A Place Pedagogy for 'Global Contemporaneity'

• Published in: Educational philosophy and theory Vol. 42; no. 3; pp. 326 - 344
• Main Author: Somerville, Margaret J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford, UK Taylor & Francis Group 01.04.2010; Blackwell Publishing Ltd; Wiley-Blackwell; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Aboriginal culture; Australia: Culture; Critical Theory; Education systems; Educational Environment; Educational Philosophy; Educational Practices; Educational Principles; Educational sociology; Educational theory; Feminism; feminist poststructural; Feminist theory; Geographic Location; Global Approach; Globalization; Learning; Methods; Place (Concept); Place of Residence; place pedagogy; postcolonial; Postcolonialism; Poststructuralism; Space; Story Telling; Teaching; Teaching Methods; Teaching process
• ISSN: 0013-1857; 1469-5812
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-5812.2008.00423.x

Around the globe people are confronted daily with intransigent problems of space and place. Educators have historically called for place-based or place-conscious education to introduce pedagogies that will address such questions as how to develop sustainable communities and places. These calls for place-conscious education have included liberal humanist approaches that evolved from the work of Wendell Berry (Ball & Lai, 2006) and critical place-based approaches such as those advocated by David Gruenewald (e.g. Gruenewald, 2003a, 2003b). In this paper I will propose a reconceptualized framework of place as a pedagogical practice that draws on contemporary feminist poststructural and postcolonial philosophies as a basis for an alternative place pedagogy for 'global contemporaneity' (Carter, 2006, p. 683). Within this reconceptualized concept of place I will outline three key principles for a reconceptualised place pedagogy: our relationship to place is constituted in stories and other representations; place learning is local and embodied; and deep place learning occurs o in a contact zone of contestation. These principles give rise to new emergent arts-based methodologies for developing and practising place-responsive pedagogies.