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Makale Özeti:
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This study examined the effects of Sharing the Environment (STE), a situated
professional development pilot program that uses an inquiry-based approach to teaching
Environmental Education (EE) to elementary students in the US and Trinidad. Inquiry is
difficult to incorporate in both cultures because proficient performance on national tests is a
priority. As a result, teachers must cover the curriculum via transmission of knowledge
rather than its discovery. In order to capture an early understanding of the effects of this
program on its participants, focus groups and ethnographic interviews were conducted with
ten participating teachers from both countries. Using a grounded theory approach on the
data sets, three themes emerged that describe conditions required for replicating this
program: structural, cross-curricular, and cultural disconnections, technological needs, and
environmental and sociocultural knowledge gains. The findings indicate that cultural
factors had a significant impact on how Trinidadian and American teachers and
administrators perceived, valued, and reacted to the concrete experiences they had in the
course of their participation in the STE situated professional development program.
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