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17 Invoking the Ontological Realm of Place: A Dialogic Response 223

pedagogical practices with little consideration to the “nuts and bolts” of the actual
implementation, that is, we sometimes fail to make explicit the connection between
methodology and pedagogy – the “why” and the “how.” Gruenewald (2003) warns
that standardizing or scripting PBE would defeat the purpose of place-based teaching
and learning as, “practices must emerge from the particular attributes of a place”
(p. 644). In contrast, Pauline Chinn’s (2006) idea of “establishing a personal con-
nection and acquiring the tools to study one’s lifeplace can lead to transformative
teaching and learning in science” is a useful heuristic for thinking about merging
theory and practice when it comes to PBE. Coming from an experiential education/
informal science background, I value experience as a way of learning to teach.
I believe that developing activities and practices in teacher education that allow
educators to develop tools to study places would enable educators to develop place-
conscious practices that would hopefully become a part of their personal teaching
philosophies. The key is making the sense-making of these experiences obvious
through the process of reflection. This would bring to consciousness the ontological
“experience-of-being” realm and render this conscious awareness a resource on
which to build future activities. Malpas (1999) mentions:
Understanding an agent, understanding oneself, as engaged in some activity is a matter of
both understanding the agent as standing in certain causal and spatial relations to objects
and of grasping the agent as having certain relevant attitudes – notable certain relevant
beliefs and desires – about the objects concerned. (p. 95)
Reflecting on experience brings about this understanding of the teacher/agent in
relation to her place and, with guidance of a place-conscious facilitator, enables
teachers to think about how she could create similar experiences for their students
(transference), even in the face of a standardized curriculum. These experiences could
help them to realize the social embeddedness of notions of place, because as the
cliché goes, to know oneself is to understand others.
And to respond to your question about outdoor education programs, I think that
many of them intend to be place-based. If they are enacted in a local context, they
usually focus on understanding the local natural environment. However, they may
not be place-based in the pedagogical sense that we speak of – they may not consider
dimensions other than the pure ecological aspect of a place. They become more of
a methodology – a specific approach to teaching without the theoretical underpin-
nings. This factor is heightened if the programs are designed to be “exported” to
other contexts. In this case, the programs become scripted and more disconnected
from the context in which they are to be enacted.
Sheliza: Jen, in regards to less consideration to the actual implementation of
PBE, are you proposing that a balance between methodological practices and peda-
gogical practices are needed? I suggested above that PBE as methodology would
be too prescriptive and standardized, and that PBE as a pedagogy would be evolving
and formative. I guess I was thinking as a researcher and not as an educator and I
guess I advocated for PBE as pedagogy because I thought it would make for a type
of teaching that was not standardized/simple but personal and connected to local
place (the type of science education that Karrow and Fazio call for when they
emphasize invoking the ontological realm).