How can the concept of place help create a more meaningful learning environment and learning experience?

I am interested in exploring the above question to help inform my own teaching; from the little I know about Place-Based Education (PBE), I can see many strands of promise and potential. It is important to me that my students feel what they are learning is relevant in their own lives. Too often, I believe school can appear to be about issues and concepts that are distant and irrelevant, which can result in a lack of engagement, retention, and knowledge transfer. The new curriculum provides teachers with a tremendous amount of flexibility in terms of content and competencies, opening up the possibility for a shift towards more place-based methods of teaching.

PBE may facilitate the development of a critical consciousness in students about their surroundings and help them practice the skills required to be active and engaged community members. By grounding challenging social and environmental issues within students’ communities, PBE may help students feel greater agency and hope in making a positive impact. Furthermore, PBE may challenge educators to expand learning beyond the four walls of their classroom and integrate more authentic learning environments and opportunities for their students. I can imagine there are many challenges and opportunities in this realm that I would like to learn more about.

At the same time, I would like to understand some of the limitations or tensions of the approach. For instance, I believe it is important that students feel a sense of global citizenship and I recognize that many issues and systems are enforced on a larger scale than their local communities. I hope by exploring the above question I can uncover some of the possibilities and challenges within PBE to better serve my future students.

Resor, C. W. (2010). Place-Based Education: What is its place in the social studies classroom?. The Social Studies, 101(5), 185-188.

Resor argues that Place-Based Education (PBE) can be a meaningful tool to integrate into social studies classrooms. PBE is the process of using the local community and environment as jumping off points to teach subjects, and that it emphasizes real-world learning experiences that are often interdisciplinary. Resor distinguishes between the concept of space, which has no name or meaning and place, which is a social construct, imbued with meaning through the minds of individuals and groups. Place is linked closely to power and is an important point of investigation in social studies classrooms. Resor ends with an example of a place-based project in which students interrogate the subjective elements of place through competing ideas of what should be included in their town’s walking tour.

McInerney, P., Smyth, J., & Down, B. (2011). ‘Coming to a place near you?’ The politics and possibilities of a critical pedagogy of place-based education. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 39(1), 3-16.

McInerney, Smyth, & Down outline the challenges and possibilities of Place-Based Education (PBE) and argues for a more critical framework. While advocates of PBE argue that it empowers students with a sense of agency and opportunities for hands-on learning, critics hold that it is often undertheorized, uncritical, and disconnected from global perspectives. PBE’s lack of critical outlook may sustain the dominant, status quo perspectives of education. Additionally, connections must be made between local issues and the more regional and global systems to which they are connected.

PBE builds on Ecojustice notions of revitalizing the commons, the natural systems and cultural patterns that hold value but are currently being destroyed. It also seeks to break down the false divide between school and community. The research shows that PBE can provide authentic learning opportunities and foster community involvement and environmental consciousness. At the same time, we shouldn’t overidealize the notion of place; many homes and communities may not feel safe for learners and so a focus on what needs to be transformed is important. By incorporating a more critical perspective into PBE, we can invite students to question the established order and work for the common good.

Greenwood, D. A. (2013). 9 A Critical Theory of Place-Conscious Education. In International handbook of research on environmental education (pp. 93-100). Routledge.

Greenwood argues that a place-conscious approach to education can serve as an effective framework for students to understand and address today’s issues. Rather than reinforcing a narrow view of global realities, a focus on place allows learners to understand more deeply specific contexts that then allow for more global understandings of relationships. Place can make learning accessible and relevant for learners, help to overcome the false binary of “culture” and “environment,” and reveal that different people have diverse and competing meanings for the same physical spaces.

Greenwood advocates for a critical theory of place-conscious education, a philosophy that provides ethical direction for PBE, and challenges educators to rethink standard assumptions of schooling. He argues for decolonization and reinhabitation; critically problematizing current systems and building ecologically and culturally conscious relationships in their place. Educators can be guided by the following inquiry questions to help achieve these aims:

  1. What happened here? (historical)
  2. What is happening here now and in what direction is this place headed? (socioecological)
  3. What should happen here? (ethical)

Willis, A. S. (2017). Queering Place: Using the Classroom to Describe the World. In Interdisciplinary Approaches to Pedagogy and Place-Based Education (pp. 135-145). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Willis argues that educators can use the concept of place within the four walls of their classroom, rather than feeling the need to always go outdoors. Objects and social relations in the classroom can serve as departure points to discuss broader themes of power and justice globally. Through this approach, teachers can politicize their classroom and refuse the binary separation between school and community, ultimately bringing to light the explicit ways that students are embedded and tied to global forces. Questions such as “who built the stairs you climbed today?” or “how did this desk get here?” can make the erased labour of classroom objects visible. This can encourage students to consider and grapple with the ways their classroom and school relate to the maintenance or transformation of the status quo.

Getting Smart (2017). Quick Start Guide to Implementing Place-Based Education. (pp. 1-21). Retrieved from: http://gettingsmart.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Quick-Start-Guide-to-Implementing-Place-Based-Education.pdf

This guide provides an overview of Place-Based Education with some tips and examples for educators to implement this approach in their classrooms. Problem-based learning provides an effective framework to empower students to identify and solve real issues in their communities. The authors outline many ways to facilitate integration into the community such as inviting community leaders to speak and give feedback to students, as well as visiting them in their places of work. It is important that field trips be accompanied with intentional pedagogical strategies such as proper framing and reflection. The authors also weave in the importance of a critical stance to PBE, citing Greenwood’s previous work. Critically, the guide emphasizes the importance of teachers building their networks in the community and collaborating with others in this space.