In our increasingly globalized world, it is common to feel that sense of place is being eroded. At the same time, however, people are reacting to maintain the importance of place. One field where this reaction is taking place is education.
Place-based education was developed in the early 1990s as a reaction to globalization and homogeneity. Place-based education is centered in the immersion of students in local heritage, cultures, landscapes, opportunities and experiences, using these as a foundation for the study of language arts, mathematics, social studies, science and other subjects across the curriculum.
There are three main goals to place-based education:
- Boost student achievement,
- Enhance community social and economic vitality, and
- Maintain ecological integrity.
Place-based education is often thought about in conjunction with environmental education, where the “place” at hand is the outdoors. But this newer educational theory is more than that: it is learning through experiences, and has proven to be successful in different settings from rural to urban. The theory maintains that focusing on the hyper-local has many benefits, including a better understanding of large-scale, global issues.
It is true that globalization is changing how we think about place, and this creates a valid fear about the diminishing importance of local communities. It seems that place-based education could work as an antidote to the negative effects of globalization, and for this reason, I’d say it’s worth a shot.
Sources:
https://promiseofplace.org/what-is-pbe/what-is-place-based-education
