Place-Based Education

2017
Pre-publication proof of "Prelude" ...
Link: https://isbnsearch.org/isbn/0415792576
On Routledge: https://www.routledge.com/Eco-Literate-Music-Pedagogy/Shevock/p/book/9780415792578
On Amazon.com: https://www.amazon.com/Eco-Literate-Music-Pedagogy-Philosophy-Autoethnography/dp/0415792576/
On Amazon.co.uk: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Eco-Literate-Music-Pedagogy-Routledge-Education/dp/0415792576/

Published by Routledge

The Social Problem Solving through Science (SPSS) project engaged middle school-aged youth in the study of local environmental challenges with implications for human health and well-being, both globally and locally. Students considered environmental risk factors in a series of structured activities to develop background knowledge on environmental health issues. Pairs of students then worked together on a relevant topic of their choosing to create and share “public service announcements” in the form of posters to educate their peers, family, and community members about one of the public health topics they had studied. The project goal was to assess the degree to which learning tasks designed to be transformative to students’ understanding of their place in the world could also increase students’ science knowledge despite that outcome not being a primary focus of instruction. Pre- and post-interviews of the 23 project participants indicated that participation enhanced science content knowledge while also engaging them in a process of decolonization and reinhabitation of their places as members of society.

In this chapter we outline two premises that provide a viable theoretical basis for intergenerationally-focused, place-responsive education. On their basis, intergenerational
learning is said to have occurred when people of more than one generation respond to generational differences within a place. The contribution we seek to make comes from bringing together theories of the socio-material, place and learning, embodied experience, non-representation, and intergenerationality.

O Atlas Ambiental de Porto Alegre resultou de um convênio celebrado em 1994 entre três instituições: (a) a Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, reunindo pesquisadores do Instituto de Geociências, Instituto de Biociências e Faculdade de Biblioteconomia e Comunicação; (b) a Prefeitura Municipal de Porto Alegre, reunindo técnicos da Secretaria Municipal do Meio Ambiente, Departamento Municipal de Águas e Esgotos, Departamento Municipal de Limpeza Urbana, Departamento de Esgotos Pluviais, Secretaria de Planejamento Municipal, Secretaria Municipal da Saúde e o Fórum Municipal do Meio Ambiente e Saneamento; e (3) o Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais. Cerca de 200 professores, pesquisadores, técnicos, fotógrafos e diversos grupos de apoio logístico participaram no levantamento de dados e na elaboração das diversas cartas temáticas sobre os sistemas natural e construído do município. Esse trabalho apresenta a história natural de Porto Alegre desde 800 milhões de anos atrás (data das rochas mais antigas) até o tempo presente em que ocorre a intricada mistura de gases na atmosfera devido à emissão veicular. Valendo-se de teorias científicas e tecnologias, o sistema natural e o sistema construído do município foram considerados a partir de sua evolução no espaço e no tempo, utilizando-se de uma abordagem que é comum no conhecimento geológico. As mudanças locais de ambos os sistemas foram entendidas dentro de contextos globais e regionais. Por isso, esse Atlas pode ser útil tanto como referência aos dados locais para fins de planejamento, quanto para explicar teorias globais e regionais utilizando exemplos concretos e contextualizados. O Atlas, além de apresentar uma grande quantidade de dados, soberbamente documentados, sobre os parâmetros ambientais do município, sintetizou-os dentro das melhores técnicas interdisciplinares. Tendo como conhecimento matriz básico a Geologia, foi possível estabelecer uma História Natural do Município de Porto Alegre, como preconizaram os grandes naturalistas do século passado, mas fazendo uso das tecnologias, teorias e a cosmovisão do século atual. Os assuntos foram organizados em três seções: o Sistema Natural - com oito capítulos que explicam a geologia, geomorfologia, hidrografia, solos, vegetação, fauna, clima e unidades de conservação; o Sistema Construído - com os capítulos de 9 a 17, que apresentam a evolução urbana, o modelo espacial urbano, a evolução das áreas verdes, a arborização das vias públicas, o clima urbano, as atividades que produzem impacto ambiental e os serviços de saneamento que mitigam o impacto. Por fim, a Gestão Ambiental abrange três capítulos onde são apresentados os principais conceitos e problemas da gestão ambiental num mundo em processo de urbanização, da gestão ambiental pública e dos dados de Porto Alegre. Uma bibliografia e um índice remissivo sobre esses temas seguem no final da obra.

Il ruolo dell’ambiente nell’apprendimento. L’educazione geografica fra neuroscienze, place-based e outdoor education.

Il valore dell’educazione geografica all’aperto fu teorizzato e sperimentato empiricamente già nell’Ottocento. Ma oggi può rinnovarsi e trovare importanti conferme scientifiche grazie all’avanzamento delle conoscenze nelle neuroscienze e alle metodologie didattiche dell’outdoor education e del place-based learning. In particolare, oggi sappiamo che le esperienze nell’ambiente contribuiscono allo sviluppo psicofisico, possono potenziare i percorsi di apprendimento e supportare il raggiungimento di competenze di cittadinanza.

The role of the environment in learning. Geographical education between neuroscience, place-based and outdoor education.

The value of outdoor geographic education was theorized and empirically experimented as early as the nineteenth century. Nevertheless,
today it can renew itself and find important scientific confirmation thanks to the advancement of knowledge in neuroscience and the
teaching methodologies of outdoor education and place-based learning. In particular, today we know that experiences in the environment
contribute to psychophysical development, can enhance learning paths and support the achievement of citizenship skills.

Environmental education (EE) has a history of support for critical place- based pedagogy as a means of learning through engagement in space, both cultural and biophysical. In this paper I tell the story of how Franco – a non-white, non-American undergraduate – engaged with local discourses in a watershed-focused EE program in the rural Midwestern US. I examine how the five tenets of critical race theory (CRT) can be used to interpret Franco’s experience, where he encountered multiple instances of racism and xenophobia. I argue that without a critical analysis of race in place-based EE programs, instructors may (a) privilege their own ways of knowing in local settings, (b) rely on ‘grit’ narratives as mechanisms for mediation of racism, and (c) send non-white students home having learned that they cannot effect meaningful change for sustainability. I conclude with recommendations for faculty in predominantly white institutions on how CRT might foster the development of critical consciousness of race in place-based EE programs.

Ola Nā Iwi is a grant project that produced and distributed a place-based curriculum resource packet that provides K-12 teachers with both primary and secondary sources—texts, images, videos, links and more—centered on the royal, and other, burials at the Waineʻe Cemetery of Waiola Church in Lāhainā, Maui. These materials can be used to create place-based lesson plans that address current Hawai‘i Department of Education Content and Performance Standards.

Dominant Western cultural narratives of the outdoors imbue
‘natural’ places as sites of recreation, adventure, and respite from
an otherwise fast-paced ‘unnatural’ world. This paper explores the
seeming lack of racial and ethnic diversity among advocates of
outdoor leisure and education in Canada, a characteristic that
may reflect the preponderance of white, middle-class constituents
in mainstream environmental movements in the West. Through
critical discourse analysis, and inquiry into lived experiences, the
authors, two immigrant settlers from Taiwan, question the ways
that environmental movements project and inscribe white
experience by examining the presumed historical and cultural
positions which install ‘place’ as an axis for outdoor recreation
and education. The authors offer a Taiwanese concept of place,
鄉土 (Xiang-Tu), that engenders both the social and ecological, in
hope to broaden the theoretical scope of outdoor leisure studies
while mitigating the risk of reinforcing colonialism via privileged
perspectives.

The outdoor education industry is assumed to be inclusive, but this is often not the experience of people of colour who participate in this space. In this chapter, the authors first offer an examination of “wilderness” as a socially constructed term, rather than an ecological category. The way that “wilderness” experiences are implemented, within outdoor education, can be constructed and act to make these spaces exclusionary. The authors share their experiences as Asian immigrant outdoor practitioners, through a duoethnographic method, to present concrete examples of the ways in which race, gender and class intersect in oppressive ways. This chapter calls on outdoor practitioners and organizations to recognize exclusionary practices and to make room for representation of marginalized populations in strategic and leadership positions. By doing so, the authors suggest that outdoor sectors can find ways to create culturally responsive and justice-oriented outdoor spaces.

The role of place-based education (PBE) in a teacher education methods course was explored in a constructivist case study of preservice secondary English teachers during their semester of student teaching. Written and discourse data were examined through the lens of a conceptual framework of PBE. Findings suggest that PBE methods can prepare student teachers for success with classroom management, assessment, and meeting students’ individual needs. Further
research is needed to explore PBE and its role in teacher education. The implications of this research extend benefits to students and society through improvements in teacher education and connecting classrooms to communities.

This article documents an exploratory, values-based process involving culture, society and contemporaneity in Steiner Waldorf education. I do this by using my own developing values as a lens through which I assess and critique Steiner educational practice. Through the growing awareness and articulation of my own values, I look at notions of representation in Steiner education, and investigate the degree to which it responds to ideas of equity and social justice. I illustrate the development of my living-theory by using an action research model, working through cycles which expand gradually from personal reflection to international discussion; I articulate how these developing values in turn influence people I work with and those further afield. This process is of its nature unfinished; I record here the first seven years.

This article is now online at the website of the journal THE SIDE VIEW:

https://thesideview.co/journal/finding-the-center/

In this article, I highlight American architect Christopher Alexander’s concept of “center,” which offers one way to identify the crux of his work, whether thinking or designing. Most broadly, a center is any spatial concentration or organized focus of more intense pattern or activity—for example, an intricate carpet pattern, an elegant entryway, a handsome arcade, a gracious building, or an animated plaza full of users finding pleasure in the place. Whatever its specific nature and scale, a center is a region of concentrated physical and experiential order that provides for an intense spatial and lived relatedness among things, people, situations, and events. A center is “an organized zone of space … which, because of its internal coherence, and because of its relation to context … forms a local zone of relative centeredness with respect to the other parts of space." A pivotal question for Alexander is how an understanding of centers might help architects to conceive of and actualize vigorous places and environments that sustain thriving human life.

Educational renewal in rural schools and communities can be stymied by many challenges including teacher isolation, staff turnover, and failing resource-based economies. Education change networks within and across rural communities can nurture educator’s professional development through collaborative inquiry and connect educators interested in taking up equity-oriented, place-conscious pedagogies. This afterword draws from the chapters in Rural Teacher Education: Connecting land and People to outline how rural education transformation can benefit from and be realized within education change networks that take up multiple perspectives including the more-than-humanworld, reconciliation with Indigenous communities, and service learning.

The essay offers reflections on the purpose of Indigenous environmental education. Indigenous peoples engage in wide-ranging approaches to environmental education that are significant aspects of how they exercise self-determination. Yet often such educational practices are just seen as trying to genuinely teach certain historic traditions or scientific skill-sets. Through reviewing the author's experiences
and diverse scholarly and practitioner perspectives, the essay discusses how Indigenous environmental education is best when it aims at cultivating qualities of moral responsibilities including trust, consent and accountability within Indigenous communities. The concept of collective continuance is one way of thinking about how moral responsibilities play significant roles in contributing to social resilience. Understanding education in this way can be used to address some of the major issues affecting Indigenous peoples everywhere, including environmental justice, gender justice and the resurgence of traditions.

In this chapter, I draw on French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty's philosophy to explore environmental embodiment-the various lived ways, sensorily and motility-wise, that the body in its prereflective perceptual presence engages and synchronizes with the world at hand, especially its architectural and environmental aspects. First, I consider Merleau-Ponty's interpretation of perception, which he understands as the immediate givenness of the world founded in bodily sensibility. Second, I consider the architectural and environmental significance of what Merleau-Ponty calls body-subject-pre-reflective corporeal awareness expressed through action and typically in sync with and enmeshed in the physical world in which the action unfolds. I focus on the taken-for-granted sensibility of body-subject to manifest in extended ways over time and space. I ask how routine actions and behaviors of individuals coming together regularly can transform an environment into a place with a unique dynamic and character-a lived situation I term place ballet. For both perception and body-subject, I examine how qualities of the physical and designable worldfor example, materiality, form, and spatiality-contribute to the lived body's engagement with and actions in the world. I end by arguing that Merleau-Ponty offers an essential perspective for understanding the importance of place and lived emplacement in human life, but this perspective must be extended by considering how places change over time via generative processes that enliven or undermine places and lived emplacement.

Стаття розкриває можливості дискурсивного підходу в дослідженні комунікаційного простору сучасного міста. Об’єкт дослідження – Запоріжжя, з його багатою розмаїтою історією та сучасними дискурсивними практиками. Узагальнено досвід реалізації творчих дослідних проектів студентів факультету журналістики Запорізького національного університету, представлених на освітньому сайті – віртуальній навчальній лабораторії “Медіакультура в сучасному місті” (http://mcmc.tilda.ws) в розділі “Дискурс міста” (http://mcmc.tilda.ws/misto).
Ключові слова: дискурс міста, колективна пам’ять, енактивоване пізнання, журналістика, проектне навчання.

The article reveals the possibilities of public history approach in exploring communicative space of the modern city. The object of research is the city of Zaporizhzhia (Ukraine) that has rich diverse history. Experience of creative research projects made by the students of journalism faculty, Zaporizhzhia National University, which are presented on the educational website Virtual Learning Lab “Media Culture in the Modern City (MCMC)” in the site section “Discourse of the City” (<http://mcmc.tilda.ws/misto>) is summarized.
Keywords: public history, collective memory, journalism, project based learning.

This manuscript unfolds in the context of a Faculty of Education course that was designed in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada's call to post-secondary institutions to identify and meet teacher-training needs relating to the history and legacy of Canada's Indian Residential School system. The course instructor (Madden) begins by tracing how she is theorizing truth and reconciliation education through engagement with literature produced by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, and those who respond to their efforts. The pedagogical activity Wandering With/In the University of Alberta animates how she attempted to mobilize these emerging understandings through course design. We then introduce the collective processes we carried out as co-authors (i.e., course instructor and three graduate students who completed the course): creating, analyzing, and representing data, as well as generating the knowledge claims offered throughout. Next, data fragments that weave photographs of and narrative writing about campus sites anchor exploration of three central themes: wandering in relation to (a) evolving understandings of self, (b) a situated and significant historical moment (i.e., Canada 150), and (c) the (imagined) classroom as a site of reconciliation. We conclude with a discussion that explores the relationship between Faculty of Education coursework, identity, and place-based pedagogies for truth and reconciliation education.

Cette étude s'est déroulée dans le contexte d'un cours offert par la Faculty of Education et développé en réponse à l'appel de la Commission de vérité et réconciliation du Canada aux établissements postsecondaires pour qu'ils identifient les besoins en formation des enseignants quant à l'histoire et les séquelles du système des pensionnats indiens au Canada et qu'ils répondent à ces besoins. La chargée de cours (Madden) débute en expliquant ses démarches pour théoriser l'éducation de vérité et réconciliation en se penchant sur la littérature produite par la Commission de vérité et réconciliation du Canada et sur la réaction des gens aux efforts de la commission. L'activité pédagogique Wandering With/In the University of Alberta est une animation de ses efforts pour mobiliser ces nouvelles connaissances par la conception de son cours. Ensuite, nous présentons les processus collectifs que nous avons entrepris comme co-auteurs (c'est-à-dire, la chargée de cours et les trois étudiants aux études supérieures ayant complété le cours): la création, l'analyse et la représentation des données, ainsi que l'élaboration des déclarations présentées dans l'ensemble du cours. Par la suite, des fragments de données tissent des photos et des récits narratifs portant sur des sites sur le campus et offrent des balises pour l'exploration de trois thèmes centraux: errer par rapport à: (a) une compréhension en évolution de soi-même, (b) un moment historique significatif (par ex., Canada 150) et (c) la salle de classe (imaginée) comme site de réconciliation. Une discussion portant sur le rapport entre

Within the public Montessori community, most research has related to schools in urban areas. This thesis explores public Montessori programs in rural and remote areas. This paper addresses current scientific thought, including systems thinking and cosmogenesis. Next, this thesis explores educational theory—particularly, Montessori education and rural education—and leadership theory with regard to new scientific thought. This paper also explores neurophenomenology, one approach to research, a methodology that acknowledges both objective and subjective realities. Finally, this paper examines objective data and shares subjective experiences regarding public Montessori programs in rural and remote settings.
Schools in rural and remote settings represent approximately 25% of all public Montessori programs in the United States. They are an important part of the larger Montessori community. These rural and remote schools have advantages and challenges that schools in urban and suburban areas do not. Perhaps rural and urban Montessori leaders could benefit from more contact with each other and the chance to exchange ideas and experiences.

This study examines the intersections of place and second language learning. Learner identity has been found to be an important construct in second language learning. In recent years, place and space have become central topics in the study of sociolinguistics and identity. One area of place and language that has not been studied in depth, however, is whether place plays a role in second language learning.  This study begins to fill this gap by examining the second language learning experiences of thirteen Japanese study abroad students who were enrolled in an eight-week, content-based language course. The content of the course focused on the history and culture of the city in which the course was offered, Memphis, Tennessee. This study demonstrates that the students formed place attachments to the city, that these attachments led to identity shifts, and that the students’ identity shifts affected their language behavior, identities, and future trajectories.
Thirteen Japanese university students between the ages of 18 and 19 took part in the study. Data collection included interviews with students taking the class in 2016 and course alumni from 2012 – 2015, their social media posts, class blog posts, classwork, and their photographs of Memphis served as the sources of data for this multi-modal study. The participant-provided photographs were also used as an interview elicitation tool.
Findings from this study contribute to an understanding of the complexities of place, identity, and language learning. Whereas prior work has pointed to the social capital that can be gained through investment in a second language, this study suggests that investment in place can also lead to gains in social capital. The study also shows that when language learners engage with the history and culture of a place such as Memphis, where racial violence has played such a significant role, that place factors into their future trajectories. Specifically, the participants constructed good language learner and global citizen identities. These findings reveal the power of a place-based curriculum that offers language learners the experience of a fuller spectrum of place and thereby facilitates the difficult work involved in constructing and orienting identity.