Can a city be a school?

Much research in place-based environmental education (PBEE) has focused on addressing and overcoming the barriers to PBEE implicit in modern schooling practices and formal educational institutions (e.g., Gruenewald, 2005). In this presentation, we make the case that while schools may be one important way people/citizens enact place-based educational opportunities, arguably, cities, neighbourhoods, towns, villages—the sites of daily, public life—are more fundamental and all-encompassing sites of informal place-based education for the majority of people in society.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made apparent both the limits of formal educational programs in reaching many groups and demographics as well as the importance of public city-spaces as sites of informal education and learning that are vital to community health and well-being. We propose that in order to address issues of access and inclusion in PBEE, researchers and educators should turn their attention to better understanding the role municipalities play as places for collective and public study.

In order to conceptualize how we may think of cities as educational sites, in which citizens of diverse backgrounds and demographics can openly and fluidly enact informal, public, place-based study and learning, we explore and apply Masschelein and Simons’ conceptualization of the school as an enacted “pedagogic form” (2019). We add to this account by presenting new conceptual tools from bio/ecosemiotic learning theory (Campbell, Olteanu & Kull, 2019) that help account for sites of organism/environment interactions. We apply this conceptual framework to the analysis of three public sites in the City of Vancouver, in order to better understand how people learn informally in public environments and how municipalities can work to enhance and support access and inclusion to these kinds of informal place-based learning opportunities.

References

• Campbell, C., Olteanu, A., & Kull, K. (2019). Learning and knowing as semiosis: Extending the conceptual apparatus of semiotics. Sign Systems Studies, 47(3/4), 352-381.
• Gruenewald, David A. (2005). Accountability and Collaboration: Institutional Barriers and Strategic Pathways for Place-based Education, Ethics, Place and Environment, 8:3,261-283.
• Masschelein, J., & Simons, M. (2019). Bringing more ‘school’ into our educational institutions. Reclaiming school as pedagogic form. In: Bikner‐Ahsbahs A., Peters M. (eds) Unterrichtsentwicklung macht Schule. Springer VS, Wiesbaden.