Place-Based Learning - Why and How.

‘Place’ and ‘places’ feature in different ways in the daily lives of children and young people and over their lifetime. Children’s experience of ‘place’ and associated cultures and communities, is increasingly plural rather than singular, and may encompass ‘non-place’ and ‘post-place’ communities detached from ‘place’ (Brennan et al., 2013). In an increasingly globalised world, place, culture and identity can have multiple meanings for children and young people. Family, friends and social networks can straddle neighbourhoods, regions, countries and continents – as well as urban, suburban, peri-urban and rural areas. Place-based learning has developed as a pedagogy that uses local place - the environment, economic activities, history, traditions and community reference points - as a site and resource for engaging more actively with children and young people in the context of their lives. It has developed most extensively in some rural areas where it is not only used as a powerful educational tool but as a means of promoting the sustainability of local communities. However, it is now extending to urban areas in a variety of different forms, from access to nature and outdoor activities, to inner city schools offering culturally relevant curricula to ethnic minority students (Cohen and Rønning, 2014; Smith and Sobel, 2010). This presentation will draw on some findings from a comparative research project examining place-based learning in Nordland, Norway, Highlands and Islands in Scotland and Alabama, USA, but with a particular focus on findings from Norway. References: Cohen, B. & Rønning, W. (2014). Place-based Learning in Early Years Services: Approaches and Examples from Norway and Scotland. In Cameron, C. & Miller, L. (Eds.): International Perspectives in the Early Years. London: SAGE publications Smith, G. A. & Sobel, D. (2010). Place- and Community-Based Education in Schools. Abingdon, Oxon.: Routledge