Page 216 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

190 M. van Eijck

acterized by tensions in current scholarly work and, resulting from these tensions,
the pushing and blurring of disciplinary boundaries. Engaging the reader in this
challenging process of scholarly development is the aim of this section.
One of the tensions present in this section is between local (place) and global
(non-place) knowledge. Place-based education, by nature, deals with local knowl-
edge from the places studied. However, in science education, global, universal
knowledge is privileged over those local kinds of knowledges that are bound to places.
Here, disciplinary boundaries are disrupted and become porous since exactly the
same tension is focused on in studies that deal with the role of indigenous knowl-
edge in science education (e.g., van Eijck and Roth 2007).
The overlap between studies on indigenous knowledge and place-based educa-
tion is due to another tension as well. This tension concerns place as something we
identify with (places in which we dwell up to the extent of indigenousness) in con-
trast to the way scientists have traditionally generalized the notion of place. When
we identify with a place, it becomes part of ourselves and we become part of it,
such as is often the case with indigenous peoples and the places they inhabit. This
contrasts strongly with the objectification of a place from a scientific perspective,
allowing one to compare features of the place with those of any other place on Earth.
By doing the latter, however, the place is reduced to universal and non-idiosyncratic
measures that are inherently placeless. Although such measures allow the identifica-
tion of a place, they have little to do with the ways inhabitants identify with the
places they inhabit.
Connected to the former is the tension between taking places as living entities
that are part of ourselves and which we are part of and care for (subjects) and
things in themselves we can study as bystanders in the natural science without
being part of or caring for (objects). This tension clearly reflects issues present in
ecojustice education since the commons in our environment keep us alive and
make us part of (subjects from) the places we inhabit. But it is also connected to
the former tension since indigenous knowing is related to taking places as living
entities we identify with.
Hence, a focus on these tensions reveals that the boundaries between education
for ecojustice, indigenous knowing and learning, and place-based education are
in fact blurred and porous. Particularly, this blur and porosity plays through this
entire section and in each of the featured chapters. While this section initially
features studies in place-based education, one can distinguish several turns where
the focus of the text drifts toward indigenous knowledge and education for eco-
justice. These turns are of particular interest, since they reveal the pushing and
blurring of theoretical boundaries of the existing, once-separated disciplines,
yielding more universal themes disrupting boundaries and stretching over disci-
plines. Taken together, the four chapters in this section show that something is
happening in the practice of academic research on place-based education. As
such, the ancient notion of place as plateia appears to be even reflexive for this
entire section. It should be taken as a multivoiced location where people meet and
significant events occur.