The article this week by Gruenewald entitled The Best of Both Worlds: A Critical Pedagogy of Place was hard to get through. I think this is mostly due to the culmination of fatigue and stress on my end; nonetheless, this was not a light read. I have decided to make this virtual blog a space where I can lay out all the major ideas from the reading to help myself better understand the themes, rather than necessarily critically examining the author’s viewpoints.
Firstly, the author begins by delving into the meanings of critical pedagogy and place-based education which allows for converging links to be made between these two ways of thinking. The main goal for the author in this text is to demonstrate that these pedagogies are not mutually exclusive; rather, that they can work together to form place-based pedagogy so that “the education of citizens might have some direct bearing on the wellbeing of the social and ecological places people actually inhabit”. The author demonstrates that critical pedagogy evolved from well-established discourses, while place-based education is not as clearly defined and is connected to an array of practices within education. Also, place-based education is usually associated with rural contexts, while critical pedagogy is focused on in more multicultural or urban settings. The author explains that place-based education can and should be focused on in an urban setting in the context of critical pedagogy. As an urban Ed teacher candidate, I think it is important to re-think about how spaces are shaped by education, and how spaces in an urban setting also shape a person’s educational experience. Furthermore, I think focusing of student involvement in their surrounding communities, regardless of physical location, can be an important way to promote student engagement, while teaching students in ways that are applicable to their own lives in and outside the classroom. To be honest, while reading this article it took me a bit of research before I was able to clearly define critical pedagogy and place-based education for myself. According to the Promise of Place, place-based education “immerses students in local heritage, cultures, landscapes, opportunities and experiences, using these as a foundation for the study of language arts, mathematics, social studies, science and other subjects across the curriculum. PBE emphasizes learning through participation in service projects for the local school and/or community”. Critical pedagogy, on the other hand, I was more familiar with. In this philosophy, education goes beyond the surface of memorization and repetition. This philosophy makes connections between what is being taught and how it is being learned, where learning is a process that never ends. Indeed, as Ira Shor defines, critical pedagogy focuses on the “habits of thought, reading, writing, and speaking which go beneath surface meaning, first impressions, dominant myths, official pronouncements, traditional clichés, received wisdom, and mere opinions, to understand the deep meaning, root causes, social context, ideology, and personal consequences of any action, event, object, process, organization, experience, text, subject matter, policy, mass media, or discourse." (Empowering Education, 129). In seeing these two terms more clearly defined, I feel I am able to have a clearer understanding of how these pedagogies can work in unison in an urban context. By combining the ideas of place-based education and critical pedagogies, students can become more immersed into their communities and better relate their schooling to their lives; furthermore, the students can then make important connections between their physical space and the process of their learning experience. By connecting these pedagogies, we are better able to see how all things related to the process and underlying factors affecting what and how we teacher and learn affected by and relate to the environments in which teaching and learning take place. By reflecting upon and individual’s experience, we must consider their social situation, their personal history, and the spaces that they inhabit. Place, therefore, is an important factor in the human experience and should consequently be considered regardless of the places that are in question. In considering place when looking at critical pedagogy, we are better able to understand the ecological system in which human cultures, and human education, are nested. References Shor, I. (1992). Empowering education: Critical teaching for social change. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. What is Place-Based Education? Promise of Place. Retrieved from: http://www.promiseofplace.org/what_is_pbe
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