The Critical Pedagogy of Space and Place

Connecting Classrooms with Community

My current community is largely online which represents a demographic of largely diverse marginalized high school and adult learners. The challenges of a virtual online community is the risk of feeling disconnected but it is clearly still a community when students engage in critical discourse and the sharing of ideas. However, to engage remote students at a deeper level with the concept of community, it is important to provide experiences that will connect students with place and space. Connecting students with what is tangible, observable, and measurable enables them to see and understand their community and local ecology in new and meaningful ways.

We can achieve this by having students engage as ethnographic and ecological fieldworkers. Provided with various demographic and ecological datasets students can triangulate existing data with their own community observations to construct local stories that show the interconnectedness and dynamics of place, culture, and ecology.  

When talking about community it is important that students also understand human impact and ecology within a historical context. Historically we know that oppressive systems of power not only can contribute to the loss of culture and language but also has contributed to the loss of a culture’s connection with community and Its ecology.                                                                                                                                                                                            

For example, the use of readings and case studies from ancient Mesoamerican cultures can show students how political, religious, and socioeconomic collapse often occurred during or after the appearance of colonialism with cities already weakened by major ecological stress. With increasing droughts and famine, the ancient Mayan city states were no longer able to adapt or implement their sustainable methods. The ancient priest kings were no longer able to legitimize their power with claims of supernatural powers and communication with the gods. It became clear to the people in the Maya lowlands that by the end of the 8th and 9th century their gods could not change or alter course of the relentless long-term drought that led to famine complicated by overpopulation, deforestation, systemic warfare, and the political instability that followed.

Understanding the dynamics presented in history will enable students to think about those factors, stressors and systems of power that are impacting their own community.

Integrating a critical pedagogy is important if students are to understand the value and importance of environmental justice and in understanding how institutional power as a contributing force can alter the meaning of space and community.

David Gruenewald writes about the “critical pedagogy of place” (Gruenewald, 2003). He builds on the concept of “place-based education” and talks about the importance of integrating humans with ecology (one of the 4DEE dimensions in ecology education). Gruenewald also states that “human communities or places are politicized, social constructs that often marginalize individuals, groups as well as ecosystems.” Gruenewald encourages educators to connect students with community and to identify structures of power that limit or restrict groups and our environment. To promote conscientizacao (critical awareness), Freire advocates that students should be able to “read the world” (Freire & Macedo, 1987, 1998 as cited by Gruenewald 2003). While it is important to provide students with a global and historical context, we should also integrate the pedagogical approach that will encourage students to “read the world” which in the end may be the most transformational.         

Reference:

Gruenewald, David A., (2003). Educational Researcher, Vol. 32, No. 4. (pp. 3-12). Retrieved from  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0013-189X%28200305%2932%3A4%3C3%3ATBOBWA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-J