{"id":6011,"date":"2021-03-22T11:25:26","date_gmt":"2021-03-22T15:25:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/teaching-writing\/?page_id=6011"},"modified":"2025-03-20T09:47:45","modified_gmt":"2025-03-20T13:47:45","slug":"exploring-place-based-pedagogy","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/teaching-writing\/research-and-professional-development\/faculty-seminars\/exploring-place-based-pedagogy\/","title":{"rendered":"Exploring Place-Based Pedagogy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>March-April 2019<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Also see our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/teaching-writing\/resources-for-teaching-writing\/guides-tips\/guide-to-experiential-learning-and-the-writing\/\">guide to experiential learning and the writing classroom.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><div class=\"bu_collapsible_container \" aria-live=\"polite\" data-customize-animation=\"false\"><h6 class=\"bu_collapsible\" aria-expanded=\"false\"tabindex=\"0\" role=\"button\">Session 1--Place Foundations, or Where Do We Come From?<\/h6><div class=\"bu_collapsible_section\" style=\"display: none;\"><br \/>\n<span>\u201cThe real story begins with the land.\u201d \u2014 John Hanson Mitchell, <\/span><em>The Paradise of All These Parts: A Natural History of Boston <\/em><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cA multidisciplinary analysis of place reveals the many ways that places are profoundly pedagogical. That is, as centers of experience, places teach us about how the world works and how our lives fit into the spaces we occupy.\u201d \u2013 David A. Gruenewald<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Questions to consider:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span>What does place mean to us, to our students, and to\/for our teaching?<\/span><span>\u2028<\/span><span>Where are we\u00a0<\/span><span>from and how has it, does it, or can it affect us as teachers, our pedagogies Where are our students from and how does it affect their learning and engagement with course materials and with each other?<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span>How do the frameworks Gruenewald and Smith offer for place-based learning compare? How do the contemporary issues that Shannon and Galle address demonstrate both continuity and change in relation to the earlier theories?<\/span><span>\u2028<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span>Gruenewald quotes Geertz (1996): \u201c[N]o one lives in the world in general.\u201d<br \/>\nWhere do our students \u2018live\u2019\u2014e.g. do they live in the world in general? (digital natives, global citizens, etc.) How does place affect student engagement? How can Boston operate as a shared place?<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Readings:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>David A. Gruenewald, \u201cFoundations of Place: A Multidisciplinary Framework\u00a0<\/strong><span><strong>for Place-Conscious Education\u201d (2003)<\/strong><br \/>\n<\/span><span>A foundational text in the area, quoted by many. Gruenewald is a key figure of the modern movement for place-based education. In this article, he describes five \u201cdimensions\u201d of place that can help us engage in place-based education.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><strong>Gregory A. Smith, \u201cPlace-based education: Learning to be Where we Are\u201d (2002)<\/strong><br \/>\nAnother often-quoted classic text in place-based education. Smith discusses the historical background of place-based education and five \u201cthematic patterns\u201d in place- based education that can apply to a range of contexts.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Deric Shannon and Jeffery Galle, Chapter 1: \u201cWhere We Are: Place, Pedagogy, and the Outer Limits,\u201d from <em>Interdisciplinary Approaches to Pedagogy and Place-Based Education From Abstract to Quotidian <\/em>(2017)<\/strong><br \/>\nThis introduction to a recent collection cites another article of Gruenewald\u2019s and quotes from David Sobel, another pivotal figure in PBE. It provides a quick, readable view of some current central issues in place-based pedagogy, including some more recent tensions that stretch the notion of place.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"bu_collapsible_container \" aria-live=\"polite\" data-customize-animation=\"false\"><h6 class=\"bu_collapsible\" aria-expanded=\"false\"tabindex=\"0\" role=\"button\">Session 2--A Collaborative Pedagogy of Place: Wandering, Translocality, Multidisciplinarity<\/h6><div class=\"bu_collapsible_section\" style=\"display: none;\"><br \/>\n<span>\u201cBut if you are an urban wanderer, the type who will follow streets, paths, and alleyways because they are there, you will inevitably discover Boston\u2019s other, less obvious, neighborhoods.\u201d \u2014Lynda Morgenroth<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cAll of this activity occurring in one place (instead of many) further magnifies the integrative learning and educational impact. Students and faculty are able to make connections across investigations and disciplines that might not be possible otherwise. The fragmentation of knowledge that can occur through highly focused studies is overcome (or at least reduced) by a collaborative pedagogy of place.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><span>\u2014 Jeffrey Scott Coker on the Elon Forest<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cThey could do all of this because there is no physicality in digital space. It is the realm in which one can test the possible, and not be tied down to the fixed and unchanging realm of actuality.\u201d \u2014 Laureen Park on DURA<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Questions to consider:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span>As Coker suggests, can focusing students\u2019 attention on one place enable deeper, more coherent engagement with complex problems and multiple disciplines?<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span>How do we use place-based pedagogy to exploit the versatility of the kind of virtual spaces which Park describes? What opportunities do virtual spaces offer by giving us the ability to inhabit different places even while we\u2019re occupying the same physical space? How do students\u2019 attachments to multiple literal and virtual places affect their learning, their writing, their engagement?<\/span><\/li>\n<li>What kind of place is the classroom? Can bringing and sending students to places outside the classroom focus their attention in ways not possible inside it?<\/li>\n<li>How do we teach students as local-global citizens using their place-attachments and cultivating a sense of translocality, or \u201cglobal sense of place\u201d? How do we explore the multiplicity of places that they (and we) bring into our classrooms?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Readings:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Jeffrey Scott Coker, \u201cPedagogy and Place in Science Education\u201d (2017)<br \/>\n<\/strong>Coker argues for the necessity of incorporating place-based education into science due to the need to frameshift between concrete and abstract thinking. He describes the inspiring multidisciplinary discoveries made possible by the protection of a forest on campus.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Karen Goodlad and Anne Leonard, \u201cPlace-Based Learning across the Disciplines: A Living Laboratory Approach to Pedagogy\u201d (2018)<br \/>\n<\/strong>Goodlad and Leonard analyze a campus-wide program that encouraged faculty to engage in place-based learning in response to a new set of general education requirements.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Laureen Park, \u201cThe Varieties of Place-Based Education\u201d (2018)<br \/>\n<\/strong>Park uses Hussrel\u2019s theories as a lens to explore urban and digital environments as sites for place-based education.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Michael Sheridan, \u201cGenius Loci: Introducing a Place-conscious Approach to Management Education\u201d (2018)<\/strong><br \/>\nSheridan applies Gruenewald\u2019s framework to Management courses, arguing for the benefits of a local focus in contrast to primarily global trends.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"bu_collapsible_container \" aria-live=\"polite\" data-customize-animation=\"false\"><h6 class=\"bu_collapsible\" aria-expanded=\"false\"tabindex=\"0\" role=\"button\">Session 3--'A Slow Pedagogy of Place': Assignments That Cultivate Place-Sense<\/h6><div class=\"bu_collapsible_section\" style=\"display: none;\"><br \/>\n\u201cMoving toward a migratory conception of place, then, does not mean altogether abandoning the local.\u201d \u2014 John Hultgren<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFollowing Philip Payne and Brian Wattchow\u2019s \u2018slow pedagogy of place,\u2019 the nature journal was thus designed to facilitate a process that \u2018allows us to pause or dwell in spaces for more than a fleeting moment, and, therefore, encouraged us to attach and receive meaning from that place\u2019\u201d \u2014 Traci Warkentin<br \/>\n<strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Questions to consider:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span>How do theories and principles of place-based pedagogy that we have previously explored shape the teaching described in our readings for this week?<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span>How do the pedagogical strategies in these readings encourage students to invest in local places, to cultivate place intimacy, and to transform their perspectives on familiar physical and psychogeographical landscapes?<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Readings:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Thomas Hothem, \u201cSuburban Studies and College Writing: Applying Ecocomposition (2009)<br \/>\n<\/strong>Hothem discusses ecocomposition \u201ca composite term for writing instruction that implicates natural environments as well as \u2018classroom environments, political environ- ments, electronic environments, ideological environments, historical environments, [and] economic environments,\u2019 to name but a few\u201d (35). He describes in detail his first-year writing course The Suburban Experience which challenges undergraduates to analyze suburbia as a place with a rich set of dynamic, distinct identities.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Fidelia Twenge-Jinings and Joanna Sullivan, \u201cRose City Reading: Towards an Open Educational Resource with a Place-Based Curriculum\u201d (2016)<br \/>\n<\/strong>Twenge-Jinings and Sullivan describe a course they taught to international ESOL students to help them engage with the city of Portland through outside the classroom experiences that linked with course readings. They provide a list of local activities that facilitated their students\u2019 connection to Portland and enhanced student-student and student-instructor relationships inside and outside the classroom.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Traci Warkentin, \u201cCultivating Urban Naturalists: Teaching Experiential, Place-based Learning through Nature Journaling in Central Park\u201d (2011)<br \/>\n<\/strong>Warkentin discusses how observing in pairs and journaling in Central Park over the semester transformed students\u2019 ideas about nature and the natural and encouraged them to reexamine their previously held views about human relationships to place.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Anne Whiston Spirn, <a href=\"http:\/\/web.mit.edu\/thecity\/\">The Once and Future City<\/a> (Spring 2018 class)<br \/>\n<\/strong>A website for the course of a landscape-architect professor at MIT which presents assignment descriptions and sample multi-modal student writing assignments that deeply explore specific Boston sites by analyzing natural processes, observing patterns of infrastructural and social change, and identifying traces of the past in order to predict the future.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>March-April 2019 Also see our guide to experiential learning and the writing classroom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5515,"featured_media":0,"parent":322,"menu_order":13,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/teaching-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6011"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/teaching-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/teaching-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/teaching-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5515"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/teaching-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6011"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/teaching-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6511,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/teaching-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6011\/revisions\/6511"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/teaching-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/teaching-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}