In September 2011, the Maple Ridge Environmental School opened in BC School District 42 (Maple Ridge/PittMeadows) with three teachers and sixty-six children from kindergarten to Grade 7. The school was conceived and developed in the context of a SSHRC-funded community-university research alliance (CURA) between CIRCE researchers, the school district, and the municipality of Maple Ridge. Uniquely, the school has no building; classes are held outside in various locations, primarily local forest parks.
For the first three years of the school’s operation, the research team collected extensive data through first-hand observation of school processes, involving teachers and staff, students and their families, as well as reflective fieldnotes on the research process itself.
These YouTube videos depict the school in its first year of operation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLV4KqlD_j8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHLoh5PA36w
Here is parent and film maker Craig Cerhit describing the school in a SFU TEDx talk in 2016:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMOQiBkFZeo
And here is a music video made by students at the school in 2021:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8fk5QDAhzo
Elsewhere on this site you can find our guide to starting an eco-school, which was an attempt to systematize some of the practical issues we encountered in the Maple Ridge project and in subsequent collaborations with other eco-schools.
The Maple Ridge project also gave rise to quite a range of academic work. Here are some of the pieces:
Book:
Blenkinsop, S., M. Fettes, & L. Piersol. 2022. Ecoportraiture: The art of research when nature matters. New York, NY: Peter Lang. (See the Ecoportraiture pages on this site for an introduction,)
Thesis:
Piersol, L. (2015). Eco care: Nurturing possibility & resistance within education. Unpublished PhD thesis, Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University. https://summit.sfu.ca/item/16055
Journal Articles:
Blenkinsop, S., C. Maitland, & J. MacQuarrie. (2019). In Search of Policy that Supports Educational Innovation: Perspective of a place- and community-based elementary school. Policy Futures, 17 (4), 489-502.
Blenkinsop, S., & D. Ford. (2018). The Relational, the Critical, and the Existential: three strands and accompanying challenges for extending the theory of environmental education. Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education 21 (3), 319-330. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42322-018-0027-4
Blenkinsop, S., L. Piersol, & M. Derby. (2018). Boys Being Boys: Eco-Double Consciousness, Splash Violence, and Environmental Education. Journal of Environmental Education. 49:4, 350-356, DOI: 10.1080/00958964.2017.1364213
Blenkinsop, S., Telford, J., & M. Morse. (2016). A Surprising Discovery: Five Pedagogical Skills Outdoor and Experiential Educators have to offer more Mainstream Educators in this time of change. Journal Adventure Education and Outdoor Leadership, 16 (4), 346-358.
Blenkinsop, S. (2014). In Search of the Eco-Teacher: Public School Edition. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education. 19 (1), 145-159.
Blenkinsop, S. & L. Piersol. (2013). Listening to the Literal: Orientations Towards How Nature Communicates. Phenomenology and Practice 7(1), 41-60.
Blenkinsop, S. (2013). Feature Article: An educational project for cultural change: towards a place-based, imaginative, ecological ‘school’. Education in the North, 20 (Special Issue), 116-119.
Blenkinsop, S. (2012). Four Slogans for Cultural Change: An Evolving Place-based, Imaginative, and Ecological Learning Experience. Journal of Moral Education. 41 (3), 353-368.
Ho, YCJ. & Block, S. (2017). School, Nature, and Educational Wounds: Parents’Stories.
Pathways (http://www.coeo.org/pathways-journal.html)
Jickling, B., & S. Blenkinsop (2020). Wilding Teacher Education: Responding to the Cries of Nature. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 23(1), 121-138.
Jorgensen-Vitterso, K., Blenkinsop, S., Heggen, M., & H. Neegaard (2022). Friluftsliv and Wild Pedagogies: Building pedagogies for early childhood education in a time of environmental uncertainty. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education. 25 (1), 135-154.
Piersol, L., J. Groves, & L. Russell. (2018). Nature Education for Sustainable Todays and Tomorrows (NEST): Hatching a New Culture in Schooling. Australian Journal of Environmental Education. 34 (2), 97-114.
Piersol, L. (2014) Listening Place. Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education 17, 43–53.
Sitka-Sage, M., H. Kopnina, S. Blenkinsop, & L. Piersol. (2017). Rewilding Education in Troubled Times: Or, getting back to the wrong post-nature. Visions of Sustainability 8, 20-37.
Book Chapters:
Blenkinsop, S., J. MacQuarrie, & C. Maitland. (in press). The Maple Ridge Environmental School a case study: Ten years as an outdoor public elementary school and what we think we know now. In, Outdoor Environmental Education in the Contemporary World (Eds. J. Činčera, B. Johnson, D. Goldman, I. Alkaher & M. Medek). Springer.
Blenkinsop, S., M. Fettes, & L. Piersol. 2022. Ecoportraiture: Researching when the natural community matters. In, Challenges for Environmental and Sustainability Education Research in Times of Climate Crisis. Pp. 57-60.
Blenkinsop, S. & L. Piersol. 2018. Splash violence and other-than-human bodies as sites of power, resistance, and pedagogical possibility. In, Pedagogies in the Flesh: Teaching, Learning, and the Embodiment of Sociocultural Differences in Education. Eds, S. Travis, A. Kraehe, E. Hood, & T. Lewis. (Pp. 205-210). Palgrave Macmillan.
Blenkinsop, S. 2014. Four slogans for cultural change: an evolving place-based, imaginative and ecological learning experience. In M. Bonnett (Ed.), Moral Education and Environmental Concern. Routledge.
Fettes, M., S. Blenkinsop, & L. Piersol. 2022. Ecoportraiture: Researching in Resonance with the More- Than- Human. In, Blenkinsop, S., M. Fettes, & L. Piersol. Ecoportraiture: The art of research when nature matters. Pp. 1-22.New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Heggen, M., M. Morse., B. Jickling, & S. Blenkinsop. 2022. Where the Children Are. In, M. Paulsen, J. Jagodzinski, & S. Hawke. Pedagogy in the Anthropocene. Pp. 87-104. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Jickling, B., & S. Blenkinsop. 2020. Wild Pedagogies and the promise of a different education: Challenges to change. In, Social Ecology and Education: Transforming Worldviews and Practices. D. Wright & S. Hill (Eds.). Pp. 55-64. London, Routledge.
Sitka-Sage, M., H. Kopnina, S. Blenkinsop, & L. Piersol. 2020. Childhood in a Post-Nature World: The challenge of unlearning anthropocentrism. In: Cutter-Mackenzie A., Malone K., Barratt Hacking E. (eds) Research Handbook on Childhoodnature. Springer International Handbooks of Education. (Pp. 603-621). Springer, Cham (doi:10.1007/978-3-319-51949-4_40-1)