Using Place-Based Learning to Spark Inquiry

In rural Kentucky, students deepened their understanding of math, Indigenous wisdom, and practical skills by investigating Native American practices for harvesting maple sugar. In urban Georgia, students used geography, history, and mapmaking to uncover a nearly forgotten story of racial segregation and community upheaval.

Both projects demonstrate the power of place-based learning to spark student inquiry, connect with local partners, and emphasize cultural ways of knowing as essential for learning. The teaching strategies behind such hyperlocal projects are the focus of a new book, Place-Based Learning: Connecting Inquiry, Community, and Culture, by veteran educators Micki Evans, Charity Marcella Moran, and Erin Sanchez. I spoke with them recently about the promise and challenges of learning in place.

Breaking Barriers

Breaking barriers is a recurring theme in the book and in the authors’ own classroom experiences—which add up to nearly a century of teaching and professional development. “So often, people’s experience of place-based learning is through service-learning or only in rural areas. But we’ve all experienced the power of place in urban environments,” says Sanchez, as well as across grade levels and content areas. “We saw a need for pushing down barriers.”

Focusing on local issues “allows the contextualization of the inquiry,” adds Moran. Projects that center on students’ own communities and cultures make learning more tangible, engaging, and equitable. “Learning becomes more exploratory,” Moran says, with students recognizing community assets while also driving toward action to solve local problems.

Tackling place-based projects may mean challenging histories that don’t tell the full story of a community and its people. “So many kids try to fit into the dominant narrative,” Evans says. “We want their community to see them for who they truly are.”

Practical Strategies

Although closely related to project-based learning, place-based learning puts greater emphasis on community partnerships, local problem-solving, equity, and students’ own identities and cultures. Over the years, the authors have honed practical strategies to guide this student-centered approach to learning.

For teachers new to place-based learning, a project can begin by taking a community walk with students. “Empower students to show you a bit of their lived experience entirely from their perspective,” the authors suggest. Such experiences should naturally lead to questions for deeper inquiry, like these: Where do we see people creating and sharing artwork in the neighborhood? How has geometry shaped our community? What are your favorite places? If you could add something, what would you build?

Mapmaking is another strategy used extensively in place-based learning. With plentiful project examples, the authors show the potential of three types of maps as tools for inquiry and critical thinking.

Story maps: Connecting narratives to geography, story maps can be used by teachers during project design or as an inquiry activity with students. In both cases, story maps capture diverse perspectives through interviews, help to fine-tune questions for deeper inquiry, and can reveal potential community partners and resources.

Teachers in a Native American community began the project design process by interviewing tribal biologists and other local experts about big game management from an Indigenous perspective. That led to a locally focused driving question for students: “How might our wildlife sanctuary teach others about the Jicarilla Apache culture?”

For a new project, Moran has been using story mapping with educators in Ghana who are getting started with place-based learning. “A lot of storytelling happens in our [virtual] meetings,” she says. As teachers are telling stories, “I’m gathering and mapping them so we can see what’s going on in communities” and discover project ideas.

Counter maps: When historical records or maps misrepresent or erase the stories of marginalized communities, counter mapping offers a tool to recapture the experiences of those who were silenced or overlooked.

For example, the existence of a Black community in Athens, Georgia, was nearly erased after residents were evicted through eminent domain and university dormitories were built on the land. Using geographic information system  mapping tools, along with interviews, students told a more complete history of place.

In Kansas City, Missouri, students used statistics and mapping to investigate patterns of redlining that prevented families of color from buying homes with mortgages from savings and loans or banks. The students’ analysis “countered the story,” Moran says, while embedding math and history into the project. 

Community asset maps: The people, institutions, and social networks that connect a community are the focus of community asset maps. Teachers can start building asset maps in their own classrooms by identifying students’ cultural and  individual assets, along with their own. “There are enough assets right there to keep you moving forward,” says Sanchez.

As projects get underway, students can use asset mapping to identify experts and allies in their communities. For a project in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, students explored the question, “How can we plan a public swimming pool that will honor the people and culture in our community?” Their investigation led them to interview elders in the Black community who recalled the closing of public swimming pools, landscape architects, city officials, and others who helped students think critically about their proposal for a new facility.  

A Continuing Journey

Incorporating place-based learning is often an evolution for teachers. “It’s a journey,” acknowledges Evans. “It’s not all or nothing.”

The authors outline a continuum of practice, starting with teacher-designed projects and moving toward more student ownership and cocreation of projects. From designing projects that focus on narrow content goals, teachers can evolve toward projects “that transcend disciplines,” Sanchez says, with cultural ways of knowing “just as valuable as traditional academic goals.”   

Support from colleagues, community partners, families, and school leadership helps to encourage and sustain place-based learning. “This work can be done in isolation—but it shouldn’t be,” cautions Sanchez. To build support across school systems, the authors conclude the book with protocols for fine-tuning and reflection at all stages of place-based projects.