Teaching Geoscience in the Context of Culture and Place: Theme Issue Continued

Abstract

This issue of the Journal of Geoscience Education includes the second installment of a two-part special theme issue on Teaching Geoscience in the Context of Culture and Place. In an editorial paper that introduced the first installment (Apple et al., 2014), we presented a literature review and overview of philosophy, theory, and practice related to culturally-infused and place-based geoscience teaching and learning, as preface and context for the collection of new works in the two-part theme issue. We invite readers to refer to this introduction, as it pertains equally to the content of this second installment.In this second part of the theme issue, seven papers continue the exploration of the interfaces among place, culture, identity, and geoscience education, highlighting new and ongoing efforts to better define, implement, and assess place-based, culturally-infused approaches to geoscience teaching. The total number of papers in the theme issue (19) constitutes a strong testimony to the commitment of the geoscience education community to this topic.CONTINUING THE THEME ISSUEPlace-based teaching, which by definition leverages and emphasizes local environments, landscapes, and communities, has been compared and contrasted (e.g., Gruenewald and Smith, 2008) with globally oriented teaching that, while mirroring current societal trends, may offer less immediate relevance to students. Ault (p. 158) enters this fray with a provocative commentary paper that offers a place-based philosophy of pedagogy as a counterpoint to a movement to unify (or universalize) science education through steady standardization. Ault illustrates his argument with an example from geoscience that is at once scientifically robust, culturally relevant, and firmly place-based: paleoseismic studies in Cascadia.Four papers in the current issue provide examples of place-based pedagogical approaches to geoscience education, three of which also highlight effective integration of Indigenous knowledge to enrich students' senses of place and motivate learning. Kirkby (p. 177) provides strategies for helping undergraduate students in an urban setting develop a stronger sense of place through exploring interconnections among geological, cultural, and Indigenous history of local geographic spaces. This place-based educational approach is expanded by Cohn et al. (p. 203), who blend Indigenous knowledge and technological tools (i.e., Digital Earth) to foster a sense of place in the community along with a greater global awareness. …