‘Why are we here?’ Taking ‘place’ into account in UK outdoor environmental education

Abstract

‘Place’ is an under-researched and poorly documented element of UK outdoor environmental education. In the international literature, North American and Australian researchers and practitioners show considerable attention to ‘place’. Yet UK outdoor environmental educators and researchers seem to have neglected this area despite calls for increased attention to this element of education in the outdoors. This paper starts from an example of environmental education practice and develops various questions around the role of ‘place’. Investigating the epistemology and ontology of place-based education, the paper draws on the considerable and diverse non-educational literature on ‘place’. Action research is put forward as a suitable fit in the search for an appropriate research methodology for place-based education, and a further set of pressing questions are raised.

Keywords:

• Deep-ecology
• Eco-psychology
• Antology
• Epistenology
• Action Research

Acknowledgements

The encouragement and critique by Pete Higgins, Simon Beames, Brian Wattchow and the reviewers were fundamental to the development of this paper. Many thanks also to my supervisors, Morwenna Griffiths and Robbie Nicol, for their continual support.

Notes

1. There is considerable anthropological research into non-western understandings of place (Basso, 1996; Feld & Basso, 1996; Seamon & Mugerauer, 1985), and also an interest in how indigenous ways of understanding places can inform environmental education (Shiva, 1993; Takano, 2004; van Damme & Neluvhalani, 2004), yet how to develop a sense of place seems to be a question typical of ‘western’ cultures.

2. However, it is not within the scope of this paper to investigate the reasons behind this apparent neglect.

3. Some of the literature asks these questions, for example Stewart (2003), and Wattchow (2007). Pivnik (2003) writes about ‘topos’ as a guiding principle for research methodology, but doesn't venture onto conceptual territory.

4. This concept offers the potential for further research linking education with Scottish senses of place.

5. Something that geographer Doreen Massey analyses in depth (Massey, 2005).

6. A question which arises in this context is whether there ever was a time or place where people dwelled ‘authentically’ in one locality. What is clear from writing such as Doreen Massey's is that modern life involves complex interconnected relationships between places (Massey, 2005) and implies that place-based education is about places rather than one place.

7. This fits with wider philosophical attempts to understand the nature of subjective experience (Kidner, 2001; Lukenchuk, 2006; Malpas, 1999; Merleau-Ponty, 1968), which do not fall into the dualism of postivism vs constructionism.

8. Nicol has already applied this epistemological framework to outdoor environmental education theory and practice (Nicol, 2003a). However, the particular applicability to how we understand places remained implicit.

9. This forms the focus of the author's continuing PhD research—sense of place in an Argyll context and Action Research with educators looking at place-based education practice in their work contexts.

10. Some of these questions have been asked (Gibbs & Howley, 2001), in a US context. Also, Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence seems to promote a cross-curricular approach congruent with place-based education, see www.LTScotland.org.uk.

11. Would the idea of praxis, as the critical interaction of theory and practice (Collins, 2004; Cotton & Griffiths, 2007; Meyers, 2006), be realistic for a practitioner?