Space represented on geographical maps is ordered and navigable, allowing one to "know" features and layouts of places before visiting, and finding landmarks, pathways and spaces of importance that connect you from one point to another, reducing possibilities for disorientation. Maps "work" because they represent a reality…

As an American-trained compositionist working in the Middle East, Amy Zenger questioned the ways she and others in her position conduct research and construct, revise, or administer composition programs outside of the U.S., particularly when these programs purport to adhere to American models of liberal arts education. Universities and programs…

In our conceptual essay, we draw on an exchange between a White scholar and a group of panelists on Critical Race Theory at an international conference. Taking up this exchange as our point of departure, we work in dialectical and multidimensional ways between the essentialized politics of place on race and critical anti-essentializing foundations…

Enabling ability and growing talent is central to our professional work with young people. This paper is a 'think piece' that draws on findings from two research projects from the Aotearoa New Zealand context to highlight elements that appear to be central to enabling ability and growing talent in young people. A dialogic process was used to…

"Place-based education" refers to pedagogy that connects student learning with the local environment and students' lives. Educators' preoccupation with standardized test scores have increased the disconnect between formal education and student's life experiences. Schools have developed systems of learning in isolated subjects through…

Through collaborative authorship, this article provides cross-disciplinary examples of TEK projects to illustrate today's best practices for keeping Indigenous peoples and knowledge at the center of such research and teaching.

Children explore their environment through experiences and each experience is meaningful in developing their environmental consciousness and identity. On the basis of the drawn landscape experiences, the present qualitative study set out to find out what landscapes the participating students deemed worth conserving. The data consisted of the…

This article examines the perception of the Czech place-based education program School for Sustainable Development from the perspectives of the participating students, teachers, and representatives of the local municipalities. The study is based on an analysis of paired or group interviews with 47 students, 7 teachers, and 6 representatives. The…

In this paper, the authors illustrate the impacts of their cross-cultural research in Africa, on their current work in science and STEM education. Through the examination of two research projects in cross-cultural settings in Africa, the authors explore the lasting impacts of this type of work. Specifically, through the use of Critical Personal…

In Aotearoa New Zealand we need an informed educational response to the environmental crisis within and across all learning areas in the curriculum. One way of organising that response is through the concept of eco-literacy. This article explains the concept of eco-literacy developed within the TLRI project Tuhia ki Te Ao--Write to the Natural…

In this article I intend to explore one possible way of using "place" to rethink "nature," the relationship between humans and nature, and the implications for education. The elucidation and discussion of the sense of place will reveal that there are profound and superficial or, placeful and placeless, senses of place. This…

This paper discusses human relationships with the natural world in Japanese educational policy. Based on two case studies, we argue that policy must recognize the cultural and spiritual ties that people in Japan have fostered in order to live well, which this paper considers to be part of "re-wilding education policy." We briefly review…

This essay analyzes student learning through place-based pedagogies in an American Religions course. In the course, students analyzed cultural meanings and practices of regional religious communities and participated in sensory awareness and ecological learning in a campus garden. Embodied learning increased student understanding and appreciation…

Environmental consciousness-raising programs tend to emphasize the magnitude of imminent ecological disasters, if humans continue on their current trajectory. While these environmental literacy programs also call for action to avoid cataclysmic ecological changes, psychological research on "learned helplessness" suggests that information…

Integrating art into science as a means of involving students in learning about their environment offers the promise of engaging students both cognitively and emotionally. However, few studies have investigated the use of art as a learning and assessment tool in science. As such, we conducted a research study with 4th and 5th grade students at a…