What Is Place-Based Education?

Place-based education is one of the primary approaches that the PLACE Program uses to engage local teachers, students, and sometimes the students’ parents in explorations of their landscape. Since the 1990’s, place-based education (also referred to as “Place-Based Learning”) has emerged as a distinct entity from the related fields of outdoor education and environmental education. At least in part, place-based education may have developed as a response to the call to arms for educational change issued by Oberlin environmental studies professor David Orr in 1994. Orr argued that most of our current educational systems and pedagogical techniques are shaped by “the drive to extend human domination to its fullest,” and to “attempt to reshape the planet to our infinite wants” (Earth In Mind: On Education, Environment, and the Human Prospect, 1994). He felt that students were essentially being narrowly educated to operate efficiently in a world that increasingly values technological savvy, specialization, and conspicuous consumption, when instead they should be educated to live and work sustainably in their own communities with an integrated understanding of the natural and cultural elements that support them.

A direct benefit of using Place-Based Education methods in local schools is getting students outdoors, into nature. A growing body of research, in line with Orr’s thinking, links our mental, physical, and spiritual health directly to our association with nature—in positive ways, according to author Richard Louv. In his book, Last Child in the Woods, Louv coined the phrase “nature-deficit disorder”, and with it launched a national movement to get children outdoors, both for their health, and the health of the planet.

According to place-based educator and teacher trainer David Sobel,

The PLACE Program believes that the process of analyzing and interpreting the local landscape presents tremendous opportunities for engaging a variety of individuals and organizations in the community. Because human beings–no matter what their age or background–have an inherent interest in their surroundings, there is little problem finding a motivated audience of learners. One of the strengths of place-based education, however, is that the learning need not be passive or one-way. There are ample opportunities for community members, be they elementary school students or town elders, to actively participate in discovering and sharing information about the landscape. In place-based education, the boundary between teacher and student can become quite blurry. Everyone learns and everyone has something to share, and information is flowing in all directions. Place-based education also has the potential to transcend ownership boundaries and political differences, because the focus is on celebrating the landscape as our common ground.

More information about place-based education can be found at the Promise of Place Website.