Page 223 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

16 Educating-Within-Place: Care, Citizen Science, and EcoJustice 197

by considering, in detail, the ontological realm. Considering the ontological realm
through the philosophy we posit helps ease binary distinctions between subject and
object, and create room for a theory of knowledge posited on care. In what follows,
we trace out a rudimentary evolution of thought on the matter of place meanings
and categorize these according to the three realms of experience previously noted.
Nespor (2008) highlights two common associations of place that PBE theorists
tend to default to. First is the tendency to equate place with land or a natural environ-
ment (Greenwood and Smith 2008), and second is the trend to add to this early defi-
nition the veneer of community (Theobald 1997). Subsequently, we refer to these as:
place-as-land or place-as-community. Community or “the commons,” as Theobald
and Bowers refer to it, is “the environment ... available for use by the entire commu-
nity,” encompassing “every aspect of the human/biotic community that has not been
monetized or privatized” (p. 2). Referring back to Steele’s opening quote, each of
these perspectives on place, whether land or community, shares an affinity with the
“physical.” Such place constitutions are grounded in what we refer to as the natural
realm. NatureWatch illustrates these two meanings of place in that the “places”
implicitly examined are ecological spaces where certain indicator species, i.e.,
worms, are sought after as harbingers of ecological health. We can even see the
influence of community as an overlay upon meanings of place derived from land or
the environment enacted through the concept of citizen science where the “concerns,
interests, and activities” of everyday people are considered reflexively.
A third conception of place addresses a deficiency in the former and overly
simplified place-meanings by considering complex issues surrounding class, gender,
and race (amongst others). Here we begin to see the influence of the psychological
and social dimensions of place alluded to by Steele at the outset of this section.
While place-as-difference is important and potentially extends PBE and its theoreti-
cal base, such an orientation to place is generally described as being grounded
within a sociopolitical context (Wollan 2003). Using our nomenclature, place-as-
difference is grounded in the cultural realm.
Whether place is associated with land and/or community and/or difference
grounded by respective natural and cultural realms, what appears to be down-
played in the discussion is a consideration of the ontological realm. Fundamentally,
there is a deficiency around the meaning of human existence in relation to the
world, and as such, we advocate for another conception of place-as-being. Adds
Casey (1997): “[T]o be at all – to exist in any way – is to be somewhere, and to be
somewhere is to be in some kind of place” (p. ix). While Lim and Barton (2006)
do begin to acknowledge the importance of an ecological relationship between the
student and their learning environment, what they refer to as a “sense of place”
within the science classroom (an appropriation of the lifeworld), and their work
focuses on how students bring into the science classroom their senses of place, our
work is distinctly different.
First, our conception of place is also informed by the ontological (being), whereas
Lim and Barton, borrowing from Gruenewald (2003) and Lutts (1985) view place
“as a complicated, ecological system that includes physical, biological, social, cul-
tural, and political factors with history and psychological state of the person who