What Is Place Based Education

The short answer

Place based education uses the local community, environment, history and economy as the primary context for learning, rather than a generic curriculum that could be taught anywhere.

The market down the road, the river, the factory, the field, the people who live here.

Why it works

Motivation, because the subject is visibly real. Depth, because you can return to the same place repeatedly. Transfer, because a child who has understood one river understands rivers.

And it puts adults from the community into the curriculum, which changes how a school sits in the place it is in.

What it is not

A field trip. A trip is a visit. This is using the place as the material across a whole unit or year.

It is also not a rejection of academic content. The content is the same. The context is local.

The obvious objection

If everything is local, do children learn about the wider world.

They do, through comparison. A child who has studied their own market properly has a template for understanding any market anywhere, which is more useful than a superficial tour of six countries.

How to start

Pick one place within walking distance. Go there six times over a term with a different question each time. That is the whole method.

Related

Learning From a Market and the Anywhere Lesson Prompt Maker, which builds a session around wherever you actually are.