Place Based Education

Both Wrigley et al. and Muijs describe today’s educational framework as consisting of students being fed shallow information at high speeds followed by high stakes testing then purging the information.  Statistics show that this type of learning is not benefiting the student nor our society, education is in need of a drastic change.  What is the alternative to such primitive learning?  Wrigley et al. argues that the current neoliberal ways need to be replaced by meaningful learning that teaches students the pleasure and purpose of knowledge and  prepares them to be citizens who are socially responsible, and value democracy.   Where does such an educational reform begin?  It starts in the classroom.  Muijs argues that the greatest impact on educational reform does not rely on the typical top-down approach, but rather it starts at the classroom level, with the teacher.  Muijs identifies individual teachers styles, personality and self-efficacy as having the greatest impact on student achievement.  The question now becomes, what is the most effective classroom pedagogy?  While this question does not have a definitive answer, one leading contender is place based education.    Muijs identifies several features of pedagogy that promotes learning: when learning is connected to a physical experience and emotion, when information and skills are “embedded in natural, real-life activity” and when there is a balance between the learning experience having a high challenge but a low threat.  Place based education has the potential to facilitate such learning experiences, through engaging student learning that is meaningful and deep.  Can place based education be the revolutionary change that education needs? 

Wrigley, T., Lingard, B., & Thomson, P. (2012). Pedagogies of transformation: keeping hope alive in troubled times. Critical Studies in Education, 53(1), 95-108. doi:10.1080/17508487.2011.637570

Muijs, D. (2009). Changing Classroom Learning. In A. Hargreaves, A. Lieberman, M.
Fullan, & D. Hopkins (Eds.), Second International Handbook of Educational Change (pp. 857-867). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.