Best Education Practice: Beyond the Community RSS Feed

See below for: research findings about how to work beyond the community – with agencies, groups, or a geographic region that may affect a specific community.

For Beyond the Community, the learning experience:

  • Builds value for education as part of policy development and implementation.
  • Builds skills for flexibility and responsiveness to environmental issues and for facilitating community engagement.
  • Offers avenues for participation which are competent, fair, and enhance involvement for all levels of responsibility.
  • Concerning a particular topic – consolidates the learning goals for all levels of responsibility, but not the teaching methods, which are adapted for the target audience.
  • Matches the target audience to the scale of the problem.

Findings Navigation: Browse by Audience; Browse by Theme; Browse by Best Education Practice; Browse by multiple topics

Ghanbarpour, M. R., Hipel, K. W., & Abbaspour, K. C. (2005) Finding 2

In the long-term watershed planning process, assess and analyse different stakeholders’ preferences in order to prioritize various strategies and alternatives. For example, use an analytical hierarchy process (AHP) or a social choice function (SCF) process. The analytical hierarchy process is best used with expert groups and includes (1) the structuring of a problem into a hierarchy consisting of a goal and subordinate features, (2) pairwise comparisons between elements at each level, and (3) propagation of level-specific, local priorities to global priorities. The intensity of preference between any two elements is assessed by integers ranging from 1 to 9 (Saaty, 1980, 1990).  The social choice function is based on pairwise comparisons on the number of voters between pairs of strategies. It assumes that all assertions of preference between two strategies carry equal weight. Continue reading →

Adams, J., Kraft, S., Ruhl, J. B., Lant, C., Loftus, T., & Duram, L. (2005) Finding 1

As watershed organizations develop, facilitate a form of governance that is democratic and able to generate outcomes considered legitimate by all affected parties:

  • Provide a foundation of accepted scientific knowledge about the scope of the problems and the underlying biological-chemical-physical-socio-economic factors at work;
  • Develop rules to inform the planning process that are accepted as ‘‘right’’ and just by the stakeholders and provide for a process through which interested individuals (stakeholders)develop, debate, reject, and accept plans to deal withthe identified problems while promising to reach stipulated goals including a process for making the plan known to all affected parties;
  • Establish an accepted process for implementation, monitoring, and enforcement of the plan and its recommendations in an impartial way including a way to amend the plan or recommendation in light of new scientific information or changingsocial and/or environmental conditions.

Continue reading →

Ferreyra, C., & Beard, P. (2007) Finding 4

Build interorganizational leadership skills among watershed management team members that addresses the inherent tension between the nurturing and steering functions of leadership in network settings. Focus on an effective but at the same time democratic leadership style that empowers participants to respectfully engage during discussions, allowing for constructive disagreement to enrich both dialogue and action. Continue reading →

Bidwell, R. D., & Ryan, C. M. (2006) Finding 3

Explicitly recognize the implications of organizational affiliation when designingpolicies that foster collaboration in watersheds. Organizational culture and preexisting constituent relationships may dictate definitions of the problem and the range of preferred alternatives in agency-affiliated partnerships. Continue reading →

Bidwell, R. D., & Ryan, C. M. (2006) Finding 2

To assure that watershed groups can play a valuable substantive role in states’ watershed management programs, encourage active recruiting to include a variety of perspectives. As collaborative policies are developed, sponsors must strike a balance to achieve an appropriate balance of participants to address each concern. Continue reading →

Bidwell, R. D., & Ryan, C. M. (2006) Finding 1

To assure that watershed groups can play a valuable substantive role in states’ watershed management programs, encourage and maintain heterogeneous participation in watershed partnerships as they work through assessment, planning or day-to-day operations of the partnership, wrestle with internal differences, and establish new collective goals and strategies to achieve them. Continue reading →