Eco-education: Developing effective partnerships perspectives from a New Zealand based case-study

Education-community partnerships offer a profound understanding of the environment and awareness about the fundamental causes and consequences of ecological issues including climate change, loss of biodiversity, extinction of endangered species, degradation of ecosystems, and natural disasters. A systematically developed partnership between academic institutions and the community aimed at resolving local environmental issues offers educators the opportunity to construct authentic educational content and integrate diverse teaching pedagogies. As these alliances evolve with time and support, they become significant conduits for the exchange and distribution of resources, leadership, and expertise across cross-sectoral stakeholders. Partnerships that present a shared understanding of the context and challenges become an essential mechanism to unleash the full potential of stakeholder engagement for developing young learners as early-stage change agents, by engaging them at the grass-root level and with wider communities. Academic and practitioner perspectives offer the possibility to adopt inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary approaches to help students gain a deeper understanding of environmental issues and enable academic institutions to develop longterm capabilities that proactively contribute to co-learning while resolving local ecological issues. Formal eco-education lacks extant researched and validated models that can guide stakeholders in the formulation process and to overcome barriers associated with the development and maintenance of school-community partnerships. The objective of this paper is to advocate the exhaustive research undertaken by academicians DePetri and Eames of the “Kids Greening Taupo” (KGT) pilot project aimed at bridging the gap in scholarly discourse on how an effective school-community partnership can be established. Their study provided a comprehensive and in-depth account of the 18-month project developed as an education program on a school-community collaborative framework in Aotearoa, New Zealand. The partnership structure followed a three staged approach of (i) planning, (ii) implementation, and (iii) maintenance. Researchers DePetris and Eames collected data using an ethnographic approach which sought stakeholder feedback, perspectives and insights on the processes and structure utilized in the program’s advancement. Qualitative data was collected through (i) observation, (ii) semi-structured interviews, and (iii) document analysis and then thematically assessed. An evaluation of this small-scale study, revealed challenges as well as a collective consensus amongst the stakeholders on the several benefits provided by the partnership within the domains of educational, ecological, social, and professional outcomes. Consequently, the researchers identified a “Collaborative Community Education” model as a prospective framework to influence the process of developing a new or enhancing an existing school-community partnership.