Building on Young Children's Cultural Histories through Placemaking in the Classroom

Abstract

This article suggests placemaking as a framework to more deeply understand how teaching and learning can take into account young children's cultural histories. Placemaking, a form of analysis commonly found in land development literature, critically interprets the relationship between power, politics and the production of place. In this article, parallels are drawn between several tenets of placemaking, such as surveillance, self-definition, and a consciousness of solidarity, and the curricular spaces of a second-grade classroom as the children and their teacher participate in a biography project centered on the Harlem Renaissance. Through analysis of the class-wide inquiry, this article sheds light on the possibility for cultivating children's cultural imagination through placemaking in spite of political practices attempting to define in more narrow terms how teachers and children are to participate in the schooling spaces they inhabit.

“A Place Thriving With History”: Reclaiming Narratives About Literacy in the Arkansas Ozarks

“…If place is socially constructed, it “can be contested, reimagined, and remade” (Mills & Comber, , p. 412). As a critical literacy educator who works at a university in the Southern United States, I aspire to create opportunities for students to participate in placemaking (Comber, ; McCann, ; Sánchez, ) as a way to reclaim narratives about people and literacy in marginalized communities. The concept of placemaking is drawn from literature on land development and refers to the work of architects, zoning commissions, developers, and others who contribute to constructing the physical environment of places that people inhabit.…”

“…In the second half of her video essay, Emily adopts a critical stance as she engages in placemaking (McCann, ; Sánchez, ) and uses Martha's literacy narrative to problematize cultural models that promote a deficit view of literacy and education in the U.S. South. As video footage of a small city in the Ozark Mountains pans across the screen, Emily makes an impassioned plea: “I want Martha's story to give hope to those living in the South.” Speaking to what she describes as a problematic (and unfair) set of assumptions, Emily continues, “With other regions of the United States, people may come from similar backgrounds, such as the working‐class home, but rarely in other regions do you see the expectations to succeed so low.” She goes on to interpret Martha's experiences with literacy as disrupting these low expectations and complicating cultural models that imagine Southerners as less educated.…”

“…In the second half of her video essay, Emily adopts a critical stance as she engages in placemaking (McCann, 2002;Sánchez, 2011) and uses Martha's literacy narrative to problematize cultural models that promote a No. 4 January/February 2017 literacyworldwide.org…”

“…To conclude the inquiry project, the students produced digital video essays in which they recounted and interpreted their interviewees’ experiences with literacy. Influenced by critical literacy pedagogy, and more specifically by the concept of placemaking (McCann, ; Sánchez, ), this aspect of the assignment challenged the students to demonstrate how the oral histories that they had collected complicated cultural models that promote a deficit view of literacy and education in the Arkansas Ozark region. Finally, I published the students’ video essays on a Google map, which allowed them to share their work with both their interviewees and the staff at the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History.…”

Critical Literacy and Social Justice

“…These trends are depressing and demoralizing. However, there are instances of teachers exploring the affordances of such tragedies with young people to tell new stories through dramatic play and story‐telling (Bateman, Danby, & Howard, ), film‐making (Mills, Comber, & Kelly, ), and using urban regeneration to reclaim a sense of belonging in place through place‐conscious pedagogies (Sánchez, ).…”