Page 289 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

20 Critical Pedagogy of Place: A Framework for Understanding Relationships 263

Thus, I argue the need for teacher education programs to actively prepare teachers
to critically consider their own situationality within the context of school and
schooling, especially in shared/contested places, like Hawaii. In doing so, educators
gain the opportunity and tools with which to question the ideologies and politics
that work to produce and reproduce power relationships within spaces/places that
benefit some individuals and groups of people over others.
In the next section, I extend this argument from the context of the diverse edu-
cational system of Hawaii to the changing landscapes of American schools where
new waves of immigration make necessary the need for educators, especially in
urban and rural settings, to consider science curricula that promote an understanding
of the socio-ecological relationships between people and place in contested places.
Specifically, I conclude this chapter with a discussion of Greenwood’s belief that
critical place-based (science) education can and should empower individuals in com-
munities to engage in explicit decolonization and shared reinhabitation of places
and spaces by attending to the spatial–temporal–socio–historical–cultural contexts
of people being in places together.

The Role of (Science) Education in the Decolonization
and Reinhabitation of Shared Places

In the context of my research as an urban science educator, I see some parallels in
the challenges the different communities of Hawaii face as they seek to come to
terms with the ways in which the identity of individuals and groups within this
shared space have been impacted by the history of Hawaii’s colonization. Through
my work in urban schools, I encounter individuals like David and his students who
are struggling to come to terms with the changes that are taking place in our com-
munity. Like many large urban centers, Philadelphia has a fast growing immigrant
population, many of whom are emigrating from countries with long histories of
imperial colonization by other, more powerful nation-states. Many of these new-
comers are English language learners whose children represent the fastest growing
segment of students in US public schools in rural and urban communities. The
majority (83%) of the teachers in US public schools are White and middle class
(NCES 2007), suggesting they are unlikely to share the same race, language,
socioeconomic status, culture, or even religion with their students. These families
are settling into neighborhoods, just as Asians have settled on the islands of
Hawaii. These neighborhoods consist of both physical places and social spaces,
which have been constructed over time by those who have inhabited the land for
generations. In doing so, people have filled these places with ideologies which
give shape to the cultural identities of the inhabitants of the neighborhoods, as well
as the land on which they built their homes and communities. As a result, the
original inhabitants of these neighborhoods and the newcomers who are settling
among them are challenged by the need to share the same physical place and the
social space.