This award supports a team of U.S. researchers and students to participate in an international planning visit in Taiwan to study how ecological literacy is enhanced through place-based curriculum in four Indigenous cultures in Taiwan, Siberia, New Zealand and Belize. The collaboration, led by the University of New Hampshire and Providence University in Taiwan, also involves Nga Pae O te Maramatanga-University of Auckland in New Zealand and Gorno-Altaisk State University in the Altai Republic of Siberia. A planning workshop brings together majority and Indigenous educators and researchers to examine education curricula in four Indigenous schools worldwide. Researchers will then work together with Indigenous teachers to refine a conceptual place-based education framework. This work will benefit the Indigenous schools by strengthening their own missions, while also helping their nations learn from past practices in developing more ecological literacy among all children. Researchers aim also to identify unifying themes suggesting how non-Indigenous schools can incorporate traditional and local ecological knowledge into their curricula.
