ABSTRACT
At a recent environmental education conference, we organized a workshop to collaboratively and experientially consider the role of place as co-teacher (Blenkinsop and Beeman 2010) and explore some of the challenges in implementing a critical pedagogy of place (Gruenewald 2003). We invited workshop participants into a downtown urban environment and encouraged them to ask three questions inspired by Leopold (1949): What is happening here? What has happened here? and What should happen here? Specifically, we hoped that participants might experience and reflect upon some of the predicaments involved in establishing meaningful connections with the more-than-human aspects of place – including ways in which ‘what-is’ can work to obfuscate ‘what has been’ and prescribe ‘what should be’ – in densely urbanized environments.
