Clark, Delia. “Learning to Make Choices for the Future: Connecting Public Lands, Schools, and Communities Through Place-Based Learning and Civic Engagement.” The Center for Place Based Learning and Community Achievement, December 2008. Web. 18 April 2015. http://promiseofplace.org/curriculum_and_planning/planning_tools.
This article is essentially an instruction manual for teachers and community members for how to introduce place-based education into a given school. It proved an invaluable resource in concisely and exactly defining what constitutes place-based education. It also provided many activities oriented at establishing “sense of place” in teachers, which we adapted to suit our needs. It inspired us to think about what colors and smells remind us of our homes and to draw creative maps of what we remember about our homes in order to put us in the mindset of thinking about how place-based learning could be implemented in our communities.
“Tips and Techniques for Reading the Landscape.” Web. 18 April 2015. http://www.promiseofplace.org/curriculum_and_planning/planning_tools
This article, which came from the same website as the instruction manual, helped us consider different ways of understanding what “place” means. It defines physical, cultural, and ecological landscapes and how they work together. Thinking about place-based education demands that we incorporate all three readings of the landscape into the curriculum. It was helpful in reflecting on how we viewed the landscapes of the towns we come from and how place-based education could be implemented in ways that incorporate the three readings together.
Core Standards. Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2015. Web. 18 April 2015. http://www.corestandards.org/.
This government-sponsored website provided us with an outline of what students are going to be expected to know in every grade and subject starting this year. We used this information to develop our place-based education sample curriculum unit in order to prove that place-based education and Common Core could potentially work together.
Dewey, John. “The Child and the Curriculum.” Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1902. Print.
We felt that the article by John Dewey that we read in class spoke to many of the goals of place-based education even if he never explicitly argued for place-based education in precise terms. We wanted to tie our project into what we’d been talking about in class and felt Dewey was a good opportunity to do that.
Fenstermacher, Gary D. and Jonas F. Soltis. Approaches to Teaching. Fifth Edition. New York: Teachers College Press, 2009. Print.
We used this book to connect what we learned about place-based education to the approaches to teaching we learned about in class. Obviously, place-based education could exemplify executive, facilitator, liberationist, or emancipatory teaching, but the point we were trying to make was that it could be an example of social-justice oriented emancipatory teaching and praxis because of the way it engages students in the world around them and has them learn through action.
Massey, Doreen. “A Global Sense of Place.” Marxism Today 35.6 (1991): 24–29. Print.
This article explores the changes within our sense of place as globalization increases the mobility of our ideas and commodities. Massey discusses the importance of establishing a rooted sense of place before expanding out, but at the same time she argues that places are actually networks of social relations. It helped us understand the need to incorporate the global and the local into “glocal.”
Michie, Gregory. Holler if You Hear Me. Teachers College Press, 2009. Print.
We felt that Gregory Michie’s stories about his experiences would be useful in talking about different examples of place-based learning. His culturally-responsive methods are what a good place-based education program should strive to be. In particular, his after-school media literacy engaged students with the community by letting them record an audiobook for public consumption.
Proctor, James. “Replacing Nature in Environmental Studies and Sciences.” Submitted for consideration to Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 2014.
We felt this article gave us a better understanding of what “place” in place-based education means, as many times it can seem like place-based education is a study of everything. Proctor also discusses the application of place in ecoliteracy, and the feasibility of utilizing ecoliteracy to create a deeper connection to the Earth for students. It also helped develop our idea of using the “glocal” in place-based education.
“Community-Based Learning: Connecting Students with Their World.” Edutopia. George Lucas Educational Foundation, 2015. Web. 15 April 2015. http://www.edutopia.org/practice/community-based-learning-connecting-students-their-world
This video gave us an example of the diversity of ways in which Place-Based Learning can be implemented. This program, which is located in Montpelier, VT, is largely student driven and allows high-school students to choose an interest of theirs that they would like to learn more about. They then work one-on-one with a local organization or community member to achieve learning goals that they set for themselves. We used this video as part of our presentation to show our classmates what Place-Based Learning can look like.