Talk:Critical pedagogy of place

Formation
I've written this page for critical pedagogy of place--there was previously not such a page. Initially, I had thought that a broader entry on critical pedagogy in relation to environmental education would be useful. However, as I have read more in the field of critical theory, I have begun to realize two things: first, there is not a lot of scholarship on the intersection of critical theory with environmental education and, second, the work that has been done is much more narrowly focused into a theory (critical pedagogy of place) that incorporates aspects of both fields.

I think this entry is important because, where critical theory intersects with environmental education research represents an area in which environmental education can grow and improve enormously. Despite environmental education’s professed goal of providing “opportunities to acquire the knowledge, values, attitudes, commitment, and skills” to instigate change (UNESCO, 1977), environmental education programs often fall short of this goal (Saylan & Blumstein, 2011). In my opinion, one of the reasons environmental education fails to encourage action and change is because it fails to take into account careful thought about its pedagogical choices. Oftentimes, the environmental education research world is separated from the world of education research, and I believe that environmental education research could benefit from a more rigorous and thoughtful inclusion of the history of thought around how to encourage students to think critically about their freedom, decisions, and actions.

This entry is an attempt at a start to that. I include, of course, Grunewald (also known as Greenwood), the scholar that proposed the formal idea of a critical pedagogy of place. I think, however, that the theoretical underpinnings are the same in many of the critiques of land- and place-based education (Indigenous approaches), thus I include them as the first "antecedents." I also include Bowers' critique of Greenwood, but try not to let the article get bogged down in the drama of the (rather harsh) criticism.

Last, I suggest ways in which critical pedagogy of place has crept into other, related, environmental education scholarship. I am sure there is more out there, but it is a start.

Iphukan (talk) 09:04, 15 December 2016 (UTC)