Review of Developing place-responsive pedagogy in outdoor environmental education: A rhizomatic curriculum autobiography
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Review of Developing place-responsive pedagogy in outdoor environmental education: A rhizomatic curriculum autobiography by Alistair Stewart Springer, 2020, ISBN: 978-3-030-40319-5, https://doi.org/10.1007/ 978-3-030-40320-1 Scott Jukes 1 Accepted: 13 September 2020/ # Outdoor Education Australia 2020
Alistair Stewart’s (2020) ‘Developing place-responsive pedagogy in outdoor environmental education’ asks questions that provoke different ways of thinking about outdoor environmental education (OEE). He prompts educators to think critically about pedagogical practices, inquire into the places we teach and reevaluate how we form relationships with the more-than-human world. As he states, ‘survival of the more-than-human world is intimately linked to how we think about and act in their interests’ (Stewart 2020, p. 181). A significant thread running through Stewart’s book is this pressing need to ethically reevaluate how we think about and relate to unique Australian environments. Despite the distinctly Australian focus, many of the lessons that can be gleaned from this book are relevant and worth contemplating in other places. This book comes at a crucial time for rapidly changing environments and species facing extinction. It also emerges from several decades of development in outdoor education (OE) where the environmental education overlap has gained increased focus. For example, academics such as Brookes (2002a, b) argued for a move away from universalist and personal development centred approaches in OE towards more concentration on the specific environments and cultural contexts educators practice in. In 2016, this journal even changed its name, adding ‘environmental’ into its title (see Quay 2016; Gough 2016 for discussion on this). Handling editor: Scott Polley Alistair Stewart, Developing place-responsive pedagogy in outdoor environmental education: A rhizomatic curriculum autobiography, first edition, Springer Nature. Switzerland, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3030-40320-1
* Scott Jukes [email protected]
1
La Trobe University, Bendigo, Australia
Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education
Stewart has been central in this development of OEE and, in particular, placeresponsive pedagogies.1 Stewart’s (2020) book travels his 20+ year journey of practicing/researching placeresponsive OEE within south-eastern Australia. Throughout he offers pedagogies that attend to the bio-geographical and cultural locations he practices, and curriculum that draws upon natural and cultural history. The book provides a critique of some taken for granted approaches whilst offering original alternative possibilities. In the development of curriculum and pedagogy, Stewart reaches beyond previous OEE literature, delving into philosophy and environmental history to produce a thought provoking and pragmatic text, highlighting the potential OEE has in engaging students with places. In simple terms, his approach is about exploring and getting to know places, not expeditions through them.
Structure and approach Drawing upo
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