Power in Place-Based Education: Why a critical pedagogy of place needs to be revived and how narratives or collective biographies support its practice

David Greenwood introduced a critical pedagogy of place in the literature on environmental and place-based education over ten years ago. A critical pedagogy of place aims to engage place-based educators with critical pedagogues to challenge dominant discourse in our education of places and the environment. Through a critical pedagogy of place, students can develop solutions to both the social and environmental issues that their local places face by having a more comprehensive understanding of how social and ecological problems are connected. Because of power structures and dominant social paradigms that still exist in place-based education, I hope to revive the conversation on a critical pedagogy of place. To do this, I take a step back to reveal how power structures influence place and education. Through this analysis, the need for a critical pedagogy of place becomes evident. I review how a critical pedagogy of place has been discussed in existing literature, and how the use of a collective biography of place or narratives is a way to turn a critical pedagogy of place into practice.