Organic education and its place in the city.

Abstract

Current practices in place-based pedagogy endorse obtaining an ecological literacy (Orr, 1992). In doing so, it is assumed that students acquire and relate to a vast amount of ecological knowledge by equal means. In reality, students create meaning in different ways. Therefore, a student's degree to which he/she may obtain this ecological literacy depend upon his/her engagement with one or many constructions (occurrences) of a place, and capacity for engagement (intensities) with place. This article posits that there are several occurrences (Orientation, Perspective, & Interaction) and intensities (Active, Passive & Dis-associative) of place, that place-based lessons should be flexible enough to allow for meaning making by students engaged with any occurrence of place at any intensity level, and that an inquiry-based pedagogy be utilized.

Introduction: Place-based Pedagogy and Beasley, Texas 

In a rustic country town with only one stop-light, I engaged place-based learning. I lived the text of my fourth grade curriculum; not at my desk, but on the front yards and side roads of Beasley, Texas. Living the text of my place involves consciously inhabiting both the physical and theoretical space (place) [1] surrounding me while constructing meaning. In a classroom, this meaning making is linked to curricular objectives and then ideally contextualized in relation to the larger framework of meaning in which we make sense of our place. Mr. Pastor, my fourth grade teacher, and the principal of Beasley's rural four room school house, created stronger connections to literature and writing by utilizing the familiar: the agriculturally dominant place in which we students lived. Whether we fourth graders were identifying plants in Mr. & Mrs. Barcak's backyard, constructing with rocks in our local quarry, or measuring plant growth in the nearby corn and cotton fields, the culminating scientific field notes and reports were certainly interdisciplinary. To Mr. Pastor, the experiences and the texts we constructed during those lessons were the basis for later place-based literary writing and readings exercises. For us, Mr. Pastor's field days were fun and challenging.

Within place-based pedagogy, students participate in the lived text of their community and hopefully approach their traditional materials with more enthusiasm and insight-gaining a sense of place [2]. Twenty one years after my carefree schooldays as a Beasley Bobcat in south Texas, it is at Teachers College, Columbia University in Manhattan that I wrestle with the pedagogical complexities of sense of place and its eco-centric subtext. Paradoxical location you wonder? No. Rather, this urban setting is a propos because students can realize a sense of place without access to a rural setting because place may occur in different constructions and students may relate in varying intensities. The subtext of place-based pedagogy branded sense of place is partially fueled by environmental tenets. These principles necessitate increased awareness of, concern for, and connection to non-human inhabitants of the planet and a widespread concern about environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, global warming, and pollution. Specifically, the means by which students may or may not discover their sense of place, in the form of ecological literacy (Orr, 1992, 1994) are what I reveal first in this essay. Pedagogically, an alternate goal for place-based (sense of place) teaching--one promoting engagement with place occurring in multiple constructions and relating to place in varying intensities--is later discussed.

Background: Place-Based Education, Sense of Place, and Ecological Literacy In hindsight, Mr. Pastor didn't teach so we could have fun. His pedagogy was part of a natural evolution of ideas beginning with the introduction of place-based curriculum into late nineteenth-century U.S. grade schools by proponents of the science's nature study movement. After Lewis Mumford (1946), an experiential educator, theorized possibilities of teaching via place with environmentally concentrated perspectives, environmental educators David Orr (1992) and C. Bowers (1995), place-based theorist Matt Sanger (1997), education researchers Hutchings and Wutzdorf (1988), and Martinello and Cook (2000) influenced what is known today as part of place-based pedagogy--that is, teaching with a sense of place. An eco-centric shift in place-based (sense of place) education to bioregional education was strengthened by David Orr's (1992) views declared in Ecological Literacy. Based upon six principals, Orr (1994) champions re-imagining education "in a way that fosters innate biophilia and the analytical abilities and practical skills ... [in] education that supports and nourishes a reverence for life [] occur[ing] more often out-of-doors and in relation to the local community" (148). In essence, Orr (1992) lobbies for an ecologically literate [3] curriculum in higher education where students gain a sense of place re-defined as ecological literacy.

Teaching with ecological literacy as a goal is inconspicuously problematic when educators presume that all students are able to: 1) begin with, and gain the same level of ecological literacy, and 2) obtain it through one specific active-reciprocal exchange--a biological and geographical construction (occurrence) of place. As such, ecological literacy does not account for places as inhabiting multiple spaces and its practitioners imply that it may be equally obtained. I propose instead, that a student may develop a degree of ecological literacy dependent upon the intensity (capacity) in which he/she engages place. And, student-place engagement is relevant to the many theoretical and physical occurrences of place. Existing occurrences (constructions, forms, meanings) of place and student capacities to engage with place are the more educationally viable tenants of which to found sense of place teaching. Detailed in this text are some initial occurrences of place (Orientation, Perspective, & Interaction) and degrees of participation (Active, Passive, & Dies-associative). Acknowledging and utilizing these occurrences and intensities may help confirm the value of student-brought knowledge and may allow for a more meaningful exchange with place-based methodology. Each is part and parcel of a more organic conception of teaching with place--one where teachers may help students crystallize connections for a more holistic understanding of what is taught in school.

Occurrences of Place

Places possess hidden multiple constructions, or occurrences. Some initial occurrences of place I've identified through my place-based teaching efforts are Orientation, Perspective, and Interaction. Through the aforementioned occurrences, place becomes the tool through which lessons are learned. In essence, place turns into a classroom's chalk board upon which teachers may help facilitate connections between what students learn about the place they inhabit and information they gain in their subject-segregated classrooms. To identify these occurrences of place is important, but of greater educational value is the theory that students may engage with place through different occurrences and with different intensities as well as how teachers may help facilitate students' learning through active and reciprocal engagement. I have found that it is most beneficial if a place-based exercise be set up in a way that prompts students to engage with all three occurrences of place in one exercise, if possible.

Orientation encompasses place as the background for a significant action and information source. It can embody a physical setting such as a park, inside a museum, and/or a classroom. The place(s) where teaching and learning occur, or the place(s) the lesson is concerning, must be acknowledged, explored, and engaged. Orientation, in an exercise I have students complete in my writing courses, occurs in two ways: a specific part of the college campus becomes place as the background for action and engagement, and an animal which students must spy upon and describe in detail is considered place occurring as the information source. The entire exercise; however, is also designed to facilitate students' practice in writing with detail. Perspective as place is associated with the way(s) in which a student relates; it is the student's point of view toward or about their physical or theoretical orientation of place. In use during the college level English course, place-as-perspective may involve the use of a lens or theoretical framework through which a student may obtain an individual and personal connection to their orientation of place. During the narrative portion of the same place-based writing exercise mentioned above, students use their point of view (place-asperspective) to create a work of fiction from their list of detailed observations about the animal (their orientation). In doing so, students utilize their imagination and inherent belief system (perspective-as-place) when relating to the exercise's orientation(s) of place. In this particular exercise, place-as-background (the campus) and place-as-information source (the animal) are the student's orientations.

Interaction involves place having character as well as students having physical interactions with place as character. Place-as-interaction occurs in two ways: 1) in students' physical interactions (sight, touch, smell, hearing, taste), and 2) in the looks, feelings, smells, sounds and tastes of objects engaging students' senses and comprising the object's character. For example, place-as-interaction may include patterns and inconsistencies (or character) occurring in a physical setting, like a door that always opens toward the outside or the movement of a leaf blowing in the wind. Place-as interaction may also include a person's physical responses like smelling a flower, seeing their friend walk by, hearing their dog barking, tasting a chocolate chip cookie, or touching a snake. In an alternate place-based writing exercise that was also designed to facilitate students' practice in writing detail, students were asked to isolate each one of their senses and describe their interaction with objects I gave them. These objects served as place-as-interaction in that what was described by each student using his/her isolated sense comprised the object's character. Recognition of and allowance for the different ways in which place occurs is one part of the existing formula for first, authentically engaging in place-based exercises and lastly, obtaining Orr's vision of ecological literacy. Intensities of place, explained in the following section, represent ways in which place develops into a portal that students utilize to discover, engage, and relate in varying capacities to occurrences of place.

Intensities of Place

The intensity to which a student may or may not engage with place in its different occurrences is equally crucial. Each student brings with him/her a capacity to engage with his/her place; a classroom exercise and teacher, must be flexible enough to allow for students varying views of place in order for meaning making to occur. In my research, I have identified initial intensities of place that exist in conjunction with each occurrence of place. They are Active, Passive, and Disassociative, of which the Active and Passive capacities contain sub-layers. The intensity to which a student is Active in his/her engagement with place can be Functional or Relational. To be Functionally Active one usually lives in a place for many years and harbors a concern for, awareness of, and actively participates in, its environmental, political, communal, and daily happenings. He or she feels the place belongs to him/her and he/she belongs to/in that place; he/she is part and parcel of the place he/she has come to know. Hence, the intensity to which a student is concerned for and actively participates with place transpires through mindful action specifically performed for the benefit of not only the person, but the place as well. This person recognizes the rhythms of his/her place and actively engages for and with it in a harmonious manner. This person uses his/her knowledge about a place to function with it, hence actively recognizing he/she as part of that place.

A Relationally Active intensity with which a student engages with place may also occur after a person makes his/her home in a place for many years; however, he/she merely experiences a comfort level and familiarity with that place (meaning that he/she is not equal to that place). The person actively participates in the place's daily happenings out of concern for himself/herself and possibly, place as a separate entity. It is important to note that a relationally active person at least acknowledges place as a separate entity. The Disassociated intensity with which a student engages with place usually occurs if he/she is visiting or has recently moved to the place, or identifies place as a resource. He/she is not equal to, or related to that place but superior to it. No comfort or familiarity with place exists. This student harbors a detached, impersonal experience with place and does not acknowledge the existence of place at all. Although, this student may recognize the existence of place as nature that is solely slated to be used and controlled by man and serve as a resource. When visiting or after moving to a place, people have the ability to engage with it utilizing the same intensity they previously possessed. Moving from a Disassociative to Relationally Active to Functionally Active is about effects, participation, and relationships. On occasion, the separation between obtaining a Functionally or Relationally Active sense of place is about whether or not a person relates to the vast amount of knowledge he/she has about that place, has an affinity for relating that knowledge to aspects of the world, utilizes that knowledge, and possibly educates others in a way that facilitates connectedness.

Ecological Literacy and the City

The aforementioned occurrences and intensities of place are educationally valuable because they represent the mechanisms by which students may or may not actively gain a sense of place in the form of Orr's ecological literacy. What I reflect upon in this section is the unassumingly problematic goal of sense of place teaching which is to produce ecologically literate students. Pedagogically, I also lobby for an alternate function of place-based teaching--one that not only promotes engagement with place occurring in multiple constructions and with varying intensities--but one that moves toward an ideology concerned with wholes or complete systems and learning through inquiry. In a sense, my interpretation of placed-based teaching depicts a more organic rather than ecological goal for teaching via place-based methodology but does not exclude the dominant discourse of sense of place as ecological literacy.

Some educators may reason that ecological literacy would equal a functionally active intensity for engaging with place. However, if facts and details of one's place (for instance, the names of all the plants in his/her area, what is native and not, where the garbage goes, where his/her water comes from, and the local recycling practices, etc.) is not associated in a meaningful way to bring about a living balance and kinship with that place/environment then ecological literary is functioning at a Relationally Active intensity. In other words, being able to identify all the plants in one's area is admirable; however, to what end is the naming of plants occurring? Pointing them out to be identified and memorized is continuing to, albeit in an unintended way, other that place away from humans; it is not taking that knowledge and using it as a way to see oneself as a part of the region. A more effective means of creating knowledge would be to holistically view it from multiple perspectives and engage and relate to place with a Relationally Active intensity in which people are not other; they are part and parcel of place. Ecological literacy encourages an eco-centric viewpoint because it "fosters innate biophilia and the analytical abilities and practical skills ... [in] education that supports and nourishes a reverence for life [] occur[ing] more often out-of-doors and in relation to the local community" Orr (1994). Educators are left to wonder. exactly, in what ways do people exhibit ecological literacy? In what space do urban spaces (places) fit within ecological literacy; what happens when a student's lived text includes cemented city streets and steel skyscrapers, weed and animal dominant abandoned buildings and open lots, and esthetically pleasing, albeit human constructed public parks?

It can be argued that becoming ecologically literate, via this eco-centrically infused place-based teaching method marginalizes urban environments, its teachers, and students. This marginalization occurs because of: 1) the way humans, in mass, and educators specifically, romanticize nature in their definitions, and 2) the belief that their romanticized interpretation of nature (unspoiled, beautiful, poetic, awe inspiring, unspoiled) equals place. By this logic then, the romanticized meaning of place equals nature. Accordingly, to be ecologically literate for some is to gain a sense of this romanticized place (place = nature: unspoiled, beautiful, poetic, and awe inspiring) by going away from the suburbs or cities in which they dwell because these places do not fit the dominant view of what place consists.

A city dweller's sense of place may be far removed from the biological engagement for which Orr (1994) speaks a word. The state of the surrounding natural world from which Orr (1994) associates that students gain an ecological literacy overlooks city environs. I assert this happens because most all city environments are constructed by humans and therefore people do not necessarily consider them purely natural. Cities also do not fit the dominant view of place as unspoiled, beautiful, poetic, and awe inspiring. As a result, the goal of becoming ecologically literate through place-based pedagogy marginalizes its urban students, environments, and teachers. Urban dwellers have cement sidewalks, pocket parks, zoos, urban waterways, buildings, underground tunnels, and manicured grasses. They are neither awe inspiring to the dweller, nor beautiful or poetic without imagination; nonetheless, they are nature inherently formed and molded with elements of the earth. Books such as Terrell Dixon's (2002) reader City Wilds: Essays and Stories about Urban Nature, Pattiann Rogers' (1994) collection of poems entitled Firekeeper: New and Selected Poems, and Jennifer Price's (2000) Flight Maps: Adventures with Nature in Modern America have the capacity to make headway in changing this viewpoint [4].

Educators' marginalization of this nearby nature may or may not be intentional depending upon outright rejection or devaluation of urban nature but the result is a dangerous alienation of almost 80% of our student population. I argue that the end to the means of place-based education should not be focused on the current form of sense of place that is ecological literacy--partially because it does not recognize the various occurrences and intensities of place but mainly because of its narrow definition of place as geographically located. It is Margaret Rodman (1992) who first recognizes that places are "politicized, culturally relative, historically specific, local, and [have] multiple constructions" (641). She further contends that places "their inhabitants [experience] at particular times need to be understood apart from their creation as the locales of ethnography" (1992, p. 641). I concur and add that educators across disciplines might better benefit their students by teaching through inquiry about one's place in whatever occurrence and intensity students recognize. It is important to acknowledge then, that a person's sense of place can originate and occur differently, and a person's engagement with place varies in intensity.

An Organic Context: More Space for Teaching Writing with Place

What is essential for the future of place-based education is promoting engagement with place in its theoretical and physical occurrences and intensities to create localized meaning. That meaning must then be used to see connections between humans and the surrounding environs; the connections however do not have to be ecological or scientific in nature but can be historical, political, social, mathematical, literary, textual, spatial, architectural, auditory, etc. The goal is a more organic meaning and holistic view and engagement of place.

With a more inclusive definition of ecological literacy and a (re)configuring of place-based education I ask educators to consider the merits of an organic way of educating. This organic context for teaching utilizes varying representations of place as teaching tools and makes room for fluctuating layers of engagement with place. It does not marginalize any group because it is based on systems and wholes, not individual cultural interpretations. The theoretical underpinnings of an organic education are situated in the interdisciplinary construct "habits of mind" (Martinello & Cook, 2000) and emphasize teaching through inquiry. Habits of mind encompasses the merging of two or more disciplines where emphasis lay on the learner and the meeting point of the inter-reliant disciplines' modes and processes (Martinello & Cook, 2000). In other words, the learner, through inquiry, approaches a problem without the viewing constraints of one discipline. Rather, the complex issue the learner chooses through the inquiry process is viewable through multiple disciplines. Utilizing habits of mind and inquiry-based teaching is crucial if educators are to help students create a more holistic view of what they learn, not only in the English classroom but among all disciplines. Acknowledging that students learn in different ways (Kolb, 1984), valuing prior knowledge, and utilizing a more organically orientated place-based pedagogy may aid students in better relating to and learning in school.

Overall, an organic education extends beyond merging disciplines and creates experiences in which learners use beliefs and premises from many content areas. Specifically, a more organic place-based lesson utilizes place in all its occurrences to create a forum for teachers and students to interact and share ideas and projects that embody interdisciplinary languages. Places can be studied in the multiple ways they relate to students: in the physical, theoretical, and experiential occurrences of place. Significantly, discovering one's sense of place is not dependent upon obtaining a predetermined ecological literacy and fewer students' physical, theoretical, and experiential interactions with place are marginalized.

In relating place-based pedagogy to teaching literature and/or writing, it is Elbow's (1995) conflict concerning what to read in the composition classroom--published academic work or students' own writing--that is essentially, in my view, about students finding their place inside the writing classroom. He publishes class work. This part of his course, he declares, "helps students begin to experience themselves as members of a community of writers" (Elbow, 1995, p.74). Nevertheless, he also provides academic writing for exploration. By utilizing an organic place-based pedagogy in the writing classroom, Mr. Pastor accomplishes these same goals in much the same way as Elbow because both regularly employ academic texts in the classroom not as the perfect end of writing but as works in progress, or as example writing after a long process of revision and classification. Given that "the academic is reader and grader and always gets to decide what the student text means" Elbow reasons this causes students "to withdraw ownership and commitment" (1995, p.77). Theoretically, in placed-based writing classrooms, students reacquire that ownership because they engage in the place they are writing about, constructing new meaning relevant to their daily lives and, in the end, the meaning they create is academically immeasurable. With a little (re)visioning via an organic context for place-based teaching and learning, the writing classroom as well as any other, has the possibility to move toward an ideology concerned with wholes or complete systems and learning through inquiry.

Endnotes

[1] Place can mean the area tO which a person identifies or belongs. This term area is purposely left ambiguous because each person has his/her own definition of what constitutes his/her place. For the purposes of this statement, my place was our predominantly white and minority accented Latino culture filled with working class folks who subsisted on a 100 acre community.

[2] Sense of place is, in my definition, and for the purposes of this essay, a person's level of comfort while engaged in his/her local area. Area is purposely left ambiguous because each person has his/her own definition of what constitutes his/her place.

[3] Theoretically, ecological literacy is obtained through shifts in substance and process in contemporary education. Substance in education is modified when school subjects are derived from the surrounding natural world; educational processes utilize physical and analytical engagement with that same natural habitat (Orr, 1992, 1994). For more on ecologically literate, see Orr, David W. (1994). Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Post-modern World. Albany: SUNY Press, p. 148.

[4] For a theoretical exploration of nature see: Cronon, William. (1996). (Ed.) Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature. W.W. Norton & Company.; Oelschlaeger, Max. (1993) The Idea of Wilderness: From Prehistory to the Age of Ecology. Reprint edition. Yale University Press.; Evernden, Neil & Lorne Leslie Neil Evernden. (1992). The Social Creation of Nature. Johns Hopkins University Press.; Soule, Michale E. & Gary Lease. (1995). (Eds.) Reinventing Nature?: Responses to Postmodern Deconstruction. Island Press.; Bennett, Michael, & David W. Teague (1999). (Eds.). The Nature of Cities: Ecocriticism and Urban Environments University of Arizona Press.

References

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Dana Zaskoda, Teachers College, Columbia University

Dana Zaskoda is an EdD candidate and is the Director of the TC Graduate Writing Center.