1st Edition
Diverse Pedagogies of Place Educating Students in and for Local and Global Environments
Diverse Pedagogies of Place presents eight original place-responsive pedagogies that address a question of paramount importance in today’s world: how do we educate the next generation of students to confront the challenges of global climate change and the on-going degradation of natural environments? Each place-responsive pedagogy is a result of innovative environmental educators’ long-term engagement with particular places, and demonstrates that personal connectedness is crucial to effective environmental education.
Professional learning and teacher collaboration is an important theme throughout the book, and the editors discuss how teachers could adapt the learning activities and teaching strategies found in the book in order to create their own place-responsive pedagogies. Each case study provides a rich account of how students can learn to be attentive and draws upon a common analytical framework derived from recent theorisation of place that highlights the centrality of stories-in-place, embodiment, and contestation. The authors present detailed and persuasive evidence that place-responsive pedagogies enable students to construct their own identities, as well as develop commitments and a deeper knowledge of the environments that surround them.
A work of international relevance, Diverse Pedagogies of Place will appeal to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of environmental education and sustainability, place-based education, outdoor learning, professional learning and teacher development, as well as policymakers and environmental educators.
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
1. Diverse Place-responsive Pedagogies: Historical, Professional and Theoretical Threads (Peter Renshaw and Ron Tooth)
2. Pedagogy as Advocacy in and for Place (Ron Tooth and Peter Renshaw)
3. Pedagogy as Story in Landscape (Ron Tooth)
4. Pedagogy as Slow Time in the Extra Ordinary Bush (Noeleen Rowntree and Agatha Gambino)
5. Pedagogy as Walking Country at Barambah (Sue Gibson and Mark Cridland)
6. Pedagogy in the Clouds – between Heaven and Earth – at Paluma (Linda Venn and Louka Lazaredes)
7. Pedagogy as Shifting Sands at Nudgee Beach (Mary-Ann Pattison)
8. Pedagogy of the Edge at Moreton Bay (Belinda Daly)
9. Place-responsive Design for School Settings (Ron Tooth and Peter Renshaw)
10. Environmental Educators Learning and Theorizing Place-responsive Pedagogy (Robert Stevenson and Gregory Smith)
Biography
Peter Renshaw (PhD) is Professor of Education at the University of Queensland, Australia. His research draws on sociocultural theory to address issues of pedagogy, social justice and inclusion. In the past decade he has collaborated with Ron Tooth to research environmental education and place-responsive pedagogies. He is Senior Editor of the Routledge/AARE book series Local/Global Issues in Education.
Ron Tooth (PhD) is Honorary Associate Professor at the University of Queensland, Australia, and founding Principal of the Pullenvale Environmental Education Centre, Australia. His experience at the Pullenvale Environmental Education Centre has given him an extended history of professional engagement with teachers and students. Ron has also worked as a consultant for local councils and schools to lead the design of environmental programs based on a narrative pedagogy called Storythread.
‘This fine book, edited by Peter Renshaw and Ron Tooth, contains many examples of place-responsive pedagogies drawn from environmental education centres and the educators who live and work there. We hear their voices along with the students who visit the centres. We hear local histories and the stories from long time inhabitants. Collectively, they reveal a range of thoughtful and inspiring pedagogic approaches that resonate with advocacy, a sense of slow time, walking and deep reflection, sacredness and Indigeneous ways of knowing. There are positive, uplifting accounts, and there are challenging stories of sensitive ecologies and those educators who continue to work for their preservation. There could be no stronger reminder that all places are in a state of change, and that our future as a society is bound up with how we care for them.’ - Brian Wattchow, PhD, Federation University, Australia
