Apologies for cross postings. For info and/or to pass on to colleagues
involved in this work.
Please reply to mary lewis <[log in to unmask]>
****
September 2004
Dear Colleagues,
As fellow researchers involved in projects related to green schools, we
are writing to invite you to participate in an international greening
schools research network. The network was inaugurated in November 2003
by eight Canadian and US ‘green school’ grounds researchers at a meeting
in Toronto that was hosted by Evergreen, a non-profit organization
dedicated to urban greening.
The Toronto meeting served several purposes for us: meeting other
researchers, learning about existing and emerging research projects,
identifying future opportunities for support and collaboration, and
developing an on-going informal network of professionals with shared
interests. We presented our individual research activities and concerns,
discussed key areas for further research in the field, selected Greening
Schools Research Network (GSRN) as a formal name for our group and
discussed future directions for the network.
The second meeting of GSRN took place in Copenhagen, Denmark in June
2004. GSRN members Janet Dyment (Canada) and Mary Ellen Lewis (US), who
were participating in the Research in Participatory Education Network
(RIPEN) meeting in Copenhagen, met with RIPEN members Soren Breiting
(Denmark), Marianne Krasney (US), Sun-Kyung Lee (Korea) and Alan Reid
(UK) and discussed future possibilities for the GSRN network. We also
discussed the possibility that GSRN might function as a working-group of
RIPEN--researching participation in schoolyard greening projects.
As a result of these meetings GSRN members agreed to pursue three projects:
· First, we have developed a web-based Discussion Forum, which we
invite you to join or visit at: www.peecworks.org/GSRNshtml
<http://www.peecworks.org/GSRN.shtml> . This forum was designed to
encourage greening schools researchers to share ideas, pose questions,
seek advice, share resources, and disseminate research findings. The
GSRN home page includes a link to the GSRN Forum Archives, a link to the
minutes from the GSRN inaugural meeting in Toronto and instructions for
subscribing to the Discussion Forum.
The GSRN Discussion Forum is housed on the website of the Place-based
Education Evaluation Collaborative (PEEC), a partnership of several New
England (US) foundations and educational organizations. This listserv
should fill a gap left by the no longer active Green Schoolyards
Research Listserv established at the North American Association of
Environmental Education 2002 conference in Boston which had been housed
on the website of the National Gardening Association. Michael Duffin
(Program Evaluation and Education Research Associates, PEER) has agreed
to serve as list manager of the GSRN Discussion Forum. He can be
contacted at: [log in to unmask]
<mailto:[log in to unmask]>.
· Second, we are helping to coordinate a mini-thematic issue of
the 2005 volume of the Canadian Journal of Environmental Education
(CJEE) , which will focus on research related to ‘green school’ grounds.
Janet Dyment (Lakehead University, Ontario, CA) has agreed to be the
guest editor and can be contacted at: [log in to unmask]
<mailto:[log in to unmask]> for further information.
· Third, we will be hosting "Greening Schools Research Network:
Opportunities to Collaborate" at the 2004 conference of the North
American Association of Environmental Education (NAAEE) in Biloxi,
Mississippi (US) on Monday, November 8, from 10:15 AM -12:00. We invite
you to participate in our NAAEE session. (See www.naaee.org
<http://www.naaee.org/> for conference information.) We have chosen an
informal hands-on format to permit the sharing of individual research
initiatives and the identification of opportunities for
collaboration. Mary Ellen Lewis (City University of New York, NY, US)
has agreed to coordinate this session and can be contacted at:
[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> for further
information.
We are planning to seek funding and support for future projects and
possibilities for the Greening Schools Research Network.
We invite you to join or visit the GSRN Discussion Forum, read the
“green schools” research articles in CJEE (Volume 5) and participate in
the GSRN session, if you plan to attend the NAAEE conference in
November. Please feel free to forward this email to colleagues you think
might be interested.
We look forward to hearing from you, and hope you share our enthusiasm
in launching this network.
Best wishes,
The Greening Schools Research Network (GSRN)
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