and art (murals, interactive ecology trail drawings, sundials), teachers encourage the ideas of risk-taking and innovation in these children. By placing these works of art near the places that students have engaged with (such as playgrounds and forests), the creative works by students act as a reflective tool (Green and Somerville 841). While this paper may pose a barrier to other readers who seek a quantitative measure of student understanding, Green and Somerville provide a thoughtful narrative evidence (qualitative, language-based, and story-led) of how teachers best engage students. By explaining what sustainability can mean in an educational setting and by focusing on place rather than curriculum, this research contributes to larger questions of how to best teach sustainability in a way that avoids the “bumbling” that Blumstein and Saylan describe (0976). While Green and Somerville never explicitly discuss the combination of visual and place education, opting instead for a focus on student-led discussion and experimentation, their study inspires the use of photography as a tool to expand on or explain the importance of the environment to students. Photography has the potential to achieve similar goals by having students engage with their communities and by presenting places in a familiar context.
PHOTOGRAPHS AND EDUCATION In order to understand the potential of photography, the methods by which photography acts as a learning tool must first be investigated. In outlining and examining the use of student-created picture books Burke and Cutter-Mackenzie engage with children and assesses their perceived connection with nature, therefore, putting numerous sources into conversation regarding the ties between environmental education and art. Broadly, Burke and Cutter-Mackenzie conclude that art and the environment have strong pedagogical connections, in that each promotes creative thinking and requires development of connections between the seemingly unconnected. Student-created picture books allowed students to examine their own world, and in turn, gave the researchers the chance to examine the students’ understanding of environmental issues (Burke and Cutter-Mackenzie 327). What Burke and Cutter-Mackenzie leave out of the conversation about environmental education, Lipponen et al. pick up by examining the educational methods by which photographs act as a tool for education, like any other artwork. The study by Lipponen et al. on the effects of using the photographic process with Finnish preschoolers reveals the process by which education and photography are connected and also illuminates possible uses of photography in the classroom. 56 | THE GEORGE MASON REVIEW