Exploring Place-based Education – What, Why, and How

Original date: February 9, 2012

Click here to access this webinar

Presenter: Clifford E. Knapp

Description: You have no doubt heard about place-based education and the importance of teaching in and about your local surroundings. This webinar will explore some big ideas about this emerging field and attempt to shed more light on the topic. For the first 25 minutes, Dr. Knapp will present some important concepts and raise some questions to ponder. These will include some definitions, guiding principles, and characteristics of place-based education. Other topics will include: Living Well in Place, Place Attachment, Displacement, Ecoliteracy, Bioregionalism, Pedagogy of Place, Identity, Powerful Places, and Reading the Landscape. These big ideas will be referenced so that webinar participants can follow up with additional reading. The last 35 minutes of the program will consist of a question and answer session that will likely include mention of additional resources for teaching more about your place. Come prepared to dig deeper into your locale.

Suitability:  All formal and non-formal youth educators (and others who may be interested)

Clifford Knapp is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Northern Illinois University. Since his retirement, he has stayed active in the field of outdoor teaching and learning by reading, writing, travelling, and teaching in the United States and abroad. He was a featured speaker at the first Place-based Education Seminar at Raffles Institution in Singapore in 2009, and delivered the Hahn address at the 37th annual International Association for Experiential Education in Montreal. He contributed the lead chapter to Gruenewald and Smith’s 2008 book, Place-Based Education in the Global Age. In 2003 he co-presented a paper, on place-based pedagogy at Glasgow Caledonian University in Glasgow, Scotland. He currently is associated with the Children and Nature Network and the Chana School Museum in Oregon, Illinois. Dr. Knapp has developed and leads a number of nature workshops: see wonderearth.org for details.