Landscape controversy: a tool and educational device

ABSTRACT

Since the 2000 European Landscape Convention (ELC), experiences of awareness-raising, landscape mediation and participatory approaches to landscape have multiplied. Among them, controversy analysis is emerging as a stimulating learning situation. Landscape controversies are situations in which landscape is examined; in which its qualities, values and future, are discussed. Controversy as a pedagogical tool enables a political approach to landscape and helps students understand and experiment with the importance of democratic debate. It makes it possible to address landscape through the eyes of each actor, and to understand the diversity of interpretations of a landscape. This success highlights the need to take a reflexive and critical look at approaches to landscape. This paper is based on a research programme, ‘Landscape didactics: sharing experiences and didactic perspectives on landscape controversies’. It discusses landscape education objectives and analyses pedagogical experimentations, in particular controversy studies and debate situations.

KEYWORDS:

• Landscape education
• controversy
• debate
• participation
• democracy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The ‘Landscape didactics: sharing didactic experiences and perspectives on landscape controversies’ programme, supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF): 10001A_156116/1, February 2015-January 2018, led by Anne Sgard (University of Geneva, Department of Geography/IUFE); project website at https://www.unige.ch/portail-didactique-paysage. It involved Sophie Bonin (ENSP—LAREP Versailles, France), Laurent Daune (HEPIA Geneva, Switzerland), Hervé Davodeau (AgroCampus Ouest-ESO Angers, France), Pierre Dérioz (University of Avignon, France), Marie-José Fortin (University of Quebec at Rimouski, Canada), Laurent Lelli (AgroParisTech, France), Sylvie Paradis (University of Geneva, Switzerland), Christine Partoune (University of Liège, Belgium), Alexis Pernet (ENSP-LAREP Versailles, France), Monique Toublanc (ENSP-LAREP Versailles, France), Sandrine Billeau-Beuze (Research Assistant, University of Geneva, Switzerland) and François Diverneresse (Assistant, University of Geneva, Switzerland). The research programme culminated in a closing conference in October 2017 on the theme of ‘Debating landscape’, supported by the SNSF (IZSEZO_177524). Along with teachers and researchers, it brought together many representatives from the non-formal sectors of landscape education, including organisations, landscape architects specialising in mediation, museums and ecomuseums, and artists. These contributions were brought together in Sur les bancs du paysage (2019), a book and ebook providing educational resources. A new research programme on ‘Landscape Didactics’ has begun for the period 2020–2024 (10001A_189258), led by Anne Sgard and Natacha Guillaumont (HEPIA Geneva, Switzerland).

2. See for example: http://www.bruno-latour.fr/fr/node/31.

3. The main pooled experiences were: role play with landscape architecture students, surveying and sensitive mapping exercises with geography Master’s students, several controversy analyses with geography undergraduate students, and a controversy analysis regarding wind turbines in a Geneva secondary school class. All took place between 2013 and 2019.

4. These analyses were prepared in advance by those in charge of the programme, and included fieldwork, documenting the course of the controversy and interviews with protagonists. The collective analysis was done by the team as a whole, in the field, and in the presence of some of the protagonists.

5. All the members of the research team make use of this device when interacting with all types of audiences: in secondary schools, landscape architecture schools and universities, with local residents and stakeholders.

6. This article is not the place to explore the huge topic of emancipation, so important to the history of education. But we should emphasise the focus this concept brings to the permanent tension between individual fulfilment and collective responsibility.

7. This was explored by the many participants in the ‘Debating Landscape’ conference, who hailed from various (both formal and non-formal) fields of education (see Sgard & Paradis, 2019, Sur les bancs du paysage).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (10001A_189258); [10001A_156116/1]

Notes on contributors

Anne Sgard

Anne Sgard is Professor of Geography at the University of Geneva. She teaches political and cultural geography at the Department of Geography and geography didactics at the Institute of Teacher Education. She specialises in the analysis of landscape policies, mobilisation for landscapes and mediation practices. In 2014 she created the international research group ‘ Landscape Didactics’, which brings together teacher-researchers in geography and landscape architecture from Switzerland, France, Belgium and Canada.