Abstract
In this chapter, we develop an island metaphor to communicate our emerging framework for EE in Indonesia. The concept of an island is a powerful metaphor in everyday speech as well as in the disciplines, and we use it here as an attempt to clarify our meaning of community. Beyond the metaphor, islands have also played a major role in the realm of knowledge construction (e.g., descriptions of isolated gene pools were seen as instrumental in the development of Darwinism, and these processes were described as taking place within the “Malay” archipelago by Wallace). Social anthropology also uses islands implicitly in the description of isolation and boundedness in cultural systems. In the case of Sulawesi Utara, this insularity is a strong descriptive metaphor but also describes an ecological reality for this region. Environmental learning then can draw on the functions, intersections, and relations of place-based education. Our discussion is informed by a place-based island metaphor for ecological education that emerged from the development work for a field school conducted in Indonesia. Place-based education (in our view) discards a one-sided view of education by taking as its first assumption that education is both “about” and “for” defined communities. This perspective then informed a study of place-based education on Sulawesi Utara and the design of the field school for teachers that we conduct there.
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Perera, V., Rotinsulu, W., Tasirin, J., Zandvliet, D. (2018). Indonesian Adventures: Developing an Ecology of Place on Sulawesi Utara. In: Reis, G., Scott, J. (eds) International Perspectives on the Theory and Practice of Environmental Education: A Reader. Environmental Discourses in Science Education, vol 3. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67732-3_8
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