Permaculture Education Research - Posted by bryce

Discussion in 'Planting, growing, nurturing Plants' started by Geoff Lawton, Nov 23, 2002.

  1. Geoff Lawton

    Geoff Lawton Administrator Staff Member

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    I have just begun a Master's degree at Brigham Young University here in Provo, Utah. My major is Biological Sciences Education and they have given me the lattitude to research whateven I think is intertesting. I received a Bachelor's degree in Ecology from Massey University in New Zealand last year. By the end of that degree I loved the principles involved in the study of population and community ecology but the only three options presented at the university for application of this knowledge were research/teaching, conservation, and natural resource management.

    I read up on a couple of different author's ideas of sustainable living, but when I came across "Permaculture: A Designer's Manual" by chance in my little public library I knew I had found the perfect way to apply my knowledge of ecological interactions to the design of human sustaining living systems. I have some ideas on how to integrate the research I will undertake in my advanced degrees with Permaculture - not just to earn me a doctorate (eventually) but to further the cause of Permaculture.

    I hope to get my design certificate as soon as practicle, but right now I need to decide what to reasearch. I'd like to talk to(or even just write back and forth to) leaders/researchers in the field about what they think would be helpful for me to do my thesis on. The idea I favor most right now is doing a study of the teaching practices of instuctors at several Permaculture Institutes (ie what methods instructors use to ensure their students really learn the topics covered in these short design courses and how these methods could be improved).

    If there is someone in particular I should ask these questions of, please let me know.
     
  2. Geoff Lawton

    Geoff Lawton Administrator Staff Member

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    Hi Bryce

    teaching practices in any subject but especially permaculture are justified by the teachers students and what they achieve.

    If your students go out and do what you have taught them ie become permaculture activists and change the world for a better place and encourage other people to do the same, then you are a good teacher. As permaculture is a self breeding system it breeds it's own teachers so as a teacher if your students become teachers as good as you if not BETTER you can consider yourself a very good teacher. You should produce a teacher amongst your students at least every hundred or so students.

    The trouble with the conventional academic teaching system is teachers get more wages, more holidays, more retirement fund the longer they teach and often continue teaching because of this although they have come to hate the job and therefore fail to really inspire their students. Maybe they should be paid by what their students really achieve in the real world accumulating over time, or the longer they teach get less pay, holidays and retirement benefits, then we would have teachers who teach because they love teaching, and at retirement they would be well looked after by their students.
    So I believe you would be best reseaching the most active permaculture students and trace back to their teachers and their teachers teachers.

    A teacher really themes their students in the way they teach so as a teacher if you really want your students to be better teachers and designers than you are, thats what will happen and you are part of a sustainable evolving movement and one day you will be able to go home and garden, happy and content that you've done your bit.

    Cheers Geoff
     

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