Relationship with Place: Transformative and Sustainable Pedagogy for the Planet (original) (raw)
1. Introduction
Anyone reading this journal is familiar with environmental problems related to sustainability. There is a litany of issues related to global warming that surround our dependence on petroleum, a non-renewable resource. Toxic pollutants, by-products of manufacturing and agribusiness practices, are in our food chain and our bodies. For example, rainforests, coral reefs and wildland destruction, acid rain, loss of species, waste, and water issues—the litany goes on and on. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring [1] in 1962 was a turning point for awakening our country’s awareness to the idea that there are consequences for the lifestyle of modern, industrialized society. The United States celebrated the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. Yet for decades, the grassroots efforts to raise our awareness and inspire environmentally friendly behaviors have not accomplished the sweeping changes needed to effect ecological sustainability—living in such a way that maintains nature’s ability to support healthy ecosystems for generations to come. If you have read Jem Bendell’s [2] article on deep adaptation, you might have very high levels of concern regarding the longevity of our current civilization. One might ponder that a sane society would address these issues head-on, but short-term entrenched thinking within our political and economic systems is not responsive to these concerns. Orr [3] believes that the disordering of ecological systems reflects a disorder in the thoughts, perceptions, and priorities of the Western, industrialized mind and that our current ecological crisis has to do with how people think and feel about nature. The practice of sustainability requires long-term thinkers and innovative problem-solvers who have a developed sense of global responsibility and enlightened self-interest.
There is a preponderance and convergence of evidence in regard to most environmental issues. But I have come to believe facts and evidence do not change behaviors. Beyond knowing, one needs to care to act. To paraphrase Stephan Gould, without the emotional bond of relationship, we will not strive to preserve what we do not love. Relationship may lay the foundation for caring and encouragement of sustainability practices [4]. Emotions are stirred through relational experience, which can generate love. I know it sounds sentimental, but relationship to nature and love of place is vital to a sustainable society.
In 1949, Aldo Leopold wrote in A Sand County Almanac [5]:
Conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of land. We abuse the land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see the land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. There is no other way for land to survive the impact of mechanized man (p. viii).
Immersive nature experience can reach the emotional threshold needed to generate that love and respect. Based on Aldo Leopold’s land ethic, Mayer and Frantz [6] suggest that belonging or connection to nature is a foundational component of fostering sustainable behaviors and may more profoundly affect ecological values and behaviors than awareness or knowledge. Studies have shown that emotional affinity to nature is a more powerful predictor of environmental behaviors than cognitive awareness and belief [7, 8]. “The emotive power of these encounters with nature derives from their dynamic, varied, unique, surprising and adventurous character” [9]. In The Sense of Wonder, Rachel Carson [10] suggested that arousing emotions encourages curiosity, inquiry, and a sense of meaning for children. She says, “The emotions and impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds [of knowledge and wisdom] must grow”. The outdoors is a novel experience for many children and just being out there unencumbered by walls can excite emotions and create memories for a lifetime. “Emotions are a critical part of a learner’s ability to think rationally and experience meaning” [11]. The affective components of interest and curiosity enhance engagement and are essential to the out-of-school application of academic content [12]. Many believe that educational reforms that build on local resources will help children develop not only the basic knowledge and skills necessary to flourish in their bioregion but also a sense of community connection that will inspire the emotional fuel needed to meet the call to action of ecologically sustainable behaviors [13–15]. Imagine a political landscape where decisions underlying environmental policies are tempered by love.
Bowers [14] believes the ecological crisis is partially a crisis of cultural values and beliefs based on urbanization and consumerism. The majority of individuals in modern society are urban dwellers who are alienated from the natural world and, therefore, have little direct connection to nature [16–19]. This reduces opportunities to interact with wild nature and to experience its restorative quality. In Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv [17] describes nature-deficit disorder, a term used to describe the cost of human alienation from nature. A disconnect from nature contributes to a lack of eco-literacy, disregard for stewardship of the land, and diminished importance of the natural world in education. This essay will discuss how Western values have brought the planet to an environmental precipice, the benefits of nature experience, and how eco-literacy and sustainability could be a focus for a meaningful and interdisciplinary curriculum that has transformative possibilities for individuals, the institutions of education, and the ecosystems in which learners live.
2. Place-based education and eco-literacy
Place-based approaches that support ecological sustainability are multilayered from a global, societal, and personal perspective. A pedagogy of place or place-based education utilizes a local region as an educational resource for observation and authentic inquiry. A local region can serve as “a library of data about geology, history, flora, and fauna; a source of inspiration and renewal, and a testing ground for the man” [18]. The literature related to place-based education is found in a wide variety of areas such as project-based instruction; thematic/inter-disciplinary methods; urban studies; rural education; indigenous education; ecological sustainability education; Science, Technology, and Society; emancipatory curriculum theory; action research; cultural studies; service learning; youth development; and science and environmental education. Place-based education seeks involvement in communities through engaging students and school staff in studying and solving community problems. Place-based education differs from conventional text and classroom-based education in that students’ local community is one of the primary resources for learning. Thus, place-based education promotes learning that is rooted in what is local—the unique history, environment, culture, economy, literature, and art in the learners’ place: immediate schoolyard, neighborhood, town, or community. This experiential community-based approach helps learners develop a sense of civic identity and engagement by cultivating community connections and fostering environmental citizenship [20].
Eco-literacy is a basic understanding of the workings of the life-support system of the planet. It includes the concepts of energy within food webs, interdependence and diversity of life, and how materials cycle in systems. The basic concepts of ecology are included in science teaching standards but are not often taught within the social context of the communities to which schools belong. Children need to understand that their food comes from the soil, not the grocery store; and that some food items are transported great distances for our consumption. Schools with gardens actually teach children how to grow food. Young people need to know that all the waste that is not recycled does not simply disappear; it is stored in a landfill or burned into the atmosphere or ends up in our waterways. In nature, there is no waste. Young people should learn that the air we breathe comes from processes in green organisms, which emphasizes our interdependence with other life on the planet. They should understand that fresh water on our planet is limited and its distribution uneven. People should know that many chemicals that are commonly used in daily life are not compatible with the chemistry of life. Many of these chemicals are based on petroleum, the foundation of the Western world’s energy system, which is a non-renewable resource. Children should learn that green behaviors such as recycling, eating locally, and conserving energy and water reduce our impact on natural resources and support ecological sustainability.
Grade school students often lose what place-based educators call their sense of place by focusing too quickly or exclusively on the gloom and doom of national or global issues. This is not to say that international and domestic environmental issues are peripheral to place-based education, but that students should first have a grounding in the history, culture, and ecology of their own environment before moving on to broader subjects. Too often, environmental education involves large global issues such as ozone depletion, rainforest destruction, and climate change. This catastrophic approach may leave students frustrated, helpless, and hopeless. I recall showing An Inconvenient Truth to my middle school students and watching them walk out of the classroom with heads hung low and depressed body language. Weaving curriculum into the community allows students to participate in their own world and their learning has genuine meaning. They develop a sense of commitment, ownership, and perhaps a sense of empowerment from their projects. In addition to the core subjects, students learn life skills such as communication, problem-solving, decision-making, public speaking, leadership, and citizenship. They are active participants in their neighborhoods and in local democratic systems. There is hope that developing a close relationship with nature in a local setting will evolve into caring, sustainable behaviors. These relationships become the catalyst for actions and decision-making regarding caring for the places we love and want to preserve [21]. We can only imagine the empowerment these students feel in affecting real-world changes in their local communities and the type of communities they will create in the future.
A qualitative study by Chawla [22] compared 26 environmental activists in Norway with 30 environmental activists in Kentucky as to what motivated them to take action for the environment. When people explained their involvement in environmental action, their reasons were usually very personal. Many mentioned a childhood place where they played or participated in recreational activities as adolescents and a beloved family member who directed them to look closely at the environment around them. Emotional affinity toward nature predicted a willingness to protect nature [22]. It makes sense that affiliation influences emotions and emotions affect values. Values underlie our choices and behaviors. This small, qualitative study supports that love of place can affect individual commitment to environmental action. The international dimension also supports the universal notion that love of place encourages caring, protective behaviors for that place.
What would this look like in practice? David Sobel’s exciting publication, Place-Based Education describes a plethora of community-based school projects that express the values of eco-literacy through authentic learning. Naturalizing school grounds for urban wildlife habitat is a common project. Sobel also discusses garden programs that feed the homeless, local grassland and wetland restoration projects that benefit local ecologies, community recycling and awareness programs, and interpretive museum exhibits. Through critical place-based pedagogy, possibilities arise for students to develop a deeper understanding of ecological concepts as well as play a transformative role in their communities [23].
Education centered on local places and issues can potentially contribute to the well-being of community life and has transformative potential for students, teachers, educational practices, communities, and the non-sustainable ecological paradigm of modern society [24, 25]. A goal of place-based pedagogy is the development of green values and behaviors reflective of eco-centric perspectives as well as challenging educational norms and practices. Building education around local natural environments and community issues can also infuse ecological ethics and esthetics into education and culture especially when students have personal involvement, commitment, and affection for their projects [26].
The essential question of curriculum, what should we teach, should be prefaced by asking: What do our students need to know to live quality lives not only in a global economy but also in their local communities? What is needed to learn to achieve sustainability? How can people learn to live well in their own places with less stuff? Eco-literacy is a place to start, but not just the needed scientific concepts and facts. Educators need to address the social and psychological roots of the problem, which lie in the human condition. Western attitudes toward the Earth as a commodity and the separation of people from the land contribute to a lack of caring. The ability to live within natural limits in harmony and balance with earth systems requires a holistic, radical approach; a pedagogy of place with a goal toward the development of green values and behaviors reflective of humanistic and naturalist perspectives. The interdependence of life is based on relationships and this connection with a place may lay the foundation for caring and encouragement of conservation practices.
3. Benefits of nature experience
The benefits of nature experience are numerous and provide further evidence for getting young people into natural settings. The physical benefits are apparent. With childhood obesity and type II diabetes on the rise, romping about in the outdoors is much healthier than interacting with a device, playing a computer game, or passively watching videos. Of course, moving about in a less structured environment helps children develop balance, agility, coordination, and to release the boundless energy of youth. Children with symptoms of attention-deficit disorder (ADD) have shown better concentration and focus after contact with nature [27]. Being in nature relieves stress [28]. The intellectual benefits of a complex and multisensory experience stimulate neural activity and brain development [29]. Kellert [9] claims nature experience creates an intellectual competence that contributes to “developing and reinforcing the child’s capacities for empirical observation, analytical examination, and evidentiary demonstration.” There are even studies that show that children involved in consistent environmental programs showed higher achievement on standardized test scores [30].
Nature experience adds to childhood growth by developing affective qualities in natural settings. Playing with other children and animals in the outdoors encourages compromise and cooperation, which cultivates empathy, flexibility, self-awareness, and self-regulation. Imaginative play in outdoor settings enhances creativity. In addition, being in natural settings minimizes anxiety, depression, aggression, and sleep problems while improving mood. A recent study showed that connectedness to nature can significantly predict the degree of life satisfaction and overall happiness [31]. The diversity of nature encourages imaginative and creative play, which fosters language development, social interaction, and creative thinking [17]. In addition, children might just experience the thrill of a wildlife sighting or the awe of nature’s wonders. Outdoor play can lay the groundwork for the sense of belonging and caring needed to develop land ethics and transform eco-centric values.
Learning in the outdoors is a natural process that allows students to study and experience natural phenomena in relationship and direct contact with the interdependence and diversity of nature. Using a local natural area as a learning resource to study ecology is a practical and effective instructional method. The natural world is a science laboratory with limitless sensory data to explore. Outdoor learning settings may be a pond or creek, a garden or farm, a mucky swamp or tide pool, or it could even be a schoolyard habitat or a vacant lot. The potential for increased performance in school, greater mental and physical health, broader awareness, and even spiritual growth could find its roots in being in nature. There is hope that personal experience in natural environments will encourage green values and sustainable behaviors.
Green values go beyond conservation practices. As an American, I sometimes wonder how other countries and cultures perceive us. Based on our media, it appears many Americans value looking good and having fun. Comfort and fitting in seem to be our goals, but these are adolescent values conditioned by advertising and other mass media. We are a consumer culture. If we, as a culture, remain stuck in adolescence, we will never mature to our full potential and continue being frivolous devourers of natural resources [32]. Possibilities of personal growth can occur when we step out of our comfort zone to struggle, persevere, and reflect within natural settings. “Deep ecologists recognize the vital need for outdoor recreation, rather than the more artificial need for entertainment” [32]. Recreational activities such as mountain or rock climbing or paddling wild rivers hold possibilities for building character. Buddy Gilchrest, a great mountaineer and co-founder of the Texas Outdoor Education Association, often discussed the value of re-creating ourselves through outdoor recreation. This intangible quality of nature experience is difficult to express and is best understood by experience. Extreme sports are not required for this re-creation of self. Bird watching, hunting and fishing, quiet strolls in the woods or along the shore, and gardening are contemplative activities that bring us close to the land. Nature’s value to humble and inspire encourages self-reflection and personal growth. It is my experience that people who have relationship with the land have quiet dignity, self-reliance, and integrity and are contemplative in their actions, especially as consumers. I worry we export these consumer values to the rest of the world through our entertainment. As economic world leaders, it is time for us as a culture to grow up and approach environmental issues as mature people who value more than fun and surface qualities and strive for temperance, love, and virtue [33]. Immersion and connection with place offer a powerful esthetic, affective context that holds the possibilities of transforming eco-paradigms as healthy young learners grow into community members who care about the places they have explored.
4. Transforming mindsets and educational institutions
Pyle states that nature study is “a radical, subversive, even deeply seditious act against the status quo” [34]. Changing eco-paradigms is necessarily transformative. Transforming the institution of education would require changes in cultural mindsets. Revision of our educational system requires confronting the patriarchal-driven values and habits of a fragmented Western culture that are based on competition and centralized power structures. The domination of nature is related to hierarchal power and politics, but nature is holarchal. An Earth-centered, experiential education that involves our emotions, senses, and relationships to nature and each other is embedded in eco-centric values. An integrated, environmental curriculum focused on local environmental issues could segue our schools into a training ground for sustainable thinkers. Still, this daunting task will take a major shift in modern society’s perception of priorities, power, and institutions.
Sustainability will require a change in modern lifestyles toward simplicity and localization of infrastructure needs. There are many communities in the world—indigenous communities, small villages and towns—where people live simply and within ecological means; they are already living a place-based mindset. As a US citizen, I offer a generalized critique of my culture, which is grounded in “rugged individualism” rather than community and conquest of nature rather than immersion in the natural world. The American Dream of consumption, convenience, comfort, and the common belief that American know-how and technical innovation will sustain unlimited economic growth is just that, a dream [18]. Unfortunately, there are limiting factors to this lifestyle because ecosystems and resources have natural limits. These dominate modern cultural values and thought processes, which have caused an environmental crisis. This consumerism has caused worldwide impacts. Urban societies need a new eco-paradigm that breaks away from corporate economics and nationalized education. We need to decentralize our energy, utility and transportation systems, deal with our own waste, address large-scale agribusiness, and preserve/restore wild lands. Western society needs to scale down and think beyond the present to the quality of the lives of future generations. And young learners need to understand, even feel, the impact of our behaviors in our immediate world. How often are ecological concepts taught in the context of our personal lives and community ecosystems? If eco-literacy, sustainability, and green behaviors had greater value, these literal facts of life on planet Earth would become central to lifestyle decisions and what we teach in our schools.
One reason that eco-literacy is not already at the forefront of education is the interdisciplinary nature of the subject. A basic understanding of biology, geology, physics, chemistry, meteorology, oceanography, and agriculture is required to understand ecology. Most high schools teach biology, physics, and chemistry, but ecology is most often an elective. Why not teach all the sciences within the context of local environments and ecosystems? David Orr speaks of Renaissance thinking, broad-based in science and social studies [18]. From Dewey to Pinar, curriculum theorists have been encouraging more integrated, authentic approaches to education. This is difficult because a culture of fragmentation and specialization permeates the educational system. Many fiercely guard their individual disciplines. This compartmentalization creates artificial separate worlds that we are trained to navigate in school, but which do not exist in the real world. I am always amazed that students are surprised when we use math equations in physics. They wonder why we are doing math in science class. The walls between classrooms and between the world and school are reflected in their thinking processes. Eco-literacy and pedagogy of place could be a central theme, an all-encompassing inter-disciplinary focal point that can gather all the subject domains within a central concept and connect with local communities.
The same mindset of separation allows for schools that are isolated, often literally fenced off, from their communities as if the places that we live do not matter in our lives or in our education. Bridging the gap between home, school, and community and between living and learning allows students to develop and apply knowledge and skills in the context of real life in the present moment. This authenticity is uniquely engaging because it not only gives meaning and purpose but also taps into natural ways of learning and knowing. In the same manner, a place not only adds active engagement and a spark of inspiration to a child’s learning experience but also encourages a pragmatic knowledge of what goes on around here. Harnessing this natural interest and curiosity is emotionally compelling, which adds a sense of relationship and belonging to a place [35]. This sense of belonging to the land is central to Leopold’s land ethics.
Personally, I was part of an alternative school-within-a-school in the mid-1990s called the High Adventure Learning Center. This experiential program for eighth-grade youth-at-risk has been the highlight of my teaching career. I became the teacher I idealized I could become when I was still an undergraduate in teacher training. Place-based educators are not just facilitators of learning, but they are co-learning with their students [36]. My colleagues and I nurtured the whole child in this program by blending adventure activities in nature with academics. I want to share a story of one young lady’s reaction to being at the ocean for the first time. The class was finishing our six-week-long watershed/aquatic unit, which began at our neighborhood bayou, continued at the San Jacinto River into Galveston Bay, and ended on a beach in the Gulf of Mexico. After completing data collection (which included salinity), we let the kids just play in the ocean. A young lady was splashed with water; she made a face and exclaimed, “This water is salty!” I was amazed that a child who lived 45 minutes from the beach had never tasted the ocean. I reminded her that the ocean had the highest salinity readings than any other bodies of water we had tested. “I guess I didn’t really know what that means,” she replied. In a traditional classroom, she would have never had the opportunity to personally experience that the ocean is salty—to smell, taste, and float in the salt water. How many children lack the authentic experiences needed to understand the basic workings of nature? Direct experience provides concrete learning to build upon and offers context for deeper meaning.
I am still in contact with many of my former students decades later. They post pictures of taking their own children camping, fishing, and on other outdoor excursions. I wish I could bottle our High Adventure Learning model and share it with other educators. But it may not work in another place at a different time with other students. Eco-literacy is necessarily place-based and programs are built locally by committed teams of educators and community members. This approach to authentic learning in place cannot be easily encapsulated and marketed for quick consumerism. It reflects that the uniqueness of every region requires attention to local ecosystems and neighborhood cultures. These challenges are difficult to overcome.
The most transformative possibility of a place-based curriculum is the idea of an ecosystem as a pedagogical model that connects the outer world of nature to the inner self. Tending to the growth of the whole child, mind, body, and spirit will facilitate knowledge that could flourish into wisdom and passion to work toward environmental sustainability. Greg Cajete [37] describes the archetype of the teacher as one who “should help integrate the power of the soul with the power of the intellect and apply it to relationship.” From this view, learning is a life process and a teacher is a “facilitator and choreographer” [37] of not only her student’s growth but also her own. The transformative quality of a place-based pedagogy extends from the student through the teacher into the community and ripples out to the planet. This begins the path to sustainability.
Local neighborhoods, environments, and naturalized areas are a context for direct experiences that holistically engage head, heart, and hands for the inner work of discovering one’s place and identity in relationship to the immediate world that surrounds young people [18, 38]. The framework of head, heart, and hands moves students from knowing to caring to doing. Place is the context that brings it all together and helps people create purposeful and meaningful learning. Through deep engagement, reflection, and relational understandings, students find personal meaning and relevance in learning locally that adds purpose to their education. These value-laden educational experiences can be transformative by bringing a new perspective of relationship and responsibility to self and community with an improved attitude toward the personal growth that can result from learning.
Figure 1 represents a multi-layered model that views transformative learning through the context of place [39]. The model seeks to frame why the place has the potential to spark transformative experiences needed to transform eco-paradigms. The head is related to the cognitive domain. Hands refer to changing behaviors and the heart includes the affective domain. The place offers an authentic context for learners to build meaning and belonging. Relationship with a place and within a community of learners is an essential element of transformative experiences. Beyond awareness of local ecosystems and the life-sustaining services they provide, personal experience can change perceptions of the environment. It is hoped that changes in environmental worldview and love of place will affect behaviors and consumer choices. This holistic approach to meaningful, transformative learning could also contribute to the personal growth and development of self-directed learners. This model can serve to help design programs and evaluate the effectiveness of program outcomes.
Figure 1
Head, heart, and hands model for transformative learning.
The transformation of the Western paradigm of the land as a commodity to a new paradigm of the land as a place to which humankind belongs is needed to achieve a sustainable future [18, 40]. If educational institutions provided a pivotal role in fostering a student’s sense of place, young people could reunify with nature and gain an understanding of human dependence on nature through personal experience. This approach will contribute to a planetary pedagogy for ecological sustainability through a holistic approach of joining head, hands, and heart in the educational process. Mediating a relationship with the natural world, which includes an emotional dimension, ignites the passion of community members and forges collective purposes and land ethics [26]. Education centered on local places and issues can potentially contribute to the well-being of community life and has transformative potential for students, teachers, educational practices, communities, and the non-sustainable ecological paradigm of modern, urban societies [24, 25].
5. Conclusion
Most people are out of touch with the daily ways in which our lifestyle choices affect the ecosystem and, for that matter, where it all comes from and where it all goes when we are done with it. Because we are so far removed from life-sustaining systems, we give them little thought. If people were aware of how their local ecosystems functioned, the services they provide, and how systems fit together in a fragile and functioning whole that utterly supports our lives, perhaps they would consider the everyday choices that affect those ecosystems [34]. With place-based curricula, local environments can serve as a resource or laboratory to investigate water issues, food production, energy, materials, and waste flows, which will lead to eco-literate citizens who reflect upon their impact on their own environment and value the reduction of their ecological footprint [3].
Underlying the educational and environmental importance of place-based education is the hope of personal growth and the valuing and enactment of ethical and cooperative character traits among young community members. One of the early proponents of outdoor education, Julian Smith, stressed the use of the outdoors as a science laboratory; He also discussed outdoor education’s unique contribution to behavior changes such as better self-concept, creativity, awareness of and respect for the natural environment, communication skills, lifelong interests, and development of the inner man [41]. Place-based education has the possibility of meeting the instrumental, emancipatory, and personal transformational needs of young people. Place provides a testing ground for a deeper journey to self-knowledge that goes beyond the acquisition of knowledge to a process of personal growth and responsibility [37]. There is an indigenous nature to grounding local knowledge to inform policies and practices that benefit communities from a generational perspective [21]. From the perspective of ancient wisdom traditions, knowing thyself is a transformative path of trial and tribulation that allows one to discover one’s calling and purpose in life.
Multiple frameworks converge and support place-based approaches, which are often interdisciplinary. Ecology itself is a multidisciplinary study that includes all branches of science: biology, hydrology, meteorology, chemistry, forestry, agriculture, etc. The interaction of people with the environment adds subjects such as psychology, anthropology, philosophy, economics, politics, and so on. Blending it all together is a daunting task, especially in the environment of specialization that permeates academia. Moving beyond cognitive gains and instructional methodologies is why a holistic framework from the personal perspective of head, heart, and hands is the starting point to affect critical changes in the approach to ecological sustainability and pedagogy of place.
This requires a transformation of the dualist framework that is the basis of the hierarchy of knowledge that permeates standardized educational systems in the United States as well as other developed or colonized nations. Just like energy and agribusiness systems, education is an institution entrenched in its own bureaucracy. The essential elements of transformation—deep engagement, relational knowing, reflection, and an authentic context for meaning-making—are not valued in today’s educational system. Through place-based curricula, learners can move from I know to I care to I will do something [18]. Studies have shown that students are not actively engaged in their schooling experience [42], but relevance, purpose, and authenticity can be infused into the curriculum through place-based education.
Engagement, experience, and active learning will require active bodies and hands. It is unnatural for children to sit at desks for hours each day and their bodies need to move. Over-stuffed curricula with too many learning objectives require teachers to rush through instruction, and there is little time for reflection and metacognitive activity. Reflection on the quality of one’s school work, personal learning assets, sense of self, and one’s place in the community and ecosystem takes time and is essential for depth of learning. This cognitive insight engages the head in learning. Relational knowing is tied to the heart and to the network of connections involved within the complex context of schools and of place. Understanding relationships within ecosystems and the human place in upsetting or creating balance within local systems is essential for sustainability. Part of the process of transformation that will lead to sustainable societies involves building and valuing relationships between schools and the communities they serve, between group members involved in purposeful community goals, and between people and the places where they live. Valuing relationships puts people and wildlife above profits. “The transition of consciousness with the environment may be the bedrock of a needed social transformation” [26]. Ultimately, seeing the ecosystem as an extension of self will contribute to better outcomes through enlightened self-interest. Perceiving the land as our home, the place where we belong, will encourage responsible behaviors in our home. To some extent, this notion of belonging to the environment is an indigenous perspective, but it is also reiterated in the land ethics work of Leopold. The holistic approach of engaging head, hands, and heart in the context of place reclaims a personal perspective, which brings nature into the curriculum and authenticity into our schools and student’s lives.
One feels something from the place, the experience. Some powerful living force—despite the years of schooled reductionism—touches a person when they have such an experience. They are held in the embrace of what world’s touch taken out of the mechanical world in which they have been submerged since their schooling began, experiencing, as our ancestors once did, the living reality of the world.
Stephen Harrod Buhner [43]