A Place Pedagogy for ‘Global Contemporaneity’

Abstract

Around the globe people are confronted daily with intransigent problems of space and place. Educators have historically called for place-based or place-conscious education to introduce pedagogies that will address such questions as how to develop sustainable communities and places. These calls for place-conscious education have included liberal humanist approaches that evolved from the work of Wendell Berry (Ball & Lai, 2006) and critical place-based approaches such as those advocated by David Gruenewald (e.g. Gruenewald, 2003a, 2003b. In this paper I will propose a reconceptualized framework of place as a pedagogical practice that draws on contemporary feminist poststructural and postcolonial philosophies as a basis for an alternative place pedagogy for 'global contemporaneity' (Carter, 2006, p. 683). Within this reconceptualized concept of place I will outline three key principles for a reconceptualised place pedagogy: our relationship to place is constituted in stories and other representations; place learning is local and embodied; and deep place learning occurs o in a contact zone of contestation. These principles give rise to new emergent arts-based methodologies for developing and practising place-responsive pedagogies.

Fostering EFL learners´ literacies through local inquiry in a multimodal experience

“…Her results also show that by writing in blogs, students developed literacy practices and had the possibility to portray their selves through the written pieces they posted (Quintero, 2008). These findings support Somerville's (2010) statement on the double literacies acquired when using EFL and multimodality.…”

“…The products of students' inquiries were displayed in videos, music, and images accompanied by texts created by students. Somerville (2010) highlights the double literacy acquired by students in the use of EFL and in multimodality for communicative purposes. Quintero's (2008) local study in an EFL classroom in Colombia investigated a group of first year university students' blog interactions in EFL.…”

Why ‘Where’ Matters: Exploring the Role of Space in Service-Learning

“…For example, Helfenbein (2010) suggests that space produces social relations that educators must engage seriously. Place, meanwhile, evokes the local where the meaning-making experience of serving in community occurs (Somerville, 2010). With regard to service-learning, Siemers et al (2015) note:…”

Preparing Pre-service Teachers for Professional Engagement Through Place/community Pedagogies and partnerships

“…Like others before us who have applied and theorised place pedagogies as frameworks for enabling individuals to experience, understand and value for themselves the entwined and sensorial connections that exist between people and place (Hill, 2013;Somerville, 2010;Tooth & Renshaw, 2009), we view the sites and their various forces and forms (Duhn, 2012), as central to the teaching and learning experience.…”