Written by Dr. Robert G. Lee

The Multiple World Views Project was funded in 1997 by the Curriculum Transformation Project in the Office of Undergraduate Education at the University of Washington Seattle. This project was developed to help meet the challenges of curriculum transformation related to diversity in natural resources and environmental studies. Learnings involving cultural and ethnic diversity were thought to be far more effective if encountered in situ rather than in generic campus-wide courses. An outcome-based approach to curriculum design was undertaken to facilitate situated learning.

The Multiple World Views Project took a new approach to curriculum change by: (1) involving undergraduate students as equal project team members in curriculum development and design activities, (2) adopting an outcome-based approach to curriculum design, (3) involving a diverse group of individuals from the community at large to identify learning outcomes in the form of basic competencies and skills, (4) broadening learning modes beyond classroom lectures to include internships, service-learning, workshops, and flexible modules for classroom use, and (4) demonstrating the widespread applicability of an outcome-oriented approach to curriculum reform.

Today’s students can become more effective professionals and citizens by understanding how diverse cultural and subcultural identities affect definitions of environmental problems, as well as approaches to remedying these problems. How economically marginalized social classes and ethnic groups view the environment and solutions to environmental problems is especially important. A broader appreciation for environmental justice will prepare students for understanding social and political processes influencing societal distribution of food and materials, ecological services, and waste materials and pollution.

Peoples around the world are faced with increasing challenges to protect the natural environment while producing food and other material goods and ecological services for a growing population. Spokespersons for environmental protection and management are relatively homogeneous in social status (middle to upper-middle class), cultural values (urban or suburban consumers), gender (dominantly male in leadership), and ethnic identity (white North Americans and Europeans expressing the dominant ethos of Western European culture). Diversity in cultural perspectives on the environment often goes unrecognized, especially when these perspectives are held by people of color, rural resource producers, landless poor in developing countries, eco-feminists, and other groups who question the cultural values of advanced technological societies. Social and cultural diversity is as important as biological diversity, since maintenance of biological diversity will ultimately depend on the cooperation and creative problem solving of diverse social and cultural groups.

The Multiple World Views Project focused on discovering what students should learn to live and work in a diverse world. The project makes a very important contribution to transforming the learning process by specifying attainable outcomes--outcomes supported by the consensus of diverse spokespersons from the community at large. Existing curricula in natural resources and environmental studies tend to adhere to what Professor Shulman of Stanford University calls the "private model of teaching" (instructors who alone decide what students should learn and how it should be taught). The "private model of teaching" does not incorporate peer review of teaching, and certainly does not involve learning outcomes suggested by members of professional or citizen communities at large.

Curriculum transformation emphasized flexible learning modes to attain competencies and skills as opposed to inputs such as course requirements.

DACUM (Design-A-Curriculum) has been developed and used extensively as a technique for identifying the knowledge, skills, and tasks performed by competent workers in an occupation [www.dacum.com]. The DACUM process results in a spreadsheet describing competencies and skills required for successful job performance. It has been used to define educational outcomes for professional, technical, skilled, semi-skilled occupations. The Multiple World Views Project modified the DACUM process and used it for defining competencies and skills needed to be effective in living and working in a world where natural resource and environmental challenges are embedded in cultural and ethnic diversity.

This modified DACUM process was guided by three principles: (1) members of diverse social and cultural groups are more knowledgeable about diversity issues and desirable learning outcomes than anyone else, (2) diversity is best described in the discourse of diverse people rather than experts, and (3) to learn to be effective in working in a diverse setting a student must draw on socially and culturally situated knowledge, skills, sensitivities, and attitudes.

A modified DACUM process was used to represent the full spectrum of diversity associated with environmental and natural resource issues. Participants from a wide range of groups were identified, using the following selection criteria:

The Multiple World Views Project began with the involvement of a team of undergraduate students in an informal survey of diversity in views toward the environment. Team members were recruited to reflect ethnic and cultural diversity among students studying in the College of Forest Resources, College of Ocean and Fisheries Science, and College of Architecture and Urban Planning.

Three tasks were accomplished: (1) a wide variety of social and cultural groups were identified, (2) spokespersons for these groups were identified through extensive snowball sampling, (3) personal interviews were conducted (wherever possible in person, but also by telephone and email) with several spokespersons from each group, (4) distinguishing environmental views of each group were identified, and (5) candidate lists of potential DACUM participants were assembled.

This social mapping of diversity was essential for designing DACUM workshops and inviting workshop participants who could serve as effective spokespersons for the diversity of cultural views. While interesting in themselves, descriptions of the diverse cultural perspectives on environmental problems were only necessary for understanding the full range of views, who should be invited, and how groups should be constituted to avoid divisive cultural conflict. Social mapping was only a means for structuring a process to reach consensus on competencies and skills.

A total of 19 participants were involved in three, eight-hour DACUM workshops during winter and spring quarters of 1999. Workshops were held on the University of Washington’s Seattle campus and facilitated by project team members. Participants had received a letter of invitation describing the purpose of the workshops and were provided with a DACUM protocol to guide the tasks to be accomplished throughout the day (available by e-mail upon request). Participants understood that results from each of three workshops would be summarized independently and synthesized by the project team to form a final draft spreadsheet for their review and comment.

Workshops began with objectives, introductions, and a review of principles for a successful group process. This was followed by an overview of the DACUM methodology, and group participation in creating "General Areas of Competency (GACs)," identifying skills for each GAC, refining and sequencing skills, and clustering of skills according to learning activities.

All three workshops were successful in generating GACs and associated skills. GACs and skills generated by the three workshops overlapped considerably. Most of the differences between workshops were in wording and associated differences in meaning. The project team synthesized the results and suggested language that was thought to satisfy all workshop participants. Spreadsheets containing this synthesis and suggested wording were sent to all participants for their review and comment. This review suggested several changes in wording and clarifications. Only one issue with the final draft spreadsheet was not resolved. One spokesperson objected on religious grounds to the inclusion of different "sexual orientations" in the list following the skill: "Respects people from different cultural backgrounds (and their rights)." The project team chose to continue listing "sexual orientations," with the justification that its exclusion would unfairly bias the results in favor of one of a multitude of cultural views (no other spokespersons objected and most favored the inclusion).

DACUM workshops identified seven competencies and 85 associated skills. Diverse participants in the workshops reached consensus that college graduates should be capable of:

Participants placed special emphasis on the practice of science because they acknowledged the growing respect for and reliance on the scientific method for establishing a common understanding. But, more importantly, they were concerned with the growing citizen concern about the ethics of scientific practices. Workshop participants wanted students to have a better grounding in the scientific method because they were concerned that scientific studies are often biased by personal and political agendas, especially when used in attempts to solve environmental problems. Science is seen as an instrument by which the government or privileged classes exercise power by controlling what constitutes public knowledge about natural resources and the environment. This paradoxical role of science is reflected in its prominence in the list of competencies and skills.

Workshop participants identified 42 activities through which students could acquire competencies and skills. The project team grouped these activities into six primary "Educational Learning Modes." Utilization of these learning modes would have considerable advantages for students, faculty, and University administration. Students would choose among learning modes to acquire specified competencies and skills. The classroom would be only one of the venues for learning. Faculty would need to develop ways of assessing and evaluating attainment of required competencies and skills learned by means other than classroom instruction. University administrators could become more effective at increasing teaching efficiency to meet legislative standards by supporting and rewarding faculty use of diverse learning modes. Accomplishments in place of course credits could become effective measures of learning and could accelerate progress toward graduation.

Recommendations & Modular Designs

Several steps would be needed to implement the Multiple World View Project’s approach to outcome-based learning, including:

This project is designed to develop learning modules for a natural resources or environmentally related curriculum. While these modules could be assembled into a course, they would be designed so that they could also be tailored to fit into several courses in a curriculum, or even to stand alone. Learning formats other than the normal 10-week quarter course will be developed, including stand-alone modules, intensive short courses, and service learning practicums and supervised internships. This would permit faculty in various departments to identify the range of learning outcomes they want to attain, and adopt and/or modify modules for inclusion in a curriculum. These choices would be made by first arriving at a consensus about the types of diversity issues important to the field, the existing teaching of concepts and skills related to diversity, the goals for teaching about diversity, and the need for improving the learning opportunities in this area.

View the "General Areas of Competency and Skills Matrix"

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