Merging place-based education with critical pedagogy, critical pedagogy of place offers a potentially powerful framework for learning. The framework, developed by Gruenewald (2003), seeks to engage youth in challenging dominant practices that have led to the exploitation of the natural world. It aims to foster critical consciousness within youth and empower them to take action to transform their local environment and ways of living. A critical pedagogy of place promotes reinhabitation, or the restoration of Earth's natural biodiversity and ecological systems, while recognizing humans' interconnectedness with nature.
Despite the educational potential of using critical pedagogy of place as a lens in science and environmental education, few researchers have examined its effectiveness and role in formal science education. To that end, this study explored how youth reinhabited place within their deindustrialized U.S. Rust Belt city and demonstrated critical consciousness about social and environmental issues. The high school, Lakeshore High, is located in a city that is home to heavily polluted vacant lots and waterways and has experienced significant economic and population declines. Set in an urban high-school environmental science classroom with a racially diverse population of students, over half of whom are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, the study included 20 participants (12 females and 8 males). Over the course of one academic year, the researcher collected six forms of data, including teacher interviews, weekly classroom observations, student work samples, and student interviews. The researcher then qualitatively coded data from those sources to identify themes using a critical place pedagogy perspective.
Over the course of the year, the researcher found that the environmental science teacher, Mr. Lincoln (a pseudonym) integrated local environmental science issues by engaging students in urban park restoration. He established environmental remediation activities where he and his students cared for their community's environment together. By grounding the curricula in local issues, Mr. Lincoln helped the students make connections between their everyday knowledge and mandated science content.
By engaging in this park remediation work, students had the opportunity to reinhabit urban places in ways that facilitated understanding and connection with nature. In discussing park restoration, students demonstrated their deepened understanding of ecology within a specific, local environment. In interviews, for example, several students talked about the role of invasive Japanese knotweed in reducing the region's biodiversity. In interviews, youth also frequently expressed their connection to the places where they worked, as well as a belief that they could affect change within those places.
Evidence suggested that the youth developed some degree of critical consciousness. Many students spoke critically of the ecological impact of common cultural practices, including littering and city-mandated lawn care. Others expressed critical consciousness by attempting to transform the dominant narrative of their community as “failing.” Rather than focus on the city's decline, they spoke of converting brownfields to green spaces and changing their community for the better.
This study revealed a formal science education context— urban park restoration—in which aspects of a critical place perspective would be appropriate and helpful. However, this study also uncovered complications: Although students learned about the historical and social forces that led to the park's polluted state, and there was an aspect of consciousness to their work, they did not engage deeply in critical reflection. The author suggests that this was because that sort of deep reflection was absent from the curriculum.
This study demonstrates that, despite complexities and tensions, a critical place pedagogy lens can be enacted in formal science education. Learning opportunities, such as park restoration, could help students develop critical consciousness, as well as deepen their connections to local places.
The Bottom Line
<p>Critical pedagogy of place can offer a powerful framework for science learning. It can deepen youths' connections to place, as well as their understanding of ecological systems through activities such as local park restoration and remediation. In fostering youths' critical consciousness, this framework encourages students to question the historical cultural and social practices that have led to environmental degradation and take action in transforming them. The promise of critical reflection is important, but developing students' skills in this arena is not without challenges: To be successful, critical reflection should be included in curricula to allow teachers to engage students in dialogue, reflection, and action.</p>
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