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Place-Based Education
An Annotated Bibliography

by Gretchen Kehrberg

Introduction
While place-based education is a relatively new term, the concept of incorporating place and community into teaching has been around for a long time. John Dewey advocated for experiential education in the late 1800s, stating that incorporating place into educational practices had many benefits for students. These benefits included the development of critical thinking skills, the opportunity for students to develop as whole social beings, and a chance for students to connect classroom activities to their own lives (Woodhouse, 2001). The Foxfire program, which continues to offer a place-based education experience, began introducing students to community through cultural journalism in 1966. Through Foxfire, students learn local history and culture through in-depth interviews with community members. These cultural journalism projects offer students the chance to develop awareness and caring for their local community while at the same time developing skills in many disciplinary areas (Gibbs & Howley, 2000).

Today, educators are beginning to revisit the ideas of Dewey and the Foxfire program and many of them are attempting to develop a theoretical foundation for place-based education as well as encourage further research in the field. This has resulted in a wealth of new literature on the topic of place-based education and similar topics such as community-based education and bioregional education.

Many of the articles in this bibliography attempt to define place-based education. This proves to be a useful, but frustrating endeavor. Place-based education is a broad term that not only refers to a method of teaching, but a growing movement to redefine schooling, and a theory about how we should ultimately view education. Therefore, developing one simple definition for this term proves difficult; more often than not the articles reviewed here defined place-based education by its goals and/or practices.

According to Woodhouse and Knapp (2003), place-based education is a major component of the larger goal of achieving local ecological and cultural sustainability. To explain place-based education, Smith (2002b) refers to five characteristics that are often seen as part of its practice: cultural studies, nature studies, real-world problem solving, internships and entrepreneurial opportunities, and induction into community processes. Gibbs and Howley (2000) list similar characteristics and explain that the goal of place-based education "is not to limit students to a small core of knowledge, but instead to root a broadly focused curriculum in the day-to-day lives of a community's children."
We can infer from the articles' attempts to define place-based education that it is more than just a method of teaching. It is an understanding that education inherently takes place in a social, cultural, economic, political, and natural context and that when learning is focused on local places it can enhance student engagement. An increase in student engagement comes about because place-based education provides a framework for learning by connecting what happens in the classroom with what is happening in the community and in studentsí own lives (Smith 2002a).

Despite what many critics of place-based education argue, it does not seek to ignore national or international topics, in fact it can be seen as the first step in a learning process that starts with the near and progresses to the far. When young students learn about their immediate surroundings they gain critical thinking and observational skills, skills that will be beneficial when they are older and begin to grapple with complex global issues such as sweatshops and free trade.

Purpose and Methods
The purpose of this annotated bibliography is to review recent literature that deals explicitly with place-based education, its theory, and practice. The annotations mainly describe the content and focus of the articles, but also comment on their usefulness and provide information about the authorsí background. It is my hope that this bibliography will be beneficial to educators who are interested in learning about place-based education and investigating what it is, its history, why it works, and ideas on how they can incorporate it into their teaching.

I collected journal articles written over the past seven years in an attempt to capture and analyze current perspectives on the topic. There are a number of books written about place-based education, but in order to focus the bibliography I chose to only review articles. In addition to books and articles, various websites exist that provide place-based resources for educators as well as examples of successful place-based education programs.

I began my search for articles using academic indexes such as Academic Search Premier and Web of Knowledge. In addition to this, I searched bibliographies of the seminal articles on the subject. David Gruenewald, professor at Washington State University and Janice Woodhouse, professor at Northern Illinois University provided suggestions for literature to include in the bibliography. Through personal conversations and email, I also contacted David Sobel, professor at Antioch New England Graduate School and author of Place-based Education: Connecting Classrooms & Communities, Jon Orris, Education Director at the Four Corners School of Outdoor Education, and Jack Chin, Co-Director of the Funders' Forum on Environment and Education. After searching databases, speaking with experts, and reviewing bibliographies I feel confident that the following articles are a thorough representation of recent literature concerning place-based education.

Bishop, S. (2004).
The power of place.
English Journal, 93(6), 65-69.
Sharon Bishop is a secondary English teacher in Henderson, Nebraska. She is also co-director of the Nebraska Writing Project.

Place-based education can not only help to improve rural schools, but also the communities that support those schools. The author, a high school English teacher in rural Nebraska, began using local authors and places as a central part of her curriculum many years before she had even heard the term place-based education. Recently, she has become involved with the Annenberg Rural Challenge, which in Nebraska resulted in 11 rural communities coming together to form a consortium called School at the Center. The purpose of School at the Center is to "aid in the revitalization of rural communities through reimagining local schools as a centering force for place-conscious living." The author describes her curriculum and how it combines two characteristics of place-based education identified by Gregory Smith (2002b), cultural studies and nature studies. In these descriptions the author shares some examples of her students writing, which they do after reading works by local authors, conducting interviews with elders in the community, and visiting a nearby tall-grass prairie preservation. This article is important because it provides one of the few formal definitions of pedagogy of place or place-based education. The definition, which comes from the Annenberg Rural Challenge, is "pedagogy/curriculum of place is an expression of the growing recognition of context and locale and their unique contributions to the educational project . . . pedagogy of place, then, recontextualizes education locally. It makes education a preparation for citizenship, both locally and in wider contexts, while also providing the basis for continuing scholarship." This article also provides a good argument for why place-based education is so important to rural schools and communities and how place-based education can be seen as a way to address the growing problem of population loss in rural towns.

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Gibbs, T., & Howley, A. (2000).
"World-class standards" and local pedagogies: Can we do both?
Charleston, WV: ERIC Clearinghouse on Rural Education and Small Schools.
(ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. EDO-RC-008)
Tom Gibbs is an instructor at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. He teaches in the Department of Educational Studies. Aimee Howley is professor and coordinator of the Educational Administration program at Ohio University.

At times, place-based education can be seen as being in conflict with the movement for national standards and curriculums. This article looks at both place-based education and the standards reform movement and asks whether the two have to be mutually exclusive. The article begins with a short history of the recent trend toward accountability in education including the reasoning behind national standards, which often are characterized by mandatory achievement tests. It also discusses some of the critiques that advocates of place-based education have with these new standards. The article points out that supporters of place-based education usually agree with the main goal of the standards movement, which is to "provide a high quality education for all students." Where these two parties differ is in regards to the purpose of and methods used in education. For example, place-based educators see the purpose of education as "preparing citizens and promoting community interests." Standards-based educators see the purpose as "preparing workers and promoting national interests." The article includes a chart that compares three of the major differences between these two philosophical camps: aims of education, educational governance, and curriculum. I found the comparisons this article made between place-based education and standards-based education to be very useful. It provides a much-needed perspective on how place-based education can be successful while at the same time ensuring high quality education and student achievement

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Gruenewald, D. (2003).
Foundations of place: A multidisciplinary framework for
place-conscious education.
American Educational Research Journal, 40, 619-654.
David Gruenewald is an assistant professor of education at Washington State University in the Department of Teaching and Learning. He teaches Social Foundations of Education and School Community Collaboration.

This article begins with a philosophical discussion of place and its meaning as well as an introduction to the concept of place-conscious (or place-based) education. The author describes five dimensions of place, which are the perceptual, the sociological, the ideological, the political, and the ecological. Each of these perspectives on place is discussed in detail and each one contributes to the idea that place affects all parts of life and society and that the extremely pedagogical nature of place should not be ignored by educational institutions. The author then addresses three educational traditions that have shaped the field of place-based education, including natural history, cultural journalism, and action research. The article concludes with an analysis of how place-conscious education is, or is not, a part of the current education reform movement and how educators and administrators can be held accountable to a sincere discussion and implementation of place-based education. This article accomplishes something the other articles fail to do by going beyond mere definitions and examples, and establishing a theoretical argument of place-based education. It also includes a lengthy and fairly comprehensive bibliography.

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Gruenewald, D. (2003).
The best of both worlds: A critical pedagogy of place.
Educational Researcher, 32(4), 3-12.
David Gruenewald is an assistant professor of education at Washington State University in the Department of Teaching and Learning. He teaches Social Foundations of Education and School Community Collaboration.

This article takes a closer look at two educational traditions: critical pedagogy, which is concerned with power structures and decision making in schools and place-based education, which seeks to connect schools with their social, cultural, and ecological communities. Following an in-depth discussion of each tradition, including both strengths and weaknesses, the author makes a case for how elements of each can contribute to a critical pedagogy of place. A critical pedagogy of place has two objectives (taken from critical pedagogy and place-based education), decolonization and reinhabitation, which are discussed at length in the article. The article concludes with ideas for further development and research on the topic of a critical pedagogy of place. Gruenewald's explanation of critical pedagogy and how it can be combined with place-based education was extremely useful. This article clearly establishes a role for place-based education in the larger education reform movement. From a personal perspective, it expanded my views on how I can apply place-based education in my own teaching.

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Knapp, C & Woodhouse, J. (2003).
Place-based pedagogy: Experiential learning for culturally and ecologically sustainable communities.
Paper presented at the
Experiential/Community/Workbased: Researching Learning Outside the
Academy International Conference at Glasgow Caledonian University, Scotland,
June 27-29, 2003.
Clifford Knapp is a professor of outdoor education in the Teacher Education Department at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. Janice Woodhouse is faculty in the Department of Educational Psychology and Foundations at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb.

Place-based education is often only associated with school age children, but in this article the authors discuss place-based education, its definitions, foundations, and characteristics and how they can be applied to adult education. The article provides information on some of the historical foundations of place-based education (similar to what is written in other articles) as well as three philosophical foundations of place-based education. These three philosophical foundations, which come from the liberal-progressive, counter-critique, and personal growth traditions combine to form a "belief system" held by place-based educators, which is part of what helps to characterize place-based education and differentiate it from other educational movements. A piece unique to this article is a section on Agenda 21, a document produced at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992. According to Agenda 21 "education is deemed 'critical' for improving the capacity of people to address environment and development issues through formal and non-formal means." This section explains the components of Agenda 21 and discusses how "the relationship between the goals of Agenda 21 and place-based education are clear. They are complementary movements operating to support education for sustainable communities." Much of the information in this article could be applied to both place-based education for youth and adults, however, it is helpful and encouraging to know that the theories of place-based education are being considered for audiences beyond the K-12 classroom.

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Martin, J. (2001).
Learning to teach students in the community and environment.
Clearing Magazine, #110 (Fall 2001): 10-13.
Jim Martin is a former faculty member of the Portland State University Center for Science Education and past president of the Environmental Education Association of Oregon.

Unlike the other articles which focus on defining and describing place-based education, this article is concerned with the challenges teachers face when beginning to explore "community based / environment based learning (CEBL)" or place-based education. The author, who has spent 30 years working with teachers, begins with a list of issues and observations regarding teachers' initial experiences with CEBL. This initial experience can be divided into four "developmental phases" and when these phases are looked at sequentially they represent a learning curve typical to when a person learns something new. The phases are: logistics, exploitation, conceptual, and pedagogical. The author describes each phase and explains how non-formal educators seeking to encourage the use of CEBL can be most effective when they understand these phases and the experience of teachers. This article was extremely beneficial in that it went beyond defining place-based education and sought to give practical advice on how to deal with the difficulties teachers face regarding the implementation of place-based education.

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Smith, G. (1998).
Rooting Children in Place.
Encounter, 11(4), 13-24
Greg Smith teaches in the Graduate School of Education at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. He also serves on the board of the Rural School and Community Trust, a national organization that sponsors place-based educational reforms throughout the United States.

Why should we care about place and the effect places have on us when it seems to be going out of style? People are more mobile than ever and to be committed to one place often seems boring and simple. This article begins with a discussion of the cultural and ecological benefits of being rooted in a place and includes examples from the author's own life. The challenge in reestablishing a sense of place is that our education system is not set up to teach us how to do it. In life and education the focus is too often on getting out and not staying put. The author suggests that we can learn a lot about connection to place by observing other cultures, and he provides a lengthy example from Ladakh, a province in northern India. The example focuses specifically on children and how the land and their culture play a part in the establishment of their sense of place. The article then discusses how our society can apply lessons learned from the Ladakh experience to our own homes and schools. This discussion includes several examples from schools and communities around the United States. This article does not offer as detailed a look at place-based education as the others do, but it does provide an international perspective, which is beneficial and unique among the literature reviewed here.

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Smith, G. (2001).
Learning where we live.
San Francisco, CA: Funders Forum on
Environment and Education.
Greg Smith teaches in the Graduate School of Education at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. He also serves on the board of the Rural School and Community Trust, a national organization that sponsors place-based educational reforms throughout the United States.

In this article Smith discusses place-based education, its goals, and how it works in real world scenarios. The author does not explicitly define place-based education, but states that it is "characterized by its practices" and proceeds to discuss what these are. The article also addresses what research says about place-based education and lists some of the outcomes associated with it. Finally the article describes how the Annenburg Rural Challenge helped the world of place-based education by funding 39 projects in the 1990s. The author describes some of these projects as well as some examples of urban schools using place-based education. Despite being short and more general than the other articles, this piece serves as a valuable introduction to the concept of place-based education.

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Smith, G. (2002a).
Going local.
Educational Leadership, 60(1), 30-33.
Greg Smith teaches in the Graduate School of Education at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. He also serves on the board of the Rural School and Community Trust, a national organization that sponsors place-based educational reforms throughout the United States.

What is place-based education and what does it look like? To answer this question, the article begins with a look at the Environmental Middle School (EMS) in Portland, Oregon and how the students at EMS are engaged in weekly place-based education activities such as testing the water quality at a local park and building raised garden beds for the cityís homeless. The author describes place-based education as "an approach to curriculum that is grounded in students' own lives, community, and region." This definition addresses one critical aspect of place-based education which is its focus on local places. Next, as a way to further define place-based education there is a discussion of some of its common characteristics. The article goes into further detail on one characteristic; real-world problem solving. This attribute of place-based education involves engaging students in projects that are directly tied to issues in the community and is a way to build citizenship skills in students as well as demonstrate to the community that local schools are a valuable resource. The author concludes with a discussion of how place-based education can "activate a desire to learn" and result in high achievement on standardized tests. This article was useful in terms of providing concise information on the basics of place-based education. In addition, the stories from EMS were interesting and proved to be a source of inspiration.

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Smith, G. (2002b).
Place-based education: Learning to be where we are.
Phi Delta Kappan, 83, 584-594.
Greg Smith teaches in the Graduate School of Education at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. He also serves on the board of the Rural School and Community Trust, a national organization that sponsors place-based educational reforms throughout the United States.

This article provides a history that elucidates how the theories and ideas of place-based education emerged. The author then reviews five thematic patterns for place-based education that can be adapted to any setting. The five patterns are, cultural studies, nature studies, real-world problem solving, internships and entrepreneurial opportunities, and induction to community processes. In addition to discussing the patterns, there are also specific examples given for how each can be implemented. Smith asserts that place-based education in its nature is variable, although there are some common elements, which he explores in the article. He concludes with some thoughts on the challenges faced by educators who choose to adopt any or all aspects of place-based education. Smithís does an excellent job of highlighting examples of successful place-based education programs. These examples made the discussion of specific characteristics of place-based education extremely useful from a practitioner's standpoint.

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Theobald, P., & Curtiss, J. (2000).
Communities as curricula.
Forum for applied research and public policy, 15(1), 106-111.
Paul Theobald is dean of the Education and Counseling department at Wayne State College in Wayne, Nebraska. Jim Curtiss is a professor at Wayne State College.

What would our schools look like if the study of and participation in communities were a primary goal of education? The authors begin with a discussion of the original purpose of education, which was "to provide a common education so that the people could effectively wield the power that was theirs by virtue of living in a democracy." They argue that reclaiming this goal can make schools a place of community renewal rather than an isolated learning environment. The first section of the article focuses on learning theory and reviews the ideas of John Dewey and the constructivist approach to education. The authors argue that a community-based (or place-based) program can accomplish the goals that constructivist educators have laid out. These include education that is relevant to real life, a development of critical and creative thinking skills, authentic problem solving, deep understanding, and a sense of worth. The article also explores current problems with national curriculum standards and testing. The main point of this discussion is that standards do not have to be an impediment to community-based education and students in these programs often can meet and even exceed the national standards. The article concludes with examples of community-based programming and constructivist learning as well as a vision for a district that uses community-based programming from kindergarten through high school. The discussion focuses on the questions of what such a program would it look like and what resources it would require. This article offers a unique viewpoint on place-based education by describing how it naturally fits within the constructivist learning theory.

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Woodhouse, J., & Knapp, C. (2000).
Place-based curriculum and instruction: Outdoor and environmental education approaches.
Charleston, WV: ERIC Clearinghouse on Rural Education and Small Schools.
(ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED448012)
Janice Woodhouse is faculty in the Department of Educational Psychology and Foundations at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. Clifford Knapp is a professor of outdoor education in the Teacher Education Department at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb.

How are the purposes of place-based education related to outdoor and environmental education? How are these three approaches similar? Because the terminology for these three teaching approaches is so vast, it is important to understand the distinctions between them. To accomplish this, the authors review a short list of literature and discuss the context in which each source refers to place-based education. The article also covers the essential characteristics of place-based education as derived from a review of the literature. Finally, the authors comment on the importance of place-based education and give a list of curriculum sources. These curriculum sources and the short literature review are what make this article unique and helpful to someone who is searching for more information on the topic of place-based education.

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Woodhouse, J. (2001).
Over the river and through the 'hood: Re-viewing "place" as a focus of pedagogy.
Thresholds in Education, 27(3 & 4), 1-5.
Janice Woodhouse is faculty in the Department of Educational Psychology and Foundations at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb.

Place-based education is education that is focused on the learner. Education happens in the context of the learner's social, biological, and cultural region. This article is the introductory article in the Aug/Nov 2001 issue of Thresholds in Education, which focuses on place-based education. The article points out that place-based education is not a new idea and refers to some historical figures who have espoused that place is an important tool in education. The author first provides a few examples of place-based education and then reviews the other articles that are included in the issue. A number of the articles provide a diverse look at examples of place-based education with the hope that teachers will be able to adapt the information and ideas to their own classrooms. Other articles focus on the theory, history, and philosophy of place-based education. Finally, there is an article that discusses the role of standards in regards to place-based education and examines what conflict or compatibility might exist between the two. This is an interesting article and somewhat helpful on its own, but is more beneficial when read as part of the full issue of Thresholds In Education, which focuses entirely on place-based education.

Conclusion
The overall message these readings offer is that place-based education can have a profound impact on improving the educational system, not only in terms of student achievement and engagement, but also in terms of how education affects society as a whole.

The articles also illustrate a growing interest in place-based education. Examples of place-based education can be seen all over the country, although they are slightly more prevalent on the East Coast. It is happening on all levels, from kindergarten through college, and in all educational settings, both formal and non-formal. Place-based education is perhaps more common in rural schools than in their urban counterparts, although with more research on how the practices of place-based education can adapt to the different social, cultural, and ecological places in cities this will change.

Despite the growing interest in place-based education, there are still areas that need more research and discussion. Many teachers and administrators are concerned about the trend towards national standards and mandated testing. However, to build support for place-based education among the broader academic community it is necessary to continue with assessment of current programs as a way of quantitatively proving that students in place-based education programs can score at or above average on standardized tests. In addition to showing how place-based education does not have to be contrary to high student achievement on national standards, it is also important to highlight and measure other skills gained through place-based education, such as connection to community and civic engagement. A framework should be developed that can measure these accomplishments of place-based education that are not captured in standardized tests.

After reading and reviewing these articles, I have discovered that it is not absolutely necessary to have one singular definition of place-based education. It is more important to concentrate on goals and the big picture. To me, place-based education is a style of education that is grounded in the context of community, both natural and social. In addition to this, or perhaps because of this, place-based education is also part of the progressive educational reform movement.

Gretchen Kehrberg worked as an environmental educator and naturalist in the Seattle area for seven years. She currently resides in Missoula, Montana where she recently received her MS in Environmental Studies from the University of Montana.