Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Place-based pedagogies have been analysed and researched for many years, but remain crucial as we confront the local challenges of global climate change and degradation. This book offers eight rich accounts of place-based pedagogies, developed over time by innovative environmental educators working in unique natural settings throughout Australia. Each chapter highlights the long-term engagement of the educator with their collaborative research design, and considers the policy contexts which underpinned their work and professional learning. Vivid learning activities and teaching strategies provide concrete examples of pedagogies that can be deployed in a variety of contexts, to inspire readers to rethink their relationship to their distinctive environments and to suggest how we can effectively educate the next generation for a sustainable future.
Places researched include: suburban forest remnants, forest reserves, indigenous country, and contested natural sites squeezed between cities and the sea.
Synopsis
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.