Critical Pedagogy of Place: Using Geospatial Technologies and Community Mapping to Promote Civic Identity

• In Event: 29.081 - Pedagogical Practices in Urban Settings

Abstract

Student participation in real-world problems promotes “a sense of their own agency and collective capacity to alter their neighbourhoods or communities for the better” (Smith, 2007. Results from a two-week summer workshop conducted in June 2016 in which students used geospatial technologies and community mapping to investigate questions related to the school neighborhood is provided. Using critical pedagogy of place (Gruenewald, 2008) as our framework, workshop content focused both on the sources of inequality and injustice related to four student inquiry topics (community assets and needs, parks and community gardens, crime, and housing), as well as supporting ways students can generate solutions to the problems they investigate. Preliminary analyses of data suggest changes in student perceptions of the neighborhood.

Authors

• Victoria C. Stewart, University of Toledo

• Beth Schlemper, University of Toledo

• Sujata Shetty

• Kevin Czajkowski