Describes place-based education, a curricular approach that encourages students to engage in solving local problems, stimulates a desire to learn, and helps students connect to their community. (PKP)

The nation's recent preoccupation with reshaping academics and raising academic performance has all but overpowered a task of vital importance--educating our young people to become engaged citizens of their communities. Traditionally, students are taught citizenship skills in either a civics education class or through citizenship courses in the…

In contemporary life and education, the local is marginalized in favor of large-scale economies of consumption that are indifferent to ecological concerns. The consequences of neglecting local human and natural communities include a degraded habitat, loss of wilderness, alienation, rootlessness, and lack of connection to communities. Place-based…

The social justice discourse in education has been critiqued by Bowers and others for its lack of attention to a broad range of related ecological issues. This article analyzes and critiques the current discourse of social justice in the field of educational leadership and offers an expanded concept of socioecological justice in schools. Arguing…

This paper explores ways to bring together local and global knowledge systems in the context of education. It first discusses the concepts of native science and of intercultural education, key ideas in Ecuadorian indigenous education today. Both of these concepts seek to unite the local and the global in new ways. It explores the views of…

The purpose of this article is to review a partnership between a teacher education department and a dropout prevention program. The partnership developed from a variety of communities' needs, no less of which was that of reconnecting marginalized youth at a local dropout prevention school with their community through cultural and civic…

Edmund Rice Education Australia Flexible Learning Centres (EREAFLCs) operate within a social inclusion framework to "walk with" young people who have disengaged from the traditional schooling system. Students attending the centres face multiple stressors in their everyday lives, as well as significant barriers to achieving success in the…

Impoverished populations and schools in rural areas face special challenges that are different from other settings. Among these are the distances from social services, the sparse availability of assistance programs, and the shortage of resources to support educational programs and student learning. Rural schools, do, however, have assets that can…

Discusses the nature and aims of place-based pedagogies, which root the learning experience in the location of the learner. Briefly describes examples of placed-based education at the elementary and postsecondary levels. Outlines some questions related to educating students for ecological and cultural sustainability. Contains 18 references. (SV)

Reviews David Reynolds'"There Goes the Neighborhood," which examined school consolidation and community based schooling and highlighted Delaware County, Iowa, around 1910-30. Reynolds characterizes school consolidation as expressing the enduring modern tension between what is good for a community and what is good for society. (Contains…

Emphasizing writing and student inquiry, this rich collection offers teachers ready-to-use classroom resources with a sound basis in best practice. Student engagement with community becomes the centerpiece of the book, an engagement that takes place across disciplines through projects involving history, environment, culture, and much more. Editors…

Draws on research concerning the components of sense of place, the rootedness of college students to their hometowns, and categories of environmental competence. Offer insights to camp staff into fostering sense of place and the emotional attachments to camp that comprise place attachment, and to developing environmental competence among campers…

A study examined the effects of integrating cultural history interpretation of the environment into wilderness adventure trips for college students. At Colgate University (New York), pre-orientation camping trips available to all incoming students integrated interpretive activities related to the local environment. Before the trips, leaders…

In most debates about teaching, learning, and research, the spatial context of education is either taken for granted or ignored. But places can be viewed as more than empty frames for social action; they can be seen as both historically constituted by social processes and, in turn, constituting those social processes. This paper aims to restore a…

Connection to place drives people to protect the environment. One population that has demonstrated enormous dedication and reverence for the land--outdoor educators--may ironically have little sense of place because of the transient nature of their work. Individuals can build their sense of community and place by getting to know their local…