Cynefin – Being of place. An investigation into the perspectives of first-language Welsh speaking hill farmers into the meaning of the word cynefin and the significance for education in Wales and beyond

Abstract

AbstractThe new curriculum for Wales advocates place-based learnings and has a commitment to future human and planetary wellbeing. It aims to give teachers more autonomy to design their own curricula based on localised contexts and concerns. Cynefin is a key word in the new curriculum for Wales, yet it is a word that has no direct English translation. It is translated in dictionaries as habitat but in Welsh means far more than that. It is a word that is tied up with one’s relationship to a place and the land and was used in the past by Welsh hill farmers to describe the way sheep would territorialise their own part of common land to graze. This study investigates the perspectives of Welsh hill farmers about the meaning of the word cynefin. The farmers participated in semi-structured interviews focused on gaining understanding of their use of the word cynefin. Analysis of these interviews generated a number of common themes related to place-based pedagogical theory. These themes reveal how the concept of cynefin has the potential to provide a counter-pedagogy to the traditional mainstream schooling of industrialised societies yet is in keeping with place-based and Indigenous approaches to education. It is suggested these approaches necessitate ethical and epistemological perspectives, and ways of being, that could have significance not only for human and planetary wellbeing but for existential understandings.