What is Place Based Learning?
Place Based Learning is project based learning with an emphasis on asking students to think creatively about how to make their community a better place. It is grounded in the unique environmental, cultural, sociopolitical, economic and historical context of the community. Place Based Learning links content and learning to the values and cultures represented in the community. Learning and student work is aligned with community needs and interests. Teachers and students collaborate with community members, organizations and businesses to solve issues and create plans and products that make a difference in their community.
Teachers align projects with content standards while emphasizing depth of understanding over content coverage, comprehension of concepts and principles rather than knowledge of facts; and the development of complex problem-solving and life skills rather than learning building block skills in isolation. Place Based Learning encompasses facets of the local community and intersects many learning disciplines, providing multiple paths for mastery of content standards and life skills. Each project culminates with a community product (service, action, solution). Place Based Learning engages students, gives them a voice and connects learning to the real world.
For schools serving culturally diverse students, culturally embedded Place Based Learning provides the vehicle for building leadership, critical thinking, creativity, communication and social entrepreneurship skills. By engaging students in authentic projects nested in a real world context, students connect with their cultural traditions to make a difference in their community and leave their mark on the world.
The power of place shapes students thoughts, feelings, values and actions; it makes them who they are and plays a critical role in what they may become. Place Based Learning is grounded in the power of place and creates in students a sense of connectedness to the community. It empowers students to make their community and the world a better place.
Teachers align projects with content standards while emphasizing depth of understanding over content coverage, comprehension of concepts and principles rather than knowledge of facts; and the development of complex problem-solving and life skills rather than learning building block skills in isolation. Place Based Learning encompasses facets of the local community and intersects many learning disciplines, providing multiple paths for mastery of content standards and life skills. Each project culminates with a community product (service, action, solution). Place Based Learning engages students, gives them a voice and connects learning to the real world.
For schools serving culturally diverse students, culturally embedded Place Based Learning provides the vehicle for building leadership, critical thinking, creativity, communication and social entrepreneurship skills. By engaging students in authentic projects nested in a real world context, students connect with their cultural traditions to make a difference in their community and leave their mark on the world.
The power of place shapes students thoughts, feelings, values and actions; it makes them who they are and plays a critical role in what they may become. Place Based Learning is grounded in the power of place and creates in students a sense of connectedness to the community. It empowers students to make their community and the world a better place.
Place Based Learning is rigorous, relevant and builds relationships.
Rigor...is the capacity to understand content and ideas that are complex, ambiguous, and provocative and lead to an attainable, and satisfying conclusion in the work produced. The work is substantial, taps into students’ prior knowledge, and requires meta-cognitive growth through an endeavor that is personally or emotionally challenging. A rigorously designed project takes students beyond where they would otherwise go.
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Relevance...weaves in the background knowledge (both cultural and personal) and experience of students with the content, material and the cultural values of the community. A relevant learning environment has elements of trust, ownership, urgency, and authenticity, and addresses the basic needs of all its members.
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Relationships...are collaborative, safe, nonviolent, nonjudgmental, and equitable. The culture of relationship building is formed through time, common understandings, democratic practices and the appreciation of multiple perspectives where every student, teacher’s and community members voice is valued. This can only occur when differences are valued, traditional ways of knowing and languages are respected, and there is a willingness to sacrifice, push one another, and compromise.
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Place Based Design Principles
Place Based Design Principles
Ways of Knowing: Unlike a curriculum or textbook, Ways of Knowing encompasses much more. CCSS and NGSS demand a new way of teaching and learning, requiring students to think critically, problem-solve and collaborate. Place Based Learning asks us to bridge Indigenous/cultural and Western ways of knowing.
Authentic Community Partnerships: Place Based Learning is about community partnerships in which students learn, collaborate, problem-solve and receive feedback from experts, mentors, elders and organizations within their community or region.
Culturally Embedded: The power of place is most illustrated by the culture(s) represented in that place. Ask yourself, “Who are your students?” “Where is your community and what cultures are represented?” “Whose voice may not be at the table?” Culturally embedded Place Based Learning is multidimensional, inter-generational and is built on relationships. It asks us to build a classroom or school climate that honors the beliefs and values of cultures represented in the community. It leverages the cultural ways of knowing represented in the community.
Purpose Driven Inquiry: This is one of the biggest shifts PBL asks us to make in our practice. We shift our focus from coverage of content to uncovering knowledge, skills, processes, information and perspectives. Inquiry is student driven. It goes beyond research and includes interviewing, consulting experts and conducting surveys, field studies and focus groups, and data collection.
Feedback, Revision and Reflection: Place Based Learning asks students to create authentic, high quality work that is meaningful to the community. High quality work requires the practices of revision and reflection around the work students are creating and producing.
Student Ownership: Place Based Learning empowers students by giving them a voice in the work they produce. It creates ownership and pride in the process and creation of a meaningful product. It scaffolds the skills for being a change agent in the community and the world.
Community Product: Place Based Learning asks students to create a product to demonstrate understanding of the content, and community issue or need. It might be an action such as an awareness campaign; a solution and action plan to a problem facing the community, or a service to the community to address a real need.
Authentic Community Partnerships: Place Based Learning is about community partnerships in which students learn, collaborate, problem-solve and receive feedback from experts, mentors, elders and organizations within their community or region.
Culturally Embedded: The power of place is most illustrated by the culture(s) represented in that place. Ask yourself, “Who are your students?” “Where is your community and what cultures are represented?” “Whose voice may not be at the table?” Culturally embedded Place Based Learning is multidimensional, inter-generational and is built on relationships. It asks us to build a classroom or school climate that honors the beliefs and values of cultures represented in the community. It leverages the cultural ways of knowing represented in the community.
Purpose Driven Inquiry: This is one of the biggest shifts PBL asks us to make in our practice. We shift our focus from coverage of content to uncovering knowledge, skills, processes, information and perspectives. Inquiry is student driven. It goes beyond research and includes interviewing, consulting experts and conducting surveys, field studies and focus groups, and data collection.
Feedback, Revision and Reflection: Place Based Learning asks students to create authentic, high quality work that is meaningful to the community. High quality work requires the practices of revision and reflection around the work students are creating and producing.
Student Ownership: Place Based Learning empowers students by giving them a voice in the work they produce. It creates ownership and pride in the process and creation of a meaningful product. It scaffolds the skills for being a change agent in the community and the world.
Community Product: Place Based Learning asks students to create a product to demonstrate understanding of the content, and community issue or need. It might be an action such as an awareness campaign; a solution and action plan to a problem facing the community, or a service to the community to address a real need.