Learning to Stay: Critical, Place-Conscious Approaches to Postsecondary Citizenship Education in Atlantic Canada

• In Event: Rural Postsecondary Quandaries

Abstract

This paper explores a framework that brings together place-conscious pedagogy and critical frameworks for post-secondary civic education. Data were collected using an appreciative case study framework and conversational methods at Cape Breton University’s Bachelor of Arts Community Studies program. Using the Atlantic Canadian region as an example, the paper argues for approaches to civic education that are grounded in the unique political, cultural, social, and economic histories of the region. By using place-conscious and critical pedagogies, the author argues that civic education can challenge neoliberal discourses that structure university education, and work to rewrite deficit discourses that construct broader understandings of the region’s citizens.

Author

• Sarah King, University of New Brunswick