Place-based Learning

Place-based learning grounds learning in the places around us, both natural and built by humans.

We gathered a few resources that might support you and colleagues in thinking about place-based writing and learning in the context of Write Out and beyond. We also know you might have your own resources to recommend; please add suggestions and comments below.

Start by being inspired by Words on Fire: Fire Island Wilderness Poetry Slam.

Place-Based Learning: Using Your Location as a Classroom via Edutopia, 2015 By taking down the walls of their school and bringing learning into the community around them, Crellin makes education meaningful and magical for their students.

Trailer: Place-based Learning Inspiration – Classrooms to Communities from Kootenay-Boundary Environmental Education, 2017 The Place-Based Education Exemplars Video Series highlights innovative practices from across the region in order to inspire more teachers to incorporate environmental education into their own work. The video series explores the teaching practice and pedagogy of teachers who support

Place-Based Art Education by EART, 2018

The Best of Both Worlds: A Critical Pedagogy of Place by David Gruenewald (2003). This article talks about the importance of taking a critical stance in relationship to place-based learning.

Place Based Education Excerpt by David Sobel (2004). “Place-based education is taking root in urban and rural, northern and southern, well-to-do and rough-around-the-edges schools and communities across the country.”

What is Place-based Education: Promise of Place Website A website of the Center for Place-based Learning and Community Engagement in New Hampshire, this resource has definitions and resources.

The Benefits of Place-Based Education: A Report from the Place-Based Education Evaluation Collaborative. This report, written by the Place-Based Education Evaluation Collaborative (PEEC) synthesizes research on the benefits of Place-Based Education.

Nebraska Writing Project Position Statement on Place-Based Education (2012). This position statement on place-based education provides a helpful overview of Place-Based Education.

Place-Based Poetry, Modeling One Revision at a Time (2005). With the goal of helping her students create free-form poetry that engages “the part of their brains that allows them to crawl into deep recesses of memory, shake hidden treasures awake, and write from their souls,” Ann Gardner illustrates each step of the writing process she introduces to her students. Sharing a close look at student writing, she juxtaposes specific revisions made by one student from the Navajo reservation with those created through her modeling with the class.

Learning to Make Choices for the Future: Connecting Public Lands, Schools, and Communities through Place-based Learning and Civic Engagement (2008). This manual from PEEC merges concepts of Place-based Learning and education for civic engagement. It provides both definitions of the terms and resources for enacting these types of learning both in and out of the classroom.