The complexity of landscape ideas and the issue of landscape democracy in school and non-formal education: exploring pedagogical practices in Italy

ABSTRACT

Landscape-related pedagogical initiatives present a multifaceted panorama of assumptions, approaches and goals, with some contradictions and commonalities. They reflect, on one hand, the theoretical ambiguity and inherent tensions of the concept of landscape itself and, on the other hand, the different institutional approaches to landscape management. This paper discusses the results of a national survey conducted in Italy on landscape-related initiatives in non-professional education. Five landscape ideas on which educational projects are grounded emerged from the analysis: ‘anthropic and lived landscape’, ‘perceived and green landscape’, ‘landscape as an arena’, ‘heritage landscape’ and ‘natural landscape’. This diversity proves the need for theoretical frameworks and methodological tools in educational contexts to address the complexity of landscape through an insightful reading. In particular, we focus on the ‘landscape as an arena’ idea and explore its limits and potentialities in relation to the debate on landscape power and democracy.

KEYWORDS:

• Ideas of landscapes
• landscape education
• landscape democracy

Acknowledgments

We thank all the participants of the online survey for the information provided and their effort in landscape education.

Author contribution statement

B. C. and M. C. contributed to the design and implementation of the research and the discussion of the results; M. C. performed the statistical and qualitative analysis and wrote paragraphs 3, 4, 5, 6 and B. C. wrote paragraphs 1, 2, 6.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. http://educazionemuseale.it/etra/?cat = 40.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Benedetta Castiglioni

Benedetta Castiglioni, Associate Professor in Geography, representative of the University of Padua for UNISCAPE, chair of the MA degree in Landscape Studies, she is author of several publications and volumes dedicated to landscape from a geographical perspective. Her research deals with the social dimension of landscape, focussing especially on the issues of education, democracy and citizenship participation.

Margherita Cisani

Margherita Cisani, Post-doc research fellow in Geography at the University of Padova, adjunct professor of Tourism Geography at the University of Milano Bicocca, her research interests spans across landscape and mobilities studies, with particular attention to their reciprocal influences, in everyday landscapes and non-motorized practices of mobility, in tourism landscapes as well as in education and citizenship engagement.