Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Place Based Learning
Place Based Learning
Edited by
David A. Gruenewald
Gregory A. Smith
Psychology Press is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
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LC239.P527 2007
370.11'5--dc22 2007014374
CONTENTS
Preface vii
Contributor List xi
Introduction: Making Room for the Local xiii
David A. Gruenewald and Gregory A. Smith
vi CONTENTS
The idea for this book emerged in an unusual place: the basement of
the public library in Hermiston, Oregon. Both of us drove 3 hours to
meet there one January morning, David from Pullman, Washington, and
Greg from Portland. David would have been deterred by snow and post-
poned this meeting if Greg had left a little later, but absent the chance of
getting through to him by phone, David crossed the wintry Palouse west
to Walla Walla, and then drove down into the Columbia Gorge. After
meeting the spring before in Chicago at the 2003 American Educational
Research Association Annual Meeting, we had decided that more con-
versations, if not some joint project, were in order.
In our work as teachers and researchers, we have long been con-
cerned about the division between environmental educators and those
who direct their attention to matters of social justice and equity. We are
convinced that human welfare will depend on the ability to reconcile
these two domains in the coming decades, yet the impacts of industrial
activities, human numbers, and consumption are rarely acknowledged
by educational researchers or faculty members in schools of education.
We hoped that a book that conjoined the human and the more-than-
human worlds might stimulate some needed dialogue.
Our previous work on place-based education (see Preface references)
and the larger tensions between environment, culture, and education
gave us a framework for this dialogue. For about 10 years, place-based
education has been developing as a significant educational movement,
and many of the major figures in this movement tell their stories in this
book. Along with others working the terrain between environment and
culture, we suggest that reversing a slide into social and environmental
degradation will require a heightened awareness of place. Sometimes
vii
viii PREFACE
REFERENCES
Gruenewald, D. (2003a). The best of both worlds: A critical pedagogy of
place. Educational Researcher, 32(4), 3–12.
Gruenewald, D. (2003b). Foundations of place: A multidisciplinary frame-
work for place-conscious education. American Educational Research Journal,
40(3), 619–654.
Gruenewald, D. (2005). Accountability and collaboration: Institutional bar-
riers and strategic pathways for place-based education. Ethics, Place and Envi-
ronment: A Journal of Philosophy and Geography, 8(3), 261–283.
Smith, G. (1998). Rooting children in place. Encounter, 11(4), 13–24.
Smith, G. (2002). Going local. Educational Leadership, 60(1), 30–33.
Smith, G. (2002). Place-based education: Learning to be where we are. Phi
Delta Kappan, 83, 584–594.
PREFACE ix
xi
David Sobel
Department of Education
Antioch New England Graduate
School
Keene, NH
xiii
xiv INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION xv
xvi INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION xvii
xviii INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION xix
xx INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION xxi
xxii INTRODUCTION
REFERENCES
Bowers, C. A. (2000). Let them eat data: How computers affect education,
cultural diversity, and the prospects of ecological sustainability. Athens: Uni-
versity of Georgia Press.
Bowers, C. A. (2005). Revitalizing the commons; Cultural and educational
sites of resistance and affi rmation. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.
Esteva, G., & Prakash, M. (1998). Grassroots postmodernism. London:
Zed Books.
Friedman, T. (2005). The world is fl at: A brief history of the twenty-fi rst
century. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.
Hynes, M. (2003). Revitalizing economics around Cobscook Bay. Washing-
ton, DC: Rural School and Community Trust.
Jackson, W. (1994). Becoming native to a place. Lexington: University of
Kentucky Press.
Korten, D. (2001). When corporations rule the world. San Francisco: Ber-
rett-Koehler Publishers; Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press.
Mander, J., & Goldsmith, E. (Eds.). (1996). The case against the global
economy: And for a turn toward the local. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.
National Commission on Excellence in Education. (1983). A nation at risk:
The imperative for educational reform. A report to the nation and the Secretary
of Education. United States Department of Education. Washington, DC: The
Commission.
Orr, D. (1992). Ecological literacy: Education and the transition to a post-
modern world. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Shuman, M. (1998). Going local: Creating self-reliant communities in a
global era. New York: Free Press.
Suzuki, D., & Dressel, H. (2002). Good news for a change. Toronto: Stoddart.
INTRODUCTION xxiii
Clifford E. Knapp
INTRODUCTION
I fi rst started to think about the power of a place-based pedagogy in
the early 1970s when I heard artist Alan Gussow speak about “a sense
of place” at an outdoor education conference in New York. When he
referred to “place” as a piece of the environment claimed by feelings, I
understood why this idea captured my attention. Having grown up in a
New Jersey suburb across the river from New York City in the 1940s and
1950s, I recalled the pleasant memories of exploring the vacant wood-
lots and blackberry fields near home and fishing in the nearby waters
(Knapp, 1999). A summer camp counselor job while in college was my
introduction to teaching others about nature and human nature in places
I then considered to be wilderness. I later pursued a career in outdoor
and environmental education and taught at the elementary, junior and
senior high, and university levels for over 40 years. My positive feelings
about outdoor places were claimed early in life by my surroundings,
including the people in them, and eventually I earned a living by “taking
people for walks in the woods and fields.”
6 CLIFFORD E. KNAPP
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18 CLIFFORD E. KNAPP
Foxfire
The most succinct description of Foxfi re appeared in a recent book by
Hatton (2005):
Foxfi re is a not-for-profit, educational, and literary organiza-
tion based in Rabun County, Georgia. Foxfi re’s learner-centered,
community-based educational approach is advocated through
both a regional demonstration site grounded in Southern Appala-
chian culture that gave rise to Foxfi re, and a national program of
teacher training and support that promotes a sense of place and
20 CLIFFORD E. KNAPP
22 CLIFFORD E. KNAPP
24 CLIFFORD E. KNAPP
REFERENCES
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planning a learning expedition. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt.
Danker, A. C. (2005). Multicultural social studies: Using local history in the
classroom. New York: Teachers College Press.
Expeditionary Learning. Who we are: Our principles, practices and schools.
Retrieved March 25, 2005 at http://www.elob.org/design/who.html
Gruenewald, D. A. (2003). The best of both worlds: A critical pedagogy of
place. Educational Researcher, 32(4), 3–12.
Gussow, A. (1974). A sense of place. New York: Seabury Press.
Hatton, S. D. (2005). Teaching by heart: The Foxfi re interviews. New York:
Teachers College Press.
26 CLIFFORD E. KNAPP
Preface
global era. New York: Free Press. Suzuki, D., & Dressel, H.
(2002). Good news for a change. Toronto: Stoddart. This
page intentionally left blank
1 CHAPTER 1 Place-Based Curricular and
Pedagogical Models: My Adventures in
Teaching Through Community Contexts
CO: Westview.
4 CHAPTER 4 Youth as Resources in
Revitalizing Communities
from http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~janzb/place/geography.htm.
Ladson-Billings, G. (1995) Toward a theory of culturally
relevant pedagogy.
sizes, dreams. Wall Street Journal, A1. Eyre, E., & Finn,
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how they map the world. New York: Bank Street College of
Education. (Origi
York: Penguin.
AFTERWORD Creating a Movement to Ground
Learning in Place