Place-responsive Pedagogies: Designs Based on Materiality Story and Contest

Author(s):

Peter Renshaw(presenting / submitting)Ron Tooth

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

30. Environmental and Sustainability Education Research (ESER)

Format:

Paper

Session Information

30 SES 04 B, Critically Engaging with Understandings of ESD

Paper Session

Time:

2017-08-23

09:00-10:30

Room:

K6.18

Chair:

Johan Öhman

Contribution

In this paper we report research on place responsive pedagogies designed at six environmental education centres in Queensland Australia. The designers, environmental educators at each of the six centres, had prolonged engagement with the materiality of their particular places, developed insights regarding the pedagogical affordances of their sites, and gradually articulated the distinctive stories embedded in their places. Mannion and colleagues (Mannion Fenwick & Lynch, 2013; Mannion & Lynch, 2016) documented a similar process of teachers becoming sensitive to place as they designed curriculum and taught students by engaging with a particular environment during an excursion. We became co-researchers and co-writers with the environmental educators supporting them to theorise their pedagogies, document their practices and evaluate student learning outcomes. Drawing upon Somerville (2010) we theorise place-responsive pedagogies as addressing the materiality of place, its “grounded physical reality” (Somerville, 2010, p.330), along with the cultural meaning storied over time into place (Tuan, 1979). The pedagogical possibilities of different places must also be theorised “glocally” (Mannion, 2015). To construct this interconnected notion of place/time we draw upon Doreen Massey (2005) to propose that places are not bounded or stable but continually constructed through the contested activities of people across time and space. In summary, we drew upon notions of material affordance, story and contest to theorise the place-responsive pedagogies that were designed at the six environmental education centres.

The paper presents descriptions of the distinctive place-responsive pedagogies developed at each centre. The location of the environmental education centres varied from coastal intertidal zones (2 centres), to a cloud rainforest (1 centre), an extensive forest reserve (1 centre) and urban-fringe forest remnants (2 centres). The contrasting materiality of the locations was vital to the diversity of place-responsive pedagogies that were created. To encapsulate the six place-responsive pedagogies we selected a distinctive label for each as follows: “advocacy”, “slow-time”, “walking”, “sacred”, “shifting sands”, and “the edge”. For example, the place responsive pedagogy labelled “advocacy”, is enacted in an urban-fringe forest remnant that provides habitat for endangered birds, marsupials and frogs. The reserve was proclaimed by the government in the 1990s after local activists lobbied politicians and informed them of the unique features of the remnant forest. Embedded in this site, therefore, is this rich authentic story of advocacy, so students who come on excursion to the forest engage with the materiality of the place and the endangered wildlife whilst also realising that their experience was enabled by the advocacy of local citizens.

Data on student learning was collected through participant observations of excursions, interviews with students during and after excursions, co-writing and co-reflection between us and the environmental educators. The data suggest that student learning is multi-faceted and includes emotional, dispositional, knowledge-based and behavioural outcomes. For example, with regard to the place-responsive pedagogy labelled “advocacy”, students were emotionally moved to hear the story of advocacy by a local resident with whom they converse via mobile phone towards the end of the excursion; students reported also that their dispositions towards preserving forests had changed and that their knowledge of endangered species and habitats had increased. Behaviourally, they predicted changes to their lifestyles consistent with a deeper respect for “nature” and stronger commitment to more sustainable everyday practices. The paper concludes by drawing out the implications for the theory and practice of place-responsive pedagogies.

Method

The participants in this study were experienced environmental educators at six centres who agreed to be part of a three year research project on place-responsive pedagogies. The aim of the project was to document the place-specific practices of the educators at their centres and to collect data on student learning. There was prior research evidence from Ballantyne & Packer (2009) that the pedagogies at these centres were innovative and effective but Ballantyne and Packer provided only a broad description of the features of the pedagogies which they labelled as a “fifth pedagogy”. Features of the fifth pedagogy included learning by doing through hands-on exploration and investigation; learning by being in the environment; learning by addressing authentic tasks; learning from sensory engagement; and learning in their own context (backyard) by investigating local problems and issues. These features summarise common practices across centres but neglect place responsive aspects of the pedagogies unique to each centre. Our project sought to articulate these unique place-specific features through extended observations on-site, and conversations, reflections and co-writing with the educators. Across the three years we had annual workshops where the educators shared insights about their place-specific practices, and we visited each centre for a minimum of two intensive site visits. During a typical site visit we’d accompany students on an excursion and then talk at length with the educators at the centres about moments and episodes that we found intriguing and place specific. We scaffolded their collection of evidence regarding student learning by suggesting that they keep an ongoing research journal to record incidental observations and informal conversations with students during excursions. We also guided their collection of evidence from students through co-designing post-excursion student interviews, and written responses that documented students’ learning in terms of knowledge, emotions, values and behaviour.

Expected Outcomes

The environmental educators in this study had extended time and opportunity to become sensitive to the material affordances of their sites, and develop knowledge of the cultural meanings storied into place across time, and realise the contested features of overlapping stories. These insights remained tacitly embedded in their professional practices rather than explicated and communicated more widely. It wasn’t until we engaged them as co-researchers and co-writers that they were able to articulate and theorise their place-responsive pedagogies. At the same time they became more focussed on collecting evidence of the multi-faceted nature of student learning. In the process of collecting data for the research project they documented accounts of emotional and transformative learning arising from the place-responsive pedagogies designed at their centres. This increased their own commitment as environmental educators and confirmed the importance of acting locally for global change. It is at the local level where the efficacy of our actions and commitments can be felt and appreciated. This is why the place-responsive pedagogies are so important. The pedagogies reveal the unique features and the inherent value of local sites and imbue students and teachers with a heightened sense of agency and renewed appreciation of the more-than-human world (Abrams, 1996). This is not the whole answer to the wicked problems (Rittel & Webber, 1973) we collectively must solve but to address global processes we need to start at the local level and learn to understand and value the places where we live.

References

Abram, D. (1996). The spell of the sensuous: Perception and language in a more-than-human world. Pantheon Books. Ballantyne, R. & Packer, J. (2009). Introducing a fifth pedagogy: experience-based strategies for facilitating learning in natural environments. Environmental Education Research. 15 (2), 243–262 Mannion, G. (2015). Towards glocal pedagogies: Some risks associated with education for global citizenship and how glocal pedagogies might avoid them, In John Friedman, Vicki Haverkate, Barbara Oomen, Eri Park, Marcin Sklad (Eds.) Going Glocal in Higher Education: the theory, teaching and measurement of global citizenship, pp 19-‐34. Middleburg: University College Roosevelt. Mannion, G., Fenwick, A., & Lynch, J. (2013). Place-responsive pedagogy: Learning from teachers’ experiences of excursions in nature. Environmental Education Research, 19(6), 792-809. Mannion, G. & Lynch, J. (2016). The primacy of place in education in outdoor settings. In B. Humberstone, H. Prince, & K. Henderson (Eds.) International Handbook of Outdoor Studies, pp.85-94. London: Routledge. Massey, D. (2005). For space. London: Sage. Rittel, H. & Webber, M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Science, 4, 155-169. Somerville, M. (2010). A place pedagogy for ‘global contemporaneity’. Educational Philosophy and Theory 42 (3): 326–344. Tuan, Yi-Fu (1979). Space and place: Humanistic perspective. In S.Gale & G. Olsson (eds.) Philosophy in geography. (pp 387-427). Dordrecht: Reidel Publishing Company..

Author Information

Peter Renshaw (presenting / submitting)

The University of Queensland, Australia

Ron Tooth