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Educating the Imagination: Teaching for Sustainability through a Bioregional

Literacy Curriculum

Article  in  Journal of Education for Sustainable Development · September 2012

DOI: 10.1177/0973408213475375

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 Research
Copyright © 2012
SAGE Publications
(Los Angeles, London, New Delhi,
Singapore and Washington DC)
www.sagepublications.com
Vol 6(2): 327–340
10.1177/0973408213475375

Educating the Imagination: Teaching

for Sustainability through a Bioregional
Literacy Curriculum
PATRICK HOWARD

Abstract
In Canada, a national framework proposes to integrate learning outcomes
into existing K-12 curricula to teach the values, skills and behaviours
of sustainability. This article describes a research project designed to
identify existing curricula that may contribute to education for sustainable
development (ESD). The province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada,
has a tradition of developing bioregional curriculum resources that reflect
the unique landscape, history and culture of the province. This article
presents research investigating the Newfoundland curriculum to determine
to what extent it correlates with, and teaches to, the values of ESD as
represented by the Decade for Education for Sustainable Development
(2005–14) initiative. High school students involved in a four-week unit of
study were carefully observed, and the texts they generated were analysed
for themes of pedagogical value in an attempt to determine the potential of
the Newfoundland bioregional curriculum to foster values associated with
ESD. It was found that literacy curricula containing imaginative, creative
texts can be used to deepen student awareness of the cultural and living
landscapes in which they dwell. Further research is needed to support the
use of existing curricular resources and the development of new bioregional
curricula specific to unique cultures, communities and bioregions across
Canada and other countries.

Patrick Howard is an Associate Professor of Education at Cape Breton University in Nova Scotia,
Canada. Email: patrick_howard@cbu.ca
328 Patrick Howard

Keywords: Curriculum, K-12 literacy education, education for sustainable

development

INTRODUCTION

I nternational, national, state/provincial and community-based organisations are

responding to the unprecedented challenges brought on by climate change, species
extinction, resource depletion, cultural and linguistic loss, widening gaps between
rich and poor and risks to human health by environmental contaminants. Education is
central to these responses. The Earth Charter (Earth Charter International Secretariat
2001) and the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005–2014)
(United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO] 2004) are
two international efforts to address an impending global crisis. Central to achieving
the basic principles of the Earth Charter is the goal to ‘Integrate into formal education
and life-long learning the knowledge, values and skills needed for a sustainable way
of life’ (Earth Charter International Secretariat 2001: 5). The Decade of Education
for Sustainable Development (2005–2014) document states that to achieve the
necessary changes in values and skills necessary for more just and sustainable societies,
education in its present form must be ‘re-oriented’ (UNESCO 2004: 2). The UNESCO
document calls for education that is interdisciplinary, values driven, locally relevant
and addresses global issues. International curriculum developers and promoters of
education for sustainable development (ESD) acknowledge: ‘Simply adding more
to the curriculum will not be feasible in most schools; they already have a full
curriculum’ (McKeown 2002: 17). A pan-Canadian framework for ESD initiated by the
Canadian Ministers of Education, a group representing leadership at the highest levels
of education in the provinces in Canada, is integrating learning outcomes of ESD in
each subject area of current K-12 school curricula (Canadian Council of Ministers of
Education 2010). Such integration requires an in-depth understanding of how this
may be done across subjects without adding new courses to the present curriculum.
The research presented in this article investigates how the outcomes for ESD may
be realised in the literacy/language arts classroom. The focus of the language arts is
on the spoken and written word as well as visual representation. Language, literature,
art and creative representation contribute vitally to how individuals understand,
maintain and even transform their worldview. The larger research project on which
this article is based had three key objectives: (a) to identify and inquire into existing
school literacy curricula that may contribute to ESD; (b) to determine potential
tensions and correlations between existing K-12 curricula and teaching for the values
of sustainable development; and (c) to determine the ethical and theoretical rationale
for connecting literacy theory and practice with the lived, social and ecological
dimensions of sustainability. The focus of this article is on the perceived potential
of existing literacy curriculum resources and practices to support the skills, values
and perspectives that correlate with ESD. To determine this potential, high school
students were immersed in a four-week unit of study of bioregional imaginative and
creative texts to determine the pedagogical potential of the curriculum to foster
values associated with ESD (Hopkins et al. 2005; McKeown 2002; UNESCO 2004).

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 Educating the Imagination: Teaching for Sustainability 329

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

The theoretical framework of this research adheres to a hermeneutic phenomenological

view of sustainability and ecology (Evernden 1993; Seamon and Zajonc 1998;
Stefanovic 2000) rooted in the lived experience of dwelling in place (Abram 1996,
2010; Foltz 1995). In Canadian schools, the study of sustainability has largely been a
subset of the science curriculum. Most often, it is a biological approach with a strong
focus on efficient use of resources. However, to instil the values of sustainability,
we must move beyond science while being inclusive of scientific knowledge. The
use of the term sustainable in this study is informed by the work of Capra (2002)
that includes systems thinking, the principles of ecology and indicates an operational
definition of sustainability predicated on a pedagogy of ecological literacy (Barlow and
Stone 2005). Sustainability, as it is represented here, is informed by the theoretical
framework of place-conscious education (Gruenewald 2003) drawing on insights
from phenomenology, critical geography, ecofeminism and other place-conscious
traditions that demonstrate the profoundly pedagogical nature of human experience
with place. Finally, reorienting current educational practices for the values of
sustainability draws on the theory of bioregionalism (Lynch et al. 2012; Sale 2000).
The idea of bioregionalism is to learn to re-inhabit local places, ‘by becoming aware
of the particular ecological relationships that operate within and around it’ (Berthold-
Bond 2000: 6). It is this lived dimension of the bioregion that offers an opportunity
to develop a more complex picture of the interrelationship between humans and the
places they inhabit.
The power of language, literature and creative works to lead students into a greater
awareness for their place requires more attention, particularly when the work is that
of writers and other artists who give voice to the bioregion. Authors’ experiences
reveal the world in ways that nurture a child’s connection to, and sensibility for,
their place (Howard 2006, 2007). Such a view of literature and the language calls
for identifying writers and artists of the bioregion whose work invites us to immerse
ourselves in the living world. The Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador
has a strong commitment to developing curricula, particularly English language
arts curricula, that reflect the unique landscape, history, culture and language of
the province (Major 1974; Norman et al. 1983; Ryan and Rossiter 1984). Since the
early 1970s, the Canadian province has created curricula that explore, through
literature and art, the experience of intergenerational communication; traditions of
selfsufficiency; intimate knowledge of place and craft; patterns of mutual support;
and the preservation and celebration of language, music and oral traditions unique
to regions of Newfoundland. It is a literacy curriculum that focuses on the everyday
experiences of people deeply involved in the life of a place.

METHODOLOGY

One important goal of the larger study, and the focus of this article, was to identify and
inquire into existing curriculum resources and practices that address the principles,
skills, perspectives and values that correlate with ESD. Newfoundland and Labrador

Journal of Education for Sustainable Development  6:2 (2012):  327–340

330 Patrick Howard

has developed a comprehensive language arts curriculum called, Land, Sea and
Time (Jones et al. 2000). The programme builds on past curricula designed for the
middle and secondary high school curriculum (Major 1974; Norman et al. 1983; Ryan
and Rossiter 1984) and presents regional, ecological, social, cultural and linguistic
topics through a range of texts, including literature, art and music. The research
project investigated the Newfoundland curriculum and its earlier counterparts to
determine to what extent it potentially correlates with, and teaches, the values of ESD
as represented in Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD, 2005–
14) initiative and the related support and resource documents (Hopkins et al. 2005;
McKeown 2002; UNESCO 2004).
The phase of the research described in this article involved close observation (van
Manen 1997) of classroom activities over a period of a four-week intensive learning
unit with 26 Grade 10 students using the Land, Sea and Time, Book I curriculum
series. Student responses to learning activities designed using the Land, Sea and
Time, Book I curriculum were collected and analysed for themes of pedagogical value
(van Manen 1997). The learning activities provided research participants with the
opportunity to read, write, discuss and engage in creative, critical, exploratory and
participatory language events. As part of the data collection, the learning activities
stimulated student reflection based on the acceptance that the practice of living is
generative and reflection on experience potentially results in deeper meaning as it
interrupts norms, routines and unexamined cultural assumptions.
In adherence to a cooperative learning model, the students formed groups of four
and five members and chose a theme they wished to explore. The group chose from
texts pre-selected to correspond to the chosen topic or focus. In the context of this
research project and to align with current literacy theory and practice, the term text
is meant to capture any language event. Students chose among poems, essays, fiction/
non-fiction pieces, photographs, media clips, music, etc. Table 1 outlines the topics,
the selections and genres with which students engaged during the Land Sea and
Time, Book I curriculum unit.

Student Response Activities

The research began by introducing students to the writing notebook which was
central to the data collection process as it served as a repository for the students’
responses to the texts. Thematic analysis of the writing notebook entries revealed
phenomenological insights of pedagogical value. All student names used in the
analysis of the data are pseudonyms. Discussion of the Land, Sea and Time, Book
I selections and other texts related to the themes was facilitated by the classroom
teacher through the use of pre-reading and post-reading response strategies. These
instructional strategies are described next.
Associative recollection was used to stir memory; to prompt the consideration of
individual attitudes, beliefs and values; and to revisit experiences the text may echo.
Students were encouraged to speculate about selection titles, accompanying photos,
authors’ biography notes and the like before reading began. Conceptual readiness
was also considered as students were encouraged to access their prior knowledge

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 Educating the Imagination: Teaching for Sustainability 331

Table 1  Bioregional Text Selections

Focus 1: Focus 2: Focus 3: Focus 4: Focus 5:
Relationships Growing Up/ Ancestors— Change Past/ Adventure and
with Sea and Leaving a Place Those Who Present/Future Survival
Land Came Before
The Grey Islands: Wanderings, My Grandmother Places that Were, On the Road to La
They All Save One Robert Burt and Knowlton Geraldine Rubia Scie, Al Pittman
Last Squirt, John (poem) Nash, Carl Leggo (poem) (poem)
Steffler (poem) The Road (poem) West Moon, Pat Erosion, E.J. Pratt
Cedar Cove, John Home, Michael Foremother, Byrne (song) (poem)
Steffler (poem) Crummey Lillian Bouzanne Abandoned Out- The Cliffs of
Capelin Scull, (poem) (poem) port, Tom Dawe Baccalieu, Jack
Michael Looking Back, Ancestors, Tom (poem) Withers (song)
Crummey Enos Watts Moore (poem) The History of Cougar
(poem) (poem) Watching My Grates Cove, Helicopter (CBC
Guilt, Michael O. Mexicans with Grandmother Newfoundland news clip)
Nowlan (poem) Sweaters, Greg Pick a Late (website) Highway to
Locke (Internet) Flower, Allan Bits and Pieces Valour, Margaret
My Cooper (poem) for the Future, Duley (non-
Newfoundland Fingerprint, Harry Michael Oliver fiction)
Heart, Frank Thurston (poem) (poem) Drowned,
Pavlik (song) Gordon Rogers
(poem)
Rig, Greg Tiller
(poem)

and experiences. Students were asked to consider what are called focal judgements
(Milner and Milner 2007) in which they responded to the following prompts: what
is the most important word in the text?; what is the most important passage?; and
what is the most important aspect? Interrogative reading was also employed to
facilitate student response. Students wrote down three questions they had about the
text and discussed in small groups to answer the questions while a student recorder
summarised the group’s conclusions.
Finally, a pedagogical strategy known as jump start (Milner and Milner, 2007) was
employed to facilitate student response to the Land, Sea and Time, Book I selections.
Students responded to the following prompts. What pictures did this text give you
in your mind? How do the pictures make you feel? Does anyone in the work remind
you of anyone you know? Do any incidents, ideas or actions remind you of your own
life, something that happened to you or something that you know about? How did
this work make you feel?

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332 Patrick Howard

FINDINGS

Themes
By responding to the literature of their bioregion, students were able to make
connections and explore relationships resulting in three themes described as
intergenerational relationality, personal relationality and place-based relationality.
The themes were arrived at by treating the student responses to the bioregional
curriculum texts as lived experience descriptions. Reflection on the writing, the
notes taken during discussions and conversational interviews were carefully analysed
for thematic aspects of the experiences being described. Predominantly, the themes
were arrived at by employing the holistic or sententious approach to thematic analysis
(van Manen 1997). Student texts were attended to as a whole and sententious phrases
were isolated that were deemed to capture the fundamental or main significance of
the text as a whole. The three themes arrived at from the analysis encompass the
social, imaginative and emotional dimensions of being attached to living landscapes
and communities. Space will permit only an abbreviated sample of the responses
generated by student engagement with the bioregional texts and the interpretive
research that produced the data.

Intergenerational Relationality
Students who chose to respond to Allan Cooper’s poem, Watching My Grandmother
Pick a Late Flower, made connections to elder members of their own families. These
connections pointed to a theme of intergenerationality. One student, Maria, wrote of
Cooper’s work: ‘This poem made me think of my grandfather. When he tells stories
about friends who died or got killed, the way he starts off every story with the good
times and ends with deaths, then he cries.’ Another student, Kyle, responded to Harry
Thurston’s Fingerprint, a poem in which a child is remembering a grandmother’s
kitchen. The poem ends with the line, ‘My hands in her hands/working the soap/with
a strong grip’. Kyle connects the grandmother with intergenerational knowledge and
support. Kyle responded, ‘her hands could represent knowledge and experience
from her old life. The Grandmother was performing a kitchen ritual, it was passed
down and now she is teaching the child the ritual.’ Sustainable communities build on
the wisdom of the past. Intergenerational knowledge serves to connect past, present
and future and the student points to this truth.
Another student wrote an anecdote about his grandfather in response to a
selection. In the anecdote, he is reminded of a carved wooden axe created by his
grandfather and in doing so, the student takes us deep into his personal history where
rich connections are made.

This is no ordinary axe. Not like one you would use for cutting splits1. It’s a battle-axe. A
fierce weapon much like that of Gimli’s2. When I saw it I couldn’t believe my grandfather
made it. He never once seemed like a man who knew or cared about battle-axes or
designing something that was beautiful. But this is beautiful.

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 Educating the Imagination: Teaching for Sustainability 333

  The actual blade has parabolic edges that fan out from the handle. The top contains
a large wooden stake that would have been used to impale those who opposed the axe
bearer. The handle is very comfortable and perfectly weighted. The whole thing screams
medieval every time you look at it.
  My grandfather was an excellent carpenter. It’s what he did all his life. He would cut
his own wood for some projects choosing just the right tree. I wish I could have asked
him about the axe. Where did he get the design? Did he see it somewhere? Why did he
create it? The wood is beautiful; it has a deep brown colour and fine grain, no knots at all.
Perhaps it was a perfect piece that he saved for something special. Who knows may be he
could have been a sculptor or master carver. But instead he worked hard to raise twelve
children.
  I have this axe and the memories of my grandfather. The smell of wood shavings was
always about him and his hands were large and rough. He was a quiet man who loved
wood, working it, choosing it, and now I know he must have loved to create with it from
his imagination. I will treasure it forever.

Jeff selects and arranges details as they come out of his life history; his grandfather’s
wooden axe becomes an object of reflection for him. In a sense, his entry becomes
a little allegory that reveals something of who he is and how he is embedded in an
ongoing story of family and craft. Jeff’s sense of his place in this story fosters connection
and challenges the assumption of the autonomous individual. Our being here flows
out of genealogy, the interactions and pro-creative interactions between beings that
lived before us all down through time. Jeff attends and celebrates the labour and death
of an ancestor he sees as enriching his life. Opportunities to engage in the practice
of illuminating our connectedness develop a deeper sense of the individual as nested
in a complex network of relationships. Jeff focuses on the wisdom and traditions of a
previous generation. ‘He was a quiet man who loved wood, working it, choosing it,
and now I know he must have loved to create with it from his imagination.’ It is this
intergenerational knowledge that serves to connect past, present and future. In this
generational relationality, a sense of something being given or bestowed arises. But
what exactly is being given? By whom and in what manner? What is the nature of this
givenness? The student demonstrates a deep sense of respect for a grandfather who is
seen as an elder and mentor and acts as a link to a more traditional, less technologically
oriented culture that contrasts the predominantly consumer-dependent, market-
driven lifestyle that these students now live.

Personal Relationality
The poem, On the Road to La Scie, by Al Pittman, generated many responses as the
students were surprised and delighted to read a poem about a small fishing community
they had all visited since it was only 60 km from where they lived. The poem relates
the story of a young woman widowed after her husband drowns and she is left alone
with the burdens of parental and household responsibilities. Many students responded
with a deep sense of personal relationality that pointed to the need for communities
and families to support each other. Personal anecdotes generated through memory

Journal of Education for Sustainable Development  6:2 (2012):  327–340

334 Patrick Howard

can be powerful catalysts of meaning. Anecdotes reveal through the concretising

of experience ‘some notion that easily eludes us’ (van Manen 1997: 116). Another
student, Dylan, wrote:

The last passage and the last two lines really give you a sense of her pain…the poem in its
entirety made me think of my mother who raised my brother and sister on her own while
my dad carelessly took off with his friends not thinking of who he hurt…I connected
with this selection far beyond a reading perspective. I was there, I felt her pain. Her
helplessness, her longing…

After reading E.J. Pratt’s Erosion, a poem that also recounts the loss of a life to the
sea, Heather wrote,

I think the poet is trying to tell all readers that sometimes in life the bumps and the sharp
turns are what makes things beautiful. E.J. Pratt makes the reader appreciate so much
more. It’s true that we take things for granted. We pass by the hardships people face
everyday.

Children live their lives enmeshed in relation. Nurturing the values of sustainability
means emphasising personal relationships. Seeing the connections that relate to
places and situations that may be at once familiar, yet subtle, particular and personal
can be at the same time potentially transformative.
The literature in the curriculum also led students to explore writers’ other works
not contained in the curriculum. An example of this is Jamie, who after reading Enos
Watts’ poem, Longliner at Sunset, recorded this brief response:

The poem ‘Longliner at Sunset’ is a poem that I can relate to. I know what it is to watch a
longliner inch above the horizon heading towards the wharf, to see ‘a halo of saddlebacks
riding the sun.’ I’ve seen all of this and it fills me with feelings for my home.
  To give us this feeling the poet creates peaceful images. He describes it in a way that
makes you really notice what you didn’t before. When the poet writes, ‘She and the sun
would meet/one rising, the other descending’ it makes me think of times when everything
seems perfect. There are times when I have been amazed by what I see around me. I
remember this past summer when the sun seemed to be a perfect red ball dipping below
the ocean. We were out in boat and the sun was going down. Everyone couldn’t help but
just stare at it. No one said a word.
  Although the poem seems to make the long liner fit into the scene, the fisherman a part
of nature, the poet writes, ‘she’d dock in the cigarette glow of men/who’d been told by
the gulls/there was fish.’ I don’t think this is the case anymore. I don’t think people know
the signs of weather and animals like in the passed (sic), it seems technology are (sic) our
eyes and ears. We aren’t tuned into the amazing events that happen around us as much
anymore.
  I loved this poem and I think everyone, especially people who make a living on the
water should read it. It reminds us of what is awesome around us.

Jamie’s experience of the poem allows him to reconnect with a special memory. The
poem seems to open onto what is wonderful, the experience that reveals something

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 Educating the Imagination: Teaching for Sustainability 335

to us, that renews and freshens. However, the poem’s subject is one with which
Jamie is familiar, ‘I know what it is to watch a longliner inch above the horizon…I’ve
seen all this before and it leaves me with feelings for my home.’ The poem seems to
act as a conduit of sorts for memories and connections. It is as Simon Schama explains
in Landscape and Memory, ‘Before it can ever be a repose for the senses, landscape
is the work of the mind. Its scenery is built up as much from strata of memory as from
layers of rock’ (Schama 1996: 6, 7). The poem, through language, syntax, diction
and image, allows a way into wonder, into non-existent possibilities. It allows the
emergence of a newness, a suddenness, as when the ordinary becomes extraordinary.
How is this possible? How can what is commonplace for Jamie become wondrous?
Philo Hove says of the experience of wonder:

In wonder we see with new eyes…the familiar current of experience has shifted to reveal
something new; a rich beauty and depth that has emerged from the midst of the familiar,
and which compels us.
  [W]onder is a passive experience; the seeing that occurs in wonder is not a process
whereby our vision actively reveals things of the world to us. Rather, things reveal
themselves to the opened eyes. Seeing something in this new way is to be fully present to
its possibilities. (Hove 1996: 451)

Enos Watt’s poem elicits the wonderful, a recollection of an experience that at first
glance appears mundane, ‘the harbour’, ‘a little longliner’, ‘gulls’, ‘the sun’. Yet, the
poet creates the wondrous, the instantaneous, the entire experience visible at once.
The ordinary is made new through an unexpectedness, as something seen for the first
time. In the careful use of image, line patterns and breaks, a new intimacy is allowed
to emerge. The everyday is lifted out of the ordinary:

I would see around her

A halo of saddlebacks
Riding the sun
Soon to be left to its fate
In her wake below my horizon.

The poetic process, the effect of language on us, makes new phenomena possible.
The poetic process is the coupling of the linguistic ability that makes us human. Inherent
in this process is the tension between stability and change, and it is this creative activity
that makes things present and visible to us which we might not otherwise perceive.
The poem lifts us out of the ordinary, and allows the everyday to appear in a new way.
Jamie admits to seeing longliners on the horizon; they are commonplace, regularly
recurrent in his experience. How is it possible the boats can now evoke the wondrous?
How does the poem awaken the unexpected out of the ordinary?

Place–based Relationality
A third theme to surface in the students’ responses was place-based relationality.
Each selection in the Land, Sea and Time, Book I curriculum highlights the linguistic,
poetic, cognitive, imaginative, creative and expressive quality of being in place. For

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336 Patrick Howard

many students, the texts revealed a ‘making’ of places and a remaking of relationship
with place. Response and discussion was both a creative and a re-creative process.
In this space, we make and remake ourselves. Our identity, beliefs, values and
relationships are expressed and communicated to others through words, written and
spoken, through art and music, through ritual and ceremony. When we clear a space,
provide support and direction to engage with the art and literature of the bioregion,
we are cultivating that space in which students are nurtured and strengthened in a
view of the world that emphasises relationship.
Michael Crummey’s poem, The Road Home, in which he describes returning to
Newfoundland after having been away for a very long time, elicited this response in
Ashton,

There is much more we have to explore and learn in a place we may think we do know
everything. I thought how I want to grow up and be successful and live in Europe and
very seldomly come home…after reading ‘The Road Home’ I have a change in those plans.

Diana writes in response to Wanderings by Robert Burt:

He [Burt] says, ‘We threw our adolescence on the driftwood pyre.’ At first I didn’t quite
understand but when I found out what a pyre was I completely redirected the meaning of
the poem…He writes, ‘woodland paths branch out before us.’ Burt compares paths in the
woods to choices we will need to make in our life journey and I realise that our childhood
is a part of us…My home is here in Newfoundland. Being exposed to literature from right
here is new to me. I enjoy reading pieces from close by, I can relate to what the poets and
authors are telling me. It excites me to learn about other people’s adventures through life.
It makes me more eager to set out on my own journey.

Diana enjoys engaging with the literature of her place, yet her response indicates
an openness to the wider community and world. This is an important point to make.
In response to John Steffler’s poem The Grey Islands, Russell brought to class
a scratchy, black and white photograph with old-fashioned scalloped edging. It
showed a lone man in a small battered boat leaning back, away from the water as if to
counterbalance the gunwale that tipped precariously close to the dark water. His two
hands, shoulder length apart, gripped a net. Russel wrote about the photograph:

There is one photo in our album that draws my attention every time I look at it. It is of my
grandfather. He is on a fishing ground not far from this cove. I feel I have a connection
to that spot. The picture is black and white. In the photo my grandfather is hauling a cod
trap by hand. Looking at the photo you first notice the hard labour involved in the fishery
of the past. They hauled their traps by hand which would all be done today by machines.
  Then you notice the boat and how small it seems in comparison to the boats of today.
My grandfather would fill his skiff but that would be only a drop in comparison to the
boats of today. Technology today lets fishermen get a much larger catch in one trip. The
photo show the fishing methods of the past—the ropes, the rusting anchor, the gaff used
to haul the lines. The boat is dirty with blood and what looks like long strips of sea weed.
The boards look warped. The ropes wear the sides of the boat. The lines act like a saw
when they are hauled continuously over the gunwales.

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 Educating the Imagination: Teaching for Sustainability 337

  The water around my grandfather is oily calm. You can see the land in the background.
It’s about two miles away from here. I recognize the shoreline. That’s how my grandfather
found just this fishing ground. He had no GPS or computers like today. He used what is
called his ‘marks.’ Features of the land would be used to pinpoint the exact place on the
water where the fish congregate. I remember being small and going out in boat with him.
He always told me every time how to find the fishing grounds.
  In the picture I can see ‘Round Rocks’ a small island just off shore. You can just see
the land behind. These rocks and the rocks you can see just behind are used to guide
you. When my grandfather was on the grounds he was on the ‘marks.’ When you go out
the harbour you line up the gap between the small islands with the rocks behind with
the mountain behind the cove. On that mountain is a cliff—bald, whitish rock called the
‘Scrape’ can be easily seen. When the gaps between the islands, the rocks, and the Scrape
were lined up perfectly my grandfather knew he was on the fishing grounds.
  This is where he set his nets, hoping the fish would come. He knew the sea, the land,
the grounds and all the little features. I know this too, but there is so much more I don’t
know. When all the older people die they will take with them this knowledge of the land
and sea. It makes me sad and I think this is why I love that photograph so much.

Russell attaches great importance to his photo, ‘This is why I love that photograph
so much.’ He is able to give a detailed explanation how his grandfather used ‘his
marks’ to find the fishing ground. There is an element of pride in Russell’s entry; pride
for his grandfather’s knowledge and skill and pride for his own, however limited,
knowledge. But what kind of knowledge is being described in Russell’s entry? Of
what use is such knowledge?
The knowledge of which Russell writes is a local knowledge that portrays a deep,
intimate connection with the landscape. While Russell is proud of this knowledge,
he admits, ‘but there is so much more I don’t know’. C.E. Bowers (2003) believes
our culture categorises Russell’s knowledge as ‘low status’. Bowers thinks that such
knowledge is not valued in our technological, commodity-oriented culture, especially
in public school systems ‘where literacy, computers and adapting the curriculum to
the supposed requirements of the increasingly competitive work place have been the
major forces driving educational reform’ (Bowers 2003: 162).
And yet, while the knowledge may be considered ‘low status’, Russell’s description
underlies a deep embeddedness in the local and the everyday that he believes is
disappearing. While Russell lives in the local, in the minute specificities particular to
his place, he is able to make connections out into the world. He laments the loss of
this ecological knowing, the intimacy with the land and the sea that it represents.
Russell draws comparisons between the technologies of today compared to that of his
grandfather. Each memory, each artefact and each recollected moment that is forceful
enough to stand out from and survive many other moments and artefacts is a locus for
an enormous wealth of details and meaning. It is the specific incidents and observations
like Russell’s that transform the imaginary because each detail, in its density of
connection, potentially illuminates some greater insight and truth. The intimate local
detail of ‘the marks’ are unique to that person, in that place, yet it betrays a reciprocity
between the individual, the place and a greater whole that points to real knowledge of
the world—knowledge that emerges as a richly connected understanding.

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338 Patrick Howard

Nurturing an ecological sensibility means emphasising relationship. Using artefacts

to foster memory and narrative enables students to enter into a process that is both
descriptive and purposeful, being concerned with both recognising and realising
wholeness—seeing the connections that may be subtle, particular and personal,
but at the same time potentially transformative. Fritjof Capra says, ‘The process of
knowing is the process of life’ (Capra 2002: 34). Russell shares an aspect of his lived
experience, his connection to his grandfather and their connection to a wider earth
community of the sea and the land rendered in minute detail. The artefacts serve to
foster connections and bring forth opportunities for relational awareness and nurture
a focus and an engagement with a world at once present in the everyday and yet
inextricably entwined with the cosmos.
The economist E.F. Schumacher remarked:

The volume of education…continues to increase, yet so do pollution, exhaustion of

resources, and the dangers of ecological catastrophe. If still more education is to save us, it
would have to be education of a different kind; an education that takes us into the depths
of things. (cited in Sterling 2001: 21)

This study was undertaken with students living in coastal Newfoundland and
Labrador whose lives are largely defined by circumstances of environment, history
and culture (Howard 2006). The children are shaped and (in)formed as members of
a bioregion connected to continental and world ecology. In interpreting the theory
of bioregionalism, it must be made clear that attention to the bioregion, as a mode of
teaching for the values of sustainability, is a form of education that is inherently ‘place
conscious’. Place consciousness does not necessarily include a narrow or parochial
view. Guided by, and deeply committed to, ecological principles of enmeshment
and interdependence, bioregionalism is inclusive of cultural, historical, social
considerations by beginning in the local place and extending outwards by design into
wider communities. Research data generated by the student responses demonstrated
that a bioregional literacy curriculum, through its breadth and scope and its
interdisciplinary nature, is a place for reimagining and creating just and sustainable
communities that reflect the interconnected reality of our lives.

CONCLUSION

Reorienting education to teach for the values of sustainability requires an in-depth

investigation into how curricula, classroom practices and teacher beliefs become
important resources in transformative teaching necessary for the paradigmatic shift
to sustainability required at this crucial juncture in human history. Literacy curricula
containing imaginative, creative bioregional art and literature, such as that developed
by the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador, exist and can be used
to foster the values of sustainability by deepening student awareness of the rich
living and cultural landscapes in which they live. What began as a ‘regional’ or ‘local’
study—to inquire into the pedagogical potential of a bioregional literacy curriculum
in coastal Newfoundland, Canada, to support the values inherent in ESD—can be

Journal of Education for Sustainable Development  6:2 (2012):  327–340

 Educating the Imagination: Teaching for Sustainability 339

viewed as a testament to a much larger observation; the themes to emerge point to

the student, the classroom, the community as part of a much larger whole and what
emerges out of this study deepens a sense that local issues are global issues, that our
relationship with place and values required to foster a sustainable future are deeply
interconnected. These interconnections can be made more apparent for students
through participatory engagement with imaginative, creative bioregional texts.
Further research is needed to support the use of existing curricular resources
and the development of new curricula specific to unique cultures, communities and
bioregions across Canada and other countries.

Notes
1. Splits is a colloquial term for kindling.
2. Gimli is a character in J.R.R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings.

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