Schools
Last autumn, sitting around plastic trestle tables at our Big Picture Day, my colleagues and I were put into groups to hash out the wording of some potential cross-organisational goals. These would, we were told, lead to the clear articulation of a Strategy which would in turn define our work going forward.
In my group was a cross-section of the Trust, with colleagues from different sectors and regions, each bringing their different perspectives to play in a fascinating discussion.
Approaching one particular word, there was a sudden moment of convergence: ‘Place’. For each of us around the table, the word held significance.
For me, studying for a masters in Outdoor and Environmental Education before getting a job at the Trust, the discovery of ‘Place-Based Education’ provided the language I had lacked in my years as a class teacher. Back then, I’d been inspired by the concept of being “apprenticed to a place” (Myers, 2016, p. 16) and set about getting to know every inch of the city primary school in which I worked. I hoped that by paying attention to the ‘land’, in this case the school grounds, we could turn our site, weary from being trod by hundreds of pairs of feet each day, into somewhere that was obviously, visibly loved and cherished, worthy of our children and their families. I hoped that deepening familiarity with all the aspects of our place might help to ‘ground’ the new children arriving fresh from other countries and continents, uprooted and having to start from scratch.
Now, sitting around those trestle tables considering the relevance of Place to our work at the Trust, I felt a fizz of excitement in my stomach. It made sense that we should focus on place: if our vision is “to see a future where land and lives enrich each other”, ‘places’ are where this happens – where nature and culture coalesce. Perhaps it was time to have another look at what I’d learnt at uni…
Place-Based Education was recently summarised as “a pedagogical approach that emphasises the connection between a learning process and the physical place in which teachers and students are located” (Yemini, Engle & Ben Simon, 2025, Abstract).
This ‘physical place’ has four different dimensions (Ardoin, Shuh & Gould, 2012):
The biophysical (aka the natural)
The particular plant and animal species present and their habitats and ecosystems; the soil composition; the topography
The socio-cultural
The people who live there; the stories; the communities; the local practices
The psychological
Individual, internal experiences of a place; what it means to you; feelings of belonging or exclusion
The political-economic
Histories of use in commerce; issues of ownership, access and power; financial possibilities; political boundaries
With these four dimensions in mind, teachers look for the overlap between the affordances of the place in which they are situated and the needs of the pupils: this is where the learning is focussed. The more often this approach is taken, the more pupils can start to feel that they ‘know’ the place. It ceases to be simply a backdrop and becomes somewhere they inhabit and belong.
While such a focus on the ‘local’ could risk creating a narrow, parochial mindset, Place-Based Education uses the local as a lens through which to learn about the regional, the national, the international, and the global.
Things I love about Place-Based Education
1. Place-Based Education take seriously the understanding that education is about more than information; it is also about formation.
What are the children learning incidentally through the educational practices they undertake day-in, day-out? If formal learning only happens sitting down indoors, what is being taught implicitly about the value of the whole body rather than only the brain? In a nation with overlapping mental health and obesity crises, Place-Based Education take seriously children’s holistic development.
2. Place-Based Education has the potential to lead to highly effective teaching and learning since it is inherently ‘real world’, rather than abstract.
As such, it can facilitate enquiry-based learning that may raise more questions than answers, as well as problem solving, political engagement, and seeking out experts in the local community. Through Place-Based Education, children’s innate need for belonging can also be met, highlighted by the recent government Policy Paper as a prerequisite for achievement (DfE, 2026).
3. There is a contrast between “sentimental and escapist” approaches to nature, and those that are practical, and include “loyalty to and affection for…wildlife” (Orr, 1994, p. 21).
It is the latter approach that develops when one pays attention to the specific species of plant and animal, as well as the specific people, that make up our places – not a sanitised, idealistic understanding of ‘nature’ that ignores the all-too-real challenges of those whose livelihoods depend on it.
I do not know whether it is possible to love the planet or not,
says environmentalist David Orr,
but I do know that it is possible to love the places we can see, touch, smell and experience
(Orr, 1994, p.147). Humans do not love abstractly; rather it is through repeated time spent immersed in specific places that we teach children to love ‘nature’, to the health and wellbeing of both.
As the Strategy has developed, Place has continued to grow in significance, providing a coherent thread that weaves through the work of the different sectors that make up our organisation. As Outdoor Learning Leaders at the Ernest Cook Trust, we have always used the overlap between the affordances of our land and the needs of the students as our starting point, and so in one sense, our work has always been ‘place-based’. Nevertheless, I am excited to see the difference that this new emphasis will make on our practice. There are still lots of questions to think about as we develop our thinking on this topic!
References
Ardoin, N. M., Schuh, J. S., & Gould, R. K. (2012). Exploring the dimensions of place: a confirmatory factor analysis of data from three ecoregional sites. Environmental Education Research, 18(5), 583–607. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2011.640930
