“Seeing power” between young people and conservation professionals in the design of a community-based watershed monitoring initiative

ABSTRACT

Background

Community-based monitoring provides a forum for diverse stakeholders to co-construct knowledge relevant to building social-ecological resilience. However, power asymmetries between these actors can privilege the perspectives of dominant groups, while preventing non-dominant perspectives from informing conservation science.

Methods

This study investigates a workshop series intended to support young people in designing a watershed monitoring initiative rooted in their own interests with respect to a large dam removal in their community. We use interaction analysis to examine whose ideas are taken up in discussions among young people, educators, conservation professionals, and education researchers.

Findings

Power dynamics that privilege the contributions of credentialed professionals over those of young people can constrain collective learning processes while simultaneously generating tensions that allow for expansive learning to occur. Facilitation practices and other pedagogical moves play an important role in either further entrenching or disrupting hierarchies between youth and community partners.

Contribution

Our analysis reveals how careful attention to interactional dynamics—both as a research method and as a pedagogical practice—can make visible and disrupt epistemic hierarchies in multi-stakeholder learning environments. Problematizing these hierarchies can help broaden the perspectives from which knowledge is generated, a necessary endeavor in building resilient social-ecological systems.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the many students, educators, and conservation professionals so dedicated to environmental stewardship with whom we partnered as part of this project. We would also like to acknowledge those that provided helpful feedback and support on earlier versions of this project and manuscript including Mireya Bejarano, Peggy Harte, Lee Martin, and Cati de los Ríos, as well as the editors and three thoughtful reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Throughout this article, we use pseudonyms to represent the names of specific places, individuals, schools, and organizations to protect the privacy of participants in accordance with the UC Davis Institutional Review Board under Protocol No. 1639055–1.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported in part by funding from the National Science Graduate Research Fellowship under [Grant No. 16542]. Any opinion, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. This work was also supported in part by the Resource Legacy Fund’s Open Rivers Fund.