This paper presents a learning journey about deepening capacity for teaching with Place through relational learning and shares three pedagogical ingredients that are integral in enacting more ethical, decolonial place pedagogies. We are three women, educators working in community and teacher education with interests in environmental education,…

This article highlights the nascent efforts between College Unbound, Brown University, and Providence College--three very different types of institutions in Providence, Rhode Island--to foster cross-institutional capacity for place-based community engagement. By collectively engaging our institutions, we experimented with what collaboration around…

Place-based learning encourages students to explore their local communities, learn about history, and develop critical thinking skills. This article focuses on six middle school students who participated in a History Club and entered the National History Day competition and discovered how history and place liberates learning.

In response to dominant discourses of quality and an over-reliance on humancentric practice, the "Learning with Place" framework emerges as an innovative way to rethink practices, structures, and policies within education and beyond. 'Learning with Place' views the local Place as agentic, recognising Place as inclusive of local First…

English language arts (ELA) teachers and researchers have trialed methods for supporting youth who advocate for alternative and more just climatic futures (Beach & Smith, 2024; Datta, 2023). However, many educators are encountering legislation that muzzles critical talk in classrooms. Understanding that schools are not separate from society…

This paper explores opportunities for outdoor recreation and education programs to support communities working to sustain or increase community vibrancy. Vibrancy is necessarily linked to our natural environment and the quality of and access to natural environments can impact community vibrancy outcomes. Outdoor recreation access and experiences…

Thirty years after democracy in South Africa, the legacy of apartheid continues to affect Black and Brown bodies by excluding them from the ocean and other spaces through the legacies of racist laws which continue to bleed into the present. In this paper, I argue that "strandlooping" as a method of enquiry is key to understanding care…

This article reflects upon literacies that are encoded in the landscape and in natural forms, and which describe a different relation between humans and the environment. It criticises the Eurocentric biases that have equated literacy to writing and promoted the opposition of literate vs. oral societies. Although there has been a turn toward…

Natural disasters, like hurricanes, are great forces that enter and alter people's lives as well as their perceptions of reality. This article offers a model for community education events based on history, culture, and lore using the centennial of the Great October Storm of 1893 in Louisiana as a case study.

This article details a unit of study bringing together shared reading, place-based pedagogies, and climate-centered texts to engage students in youth participatory community action (YPAR). The authors envision an English classroom where youth read, write, and argue for change as activists as they encounter climate justice literature through YPAR…

Despite the scientific consensus, climate change continues to be socially and politically controversial. Consequently, teachers may worry about accusations of political indoctrination if they teach climate change in their classrooms. Research shows that many teachers are using the 'teaching the controversy' approach to teach climate change,…

This paper uses speculative methods as a way of imagining futures for higher education in open, non-predictive ways. The complexity and 'unknowability' of the highly technologised, environmentally damaged and politically degraded futures we seem to be facing can mean that our conversations about the future of higher education have a tendency to…

Place-based education is pedagogy rooted in local landscapes, community experts, and embodied communication. This essay explores the authors' initial findings from a two-year pilot project that connects students from the University of New Mexico and students from Colorado College in a multisite field experience connected to the Rio Grande…

Many key concerns require engagement with science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) knowledge. Consider the complexity and nuance of climate change, energy policy, health and medicine, and data security. Informed voting or decision-making on such issues is no easy task; effective participation in our society requires considerable…

Education policy scholars must consider spatial theories and related methodologies. Spatial theories encourage rich understandings of education policy because education and place are intimately connected. This article shows how scholars can use "spatial imaginaries" to enhance knowledge of place and education policy. We explain these…