Place-Based Teacher Education on Ossabaw Island: A Preservice Teacher’s Longitudinal Experiences

• In Event: Georgia Places: Language, Race, and History in Place-Based Georgia Education

Abstract

Ossabaw Island, a barrier island accessible solely by boat, remains shielded from development through a collaborative public-private partnership. The island bears a recorded history with rich narratives from diverse inhabitants including Indigenous Peoples, early colonizers, enslaved Africans, emancipated descendants, camp project members, modern-day researchers, and scientists. We have implemented two immersive site visits—a single-day excursion and a comprehensive weekend retreat—to facilitate pre- and in-service teachers’ exploration of Ossabaw Island’s vibrant historical, cultural, and natural landscapes.
These professional development opportunities focused on inclusive, place-based education (PBE). The Center for Place-Based Learning and Community Engagement (n.d.) has defined PBE as immersing “students in local heritage, cultures, landscapes, opportunities and experiences.” This approach enables teachers to expand their standards-based curricula, instruction, and assessment through “locally situated learning” (Comber, 2013, p. 362) and PBE (Author, 2020a, 2022; Coughlin & Kirch, 2010). By doing so, K-12 students can discover how “their lives [are] rooted in specific regions and communities'' (Brooke, 2015, p. 20). Furthermore, PBE may increase student engagement and academic success (Demarest, 2015; McInerney et al., 2011; Smith, 2002; Sobel, 2004, 2008), particularly inspiring connection between subject areas and stewardship of local places and spaces (Hamilton & Marckini-Polk, 2023). Collaboration among teacher educators (TEs) and pre-service teachers (PSTs) can yield innovations in the development of inclusive, place-based curricular resources (Author, 2020b, 2021). Our research question was: How can immersive site visits provide a PST with longitudinal experiences that she can use to design inclusive, place-based curricula?
Through this single-case design (Yin, 2017), we explored how Melanie (pseudonym), a middle school social studies PST, experienced Ossabaw Island as a site for interdisciplinary learning - connecting historical, cultural, and natural features to curricular topics. Data sources included notes from both immersive site visits, questionnaires, researcher notes, and audio/video recordings to achieve qualitative data triangulation (Merriam, 2009). Identifying themes, we utilized thick description (Mills & Gay, 2019) in analytic memos; then, engaged in holistic, descriptive, and simultaneous coding of data sources (Miles et al., 2020).
Our preliminary findings from this project are: 1) experiencing places first-hand, 2) making connections using sources, and 3) brainstorming ideas for curricula. Related to the first finding, Melanie highlighted the “experience [of] seeing the history while getting the background information.” Related to the second finding, Melanie made connections between sites, an Indigenous shell midden and enslaved tabby houses, and aspects of our state’s social studies curriculum. Related to the third finding, after brainstorming ideas for curricula, Melanie explained that she experienced how “language arts [can be] used [and] how social studies is integrated into the island.” She noted on the post-survey that she realized “the importance of communication and working with other teachers” to develop resources. Overall, Melanie broadened her understanding of PBE, designed inquiry questions and formulated interdisciplinary tasks anchored to sites, while collaborating with TEs. Significant impacts from this work include the development of interdisciplinary place-based curricular resources that improve the accessibility and quality of education in local and state communities.

Authors

• Kathryn Leigh Haughney, Georgia Southern University

• Ariel Cornett, Georgia Southern University

• Amanda Wall, Georgia Southern University

• Cynthia C Massey, Georgia Southern University

• Delandrea Hall, University of North Texas

• Kania Greer, Georgia Southern University