The purpose of this paper is to establish clarity of the definitions in the field by analyzing three cases of place-based education through the lens of the following educational philosophies: essentialism, progressivism, and social reconstructionism. The goal of this paper is to create a distinct definition between place-based education and other models to reduce confusion in the literature and strengthen the use of place-based education as it benefits both students and the surrounding community. By clearly defining place-based education from other models, the pedagogy can be implemented and studied using a succinct set of parameters, creating cohesion in the field. Additionally, the strengthening and adoption of a universal definition aids in teacher professional development and education by reducing barriers to entry that result from discipline-specific training.
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A case study of place-based education in practice using philosophical perspectives
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place-based education
educational philosophy
rural education
STEM
pedagogy
To solidify academic content, most K-12 educational curricula include utilizing theoretical examples, often in the form of detached or vague case studies that are devoid of student local culture and contexts (Beach et al. 2019). In fact, a majority of national curricula tends to be urban centered, often excluding rural students and contexts (Aberg-Bengtsson 2009), creating a metrocentric bias for instruction (Beach et al. 2019). Despite many students living in rural communities, national curriculum and state standards largely utilize urban or metrocentric examples, washing it of any cultural or community context (Azano et al., 2020). The conundrum is that it creates cognitive dissonance between students’ contextual knowledge and the new knowledge being presented in the classroom. More specifically, there is little to no connection between the rural student’s daily context and the sweeping urban examples provided in the curriculum. Therefore, to bridge this cognitive gap, educators may use contexts much closer to the students’ “place” or home and community.
A place is what people make it. Individual connections and attachments are what makes a place, which means that by using place, each person makes their own meaning as they have their own attachments and values in a “place”. For all student learning, the idea of “place” is important as it is a means to contextualize abstract content. Human attachment to a place is often built on meaningful experiences, which not only helps us understand ourselves as people (Azano et al. 2020) but also how we are connected to the world (Smith and Sobel 2010). By connecting classroom content to place, students are able to see and make meaning, connecting content to the context of a place meaningful to them (Emekauwa and Williams 2004). Rather than using nature or environment, place encompasses the local ecologies and the anthropological aspects of location like communities and their histories (Wattchow and Brown 2011). Place-based education “can (and must) be adapted to authentically represent individual communities” (Lowenstein et al. 2018, p.36), resulting in instruction that is focused contextually on the students rather than a metrocentric, blank slate example.
Place-based pedagogies
Within K-12 education there are a vast number of instructional models, typically lumped together with the catch-all term of “place-based education”. This creates confusion as not all models that use place are place-based education. These place-based instructional methods each hold their own definition and characteristics that differ from place-based education. To better understand this confusion the authors, use a soup metaphor. If we think of these instructional strategies as a soup, each variation adds their own ingredient or flavor creating a new, but divergent model. By adding or taking away “ingredients”, the characteristics and goals of the pedagogy are differentiated but still retain the primary base - creating context through place. To continue with the soup metaphor, the models could be divided into two categories; 1) models with a broth, where you can clearly see each of the components and how they create context, and 2) those that are of a cream base, those that are more cloudy at first, each component may not be identified at first glance but are fully integrated in the final product.
To continue our discussion, broth models tend to focus on the environment, more specifically the natural environment as a place. The most common model of this variety is “place-based learning” where learning is occurring in a specific location (Sobel 2004). Field trips are a great example of place-based learning, where students are physically traveling to another location and learning from knowledgeable others at the location (Vander Ark 2020). Other models use specific aspects of the environment such as land-based learning (McKim 2019) or environment as an integrating context (EIC) (Lieberman and Hoody 1998) where environmental aspects of place are being used like the soil or the forest. The focus is primarily on environmental ecosystems and natural elements like water systems or animal predation where the concept “place” is geographically unique and specific.
In contrast, cream-based models have a heavier focus on place as a holistic idea including not only the environment, but human-factors like culture, power, and privilege. Models like place-conscious education (Gruenwald 2003) and critical pedagogy of place (Azano et al. 2020), feature human concepts (Smith 2008) like considerations of power and privilege (Azano et al. 2020). For example, students are tasked with interviewing their grandparents or an elderly person about their work histories. Students then study how work has changed in the community over the past 50 years. Students then imagine themselves in 10 years and what kind of work they could do in the community and what “dream job” they would like to have and how to change communities to create opportunities for future jobs. This activity is contextualized in the community, and a discussion focuses on who had privilege to get a “good” job in the past (from a historical perspective) and who might have privilege to get a “good” job in their community now, and 10 years from now.
While these models can be distinctly separated into two sub-categories, they are all still members of the broader “soup” or place-based taxonomy. The task lies in distinguishing their important nuances as they are often just referred to as “place-based education”. In this article, we focus on just one ingredient of the soup, the “base” of the soup–using place as context, in an attempt to bring clarity to the field and determine what is and what is not place-based education.
Smith (2016) highlights the definitional confusion referring to the numerous place-based experiences that were being introduced into local areas, but each author coined their model with a different term. Gruenewald (2003) coined working with community ‘reinhabitation’ and decolonization place-conscious education, as his model has strong critical theory backing. Sobel (2004) used place-based education, which emphasized using the local community and natural spaces to teach traditional classroom content. Lieberman and Hoody’s (1998) called their approach Environment as an Integrating Context as they used the local environment to contextualize classroom content. Despite Smith’s (2016) observations in the various models and terminology used, Smith introduced place-based education and used place- and community-based education as synonyms in the same sentence. This causes further confusion by not defining and upholding one term and definition, inferring that the terms for place-based pedagogies can be used interchangeably.
The purpose of the manuscript has three main objectives:
1. Provide a synopsis of place-based education,
2. Describe the complexity of the term, and
3. Analyze place-based education cases to provide a rationale as to why the complexity is so intense, through utilizing educational philosophical foundations.
Place-based education philosophy
As place-based education is a mixed soup entailing different terms, definitions, and characteristics, it is difficult to solely base comparison of implementation on the term “place-based education”. Unlike other pedagogies, place-based education does not have its own theoretical foundation, rather it shares practices and purposes from experiential learning, problem-based learning, outdoor education, indigenous education, environmental and ecological education, and several others. These approaches share the value of learning from specific places, communities, or regions as the educational context (Wattchow and Brown 2011). In other words, the confusion of place-based education runs deeper than just vocabulary and terminology but can be rooted back to lack of its theoretical foundations (Gruenwald 2003). Rather than comparing the models based on definitions or terminology, a more effective way for comparison would be to analyze examples through foundational philosophies of education.
Educators use philosophies as a lens to apply their craft, therefore, analyzing place-based education practices through these philosophical lenses will help further clarify the distinctions beyond the dialectical soup. In the next section, we will examine place-based education using three foundational educational philosophies, essentialism, progressivism, and social reconstructionism.
Philosophical perspectives
Educational philosophies are a set of beliefs and core values focusing on the purpose and objectives of educational planning, curriculum, and processes (Bengtsson 1993); philosophy drives how a teacher practices (Styres 2011). Each teacher holds their own set of philosophies, typically stemming from established philosophies in the field. We can utilize these field philosophies as a lens to further clarify the confusion and assumptions of place-based instruction. For example, within the field, the same lesson or topic may be instructed in vastly different ways depending on the instructor. If the instructor aligns with a teacher-centered philosophy, like essentialism, they will implement vastly different instructional techniques as compared to an instructor who aligns with a more student-centered philosophy, like progressivism. Due to their foundational importance within the field, essentialism, progressivism, and social reconstructivism were selected as the three key philosophical lenses, key characteristics and definitions are provided as framing for the analysis.
Essentialism. Essentialism pulls from the concepts of realism and idealism and attempts to bring education back to its most essential form as a response to the perceived decline in intellectual rigor and moral standards seen in the 1930’s (Perez 2022). Rather than learning skills through inquiry or exploration, skills are learned through traditional subjects like math, science, and language arts. Learning is conducted through lecture or the textbook, and centers around a core of information. As it is teacher-centered, there are limited opportunities for student exploration beyond the scope of the textbook.
Progressivism. In contrast to essentialism, progressivism is student-centered, using the human experience as the basis for knowledge rather than the authority like a textbook or “the sage on the stage” (Perez 2020). Rather than traditional learning aspects like lectures and textbook readings as the basis for education, focusing on the human experience opens the door to student-centered instruction and individualized ideas. Key characteristics of progressivism include collaborative learning environments and real-world problem solving. Students are engaged in the learning process and are connecting to the material through examples that are meaningful to their background and interests.
Social reconstructivism. Social resconstructivism is an educational philosophy that focuses on reconstructing society, stemming from the idea that schools and educational institutions were not adequately addressing social issues like poverty, war, or equality. Like progressivism, social reconstructivism is a student-centered philosophy but has a heavier focus on engaging students with first-hand experience through service-learning or engagement in the community to study societal problems.
To operationalize the philosophies, Table 2 provides examples of instruction of the philosophical perspective of essentialism, progressivism, and social reconstructivism. Additionally, the table provides an example from a place-based educational perspective for each philosophy.
| Instructional Philosophies | Essentialism– | Progressivism– | Social Reconstructivism– |
|---|---|---|---|
| Philosophical Perspective | Students are given a series of chapters to read from an assigned book and take notes during a lecture on historic farming practices of common historic crops. | Students are tasked with determining how many calories are in their favorite snack foods by designing experiments and testing their hypotheses. | Students are tasked with researching impoverished areas of their community and create a food drive to address the societal problem. |
| Place-Based Education Perspective | Students are given a local example for comparison of history lesson, for example, typical meals family ate during the 1800’s using local food. | Students engage in determining calories in food by designing and testing their hypotheses. The food could be culturally relevant food, food from the cafeteria, or food from a nearby producer. | Students research the food security in their area and develop ways to address the problem. Students might discuss food deserts or community gardens and meet with individuals in the community who are combating food insecurity. |
To further exemplify how educational philosophies are implemented from the perspective of place-based education, the following cases will be examined through the three identified philosophical lenses. For the purpose of this article, the authors operationally define place-based education as learner-centered instruction that integrates interdisciplinary concepts and involves or takes place in the local community and/or natural environment. The following cases are examples of place-based education carried out in three distinct ways.
In order to examine place-based education through the lens of the different philosophical perspectives, three case studies are presented. Each case represents place-based education through an essentialist, progressivist, or social reconstructivist perspective.
Case setting
The three cases are all from the same place, a city in a midwestern state. The city is located along the banks of a large river with tall trees and sandy shores. The area was once home to a sub-tribe of Miami people called the Waayaahtanwa, often called the Wea for short. Once French settlers arrived, their settlement Waayaahtanonki (meaning ‘place of the whirlpool’) was changed to Ouiatenon, a French interpretation of the Wea name. To this day, the ancestral home of the Wea people remains to be known under the French interpretation, rather than the name the Waayaahtanwa people gave it. In addition to the erasure of the name given to the land, the Wea people have also been erased from the land. The current land boasts a downtown area with small business and large corporate chains interspersed throughout and is home to a larger university.
The case studies feature K-12 educators in the same school district, implementing place-based projects and investigations. The three cases were selected to demonstrate how different educational philosophies can drive the implementation of place-based education in various ways, despite having the same geographical location and academic discipline.
Case 1
(middle school 6–8). As the school district was reaching a major milestone, their 150th anniversary, social studies teacher Ms. Year decided to try a new way to engage her students in learning about history. She created a series of lessons that focused on the local geography, culture, history, and economy. The students were tasked with creating a museum in an empty room in their school to celebrate as the school building is one of the most historic in their community. The project began with Mr. Wall’s history class creating a timeline, where key events in the area were researched and was deepened by having students explore their community through the use of photos. For example, one group of students received a black and white photo of a bank that was in the city center and soon discovered that the bank no longer existed, and a coffee shop stood in its place.
In Mrs. Rock’s earth science class, students explored the geographical history of the land development that their community is situated on through the creation of models. In Mr. Field’s math class, students explored the land by calculating and visualizing an acre in their schoolyard. The students calculated how the schoolyard has changed overtime and calculated percentages of how the space is being used, i.e., was it open field, playground equipment, or sports fields.
Living history: analysis of case 1. In the first case, Ms. Year wanted to engage her students in the historic event of the 150th anniversary of the school district by creating a museum in an unused room in the school. To do this, Mr. Wall’s students create a timeline of events in their town, as well as compare images to the town from years ago to current times to see what had changed. Mrs. Rock’s class examined geographic principles using the local landscape and Mr. Field’s class used the school yard to visualize an acre. While these examples engage students in a local place as a context, there is a very shallow amount of integration when it comes to place-based education. The examples align with the essentialism lens, as students are using the local city as a context, but do not take a deep dive into how the changes occurred, who was in charge, when changes were being made, or even negative consequences of the changes. Instead, students just simply observed, whether change occurred, and if yes, described the change. For example, one of the archival photos showed a bank on a street corner. Students observed that there is no longer a bank in that building but a cafe shop in its place. There was no further investigation into what happened to the bank, when it closed, if it was anything else beforehand. Moreover, while it is meaningful for students to see how their community or landscape has changed over time, it serves as a superficial example as place-based education. Students are not solving problems, or engaging in inquiry-based learning, therefore, we can determine that this example is from an philosophically essentialist point of view.
Case 2
(elementary school K-5). At another local school, students looked at their place through an ecological lens and explored their schoolyard and nearby river. Mrs. Deer first introduced her students to the local wildlife by exploring habitats, biomes, and having students design scent stations to attract animals. Using cotton balls and various scents, students set up stations and watched visitors who stopped by through the use of a trail camera. Once a week, students reviewed the footage and identified their fauna friends. Throughout the year, students began to question why animals they initially saw were no longer there, sparking discussions around migratory habits and hibernation. In Ms. Fish’s class, students explored the local stream and conducted both chemical studies of the stream and biological studies to determine the health status of the stream. This allowed them to explore concepts related to chemistry, erosion, and runoff, all while using the natural, local environment. After quality testing, students worked with a local partner to raise trout from eggs. To mimic the local environment, the tanks in the classroom were monitored in a similar way, adjusting when necessary to match the natural habitat. Students raised and cared for the trout from eggs, all the way until release day, where students released them into the steam, supplementing the current population.
Local wildlife: analysis of case 2. In the second case, Mrs. Deer’s classroom examined local wildlife in their school yard. Her students first explore biomes, how scents attract animals, and principles like hibernation. Her students selected which scents they felt would best attract animals and set up scent stations with cameras to monitor who came to their stations. Once a week, the students identified the animals and tracked when their visitors came and for how long. A few doors down in Ms. Fish’s room, students explored wildlife in another way, by analyzing water quality and raising trout to replenish the nearby stream. The teachers from this case align with a progressive philosophical lens as learner-centered instruction and student choice is at the forefront. In contrast to the previous case, students are exploring and making decisions based on their hypotheses and learning by doing. Students are not only setting up a scent station to see what animals are in their schoolyard, but making the decisions about what scents they think will best attract wildlife. They are designing where the scents will be placed and what animals they predict will come based on the biome they are located in. Similarly, in Ms. Fish’s class, the students are conducting chemical water tests and matching the environment of their classroom fish tanks to that of the nearby stream. The students are replicating the habitat based on scientific exploration they conducted. Students also monitor and care for the fish, track growth and behavior, and will eventually release them into the stream. Additionally, students worked with a local Trout Unlimited chapter to obtain the trout eggs to be raised, emphasizing community connections and local knowledge. Based on the student-centered nature of this case, we determine that the teachers are employing place-based education through a progressive philosophical lens.
Case 3
(high school 9–12). At a nearby high school, students took the lead in exploring the local water way, a major aspect of the community. Students were tasked with designing their own exploration of the Wabash River. Some students took a biological focus assessing how runoff affects water quality and aquatic wildlife, others took a historical approach looking at how the river and city has evolved and changed over time, another used a political science approach exploring water rights and sustainability, and a pair of students planned an event for all students to share their findings with the community and public stakeholders. The students worked on projects toward a similar goal but were able to implement their own ideas and infuse their passions into the project. The teachers, Mrs. Sand and Mr. River emphasized student choice and exploration in an interdisciplinary nature as it reflects real-world problem solving.
River water: analysis of case 3. The third case demonstrates place-based education from a social reconstructivism lens. Students selected and carried out projects related to a prominent water source in their town. They explored social issues like the encroachment of the community onto the riverbank, water rights, and sustainability. Other students focused on water health and quality by examining the chemical composition of water and how fertilizer run-off has affected it. Another group created an event for the students to present their work to the public and community stakeholders. Each student group was able to select a topic that interested them and carry it out in the best way they saw fit. The teachers, Mrs. Sand & Mr. River acted as facilitators, helping students as needed but ultimately turned over the reins to the students. As there is a heavy emphasis in inquiry-based learning and social justice with topics like water rights and sustainability, this case extends beyond just the learner centered teaching of progressivism and reaches into social reconstructionism. The students are concerned with the causes and effects of pollution, who has access to the water, and historical elements like indigenous rights and knowledge.
The three cases represent how place-based education can be implemented in the same community, using the same natural formation, in vastly different ways–various age levels, a variety of topics ranging from chemistry to geology, to math, and even political science can be encompassed around the same topic.
Place-based education should incorporate the local community and environment in a meaningful way, whether it be to solve a problem or to bring forth a positive change, the inclusion of place should be more than a backdrop. It should also emphasize real-world skill development and application of knowledge in inquiry-based situations. This might look like developing a community garden or plot to grow culturally significant foods. This would not only increase access but allow students to make a positive impact in their community. Students should be leaders in most aspects of the project, they should feel a sense of ownership and value their own efforts. The project applies to several key content areas like math and science by developing the plots, communications, and social studies through surveying the community on what vegetables are in highest demand, and even topics like business through marketing and advertising where to obtain the fresh grown vegetables. Place-based education from this perspective helps students solve not just real-world problems, but problems that affect their neighbors, friends, family, and community members.
In the practice of place-based education, the environment, both natural and man-made, offers complex problems and is rich with opportunities for engagement. As described by the three cases, despite the cases taking place in the same location geographically, there was divergence in the execution. Some teachers focused on using place as a context only, while others considered social aspects. The teachers used the same term or definition of place-based education, but each case had varying characteristics, focuses, and goals.
Definitions of place-based education are plentiful, creating a tangled mess of vernacular. This leads to large variations in implementation based on which definition is being used. By analyzing three examples that use place-based education through philosophical lenses, we can begin to clearly see how the practice has been used in vastly different ways. The analysis breaks down each example into their most basic elements to clearly demonstrate how the variety of definitions has caused confusion. For some, place-based education must take place in another location, to others, it can be in the classroom. In addition to location, there were a variety of ways students engaged in learning whether it was through inquiry-based learning and problem-solving, the ability to choose projects and topics, or interacting with field experts. Implementations do not need to be identical but should have similar foundational elements in order to create consistency in the field. This paper aims to begin to clarify place-based education as a distinct educational model rather than a catch-all term for pedagogies that incorporate place.
In order for educators to adopt place-based education as a practice, there must be clear definitions and characteristics. Without field agreement on a definition, there will continue to be confusion on what is and what is not place-based education. Additionally, using place-based education as a catch-all term rather than a distinct pedagogy further complicates matters of what is and what is not place-based education. This applies to both formal and non-formal educators, as well as teacher educators, without consensus on defining characteristics place-based education will be unable to grow and extend, limiting its reach and stiffening its potential impact.
From a curriculum development standpoint, using place-based education and other place centric models is vital as the current curriculum is sterile, devoid of cultural examples that creates meaning and connection to students on an individual level. The metrocentric nature of the current curriculum limits student connections on a cultural and personal level unless they are within the urban areas in which the curriculum is designed from. Students from rural areas face different challenges than those in urban and suburban areas such as higher rates of poverty, limited access to internet and mental health care, and lower rates of college enrollment following high school (USDA 2022). In contrast, rural schools tend to have higher rates of teacher retention which suits place-based education as there is a stronger community network. Students may be familiar with teachers through their older siblings or extracurricular activities, or they may be familiar with them outside of a school context–for example, church or groups like Girl Scouts. As students have a stronger connection to their teachers and community, using place-based education reinforces the need to reinvest into the community rather than taking knowledge and skills out of the community and into more urban areas.
Lastly, from a research perspective, having solidified examples and cohesion in the field will lead to further developments in the efficacy and implementation of place-based education. Currently, there is a lack of quantitative tools for measuring effectiveness of place-based educational programs, without consensus, establishment of such tools is difficult or near impossible. Not only is the implementation of place-based education important but ensuring that these programs are of a high quality to further the field and student and community impact.
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No competing interests reported.