What is water literacy?

We define and advocate for water literacy as a shared vision for regionally-relevant environmental education. This approach is critical in coastal communities that are already seeing the impacts of shifting coastlines, storms, and regular flood events.

  • Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, United States Department of Commerce
  • Source: Millions projected to be at risk from sea-level rise in the continental United States, article by Hauer, M., Evans, J. & Mishra, D., in Nature Climate Change
  • Source: Sea-level rise and human migration, article by Hauer, M.E., Fussell, E., Mueller, V. et al., in Nature Reviews
  • Science Teachers’ Learning, National Academy of Sciences, 2015
  • Science Teachers’ Learning, National Academy of Sciences, 2015

Context

 

As water imperils us at a quickening rate, communities and ecosystems in coastal regions are increasingly destabilized by the human activities and systems meant to underpin them. While problematic for everyone, climate-related water issues, such as flooding, severe storms, and coastal land loss disproportionately threaten inhabitants of already vulnerable, under-resourced neighborhoods. 

Among the systems perpetuating inequity in these locations is education. Frequently, children living in these neighborhoods attend Title 1 public schools that are under pressure to increase student science achievement and, in doing so, help “close the achievement gap.” Yet their teachers often have less access to high-quality teaching resources, less science training, and fewer years of teaching experience than their peers at better-resourced schools.

Consequently, future generations face novel water-related risks without novel systems for addressing them.

Our Research

Ripple Effect draws from current research in fields that include environmental education, socio-scientific inquiry, and cultural relevancy.

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Our vision

 

Ultimately, we want to foster a new generation of water literate leaders, inculcated not in a sociopolitical ideology or agenda, but in rigorous scientific inquiry and a concern for the world around them. We want to cultivate leaders in the very same coastal communities that have the least exposure to science and are most likely to be displaced by rising waters in their own lifetimes, so that they will have the knowledge and skills to tackle the challenges that will come with rebuilding in place, retreating inland, or responding in a new way altogether.

We also recognize the environmental challenges are too immense, and the needs of our students and teachers are too complex, for any single organization to fulfill this vision alone. What would water literacy look like in communities outside of South Louisiana, each with their own unique hydrology and history? What systems exist that may be leveraged to optimize impact in those places?

For these reasons, we propose water literacy as a framework for region-specific environmental education, which can be applied to other coastal communities throughout the United States.

Our approach

 

Through a shared vision for water literacy, Ripple Effect seeks to reach the majority of students in climate-vulnerable areas and systematically transform the next generation’s relationship to a rapidly changing world. Of education’s many actors, we see teachers as the key to realizing this transformation at the scale we believe is necessary – but only if they have the tools to fulfill their own potentiality as learners and agents of change.

To accomplish this vision, we rely on a three-pronged approach that guides all of our partnerships and programs. 

  1. Socio-ecological content and curriculum design
  2. Strategic partnerships with scientific, education and humanities research organizations
  3. Research-based, data-driven teaching tools

Click here to learn more about our approach

As a framework

 

As an educational framework, water literacy falls under the same umbrella—and draws inspiration from— existing movements in environmental education, such as ecoliteracy and environmental literacy, as well as emerging interdisciplinary frameworks, such as planetary health. Water literacy, however, is concerned specifically with water issues that dominate the everyday experiences and future trajectories of densely populated, highly-engineered coastal environments, such as those located along the Gulf South and in Miami, New York, Houston, and the California Delta (to name a few.) In these places, the rate at which environmental issues are destabilizing local communities is outpacing the rate at which educational systems are responding.

In action

 

In action, water literacy education is a diverse ecosystem of high-quality educational experiences that take place in and outside of formal K-12 classrooms. These experiences should continually bring teachers and students into conversation with locally relevant water issues— a result of more frequent and purposeful coordination between K-12 providers, scientists, water experts, engineers, and other practitioners currently studying, documenting, or protecting these rapidly changing environments. Programming may take shape as curricula, teacher training, summer camp, fellowships, internships, residencies, films, exhibitions, or any other channel for learning.

PROJECT SPOTLIGHT

Water Literacy Interpretive Plan

Ripple Effect is currently working with university and environmental education partners to author an interpretive plan for regionally-specific water literacy education. This plan will describe a vision for water literacy education in Southeast Louisiana, define its educational goals, and detail the actions we must all take to scale this approach and systematically reach K-12 audiences.

Our Projects

Ripple Effect explores water literacy through our projects, and advocates for it through writing, presentations, and panel discussions.

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