Educating-Within-Place: Care, Citizen Science, and EcoJustice

Abstract

We bring to the academic debate on place-based education (PBE – science), ecojustice, and indigenous knowledge a distinctly different perspective on the relationship between humans and their world. While contemporary conceptions of place tend to reinforce modern distinctions between subject and object, our conception of place, founded upon being, attempts to ameliorate these binary distinctions. Within the literature on PBE a variety of conceptions of place extend influence over the movement. The natural realm, that is, a physical location, orients early conceptions of place. Gradually, the veneer of the cultural realm has extended influence over place to include community. Presently, a sophisticated cultural realm considering complex social and political factors has extended place meaning. The literature review indicates little consideration of place from the ontological perspective. Our work explores the ontological realm through the philosophy of hermeneutic phenomenology – a philosophy premised upon human relationship with the world. Place conceptions inclusive of the ontological and the resulting influence they have on PBE movements have the potential to replace a traditional and prevailing form of knowledge as representation with a view of knowledge as a subspecies of a kind of thoughtful dealing with the world capitalizing on transcendent experiences with nature and our primordial capacity for care.