Page 93 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

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allowed access to a section of the creek in the park, so they could train their horses
to cross Graham Creek (see location #4 on the map in Fig. 7). Despite the fact that
the horse ford was just downstream of the riffle they had planned, and despite the
fact that the horses would be passing close to an active trout spawning site, the
activists agreed to the removal of some of the riffle structure so that the horses
could cross the creek. The activists agreed to do this even though the park manager
had previously approved the blockage of the ford if it was important for the fish.
The activists made an arrangement with the most vocal horse owner that would
allow her access to the stream at times when the fish did not spawn. To the steering
committee of the Hagan Creek–Kennes Project, it was more important to have the
horse owners “on-side” than it was to have a perfect riffle – that is, a riffle that
emerged from a perfect translation from an imagined world, the world on paper,
into its material format. The riffle, in this location, was a hybrid that included the
concerns of the horse owners. Stream restoration science was transformed in its
re-creation as a set of local relations at this particular site.

A Place-Based School Curriculum Oriented Toward EcoJustice

Given the water-related problems in Central Saanich, it was not difficult to con-
vince teachers to participate in an experimental curriculum where students would
learn science by investigating the Hagan Creek watershed. During 1998–2000,
I cotaught science to three seventh-grade classes over 2–4-month periods. In these
classes, students designed and conducted their own research in and along Hagan
Creek, Graham Creek, and their tributaries (see Fig. 7) with the intent to report their
findings at an open-house event organized each year by the members of the Hagan
Creek–Kennes Project. The underlying idea in these science classes was to get
students to become active citizens and to contribute to the knowledge available in
and to the community. Other students at the middle school – and at the local high
school – already conducted research in the watershed as part of their involvement
in the regionally funded “Streamkeepers” program or for producing entries in local
and regional science fair competitions. In this way, some students already partici-
pated in creating knowledge available to their community and the activists. Members
of the Hagan Creek–Kennes Project, the authors, parents, and First Nations elders
contributed in various ways to the teaching of the children in my experimental cur-
riculum by providing workshops, talks, and assisting them in framing research and
collecting data.
It was not difficult to enlist the students in this curriculum, especially after we
were reading with them an article in which Misty MacDuffy called for community
participation in doing something about the poor environmental health of the water-
shed. The children, many of whom came from farms, hobby farms, and (hobby,
commercial) fishing families knew firsthand about the water problem. Their parents,
especially those from the local First Nation, could no longer gather shellfish along the
beaches because the pollution of Hagan Creek also polluted the inlet (left, Fig. 7).