ABSTRACT
In Chapter 6, we argue that social reconstruction learning must reject both the theory/practice and human/nature dualisms. Citizenship is more than being a member of social and political communities, as communities are not abstracted from place but ecologically embedded. Place-based pedagogies must, therefore, be a key feature of democratic education. But place is not neutral, merely somewhere for learning to occur. Students need to experience a ‘sense of place’ to develop their identity as citizens who are ecologically interdependent, which is necessary for sustainable living. We provide a series of narratives to assist teachers to create and implement place-responsive pedagogies: (1) experiences from environmental education centres illustrating different ways groups have developed place-responsive pedagogies, (2) an exploration of Aboriginal Land ethics as people belonging to land compared to liberal conceptions of land as property belonging to people, and (3) a case study of an inner-city school that uses experiential learning to implement its environmental and philosophy programs. These examples also point to the importance of critical Indigenous pedagogies of place. We conclude with a discussion on some of the bureaucratic and political challenges that education reformers should expect when attempting to implement the kind of radical democratic education we propose.
