Forest For Every Classroom (FFEC) Evaluation Report, 2003-2004

Below is a text-only version of the Executive Summary (i.e. no tables, figures, graphics). A web compatible version (i.e. low resolution graphics) of the complete report can be downloaded from the bottom of this page. Contact the FFEC directly for a high resolution version of the report.

A Forest for Every Classroom (FFEC) is a professional development program for educators created and implemented by a unique partnership of public land management agencies and nonprofit organizations. The partners work together to provide teachers with a year-long workshop series in which they are immersed in field study of the forested landscape.

Ø Participation in FFEC influenced teachers’ teaching practice, and there was a diffusion of FFEC practices to other WUMS teachers who plan on participating in future FFEC programs. The FFEC program gave WUMS teachers the tools to integrate the local forest into the traditional content areas. The team-teaching framework proved to be a useful support when implementing an interdisciplinary curriculum unit such as the Forest Unit which teachers developed as FFEC participants.

Ø The FFEC program provided WUMS teachers with exposure to resource specialists useful to their teaching practice. Involving community members with school projects strengthened community-school connections and provided students with different perspectives.

Ø WUMS students gained knowledge about and greater appreciation for public lands and their local forests. Students also demonstrated increased interest in learning traditional content in the context of their home place- its ecology, management and stewardship; exposed to diverse viewpoints from public and private landowners; encouraged to transform their teaching into a community-based real-world model, and supported in curriculum development. Critical components of the FFEC model include an emphasis on place-based education, service learning, educational use of community resources (including public land), and civic participation.

Formed in 2000, the partnership consisted of Shelburne Farms, The National Park Service’s Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park (MBRNHP) and the Conservation Study Institute (CSI), The Northeast Natural Resource Center of the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), and The Green Mountain National Forest (GMNF). In 2003, the Northern Forest Center joined the partnership, providing a Northern Forest regional perspective.

Now in its second year of comprehensive evaluation, the partners and evaluation team decided that the depth of information afforded by a case study methodology would offer valuable insight into how and why FFEC creates change in teachers’ practice and within a school. Two case studies were conducted to highlight exemplary results in two different communities: Woodstock, Vermont and Hanover, New Hampshire. A third case study examined the workings of the FFEC partnership itself, specifically focusing on how the partnership has impacted its constituent organizations, and how each organization contributes to such a partnership. Furthermore, a comprehensive survey was developed and administered to all educators who participated in FFEC in Year 1 and Year 2. This effort built directly upon FFEC’s involvement with the Place-based Education Evaluation Collaborative, and helped evaluators and program staff begin to understand how various levels of participation in FFEC impact a teacher’s practice.

Teachers from Woodstock Union Middle School (WUMS) used their experience and training through FFEC to develop a Forest Unit, which is now an integrated, multi-disciplinary component of the seventh grade curriculum. From the moment students begin their tenure at WUMS, they are encouraged to develop a deep connection to their home place of Woodstock, Vermont, and its natural and cultural treasures. Beginning with an early fieldtrip to nearby Mt. Tom, teachers approach the traditional content disciplines, such as math, English, global studies, and life skills through the wealth of information provided by their local forests. As a result of FFEC participation, teachers point to the local public lands as a valuable resource, and their students demonstrate increased knowledge and respect for their home place and the array of life contained within.

Teachers from the Bernice A. Ray School (Ray School) have recently adopted a cohesive, place-based science curriculum for their Hanover, New Hampshire elementary school. Further, the second grade teaching team has begun to implement a local forest theme for their segment of the new curriculum. The effort to enhance the curriculum was led in part by the participation of one Ray School second grade teacher in FFEC. Additional influence came from the participation of half the school’s faculty in a FFEC summer workshop, which was held at the Ray School to encourage their use of the natural surroundings as a teaching resource. Students and teachers of the Ray School have started to discover the learning opportunities of local forests through a curriculum platform inspired by the 32-acre forest adjacent to the school. Teachers anticipate that the use of the local forest as a teaching resource will develop over time as Ray School teachers and students gradually adjust to the outdoor classroom.

Ø Ray School teachers, including those who did not directly participate in FFEC, indicated their teaching practice was positively influenced. In particular, the FFEC program gave the participating second grade teacher the tools, including confidence and leadership skills, to integrate the local forest into the traditional content areas. Many Ray School teachers have committed to adopting FFEC principles in their teaching. The existing framework of support at the Ray School, including the critical friend groups, allowed for teachers to exchange lesson ideas and provide useful feedback to further develop the use of the natural surroundings as a teaching and learning medium.

The FFEC partnership unites conservation and education organizations representing the public and private sectors. The organizations represent local, regional and national territories, audiences and organizational networks. This combination offers the project a variety of perspectives, modes of operation, sources of funding, and means of dissemination.

Given this unique assemblage, there is much to be learned from how the partnership functions and what effects it has had. In FFEC’s first year of comprehensive evaluation, a perfunctory investigation of the strengths and challenges of the partnership itself was conducted. In this, the second year, a case study was designed to build on these findings and investigate the nature of the partnership in more depth.

Ø Internal Integration of Education and Conservation Activities: To varying extents, all of the partner organizations reported an increase in the level of integration between their education and conservation activities. Examples include MBRNHP incorporating educational activities into its forest management plan and Shelburne Farms considering broader conservation issues such as the global economy when planning and delivering its educational programs.

Ø Building Relationships with Communities and Schools: Partner organizations reported that FFEC has enhanced their outreach to their communities. For instance, NWF reported that FFEC increases their public appeal by branching out beyond the non-profit sector and into the public sector, and Forest Service respondents noted that public land managers benefit immensely from having a public who is educated about and engaged in the stewardship of their local environment. Their ability to work effectively with schools through FFEC fosters this phenomenon.

Ø The Spread of Language and Ideas within the FFEC Organizations: One indication of a program’s effects on its parent organizations is the degree to which its concepts and terminology are adopted into the culture and lexicon of the broader organizations. In each partner organization examples were offered of ways in which the language and ideas of place-based education and/or forest management were being more readily infused into their organizational publications, educational programs, and everyday language.

Ø Mutual Understanding Growing Between Public and Private Sector Organizations: FFEC is setting an example of productive collaboration between public and private sector organizations. Partners reported that organizational relationships had been positive, productive and had offered “gateways to further collaboration” on non-FFEC endeavors. Partners also noted that partnering distributes the burden of funding amongst societal sectors, creates a heightened appreciation within an organization of the “other sector’s” role, and presents a positive and balanced message to the public.

While the partner organizations clearly benefited from the FFEC partnership, so too did the program itself benefit from being the product of collaboration. FFEC appears to be a more balanced program, to have increased legitimacy, and to be more resilient due to its creation and implementation by a network of diverse partners.

One of the goals of the FFEC partners was to create an educational model that was worthy of replication and dissemination to a broader audience. One of the benefits to working as a partnership between public and private sector organizations is that their vehicles for dissemination are distinct, each with different networks of contacts, thereby magnifying the potential for dissemination of the FFEC model. Numerous examples of FFEC spreading far and wide were in evidence. A few examples include:

Ø MBRNHP is to host a seminar for senior National Park Service managers at their site this fall. One reason for the location is that FFEC is the NPS’s “best example…of creating a venue for civic dialogue on the management of resources.”

Ø CSI director has strong ties with the NPS National Leadership Council which is presently defining the education agenda for the NPS. She also has a pivotal role in developing the educational component of the NPS’s Gateway Community program.

The FFEC partnership demonstrates several underlying, though not insurmountable, challenges, including: the difficulty of communication, decision-making, and recognition given the complexity of the partnership arrangement; and issues of equitable funding contributions, time commitments, and institutional support.

FFEC partners described many meaningful impacts of their participation in FFEC. Some changes took place inside of organizations, while others occurred in the larger network of communities, schools, and project collaborators. As the partners flourished in FFEC, the program itself reaped the benefits of being fed by many sources. This confluence of inputs from the partners shaped a program that is more flexible, energetic, objective, and transportable than what could have been produced by any one creator.

Two sets of educator surveys administered in June 2004: 21 out of 29 educators who were participants in the FFEC 1 and FFEC 2 trainings (72% representation); and 12 out of 14 educators from FFEC 4, representing 86% of that cohort. An exhaustive exploration of the rich possibilities for interpretation and presentation of this data is beyond the scope of this report, but four scatterplot correlation graphs illustrate the way that the survey data can be used to address important questions about the program’s effects and its implementation.

The results of piloting the dose-response measurement strategy have yielded some strong evidence that FFEC is having some notably positive impacts on teacher perceptions of their own teaching practice as well as on their perceptions of outcomes for their students. Although some preliminary inferences can be drawn about the challenging cost-benefit question of “how much FFEC is enough (in order to optimize long term impacts),” deeper investigation into the cost-benefit ramifications of various program delivery models is certainly warranted. This could be very useful for future evaluation efforts.

Figure S2 shows that the more a person participates in FFEC, the more likely they are to report changes in teacher practice. This claim is also supported by the case studies presented elsewhere in this report. There is no immediately obvious reason to think that the different FFEC cohorts are systematically different in ways that would bias this finding. Given the scope of FFEC compared to all the other factors that affect teacher practice, an ability for FFEC dose to predict 23% of the variance in teacher practice related questions is impressive.

The dose-response measurement strategy appeared to be quite useful since it made it possible and practical to combine survey results from various FFEC cohorts in a meaningful way to show highly statistically significant results, like the teacher practice changes represented by Figure S2.

Interpretation of the four sets of data used in this year’s evaluation—three case studies and a survey--points to a number of recommendations for program development, also called implications for practice. Four categories of recommendations are provided: Promoting a Broader Influence, Supporting Participant Implementation, Enhancing Service Learning, and Continuing to Strengthen the Partnership. Further, more specific recommendations can be found within each of the three case studies.