Young People and Nature in the City: Minoritized High School–Aged Youths' Relationships to Nature

• In Event: 66.073 - Refusing Abstraction: Place-Based Critical Pedagogy as Resistance in a Post-Truth Neoliberal World

Abstract

This paper is aimed at rethinking how to engage minoritized youth in the exploration of their experiences and perceptions of nature within their communities. This investigation into “place-making” is occurring in the context of a place-based education class that I facilitate in an urban high school north of Boston, Massachusetts. The purpose of this work is to engage in active forms of “epistemic resistance” to re-imagine what nature is, where it can be found, and who can experience it (Seawright, 2014). My theoretical framework draws on critical pedagogy and place-based education to situate the environmental experiences of urban minoritized youth. Critical pedagogy helps to more accurately understand and frame “Nature-deficit Disorder” and other deficit lenses frequently applied to minoritized youth as a social justice. Place-based education speaks to this research because this sort of education engages youth in learning that can have direct bearing on the well-being of the social and ecological places people inhabit (Gruenewald, 2003). This research is guided by “Critical Pedagogies of Place” (Gruenewald, 2003), which challenge educators to “reflect on the relationship between the kind of education we pursue and the kind of places we inhabit and leave behind for future generations” (Gruenewald, 2003, p. 3). It is further directed by the critical need to foreground the polyphonies” (multiple voices) and “polysemia” (multiple meanings) of urban youth to actively address concerns within their communities and become agents for change (Bellino, 2015, p. 378).
Minoritized populations are traditionally left out of discourse around nature and the environment. To challenge this silence, the overarching question for this study is: How do urban minoritized high school youth express their relationships to nature? Data sources include: ethnographic interviews of 10-15 students who engaged in Photovoice (PV). Students used digital cameras or their phones to document how they experience “nature” in a cycle that included their community, several field-based experiences in urban forest reserves, and finally back in their communities once again. Photovoice journeys enabled the youth to story their lived experience, identities, and place-making at the intersection of their race, class and gender.
Critical pedagogies of place can have a decentralizing affect on the ways that teachers, students, administrators, and policy makers purpose education while simultaneously providing opportunities for students to actively reflect on their relationships to the places they live. This study provides insight into the value of place-based education for promoting the engagement of students and community within the surrounding environments. It highlights what David Sobel refers to as “student as resource to the community” (2004). Place based education reminds educators that curriculum ought to be reflective of youth and the places they inhabit. The participatory nature of this research helped students to actively challenge “Nature-deficit Disorder” and other damaged-based lenses by reversing the gaze of what counts as research while simultaneously bringing attention to the many forms of nature found and experienced among the natural and human-built environments of the city.

Author

• Andrew Turchon, Revere Public Schools