Design your own Human Ecology Program
Customize it for your culture, your people, your place, and your human needs - to meet three universal educational challenges.
Always remember, education is personal, and, unless you equalize the personal, you cannot equalize the public. ~
Solve for three challenges:
1
How to get everyone on their own life path to personal and collective success?
As each person is helped to discover their identity and 'find their passion", a diverse society becomes able to function collectively - each contributes something unique. This is the reason Human Ecology education must be universal.
2
How to build individual resilience when facing economic, climate, and social change?
That requires learning personal, practical, and psycho-social skills for home, communities, and work to develop a healthy "internal locus of control" -- the understanding of how your actions affect your life and give you autonomy and the ability to navigate larger social systems. Lack of independence and agency fosters depression and hopelessness.
3
How to educate for the management of changes caused by the increased complexity of social systems?
Life management crises, individual or collective, cause people to form tribes, seek simple solutions to complex problems, become angry, and turn to violence when they cannot understand how society can work for them. For greater national well-being, teach people how to use contemporary complex social systems.
The Basics
Designing Your Human Ecology Program
Abraham Maslow's Hierarcy of Need
Another model that drives Human Ecology education is Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Needs, which illustrates human life growth from the basics to the actualized adult agency. It is important to understand that human growth must begin with a foundation of skills and awareness about life-sustaining basic skills before future growth is jeopardized.
CASEL wheel of competencies.
Social Emotional Learning
(SEL)
Human Ecology education is always
two-part: physical, whether it is human physicality, or the built or natural environment, and psycho-social, how we think, feel, and navigate within society. Some aspects are more one than the other, but both are always in play. The psycho-social is categorized as SEL, Social Emotional Learning, illustrated by what is known as the Casel Five, the five skills to learn. It is the stage of growth after the fulfillment of basic needs.
The Framework
1
Human Ecology Program Dimensional Framework:
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Ecological dimension: Safeguarding the preconditions for life, social sustainability, and human rights.
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Social dimension:
Respecting human rights, equity, and other forms of life.
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Economic dimension:
Enabling economic stability.
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Health dimension:
Maintaining physical and mental health.
2
Curriculum Goals
for the Development of Human Wellbeing:
Elementary, Secondary, College & Life-long Learning:
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Care of oneself and others, managing daily living.
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Cultural competence, interaction, and socio-emotional expression.
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Multi-literacy.
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Information and Communication Technology (ICT) skills.
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Professional competence in work and entrepreneurship.
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Development of participation, influence, and leadership skills.
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Rational thinking and lifelong learning.
3
Curriculum Objectives
to Meet Goals:
"the student will be able to . . ."
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Have a systemic comprehension of social and ecological systems.
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Be responsible for future generations and natural environments.
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Achieve balance and moderation in life planning and behavior.
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Understand the on-going interrelation between people and other living organisms.
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Appreciate and apply aesthetic design.
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Perform practical, personal life skills and abilities for a healthy home and family.
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Understand real-world multi-cultural social systems and change.
Program Parameters:
by Universality, Culture, Topic, and Age
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Core Universal Human Needs are cross-cultural and applicable to all human beings everywhere.
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To meet those needs, different cultures develop specific skills, given their traditions and resources.
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In all cultures, resilient knowledge scales up from personal to national.
You are part of everyone's environment!
© 2022 Sandra Ericson
Human Ecology Curricula
College/University Divisional Levels
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Programs and course content are instructor-designed for age and diverse cultural contexts at each grade division.
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The complexity of content increases with student knowledge level, maturation and level of professional preparation.
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College lower division (Grades 13 and 14) courses should be required to graduate and be experiential and performance-based, at one per semester/quarter.
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College upper division (Grades 15 and 16) courses, in addition to the topics identified, may include the social scope of Developmental Pyschology, Sociology, Political Science, Religion/Spirituality, History, Climate Science, and Economics.
© 2022 Sandra Ericson
Cultural Intelligence
Cultural competence, “the acquisition and maintenance of culture-specific skills", is critical for very practical reasons in our global, transitory world:
• To function effectively within a new cultural context, whether it is with a small group or a nation.
• To interact effectively with people from different cultural backgrounds.
"It is by the age of 9 that children's cultural attitudes are set, and they tend to stay constant unless the child is faced with a life-changing event."
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According to UUA’s general assembly of 2012.
These Human Ecology education attributes guide individuals in developing cultural intelligence and competence:
• Self-knowledge and awareness about one's own culture and worldview.
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Experience and knowledge of different cultural practices.
• Attitude toward cultural differences.
On an individual level,
Human Ecology education for cultural intelligence provides:
• Cross-cultural skills,
• An ability to recover from inevitable cultural collisions,
• Inclusive decision-making,
• Knowledge about cross-cultural differences,
• Cross-cultural communications skills,
• Diversity management skills,
• Inclusive beliefs and values,
• Awareness of personal biases and stereotypes,
• Leadership cultural skills for diverse communities.
Whole individuals create whole societies ~