Expedition Inside Culture: Putting Pedagogy into Action

Abstract

This chapter serves as an introduction to the second part of this volume and again takes our framework linking place, culture, and identity to current local and global challenges. The chapter seeks to answer the question what would it look like to implement our framework on the ground in various countries, and with various groups of individuals. The challenges we see on a global level are manifested in different ways in different local contexts. Expedition Inside Culture is a program, originally designed in Poland, that uses expeditionary (Cousins in Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound 7(5): 3–8, 1999) and place-based education (Le Grange et al. in Perspectives in Education 33(3): 42–57, 2015) to build strong, contextual teaching and learning focused on leadership and identity. The program works to strengthen democracy in education by strengthening the connections and awareness students and teachers have of their communities and the issues located in them. If one role for schools in democratic societies is to help prepare young people for active life, then schools need to become more democratic in order to pass on such a democratic ethos. Democracy as a political philosophy is full of possibility and conflict. Within democratic society, education has served many purposes. These purposes for educating members of society act as the starting point for conceptualizing education.