Page 353 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

27 Place-Based Education as a Call from/for Action 327

the Southwest U.S. state of Arizona. They claim that place-based education is a
mutually beneficial transaction among people and place if it enhances the senses
of place and local knowledge of students and teachers, while also fostering care for
places that promotes their ecological integrity and cultural sustainability. Once
again, the confluence of place-based education, ecojustice, and indigenous knowl-
edge comes to the fore as a call from collective human action.
The notion of ecological integrity is taken up by Zandvliet once he expands it
by situating place-based education as a grassroots response to what is viewed by
many educators as a potential deficiency in systemic curriculum reform efforts.
Here, place-based education as a call for action is most notable. But its global
message becomes even more imminent by contextualizing place-based education
within the historical backdrop of earlier curriculum reforms worldwide. Zandvliet
characterizes aspects of Semken and Brandt’s implementations as a form of tech-
nocentric curriculum reform. In response, he provides a description of an alterna-
tive ecological framework for science education, which references the emerging
discourse around place-based education and sense of place that Semken and Brandt
refer to – but also includes socioscientific issues-based (SSI) education, grounded
in an ecological conception of education that emphasizes the “embeddedness” of
human societies and cultures (and their technologies) within place-bound commu-
nities. His model describes a range of ecological, sociocultural, and technical influ-
ences that provide a framework for educators’ diverse interpretations of curriculum.
Siry extends the implications Semken and Brandt have introduced by focusing on
the issue of cultural sustainability. She contends that a critical theoretical perspec-
tive is required in projects with contested places and displaced peoples in order
to recognize the multitude of complexities involved. Here again, the dialectics
of place as an ongoing dialogue is highlighted as she lays bare the complexity of
place-based education as a call from human action. Specifically, she suggests using
polyvocal and polysemic research in and around contested places as a means to
acknowledge multidimensional intersubjective perspectives while also emphasizing
connections to place.
Collectively, the four chapters and their responses featured in this section make
clear that place-based education should be at the heart of vibrant schools and com-
munities. Given the dialectics of place, place-based education implies much more
than what is suggested by the phrase Think global, act local, which is attributed to
the father of place-based activity, Patrick Geddes (1915). Rather, “place” pertains
as well to reading this phrase the other way round – it is the unit that mediates
thinking and acting both globally and locally. As such, place is the prime dialectic
unit by which educators can overcome dualisms they encounter in place-based
education and to establish a call from/to action, therewith uniting the object with
the subject, the local with the global, and the speaker with the listener. As a result,
in this chapter, the contours of the confluence of the ideas behind issues pertaining
to the triad of place-based education, ecojustice, and indigenous knowledge become
less opaque. However, thinking of speakers and listeners in dialogue opens up a
new line of thought that has to do with voices and discourse. Discussing place-
based education particularly in contested places, requires one to address the questions