Page 236 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

210 D. Karrow and X. Fazio

some highly evocative way, producing in the child a sense of some profound continuity with
natural processes. … [T]hese writers say they return in memory in order to renew the power
and impulse to create at its very course, a course which they describe as the experience of
emerging not only into the light of consciousness but into a living sense of a dynamic rela-
tionship [our emphasis] with the outer world. (Cobb 1959, as cited in Sobel 2008, p. 16)
Intrigue, excitement, curiosity, revulsion, wonder, and awe were common emotional
responses from the students, and sometimes their teachers. Students began to express
what Malpas (2006) observes when he states: “Returning to place is thus not return-
ing to any one place, but a returning to the openness and indeterminacy of the world
– a returning, also, to the experience of wonder” (Malpas 2006. p. 310). Place-as-
being provides for such a return, to the place where Being as such can be a matter
for human being. To experience the mystery, the joy and awe of discovering that
Being has possibility beyond that which tends to be revealed through dominant
means, namely, science and/or technology (Heidegger 1977) is worthwhile. Such an
emotional connection is the prelude to an intimate relationship. Once such a relation-
ship begins, other nontechnical forms of engagement may follow. Students, as a
foundation to their Being-in-the-World, demonstrate care, by gently touching their
worms, rehydrating them as they dry in the air, re-placing them in their home and
covering the soil carefully upon them, or acquiring empathetic understandings about
their precarious fates. In a creative writing activity, teachers had students in one class
write letters from the point of view of a worm relative whose cousin had been eaten
by a Robin (a very common North American bird that is adept at eating worms). In
another class, students assumed the role of the Robin, and prepared a thoughtful
response. In and of themselves, these activities do not guarantee learning to value
the world and its many species, but at least they begin to interrogate prevailing
assumptions and demonstrate that such engagements with nature, beyond the instru-
mental, are possible, desirable, and worthwhile. Instead of students amassing data,
as we previously suggested, perhaps their connection with nature could be nurtured
through empathetic understandings or engaging with nature along aesthetic lines.
Until these points are considered, the type of educational experiences programs
such as NatureWatch offer will fall short of bringing the types of lifelong under-
standings, attitudes, and behaviors vital to restoring a healthy relationship with our
Earth. In closing, David Sobel captures the relationship we posit between such
transcendent experiences with nature and our primordial capacity for care.
[O]nce you’ve felt at one with the natural world, it will powerfully compel you to environ-
mental ethics and behaviour. It follows that if we want to develop environmental values, we
should try to optimize the opportunity for transcendent nature experiences in middle child-
hood. (Sobel 2008, p. 18)
Summarizing this section we wish to highlight a few points before moving on to
the final section. First, Dasein’s Being-in-the-World is a unique and peculiar phe-
nomenological problem of interest to those examining the relationship between
humans and their environment. Such a perspective is useful to those elaborating PBE
theory. As we illustrated within the previous section, predominant meanings of
place-as-land/community, or place-as-difference, each contribute elements to PBE
theory, but unless the ontological realm is considered such theory remains callow.