Place-Based Curriculum and Instruction: Outdoor and Environmental Education Approaches. ERIC Digest.

Overview & Synopsis

Place-based education is a relatively new term, but progressive educators have promoted the concept for over 100 years. Place-based education usually includes conventional outdoor education and experiential methodologies as advocated by John Dewey to help students connect with their particular corner of the world. Proponents of place-based education often envision a role for it in achieving local ecological and cultural sustainability. This digest reviews place-based curriculum and instruction, especially as it relates to outdoor and environmental education, and provides examples of K-12 resources and programs. A brief review identifies the purposes of outdoor education, environmental education, and place-based education and the relationships among them, and points out overlapping concepts in the literature: community-oriented schooling, ecological education, bioregional education, ecoliteracy, ecological identity, and pedagogy of place. The essential characteristics of place-based education are that it emerges from the particular attributes of a place, is inherently multidisciplinary and experiential, reflects a philosophy broader than "learn to earn," and connects place with self and community. In contrast to work-oriented goals of schooling, place-based education prepares people to live and work to sustain the places they inhabit and to participate actively in democracy. Thirteen relevant periodicals and books are briefly described. (SV)