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Imagination and the Cognitive Tools of Place-Making
Abstract
In environmental and ecological education, a rich literature builds on the premise that place, the local natural context in which one lives, can be an emotionally engaging context for learning and the source of life-long concern for nature. A theory of imaginative education can help uncover new tools and strategies for place-based educators. Conversely, a focus on the imaginative dimensions of place-making sheds new light on the nature of imaginative development, with important implications for educational theory and practice.
... In our study, we recognize the need to support children's ecological imagination through cultural tools (Egan, 2005;Vygotsky, 1987) because imagination is known to be vulnerable to routine or scripted ways of feeling, thinking, and experiencing (Fettes & Judson, 2010). We understand stories and storytelling as potential animated means to foster ecological imagination, a "placing" of our embodied selves in the spatiotemporal geographies of those stories and their more-than-human natures. ...
... Storying can open up an important experiential dimension of becoming aware of humans' relationality with nature and its places (Facer, 2019;Payne, 2010;Warnock, 1994). Although stories and storytelling have been used and studied in children's environmental education (Kraftl, 2020;Payne, 2010;Renshaw, 2021) and are recognized as important cultural means to spark imagination (Fettes & Judson, 2010;Vadeboncoeur et al., 2021), it remains unclear how stories, storytelling and children's own storying activities can be incorporated with the use of augmented reality technology to enhance children's ecological imagination. Recognizing the significance of supporting children's ecological imagination and the unexplored possibilities of augmented reality technology in environmental education, in our study we ask: How does augmented storying create opportunities for children's ecological imagination? ...
In this study we investigated how augmented storying fosters children’s ecological imagination. Augmented storying couples culturally-based nature stories embedded in augmented storytelling technology with children’s own mobile and multimodal storying activities outdoors in local ecologies. The study took place during a four-month, cross-curricular project in a Finnish elementary school and its neighborhood. Results reveal affective, embodied, sensual, cultural-scientific, symbolic, and moral intensities, highlighting the educational possibilities of augmented storying as a way to enhance children’s ecological imagination by becoming entangled with multimodal stories about the places they inhabit.
... Num ensaio sobre "a arquitetura do lazer", escrito em 1973, mas publicado apenas em 2014, Lefèbvre discute a relação do espaço com a fruição (jouissance ou enjoyment) e de novo valoriza a experiência sensorial e corporal, assim como os encontros subjetivos com a natureza, contrapondo-os às experiências de lazer moldadas pela urbanização, que apelida de "espaço quantitativo de produção e consumo" (Lefèbvre, 2014: 100). Estas reflexões evocam as experiências das crianças na sua relação e ligação ao espaço, em que tanto o jogo espontâneo e criativo , Dovey, 1990Derr, 2002;Fettes e Judson, 2010), como o corpo e os sentidos surgem como cruciais. ...
Este capítulo pretende refletir sobre a biblioteca enquanto espaço público socializante, tendo como pano de fundo a pandemia provocada pelo Covid 19 – confinamento e desconfinamento – de maneira a compreender e analisar como decorreu a readaptação das bibliotecas públicas, quer no seu modo de funcionamento, quer em termos de programação infantil, durante o período da pandemia, entre 2020 e 2021.
As crianças, famílias e escolas puderam continuar a usufruir das bibliotecas? Em caso positivo, de que forma? Que tipo de mudanças e adaptações tiveram de ser implementadas durante e pós confinamento para se garantir a continuidade do acesso público às bibliotecas? Como é que essas mudanças foram percecionadas pelas técnicas/técnicos da biblioteca?
Para dar resposta a estas questões foi desenvolvida uma pesquisa que envolveu cinco bibliotecas do distrito de Setúbal – Moita, Alcochete, Palmela, Sesimbra e Seixal. Realizaram-se cinco entrevistas de grupo a técnicas/responsáveis de cada uma destas bibliotecas tendo estas sido sujeitas a uma análise qualitativa temática. No total, participaram neste estudo onze entrevistadas, entre as quais técnicas com diferentes funções nas bibliotecas – programação e animação – e responsáveis do sector que abrange a biblioteca municipal.
A primeira parte deste texto será dedicada a uma breve consideração teórica sobre as bibliotecas enquanto espaços públicos e espaços para crianças. Em seguida, descrevemos a metodologia desenvolvida para depois apresentarmos os principais resultados da análise temática reflexiva efetuada. Finalmente, na conclusão, discutimos as implicações dos resultados deste estudo para a promoção das bibliotecas como espaços públicos e para a promoção dos direitos das crianças.
... Empirical findings from recent research suggest that sense of place is central to childhood development (Bott et al. 2003;Wilson 1997;Chawla 1992), place-based education (Semken and Brandt 2010;Gruenewald and Smith 2008), situated pedagogy (Kitchens 2009), imaginative education (Fettes and Judson 2011) and HE (Barlett 2005;Orr 1992). These studies emphasise the important role of sense of place, which has implications particularly for education. ...
The study presented here investigated challenges of learning environments experienced by distance-learning (DL) higher education (HE) students in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana. The author interviewed students (n=24) in two DL centres, where they attended weekend face-to-face sessions. He asked them to share their personal experiences with respect to classrooms, learning facilities both inside and outside the classroom, and access to library support services. During each intensive one-on-one interview, which lasted 45–60 minutes, the author made audio-recordings and field notes for later analysis. The students’ views were complemented with audio-recordings and field notes from staff interviews (n=4), each lasting 1–2 hours. The 28 participants in the study were recruited from two University of Ghana Learning Centres, Accra and Tema. Data collection covered the period from April 2018 to December 2019. The field notes derived from all participant interviews were transcribed, coded, categorised and analysed using NVivo 10. Particular attention was paid to students’ educational and social well-being, and their sense of place. Findings include students’ struggle with poor infrastructure conditions, and most reported lack of access to power sources in the classrooms, lack of a cafeteria, IT labs, library space, a student hub, and support services as the most significant barriers to experiencing a meaningful HE as DLs. Participants stressed the importance of infrastructural support and services tailored towards DLs’ needs, with an emphasis on DL HE students’ physical, social and psychological well-being.
... Nature placemaking activities guided by NGOs enhance health and wellbeing, since it enables a sense of community (Tan and Neo 2009), environmental awareness (Fettes and Judson 2010), motivation and autonomy (Bruyere and Rappe 2007). According to Tan and Neo (2009), being involved in nature related activities led by NGOs can increase passion towards nature and a genuine non-partisan civic activism. ...
Over the last decades, Singapore has reintroduced biodiverse green spaces in the city with the aim of enhancing the wellbeing of residents through nature connection. Despite the impressive urban green infrastructure built, surges in mental health related problems have questioned the efficacy of the methods applied to reconnect citizens with the natural environment. Of interest are the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) nature placemaking programmes introducing new social-ecological values that influence the sense of psychological wellbeing in the long-term. Nevertheless, since nature placemaking is a relatively new practice, more knowledge on the methods implemented to connect residents to the natural environment is needed, considering also the values enacted, how facilitators impact or accelerate the process, and the necessary frequency of interaction and time of engagement. To explore this, we conducted an in-depth analysis at the NGO ‘The Ground-Up Initiative’ (GUI) in Singapore. A sequential mixed-methods study, including seven focus groups and a survey was conducted with core members and volunteers. It was found that the duration of engagement and number of programmes attended are correlated to feelings of social cohesion, sense of community, self-esteem, and self-efficacy. Additionally, the role of facilitators was found to be a determinant to enable values that promote interconnectedness with the natural environment.
... 124). 22 Although both approaches presume that experiential learning is the foundation of studio teaching, it would still be helpful to see how Sandbox studios-which this book introduces-differ from current studio models. ...
Placemaking Sandbox offers a valuable collection of placemaking case studies, designed for teachers and students to build expertise in shaping and creating thriving public places. Each chapter outlines the latest research and practice underpinning placemaking pedagogical approaches, with specialist authors developing and interrogating methodological techniques and reflecting on current teaching and research. By taking a hands-on and experimental look at emergent practices, pedagogies and methods in placemaking across different contexts, this book will help deepen understandings on how to wrestle with complex conditions generated by place. InPlacemaking Sandbox contributors skillfully tackle a little researched topic on the pedagogy of place and placemaking, and in the process offer a distinctive bridge between academia and practice.
... Nature placemaking activities guided by NGOs enhance health and wellbeing, since it enables a sense of community (Tan and Neo 2009), environmental awareness (Fettes and Judson 2010), motivation and autonomy (Bruyere and Rappe 2007). According to Tan and Neo (2009), being involved in nature related activities led by NGOs can increase passion towards nature and a genuine non-partisan civic activism. ...
Can place-keeping be considered as urban commons or occurring through the sharing of activities? If so, then specifically, how? This paper discusses long-term place-keeping of Singapore's neighbourhood green spaces as a shared practice, actively engaging citizens in shared responsibilities and collective efforts in transitioning a 'public' space to a 'common' space. We discuss community gardens as a shared urban space and examine two initiatives for neighbourhood green spaces characterized by active involvement of citizens in place-keeping: Community in Bloom (CIB) and Allotment Gardens (AG). Six case studies were examined to understand the current process of shared green space management. An integrated Policy Arrangement Approach (PAA) framework was adopted to analyse the governance arrangements and evaluate the spatial qualities of the community gardens (CIB and AG). Our analysis highlights the positive socio-economic impact of community-led green space management through effective shared place-keeping strategies. It emphasizes the need for an innovative participatory governance approach with a conscious balance between 'autonomy' and 'authority' as the key to long-term place-keeping. Localized community initiatives within a mosaic governance model with flexible partnerships between authorities and citizens would be a good starting point in facilitating shared governance of green spaces in Singapore's public residential estates.
... These encounters bring with them memories of previous events and other creatures that have shared those encounters in that place, as well as the inherited memories and stories of the place that are commonly known. Our conceptualisation of place aligns with that of others such as Massey (1994), Basso (1996), Fettes and Judson (2010), and Clarke and Mcphie (2016). ...
Conversations and networks are essential for transforming academics’ teaching practices as learning experiences (Palmer 1993). Yet, there has been little research reporting academics’ informal conversations about teaching (Thomson and Trigwell 2018). Teachers will generally access small significant networks (Becher and Trowler 2001) for nuanced and personal issues relating to teaching and learning. Collaborative transnational projects provide fertile ground for unique conversations about Higher Education (HE) teaching (Thomson 2015), with the added value of cross-national perspectives. This study examines the conditions that help to create significant networks and conversations, based on collective autoethnographic reflections of the member of an Erasmus+ project, including five partner universities from four different countries. The results provide insights into how the project have afforded the generation and continuation of cross-national and interdisciplinary significant networks and how unique conversations have allowed for trust, relationships and common goals to develop, which add value beyond the individual level.
In this chapter, I challenge the functionalist view of informal science education and instead, through “a lens of multiples,” attend to youths’ diverse forms of meaning making of science and self in science; and how these processes are charged by and grounded in placemaking (entanglement of feelings with materials, bodies, and multiple ways of knowing, being, and becoming in STEM). I do so through two case studies, first, a video production project in ArtScience, a club that is part of a Saturday school that reaches out to elementary school level children and families with histories of recent immigration; and second, a joint video project about a girls-only afterschool program by now young women of color who no longer participate in that program. I show how the two projects took for granted the heterogeneity of forms of engagement with science and identities as insiders to science and thereby became critical sites of critique and transformation of informal science education and visions of who can do and be in science, mediated in part also by the researcher who as a collaborator contributed to that transformation. As such, the chapter challenges visions of colored youth as disposable through a discourse on multiples.
The environmental movement has often been accused of being overly negative--trying to stop "progress." The Nature of Design, on the other hand, is about starting things, specifically an ecological design revolution that changes how we provide food, shelter, energy, materials, and livelihood, and how we deal with waste. Ecological design is an emerging field that aims to recalibrate what humans do in the world according to how the world works as a biophysical system. Design in this sense is a large concept having to do as much with politics and ethics as with buildings and technology. The book begins by describing the scope of design, comparing it to the Enlightenment of the 18th century. Subsequent chapters describe barriers to a design revolution inherent in our misuse of language, the clockspeed of technological society, and shortsighted politics. Orr goes on to describe the critical role educational institutions might play in fostering design intelligence and what he calls "a higher order of heroism." Appropriately, the book ends on themes of charity, wilderness, and the rights of children. Astute yet broadly appealing, The Nature of Design combines theory, practicality, and a call to action.
Beginning with descriptions of the ways in which children make sense of their experience and the world, such as fantasy, stories and games, Egan constructs his argument that constituting this foundational layer are sets of cultural sense-making capacities, reflected in oral cultures throughout the world. Egan sees education as the acquisition of these sets of sense-making capacities, available in our culture, and his goal is to conceptualize primary education in a way that over comes the dichotomy between progressivisim and traditionalism, attending both the needs of the individual child and the accumulation of knowledge.
In their latest book, Edmund O'Sullivan and Marilyn Taylor highlight the pedagogical practices that foster transformation from our current way of thinking about our place in the world to an underlying ecological way of seeing and acting. Learning Towards Ecological Consciousness offers the reader a selection of transformative practices that demonstrate, in specific contexts, the complex journey and contextual conditions that move us forward towards a deeper realization that we are part of the world around us, holding a greater promise for deeper ecological awareness. To this end, thirteen chapters offer a rich array of practices in diverse life settings - educational environments, communities and workplaces and personal relationships. Contributors and their material represent a range of cultures, work setting and professions. The aspect of O'Sullivan and Taylor's new book that distinguishes it from other books in the field is its exploration of how consciousness can be transformed through practices, experience and action.