An African-centred approach to land education

Abstract

Approaches to environmental education which are engaging with place and critical pedagogy have not yet broadly engaged with the African world and insights from Africana Studies and Geography. An African-centred approach facilitates people’s reconnection to places and ecosystems in ways that do not reduce places to objects of conquest and things to be exploited for profitability and individual gain. Such an approach offers effective critiques of settler coloniser perspectives on the environment and deeper understandings of the relationship between worldview and ecologically sensitised education. Through examples from Africana Studies and Geography, this article provides an introduction to how an African-centred approach can contribute to the development of a Land Education perspective and improve college-level environmental education.

Keywords:

• worldview
• geography
• place
• environmental education

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Notes

1. We recognize that exceptions to this exist, for example the work of Julian Agyeman and others who have written about environmental racism, environmental justice and other social justice issues as they relate to environment and environmental education. However, such works are not within the mainstream of environmental education yet.