Reflections on Pedagogy and Place: A Journey into Learning For Sustainability through Environmental Narrative and Deep Attentive Reflection

Abstract

Abstract Narrative is fundamental to our diverse capacities to remember, to provide an account of self, and to represent our actions, motivations and place in society. The narrative mode is concerned with central aspects of the human condition – commitments and personal agency; motivations and emotions; collective experiences and cultural histories and myths. As such it is concerned with relationships between people, their activities within particular places and the ethics that arise in these specific relationships. This paper explores the role of narrative as a pedagogical device and as a form of thinking and valuing for students to use in their everyday interactions. In particular, it considers why a combination of environmental narrative, drama and deep attentive reflection sits so well with the emerging pedagogies of “place”, and why this alliance is such an effective means for allowing individuals to experience, understand and value for themselves the entwined and sensorial connections that exist between people and place. Based on a year-long values education case study in eight primary schools, we describe and theorise about why such a narrative approach to pedagogy, when linked to deep attentive experiences in nature, is so effective in developing a new kind of place-based body/mind meaning-making and learning that inspires individuals to engage with both the inner and outer work of sustainability.

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