"Starting Where You Are": Preservice Teachers' Exploration of Place-Based Education

• In Event: Roundtable Session 23
  In Roundtable Session: Experimenting With Student Engagement, Responsibility, and Service to Place

Abstract

Place-based education (PBE) grounds teaching and learning in students’ local environment. While scholars and advocates attach many potential promises to PBE, little is known about how and why teachers use it in their classrooms. This paper uses Gruenewald’s (2003b) multi-disciplinary framework for place-conscious education to analyze an exploratory case study of six pre-service teachers’ conceptualization and implementation of PBE. While data indicate that pre-service teachers were enthusiastic about PBE and reported high levels of student engagement, their understandings of PBE were one-dimensional. With one exception, pre-service teachers embodied only the ecological dimension of place and failed to incorporate the critical analysis demanded by the sociological, ideological, and political dimensions. Implications of this study for future research on PBE are discussed.

Author

• Kristin Sinclair, University of Maryland - College Park