The Current Context for Reef Education in the Coral Sea

We begin with an insight from a James Cook University student surveyed in 2015:

None of us want to be part of the generation or generations that ‘causes the demise’ of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), although this article was written at a time of great uncertainty for the miraculously beautiful reefs along the Queensland coast, which form the world's largest coral reef ecosystem. The GBR is iconified as an Australian national treasure, and the whole ecosystem covers 348,000 square kilometres and is home to thousands of animal and plant species, including more than 30 species of whales and dolphins (Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority [GBRMPA], 2016). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are the original reef guardians and rely on the GBR for maintaining their ancestral links, tourism, fishing, and hunting. All Queensland regional communities derive direct economic, social and environmental benefits in the form of tourism and recreational activities (Marshall & Johnson, Reference Marshall, Johnson, Johnson and Marshall2007; Tarte, Hart, Hughes, & Hussey, Reference Tarte, Hart, Hughes and Hussey2017).

To set the context for our reef educational work from 2015 to 2017, we first describe the rapid environmental change that took place over that time and the policy frameworks and scientific responses around that change. The Reef 2050 Long-term Sustainability Plan (Australian Government Department of the Environment, 2015) is a framework for protecting and managing the GBR to 2050. The overarching vision is to ‘ensure the Great Barrier Reef continues to improve on its Outstanding Universal Value every decade between now and 2050 to be a natural wonder for each successive generation to come’ (Australian Government Department of the Environment, 2015, p. 1). Unfortunately, the ‘Universal Value’ of the GBR was subject to a sudden shock with the ‘unprecedented severe bleaching and mortality of corals in 2016’ (Tarte et al., Reference Tarte, Hart, Hughes and Hussey2017, p. 31) followed by another unexpected severe bleaching event in early 2017. Current conditions are a ‘depressing moment’ in the known history of the reef, in large part due to surface warming due to climate change (Hunt, Reference Hunt2017).

Professor Terry Hughes, leader of the National Coral Bleaching Taskforce, told ABC Lateline in May 30, 2016, that he had not expected to see ‘a bleaching event as severe as this for at least another 25 years, so it has come as a huge surprise and even a shock to see the level of damage that's been caused this year [2016]’. What Hughes calls ‘the elephant in the room for better stewardship of the Great Barrier Reef’ is the relationship between reef health and anthropogenic global warming. According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), surface water temperatures in the Coral Sea rose to 5°C higher than average in 2016, which resulted in 22% of corals over the entire reef declared dead (Hunt, Reference Hunt2017). In February 2017, NOAA again declared another red alert, with corals placed at ‘fatal risk’ (Hunt Reference Hunt2017). By April 2017, there was great despondency over the capacity for affected reefs to sufficiently recover (Knaus & Evershed, Reference Knaus and Evershed2017). Tarte et al. (Reference Tarte, Hart, Hughes and Hussey2017, p. 4) describe these new, annualised bleaching events as ‘a game changer’.

In early May 2017, the Independent Expert Panel (IEP), a group of scientists who advise on the Reef 2050 Plan, issued a communiqué expressing deep concern for the future of the GBR. They wrote that ‘in our lifetime and on our watch, substantial areas of the Great Barrier Reef and the surrounding ecosystems are experiencing major long-term damage which may be irreversible unless action is taken now’ (IEP, 2017). The Panel advised there should be a ‘greater emphasis on empowering local people and communities to deliver on-ground action that will benefit the Reef’. In this context, our work of promoting more offshore reef education may be hopeless (too little too late given systemic inertia), or hopeful (bleaching events mean the case for reef education is made even more strongly), or rational (we make our futures and the reefs can be saved by immediate national and international action). We simply do not know the answers. However, uncertainty is not an excuse for inaction.

The Anthropocenic risk we refer to in the title of this article is in relation to the coral bleaching caused by prolonged exposure to warmer-than-usual seawater associated with climate change. The Anthropocene is a way of naming the conditions under which we presently live (Zalasiewicz et al., Reference Zalasiewicz, Williams, Fortey, Smith, Barry, Coe and Stone2011). A deeply worrying feature of our current era is the accelerating rate of species extinction, especially among invertebrates (Kolbert, Reference Kolbert2014). The future of coral reefs is heavily debated (Knaus & Evershed, Reference Knaus and Evershed2017). The GBRMPA does publish regular updates on reef health, and in June 2017 the Authority reported, ‘it is likely the resilience of the majority of reefs north of Mackay has been severely diminished’, and that, ‘impacts such as climate change are leading to more widespread and frequent disturbances’. Confronting rapid environmental change has added an alarming and confusing dimension to our work. The back-to-back bleaching events coincided with the period about which we describe our partnership for offshore reef education in Cairns.

We formed the partnership around meeting the need for higher quality marine education as part of promoting the national STEM teaching agenda through the Step Up project sponsored by the Office of Chief Scientist. We had ethics permission to collect commentaries on reef learning from James Cook University students, and these data are presented as part of this article. (We acknowledge the absent voices from other partners and that this is a limitation of our work.) We are six educators from tropical north Queensland who asked ourselves in 2015 (before the bleaching events): How can we best contribute to Great Barrier Reef custodianship at the local scale?

In this article we describe our initiative to develop offshore reef education for school-aged students, their teachers, teacher aides and parents, tertiary educators and tertiary science students from James Cook University in Cairns, drawing on the expertise of land and sea country Indigenous reef rangers. Sea country learning and the concepts of civic environmentalism frame the theoretical context for our initiative. We discuss these concepts and our data collection. We explain how our learning partnership was formed (what we did and how we did it), and what makes formal, offshore reef education possible. We then discuss how such an initiative may be sustained over time; although we do have worries — and not without cause — that our educational efforts may morph into something equivalent to the ‘last chance to see’ (Adams & Carwardine, Reference Adams and Carwardine1992).

Sea Country Learning as Civic Environmentalism

It is important to venture out to the Coral Sea and to immerse our bodies in water and directly learn from reefs. In the words of one university student, ‘We need to experience the reef and islands to fully appreciate its beauty. Once you have experienced the reef and how amazing it is, you can't help but want to be a part of its conservation’ (JCU student, 2015). The pedagogical reasons are because ‘children who enjoy the outdoors become advocates for the outdoors’ (JCU student, 2016). And, while ‘schoolwork will help to promote sustainability of the reef’, experiencing local reefs in real life and in real time means ‘the most important thing is that children grow up to be adults who love the reef because of their enjoyable experiences’ (JCU student, 2016).

Sea Country learning is embedded within broader conceptualisations of land education (see McCoy, Tuck, & McKenzie, Reference McCoy, Tuck and McKenzie2016). Land education is first, the understanding that different people have different epistemological, ontological, and cosmological relations with lands and waters; and second, that any separation between land, people, and culture is a false separation. From this perspective, epistemology is integral to being and knowing, and therefore culture and land and Sea Country learning practices are, by their very nature, one and the same. Land education offers a theoretical framework for engaging in environmental education that opens more inclusive social, cultural and ecological spaces for educational practice. As Meyer (Reference Meyer, Denzin, Lincoln and Smith2008) writes, ‘One does not simply learn about land, we learn best from land’ (p. 219).

Coastal, island, and marine environments collectively constitute the traditional estates of the coastal and maritime peoples in Australia (Smyth, Reference Smyth1997). Understandings of Country, and of Sea Country, are increasingly reaching mainstream pedagogical practice. Western interpretations of Country as ‘the environment’ are too shallow, as this inherently reproduces the epistemological (and educational) deficiencies of the nature–human binary. Country is better understood as an interconnected web of social, ecological, and spiritual relationships (Whitehouse, Watkin-Lui, Sellwood, Barrett, & Chigeza, Reference Whitehouse, Watkin-Lui, Sellwood, Barrett and Chigeza2014). Sea Country education takes the form of relational learning whereby ‘knowledge entails the concept that people “belong” and are part of the land, sea and sky: these spheres are not set apart, but rather are kept balanced and in tune’ (Whap, Reference Whap2001, p. 23). Coral reefs are Sea Country and people do develop intimate relationships with reefs, and, ‘when you feel it, you get it’ (JCU student, 2016).

Our approach to offshore reef education is influenced by the concept of learning civic environmentalism that links environmental learning with building community capacity. Civic environmentalism merges environmental and civic issues through processes that recognise the worth of all (self and others, human and non-human), as opposed to the traditional top-down, expert-driven, individualist models of citizenship. Schild (Reference Schild2016) writes that ‘while environmental citizenship has been theorised at length, it is still unclear what such citizenship actually looks like in practice or by which methods it can be cultivated’ (p. 19). Given the problems of the Great Barrier Reef are largely political in origin (the report by Tarte et al., Reference Tarte, Hart, Hughes and Hussey2017, is firmly framed in the language of political urgency), the concept of people coming together in each community to participate in learning collectively for the environmental, economic, cultural and social health of a national treasure is civic environmentalism.

Our educational intention is to physically connect young people and reefs to encourage reef custodianship; to enhance the capacity of education and science university students to undertake reef education in their professional practice; and to educate ourselves further on reef matters in the Anthropocene. By exploring a reef on a cognitive and sensory level when guided by Sea Country rangers, marine biologists and reef educators, school and university students are encouraged to imagine a future they can actively shape. Collective education practices where people ‘do something together’ (Bender, Reference Bender2001, p. 73) in offshore reef environments are logistically difficult, but once accomplished, can be very rewarding for all concerned. We are continually reconsidering ways in which the methods of cultivating civic environmentalism can be made more explicit in our formal learning partnership. What we found from our data was that students are ‘more likely to engage . . . with physical participation’ (JCU student, 2016), and that ‘teaching about marine science in the classroom doesn't always allow students to fully understand [however] taking students to the Reef and allowing them to experience and be taught in the water engages students more’ (JCU student, 2016).

Reef Education as a Local Partnership

Nothing as complex as offshore, immersive, reef education can be achieved without a network of people and organisations making it all work. The United Nations recognises the importance of partnerships for working towards sustainability and has promoted the importance of productive educational relationships in the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UNESCO, 2005), the Gothenburg Recommendations on Education for Sustainable Development (Centre for Environment and Sustainability, 2008), the Bonn Declaration (UNESCO, 2009), the Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations Development Program, 2016) and, most recently, in a partnership exchange initiative (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2016).

We have learned that, ‘experiential learning opportunities are vital for students engaging with sustainability issues’ (JCU student, 2015). Our partnership began as a network that coalesced into a working partnership to expand our educational capacity. Networks ‘have the ability to create a shared purpose and commitment among people and organizations’ (Chapman & Aspin, as cited in Black, Reference Black2008, p. 7). Our partnership is driven by a shared purpose — a commitment to offshore education — and a fair bit of dogged persistence. People who care about the reef, who care about environmental education, and who care about the local community now work together for the common purpose of reef education, offering an immersive experience connecting people, Sea Country and learning. The program was developed through many strategic stages involving first building trusted relationships with schools, Indigenous groups and the university; working with schools to develop programs that meet educational, ethical and safety standards; building Indigenous ranger capacity to work with school and university students; and encouraging university students to consider reef education as a form of professional development. As a result, diverse knowledge and expertise is shared as ‘one [member] forms and is formed by the other at the same time’ (Stacey, Reference Stacey2007, p. 9).

What we aim for is that the long tradition of Australian Indigenous people to read, understand, listen and learn on Sea Country blends with Western scientific and educational practices and also the power and beauty of the reefs themselves to form mutual and productive understandings. Our community of learners (see Rogoff, Reference Rogoff1994) is composed of school-aged students, their teachers and parents; preservice and inservice teachers and their academics; science undergraduates (as intending teachers and science communicators); and local Sea Country guardians who are all taken to one of eight outer barrier reef locations or local island readily reached in a day trip from Cairns. Each reef offers learners opportunities to experience how energetic and warm the sea is and how amazing snorkelling reef havens can be. Our data indicate our university students are quick to understand the intention of our partnership. As one said, ‘this trip has shown me the importance of exposing school students to the reef to make them appreciate its beauty and develop awareness of the need to protect this natural great wonder of the world’ (JCU student 2016).

The first and most important enabler is access to a suitable boat and expert professional crew who provide transport, and the willingness of the company that holds all the permits for reef visits to undertake educational activities. As part of its operations, Reef Magic Cruises developed an educational enterprise called Reef Magic Education, and created the position of reef community education coordinator. The coordinator works closely with the team of marine biologists in the employ of the company to offer local and international schools the opportunity to have students participate in ‘place-based learning programs on the Great Barrier Reef’ (see http://www.reefmagiceducation.com). Marie Taylor describes her coordinator's role as offering ‘transformative education relating to Sea Country’. When Indigenous rangers discuss their land-based projects with students, they illuminate the synergies between what happens on land and the effects on offshore environments, promote caring for Country, and lift the value and profile of Indigenous knowledge. The rangers can gain qualification recognition and certificates, and by increasing their skills and capabilities and moving into different positions, open spaces for younger Indigenous people to move into ranger programs. The participation of Indigenous rangers is vitally important and ‘input from the rangers [is] so valuable in understanding an Indigenous perspective’ (JCU student, 2016).

Reef Magic Education programs are designed to take school students to a number of offshore reefs and to Fitzroy Island for a reasonable price, with a full education program, food and drink, stinger and wetsuits and snorkelling gear included for all students, parents and school staff. Programs are linked to the Australian Curriculum. For outer reef visits, all participants are provided with a mask and snorkel, fins and a wetsuit or lycra suit, and, for less able swimmers, flotation vests and pool noodles. Safety lessons are provided on the outward journey and the rangers are available to give talks. School students with their parents, teachers and aides are divided into groups to undertake a series of rotations. James Cook University students join each student group to assist the younger students and learn how to do reef education by participating in structured activities. Marine biologists and teachers lead the groups, and rangers join the student groups for snorkelling activities and in-water learning conversations. For trips to Fitzroy Island in 2015 and 2016, groups went snorkelling, visited a sea turtle rehabilitation centre, and took island walks with Gunggandji rangers.

As educators sensitive to the concept of Sea Country, our pedagogical approach is to encourage development of a deeper and more intimate relationship with offshore reefs. Students jump into the sea to become enticed by a magical kaleidoscope of marine life. Students are offered activities that include: collecting and recording measurements of water turbidity, pH and temperature; guided snorkel tours and monitoring services with a marine biologist to identify and record coral formations and key indicator species for the GBR; free snorkelling time; and chats with rangers. As students immerse themselves in directed and self-directed discovery experiences, the reef takes on the role of the teacher to engage students’ senses and emotions as they swim above and beside coral and fish species, and the sensory and emotional learning experiences combine with their pre-existing cognitive understanding of the reef to develop a deeper learning experience. As one JCU student put it, ‘waves, children learn about waves, that doesn't happen in a classroom’.

Step Up Project and the ‘Third Space’ Dimension of Pedagogical Learning

James Cook University students were recruited from the Bachelor of Education, Master of Teaching and Learning, Master of Education and Bachelor of Sustainability programs. There is no formal assessment requirement and no limit placed on the number of trips any university student attends. Students often take multiple reef trips with different schools and age groups and many have expressed their desire to be reef and marine educators as a career choice. What emerged from survey data was an understanding of how ‘reef education assists in quashing unsustainable practices’ in that ‘students, such as myself, are able to engage in processes that can assist in maintaining the reef's ecology now and into the future. [The program] made explicit links between today's experiences and sustainability leading to more active and involved citizens’ (JCU student 2015).

Adding preservice teachers and science undergraduates (as intending teachers) to school reef trips was enabled by the Office for Learning and Teaching (OLT)-funded Step Up project. This project sought to transform the nature and delivery of mathematics and science preservice teacher education in Queensland in response to an urgent need for more highly qualified mathematics and science teachers. Step Up was framed to challenge the status quo in science teacher education by identifying ‘the conditions in which science teacher education can thrive in Universities’ (Step Up, Reference Up2016). Our approach was to create a ‘third space’ in which preservice teachers (as education and science undergraduates) can develop pedagogical content knowledge in relation to a range of contemporary topics, which included offshore reef education. This ‘third space’ deliberately privileges collaborative and reflexive practice. At James Cook University (JCU), we took two different approaches. On the Townsville campus, collaboration with local partners led to the development of the Illumin8 science clubs, which provide a third space to develop innovative pedagogical practice in a laboratory or classroom setting. The second approach was to form a partnership and participate in Sea Country education in Cairns. Offshore reefs are more easily accessible from Cairns, and this is why we took the opportunity to embark on this project in Cairns rather than in Townsville.

It is important to have educators on reef trips who are comfortable in the water and who can provide hints and tips on pedagogy and skills to those less familiar with marine environments. The tourism operator has responsibility overall for the safety of all people on the board; the school teachers have responsibility for their students and accompanying parents; and JCU academics have responsibility for their students. University students take care of school students in the water and provide assistance in many ways, including helping younger and disabled children in and out of the water. Their brief is to learn both the content and pedagogy of reef trips and to have an enjoyable, immersive experience. One noted: ‘Experiential learning promotes positive learning behaviours. I saw some boys really enjoying knowledge sharing’ (JCU student, 2015).

The Coral Reef Partnership

In formal education terms, a coral reef can be considered a ‘third space’ for learning, or an object or environment to be learned about. But reality is far more sublime. The most important thing is the realisation of how magnificent and how extraordinary coral reefs actually are. Typically, there is learning about the lives of other creatures: ‘I didn't know clams get their colours from the algae they collect, neither [did I know] that each clam is a different colour, like a fashion show’ (JCU student, 2015); ‘I enjoyed and learned a lot about turtles and it was very interesting’ (JCU student, 2015); and also joy at novel experiences: ‘I was head bumped by Maori wrasse’ (JCU student 2015). There is so much that reefs attempt to teach us. Stepath (Reference Stepath2015) showed conclusively in his large, quantitative study with secondary school students in northern and southern offshore reefs that immersive experiences have the greatest positive impact on measurable student knowledge, awareness and attitudes. The reason? Salt water — the sea — is so much bigger and more powerful than us. Bobbing around on the surface of the space where the reef plunges down into bluer depths, it is evident that the reefs are profound teachers, and human educators are wise to recognise the power of reef communities to be educators.

The university student data uniformly indicated the high value of personal reef contact. While we can view these responses in an instrumental way, what lies behind every account is the educative effect of reefs. The living reality is deeply profound. Abram (Reference Abram2011, p. 4) names this as ‘the directly sensed world’ and argues, ‘We are by now so accustomed to the cult of expertise that the very notion of honouring and paying heed to our directly felt experience of things . . . seems odd and somewhat misguided . . . way to find out what's worth knowing’. Coral reefs are worth knowing and worth knowing well, more so in the devastating, warming conditions of the Anthropocene. Abram also has something to say about this, writing:

Continuing On

As we alluded to earlier, partnerships for offshore learning take doggedness to become fully established. It is difficult for schools to marshal their resources, fill out the forms and get students, teachers, teacher aides, and parents onto a boat — it is easier to stay in a classroom. It is difficult for university educators to fill out the forms, communicate the opportunities, round up tertiary students, and get on a boat. Staying in the lecture hall is easier. The ways in which formal education practices are configured means there are many administrative obstacles put in the way of students and teachers wishing to go to sea. Fear of the sea and of what may possibly happen is present in every (proliferating) risk management assessment. This is one reason why people working in formal education must partner with people working in offshore tourism, for it is the tourism operators who have already marshalled the considerable and various expertise needed to make a reef contact experience enjoyable, safe, and meaningful.

So, what do we envision for our future practice? In simple terms, we wish to keep going. As we are finding, this partnership is worth the effort: ‘To involve the kids is the best education. Reef excursions are the best way to do this’ (JCU student, 2015). The legacy of the Step Up project continues to support university students to get on board. The ranger development program continues to grow. There is a future aim to have Traditional Owners go with the boat to contextualise local science and cultural knowledge, and make more visible the significance of reef as a place for the Gunggandji, Djunbunji, and Yirrganydji people. We would like to explore further Sea Country and its significance in contemporary times, and how to better meld older (traditional) and newer (scientific) knowledges in the learning design of the offshore education program. We also need to deal with the matter of coral devastation and the confronting question of what rapidly changing environmental conditions mean for marine education in the topics. Our personal vision includes: furthering our own connections to Sea Country; continuing to build capacity, skill sets and knowledge of the Great Barrier Reef; promoting cultural diversity and providing creative and authentic learning opportunities for Sea Country education; planning for increased vocational opportunities; and further promoting reef education in university education.

As primary, secondary and tertiary students experience the rangers’ unique yarns and the marine biologists’ stories on the ecology of our reefs, they have the opportunity to develop more complex, relational awareness of perspectives larger than themselves. We hope that the combination of learning traditional and Western scientific knowledge on Sea Country invigorates a sense of belonging and future commitment. As with all environmental education programs, our aim was to build understanding of and capacity for socio-environmental sustainability inclusive of the treasure that is the Great Barrier Reef. We have had wonderful experiences working together. As Smith and Stevenson (Reference Smith and Stevenson2017) note, regional communities like Cairns: ‘. . . are more like organisms than machines, and need to be treated accordingly. Trust is critical to the maintenance of the positive relations required for human beings in groups to get work done. The most important resources in any community are the talents and life-enhancing passions that their members possess.’

This story of practice does not have a knowable ending and, like the Great Barrier Reef, we go on as best we can in the Anthropocene. We shall continue to develop our partnership and continue building capacity for reef education in tropical Australia. Our work has shown us the central importance of partnerships for enhancing environmental educational capacity in regional communities and how, by drawing on our individual ‘life-enhancing passions’, we can enable a complex partnership to be desirable and productive.