Place-based education

Place-based education, sometimes called pedagogy of place, place-based learning, experiential education, community-based education, education for sustainability, environmental education or more rarely, service learning, is an educational philosophy. The term was coined in the early 1990s by Laurie Lane-Zucker of The Orion Society and Dr. John Elder of Middlebury College. Orion's early work in the area of place-based education was funded by the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation.[1] Although educators have used its principles for some time, the approach was developed initially by The Orion Society,[2] a Massachusetts-based nonprofit organization, as well as Professor David Sobel, Project Director at Antioch University New England.

In his introduction to the first book specifically focused on the pedagogy, Place-Based Education: Connecting Classrooms and Communities (ISBN 978-0913098547), Lane-Zucker describes the context within which place-based education was developed,

“In an increasingly globalized world, there are often pressures for communities and regions to subordinate themselves to the dominant economic models and to devalue their local cultural identity, traditions and history in preference to a flashily marketed homogeneity. Furthermore, at a time when industrial pollution, biodiversity/habitat loss, and aquifer depletion are becoming widespread and acute, such pressures often exacerbate the problems by encouraging unsustainable patterns of consumption and land use, and by weakening familial and community relationships that are deeply tied to the local environment. A process of disintegration occurs as basic connections to the land fray and communities become less resilient and less able to deal with the dislocations that globalization and ecological deterioration bring about. A community’s health — human and more-than-human — suffers.

“The path to a sustainable existence must start with a fundamental reimagining of the ethical, economic, political and spiritual foundations upon which society is based, and that this process needs to occur within the context of a deep local knowledge of place. The solutions to many of our ecological problems lie in an approach that celebrates, empowers and nurtures the cultural, artistic, historical and spiritual resources of each local community and region, and champions their ability to bring those resources to bear on the healing of nature and community.

“Schools and other educational institutions can and should play a central role in this process, but for the most part they do not. Indeed, they have often contributed to the problem by educating young people to be, in David Orr’s words, ‘mobile, rootless and autistic toward their places.’ A significant transformation of education might begin with the effort to learn how events and processes close to home relate to regional, national, and global forces and events, leading to a new understanding of ecological stewardship and community. This, I believe, supports the propagation of an enlightened localism — a local/global dialectic that is sensitive to broader ecological and social relationships at the same time as it strengthens and deepens peoples sense of community and land.

“Place-based education might be characterized as the pedagogy of community, the reintegration of the individual into her homeground and the restoration of the essential links between a person and her place. Place-based education challenges the meaning of education by asking seemingly simple questions: Where am I? What is the nature of this place? What sustains this community? It often employs a process of re-storying, whereby students are asked to respond creatively to stories of their homeground so that, in time, they are able to position themselves, imaginatively and actually, within the continuum of nature and culture in that place. They become a part of the community, rather than a passive observer of it.”[3]

Place-based education seeks to help communities through employing students and school staff in solving community problems. Place-based education differs from conventional text and classroom-based education in that it understands students' local community as one of the primary resources for learning. Thus, place-based education promotes learning that is rooted in what is local—the unique history, environment, culture, economy, literature, and art of a particular place[4]—that is, in students’ own “place” or immediate schoolyard, neighborhood, town or community. According to this pedagogy, grade school students often lose what place-based educators call their “sense of place” through focusing too quickly or exclusively on national or global issues. This is not to say that international and domestic issues are peripheral to place-based education, but that students should first have a grounding in the history, culture and ecology of their surrounding environment before moving on to broader subjects.

Place-based education often involves hands-on learning, project-based learning, and is always related to something in the real world. Thus students embarking upon a unit about the Vietnam War might interview veterans of that war, collecting their stories for a radio-spot, newspaper article or educational brochure. In this case, the use of local people to support students’ learning would not only lead to greater comprehension of the Vietnam War, but also to understanding more about the history of their community and the people in it.

Byron Fellowship is a place-based learning experience built around sustainable community development.

Wintergreen Studios is a year-round wilderness education and retreat centre in Southeastern Ontario offering workshops and meeting facilities. Wintergreen's environment and architecture have been designed to enable people to engage in mindful living and return to their homes and workplaces inspired and refreshed.

Place-based education in schools

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Grants - Education Week". Education Week. 1996-05-29. Retrieved 2017-03-06.
  2. ↑ "The Nature Literacy Series". Orion Magazine. Archived from the original on 2011-09-18. Retrieved 2011-09-23.
  3. ↑ "Place-based Education, Entrepreneurship and Investing for an "Impact Economy" | Your Mark On The World". Your Mark On The World. 2016-08-01. Retrieved 2017-03-06.
  4. ↑ Rural Education Archived September 29, 2006, at the Wayback Machine.
  5. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2015-05-28. Retrieved 2015-05-28.

Further reading

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.