Critical pedagogy of place is a curricular approach to education that combines critical pedagogy and place-based education. [1] It started as an attitude and approach to place-based and land-based education (both largely considered under the umbrella of environmental education) that criticized place-based education's invisible endorsement of colonial narratives and domineering relationships with the land. The scholars critiquing place-based education mainly focused on re-centering Indigenous (and other marginalized) voices in the curriculum. In the early 1990s, C.A. Bowers advocated for a critical pedagogy of place that acknowledged our enmeshment in cultural and ecological systems, and the resulting need for this to figure in the school curriculum. In 2003, David A. Greenwood (formerly Gruenewald) introduced and defined the term "Critical Pedagogy of Place." In the years since, the general ideas of critical pedagogy of place have been incorporated into many scholars' critiques of place-based, land-based, and environmental education.
At the center of critical pedagogy of place is the critique that land-based education and place-based education have largely ignored the narratives of Indigenous peoples and conceived of humans as mainly separate from nature. [2] For example, stories of eco-heroes such as the Grizzly Man and Into the Wild's main character, Chris, center on humans attempting to overcome, or conquer, nature. [3] Scholars focusing particularly on Indigenous perspectives argue that land-based education and place-based education should instead more fully consider Indigenous ideologies that incorporate humans as part of nature. In order to do this, the colonial constructs inherent within place- and land-based education must be dismantled. In particular, land- and place-education focused on areas settled by non-Indigenous peoples need to better incorporate the decolonization of the land and work to better center Indigenous narratives. [2] This process can be best facilitated by focusing on disrupting the settler colonial narrative in modern contexts, considering land and Indigenous cosmologies in curriculum, and recognizing the significance of naming places and the land rights of Indigenous peoples. [2]
Calderon argues that, incorporating a sense of place informed by Indigenous narratives renders the settler colonialism visible. Resulting academic research has illustrated these theoretical underpinnings in a variety of ways. [4] First, scholars have worked to map the path of colonialism in history and its resulting impacts on marginalized groups, thus rendering it visible. McCoy worked to create a map of the rise of the Manifest Destiny ideology in Virginia. [5] Both Paperson and Sato analyzed settler colonialism by mapping the stories of marginalized groups, thus re-centering the narrative history. [6] [7]
Second, scholars have worked to illustrate how dismantling the colonialism inherent in land- and place-based education can improve environmental education's effectiveness. In 2014, Whitehouse et al. examined Australian environmental education and demonstrated how the program both holds up colonialist ideals and incorporates Aboriginal knowledge bases. [8] Meyer, also in 2014, did a similar study with a Hawaiian environmental education program that incorporated local Indigenous perspectives. [9] Bang et al., in their work with Native Americans in the U.S., described how a critical land-based perspective can center environmental education for marginalized people. [10] Working from the perspective of African communities, Mauro et al. describes how a local-centered approach can create a more impactful educational experience. [11]
Working in the same tradition of critique, C.A. Bowers focuses on critical pedagogy of place's emphasis on the inclusion of humans within the ecological system. Bowers argues that we cannot base environmental education efforts on the individual because we are nested within culture, which is in turn nested within ecosystems. [12] We are, therefore, inevitably influenced by the culture through which we view the world—we view the world through our subconscious cultural habits. With respect to land- and place-based education, this means that they are, therefore, born out of a Western tradition that has ideals in contrast to many local, Indigenous cultures. This sets up an educational approach that is in opposition to nature and instead focuses on monetary profit over community. [13] This results in our ignoring both the ecological crisis and the intergenerational local knowledge that might help us solve it. [14]
He was to later respond to David A. Greenwood's theory of a critical pedagogy of place (see below) by arguing that a critical pedagogy of place, in an attempt to decolonize spaces, actually encodes many of the same (universalist) assumptions that also undergird our consumer-dependent world. It ignores the long history of culturally specific inhabitation. He says that the idea of decolonization is a universalizing idea that is in direct opposition to the tenets of local and place-specific knowledge inherent in place-based education:
To reiterate, the key reason that a critical pedagogy of place is an oxymoron is that the linguistic tradition of relying upon abstractions, including abstract theories that encode many of the same taken-for-granted assumptions that underlie both the idea of universal decolonization and the market liberals' efforts to universalize the West's consumer dependent lifestyle, fail to take account of the intergenerational traditions of habitation that still exist in communities. Places have a long and culturally varied history, while the language of a critical pedagogy of place has a specific history that carries forward the tradition of ignoring the diverse ways in which more ecologically centered cultures and community practices have contributed to long-term habitation of place. [15]
David A. Greenwood is the first scholar to capitalize Critical Pedagogy of Place. He writes that Critical Pedagogy of Place seeks to combine critical pedagogy's emphasis on challenging "assumptions, practices, and outcomes taken for granted in dominant culture and in conventional education" with place-based education's focus on helping students become citizens that understand their actions "might have some direct bearing on the well-being of the social and ecological places people actually inhabit." [16]
Greenwood argues that, in the process of raising students' sense of awareness and consciousness of power structures, critical pedagogy often neglects the idea that "human culture has been, is and, always will be nested in ecological systems. [17] Because of its focus on oppressed groups, critical pedagogy focuses mainly on social and urban contexts. While this emphasis on raising consciousness is important as a pathway to change, Greenwood argues that it needs to be balanced with place-based education, which emphasizes the direct social and ecological places in which the students actually live out their lives. Thus, he emphasizes the sense of urban as a place, a concept previously missing from critical pedagogy. In order to actualize critical pedagogy, he argues, we cannot forget that the urban space is also a crucial part of critical pedagogy.
However, place-based education is often criticized for not having a strong theoretical underpinning. Scholars question the purpose of teaching about local place—what does it actually achieve for the students? Therefore, in turn, critical pedagogy offers place-based education a rich theoretical grounding with its significant history rooted in critical theory. [1] Greenwood suggests that, as a curriculum with goals of social change, this moral grounding is necessary.
As a result of combining these two pedagogies, Greenwood suggests two goals for a critical pedagogy of place: decolonization and reinhabitation. [18] In order to decolonize a place, Greenwood suggests that we must "identify and change ways of thinking that injure and exploit other people and places" (6). [18] Educators can begin this process by helping students unlearn dominant narratives and instead learn about more socially just and sustainable ways of living in the world. This also means reinvigorating non-dominant cultural patterns and traditions. By reinhabitation, Greenwood means that a critical pedagogy of place must seek to teach students how to live in a place that has endured historical exploitation, both socially and ecologically. In order to do this, students must begin to understand how "living well" differs geographically and culturally while simultaneously beginning to understand how many diverse cultures live in a global society. [18] Then, students will begin to understand "what cultural patterns should be conserved or transformed to promote more ecologically sustainable communities." [18] [19]
These two goals challenge both place-based and critical pedagogy educators to "expand the scope of their theory, inquire, and practice to include the social and ecological contexts of our own and others ‘ inhabitance." [20] This emphasize creates a pedagogy that is a place of praxis for both ecological and social transformation. [21]
Recent scholarship in this field has taken a post-modern perspective on a critical pedagogy of place, calling for the changing of social imaginaries that not only better complicate the relationship between humans and nature, but also focus on a pluralistic view of the world. [22] This includes an increased need to be reflexive and create locally defensible pedagogy, rather than a universalistic pedagogy that is not flexible enough to be re-situated for local communities. [23] This begins, McKenzie argues, with the focus on the intersubjective, or the personal and community-based, experiences of education as much as the sensory or thought-based experiences. [24]
Greenwood's ideas have been both incorporated into research on environmental education, as well as being applied to other critical education approaches. Kayira, in 2015, used Greenwood's guiding questions of "'What happened here?' 'What is happening here now and in what direction is this place headed?' and 'What should happen here?'" to examine an African-centered approach to environmental education. [25] [26] Madden used the curricular approaches Greenwood outlines to suggest pedagogical pathways to Indigenous education. [27] Barnhardt does a similar exploration with Indigenous knowledges in Alaska. [28] Working to build theory, Ardoin et al. and McInerney et al. examined the scale of place and how place and identity interact in critical pedagogy of place. [29] [30] Writing to practitioners, Martusewicz wrote a book, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse, Democratic, and Sustainable Communities that gives practical examples of how to implement Greenwood's theories into practice. [31] Chinn uses Greenwood's ideas to design a teacher training aimed at decolonizing pedagogy [32]
Greenwood's theories have also been applied to other education approaches (early childhood curriculum, [33] art education, [34] social studies, [35] and globalizing [36] ).
The problematization of land- and place-based education has recently transferred to a critical examination of science education in schools. Starting from the premise that epistemological orientations impact memory organization, ecological reasoning, and the perceptions of humans in nature, Bang and her colleagues examined how students navigate multiple beliefs in community-based science education. [37] [38] First, they examined the differences between Menominee Native American children and European American children and found that Menominee children were more likely to mention ecological connections and closeness to nature, and were more likely to mimic animals. [39] Using this information, they re-centered the curriculum to include multiple ways of knowing and designed a science curriculum that relied on multiple senses of community, rejected deficit thinking, celebrated heterogeneous sense-making and expanded definitions of nature. [40] Examination of the program led the researchers to suggest that having a diversity of perspectives in science results in more effective science education. [41]
An athletic coach is a person coaching in sport, involved in the direction, instruction, and training of a sports team or athlete.
Critical pedagogy is a philosophy of education and social movement that developed and applied concepts from critical theory and related traditions to the field of education and the study of culture.
Environmental education (EE) refers to organized efforts to teach how natural environments function, and particularly, how human beings can manage behavior and ecosystems to live sustainably. It is a multi-disciplinary field integrating disciplines such as biology, chemistry, physics, ecology, earth science, atmospheric science, mathematics, and geography.
Culturally relevant teaching or responsive teaching is a pedagogy grounded in teachers' practice of cultural competence, or skill at teaching in a cross-cultural or multicultural setting. Teachers using this method encourage each student to relate course content to their cultural context.
Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is an equitable approach to research in which researchers, organizations, and community members collaborate on all aspects of a research project. CBPR empowers all stakeholders to offer their expertise and partake in the decision-making process. CBPR projects aim to increase the body of knowledge and the public's awareness of a given phenomenon and apply that knowledge to create social and political interventions that will benefit the community. CBPR projects range in their approaches to community engagement. Some practitioners are less inclusive of community members in the decision-making processes, whereas others empower community members to direct of the goals of the project.
Place-based education, sometimes called pedagogy of place, place-based learning, experiential education, community-based education, environmental education or more rarely, service learning, is an educational philosophy. The term was coined in the early 1990s by Laurie Lane-Zucker of The Orion Society and Dr. John Elder of Middlebury College. Orion's early work in the area of place-based education was funded by the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. Although educators have used its principles for some time, the approach was developed initially by The Orion Society, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit organization, as well as Professor David Sobel, Project Director at Antioch University New England.
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Indigenous decolonization describes ongoing theoretical and political processes whose goal is to contest and reframe narratives about indigenous community histories and the effects of colonial expansion, cultural assimilation, exploitative Western research, and often though not inherent, genocide. Indigenous people engaged in decolonization work adopt a critical stance towards western-centric research practices and discourse and seek to reposition knowledge within Indigenous cultural practices.
The ecopedagogy movement is an outgrowth of the theory and practice of critical pedagogy, a body of educational praxis influenced by the philosopher and educator Paulo Freire. Ecopedagogy's mission is to develop a robust appreciation for the collective potentials of humanity and to foster social justice throughout the world. It does so as part of a future-oriented, ecological and political vision that radically opposes the globalization of ideologies such as neoliberalism and imperialism, while also attempting to foment forms of critical ecoliteracy. Recently, there have been attempts to integrate critical eco-pedagogy, as defined by Greg Misiaszek with Modern Stoic philosophy to create Stoic eco-pedagogy.
Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) describes indigenous and other traditional knowledge of local resources. As a field of study in Northern American anthropology, TEK refers to "a cumulative body of knowledge, belief, and practice, evolving by accumulation of TEK and handed down through generations through traditional songs, stories and beliefs. It is concerned with the relationship of living beings with their traditional groups and with their environment." Indigenous knowledge is not a universal concept among various societies, but is referred to a system of knowledge traditions or practices that are heavily dependent on "place". Such knowledge is used in natural resource management as a substitute for baseline environmental data in cases where there is little recorded scientific data, or may complement Western scientific methods of ecological management.
In linguistics, critical language awareness (CLA) refers to an understanding of social, political, and ideological aspects of language, linguistic variation, and discourse. It functions as a pedagogical application of a critical discourse analysis (CDA), which is a research approach that regards language as a social practice. Critical language awareness as a part of language education teaches students how to analyze the language that they and others use. More specifically, critical language awareness is a consideration of how features of language such as words, grammar, and discourse choices reproduce, reinforce, or challenge certain ideologies and struggles for power and dominance.
Indigenous education specifically focuses on teaching Indigenous knowledge, models, methods, and content within formal or non-formal educational systems. The growing recognition and use of Indigenous education methods can be a response to the erosion and loss of Indigenous knowledge through the processes of colonialism, globalization, and modernity.
Eve Tuck is an Unangax̂ scholar in the field of Indigenous studies and educational research. Tuck is the Professor of Critical Race and Indigenous Studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. Dr. Tuck will be joining the faculty of NYU in 2024 as the founding director of their Center for Indigenous Studies.
Climate change education (CCE) is education that aims to address and develop effective responses to climate change. It helps learners understand the causes and consequences of climate change, prepares them to live with the impacts of climate change and empowers learners to take appropriate actions to adopt more sustainable lifestyles. Climate change and climate change education are global challenges that can be anchored in the curriculum in order to provide local learning and widen up mindset shits on how climate change can be mitigated. In such as case CCE is more than climate change literacy but understanding ways of dealing with climate
Mad Studies is a field of scholarship, theory, and activism about the lived experiences, history, cultures, and politics about people who may identify as mad, mentally ill, psychiatric survivors, consumers, service users, patients, neurodivergent, and disabled. Mad Studies originated from consumer/survivor movements organized in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and in other parts of the world. The methods for inquiry draw from a number of academic disciplines such as women's studies, critical race studies, indigenous epistemologies, queer studies, psychological anthropology, and ethnography. This field shares theoretical similarities to critical disability studies, psychopolitics, and critical social theory. The academic movement formed, in part, as a response to recovery movements, which many mad studies scholars see as being "co-opted" by mental health systems. In 2021 the first academic journal of Mad Studies, The International Journal of Mad Studies was launched.
Decolonization of knowledge is a concept advanced in decolonial scholarship that critiques the perceived hegemony of Western knowledge systems. It seeks to construct and legitimize other knowledge systems by exploring alternative epistemologies, ontologies and methodologies. It is also an intellectual project that aims to "disinfect" academic activities that are believed to have little connection with the objective pursuit of knowledge and truth. The presumption is that if curricula, theories, and knowledge are colonized, it means they have been partly influenced by political, economic, social and cultural considerations. The decolonial knowledge perspective covers a wide variety of subjects including philosophy, science, history of science, and other fundamental categories in social science.
Rebecca Sockbeson is a Wabanaki scholar and activist in the field of Indigenous Peoples' education.
K. Wayne Yang is a professor and scholar of community organizing, critical pedagogy, and Indigenous and decolonizing studies. He is a professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, San Diego and Provost of John Muir College. He writes about decolonization and everyday epic organizing, often with his frequent collaborator, Eve Tuck. Currently, they are convening The Land Relationships Super Collective, editing the book series, Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education, and editing the journal, Critical Ethnic Studies. He is interested in the complex role of cities in global affairs: cities as sites of settler colonialism, as stages for empire, as places of resettlement and gentrification, and as always-already on Indigenous lands.
Land-based education centres land as the primary teacher, as Indigenous communities' knowledge systems are inseparable from their lands. Land-based education is place-specific, grounded in culture, and aims to strengthen Indigenous communities by reviving their reciprocal relationships with their lands through the practice of their land-based traditions. These programs can have many goals, the main one being to transmit knowledge to future generations. Land-based education programs cannot be easily replicated elsewhere, as they are meant to be grounded in the cultural roots tied to a place and the community that has stewarded those lands since time immemorial. However, they can inspire other communities to develop their own land-based education programs or projects. That being said, there are many commonalities among land-based education pedagogies. They often involve mentorship from community leaders and knowledge keepers, youth are encouraged to participate, and they emphasize using traditional languages and Subsistence practices. Land-based education can be small or large scale. In the words of Yellowknives Dene scholar, Glen Coulthard, examples of land-based education include but are not limited to: "'walking the land' in an effort to re-familiarize ourselves with the landscapes and places that give our histories, languages, and cultures shape and content; to revitalizing and engaging in land-based harvesting practices like hunting, fishing, and gathering, and/or cultural production activities like hide-tanning and carving, all of which also serve to assert our sovereign presence on our territories in ways that can be profoundly educational and empowering; to the re-occupation of sacred places for the purposes of relearning and practicing our ceremonial activities."