The use of place-based learning as a means of improving understanding among students has been proven to be effective, as shown in the articles. Statistically speaking, more times than not, place-based learning has shown improved scores across the boards, in subjects ranging from science to social studies. The fact that this learning approach encompasses such a broad variety of subjects shows its obvious success. “Learning in Your Own Backyard” gives the example of students studying tree roots stopping erosion. The article elaborates that students “remember their own experience from this gallery and have a scaffold on which to hang their understanding,” referring to the Turtle Bay Exploration Park. The author states that her own experience of “being under dirt looking up and using the roots to climb.”

An interesting point was that this learning technique has Marxist and socialist roots, as it encourages learning outside of “institutional and ideological domination.” This echoes the ideology of private Montessori schools, which encourage hands-on learning from a very young age, going outside of the idea of a common core curriculum approach that’s sweeping the nation. In fact, this method was recently implemented in New York State, and most teachers find it tedious, as students are forced to take pointless tests at the beginning and end of the school year to catalogue their progress. Furthermore, the Montessori approach caters to the idea that different students learn in different ways- some through, listening, others through reading, and others through touch- and encompasses all of these learning styles. Place-based learning seems to do the same: being somewhere correlates to touch, reading exhibits notes to reading, and hearing a curator talk to listening.

It’s also very reminiscent of the Martin family, who sold all their belongings in order to go on a road trip with their children through all 50 states. Their children were schooled online, and were able to visit all the different memorials and historical sites that are brought up in social studies classes. This brings up the very interesting point that place-based learning not only instills a better understanding of a subject, but a greater interest. Perhaps the person who learned firsthand about preventing erosion by planting trees will be the next NGO leader fighting against habitat and critical geographic changes. Perhaps the person who visits the tenement museum will further read about social injustice in the past and even today, becoming the next champion of the working class, propelling America towards equality. Perhaps the person who visits the New York Hall of Science will play with the atomic models and be the next great chemist.

The effect that planting the seeds of interest in young minds is even greater than the effect of showing kids how planting trees can save the Earth. The broad range of topics that place-based learning can affect means children are encouraged to explore their own interests. As The Best of Both Worlds states, “Educational theory that synthesizes ecological and social concerns is, however, in an early stage of development.” These are issues that strike home, and are becoming increasingly prevalent in modern day politics. By raising concerns, raising interest about these topics in today’s students, we’re only creating the leaders of tomorrow. Improving grades is only a step towards a better educational system. Wiping away ignorance is a step towards a better America, a better world.

Education was considered to be of utmost importance during the Age of the Enlightened. Today, we look towards a more enlightened populace, a populace who we can entrust the future of our Earth to. Improved education through place-based learning won’t only serve to propagate ideas and ideals in students, but to encourage them to innovate by creating new ideas, and to instill better socially/environmentally conscious ideals in a new generation.

Today, American seeks a more educated youth in order to stay on top of the world. “Classroom-based research is inadequate to the larger tasks of cultural and ecological analysis that reinhabitation and decolonization demand.” As Peter F. Drucker said, “If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old.” Maybe the “new” is the implementation of the ideologies of critical pedagogy of place.

Last semester, for our “The Peopling of New York” Macaulay Seminar, Professor Napoli took our class on various tours, including one of the Lower East Side, where the Tenement Museum is located.  I found myself particularly engaged in the tour because I related to the area; it is an area that my Italian ancestors probably inhabited, and it is an area I frequent for food.  So when Professor Napoli explained the immigrant life in the area, I took special interest because this area is where my family lived.  When he mentioned ethnic tensions between two groups of Chinese immigrants, it left a mental imprint because I never noticed it when in the area, and wondered if I would from now on.

Similarly, place-based learning takes the location of  a person and teaches them through it; from my understanding, it is slightly different than sparking interest because the learner is learning about their surroundings and therefore learning about a topic, not just because they find something random interesting.   For example, in “Learning in Your Own Backyard”,  Mary Jo Sutton talks about the (San Francisco) Bay Area Discovery Museum and its efforts to teach about the Bay Area itself.  “The mission of the Bay Area Discovery Museum is to engage, delight, and educate children through the exploration of and connection to the local environment and the diverse communities that live here.  The local environment is central to the institution and is reflected in our programs and our new exhibits” (pp 53).  By emulating their setting, the museum members create an environment of learning fueled by the idea that it is the learners’ natural setting, therefore they will have a natural desire to learn about it, and according to David A. Gruenewald’s “The Best of Both Worlds: A Critical Pedagogy of Place”, should know about.  “[Critical pedagogy/learning] must embrace the experience of being human in connection with the others and with the world of nature, and the responsibility to conserve and restore our shared environments for future generations” (pp. 6).  According to Gruenewald, learning about community and environmental balance is essential to place-based learning as humans.  While I do believe that environmental protection is important, and that education provides people with the answers that they need to make better decisions about their environment, I do not know if this is as much of an education issue as it is an issue of capitalism, social structure, and the effects of human “progress”.  I found it interesting, however, that the article spoke about education as a tool for social and environmental change, which is good, but can be dangerous if it is used to cram beliefs down learner’s throats rather than have then be more open minded about the government.

For New Yorkers and other Americans, I think a prevalent issue right now is fracking.  This is an area in which informal science learning about fracking is useful in deciding whether fracking is worth its results and repercussions.  It also brings up a good point about Gruenewald’s article: people should be taught to be open-minded, and, in some cases cynical.

When I first started reading these articles, I didn’t really understand what the difference was between critical pedagogy and place-based education. I found that the article by David A. Greuenewald was a little hard to read; it seems as though it was directed towards those who were already familiar with the concepts discussed in the article. One aspect of the article I really enjoyed was the discussion on spatialized critical social theory in regard to pedagogy of place. I’ve read about spatialized critical social theory in other aspects (such as the LA race riots of the 90’s), but not in education.

Reading “Learning in Your Own Backyard: Place-Based Education for Museums” helped me understand that place-based education was a lot more simple than Mr. Greuenewald made it seem. Seeing the Tenement Museum as an example of a place-based educational center really helped. Because it is an institution I frequent often, I could better understand what a model of place-based education was. Simply put, it is a type of pedagogy that utilizes the environment it is located in to better teach subjects that are related to it. The Tenement Museum does a fantastic job teaching not only about tenements and NYC history, but the community it is located in.

When I think about my own experiences with place-based education, the first thing that comes to mind is the Hudson River Estuary Program. In elementary school, my class went on a trip to the program base (located right downtown on the Hudson!) to learn about the Hudson River estuary as an ecosystem and about the local wildlife that depended on this unique location. We got to touch some of the fish that were native to the estuary, learn how to clean the water in the Hudson, and experienced the daily activities of a volunteer in the program. I think place-based education is extremely helpful in piquing interest in the general public and informing people about an environment or topic they wouldn’t have learned otherwise. Being able to go and learn about the physical environment you are in is extremely interesting because hands-on experiences help people to recall what they are learning. By incorporating physical movement and stimulation of the senses, more of the actual information is taken in and retained which I believe is important.

Malka Niknamfard

In recent years, place- based education has become a flourishing method of educating the public through hands- on learning experiences. The publication Place-Based Education by the Orion Society defines this idea as a process of exposing people to hands on, tangible learning experiences that are ubiquitously found in the environment and community. This method of educating citizens is not only a way to directly expose people to what is going on in the scientific community as well as the environment around them, but it also makes them feel as though they have a direct impact on what is going on around them and that they can be directly responsible for benefitting the world around them.

Reading this article made me think back to the time I visited the L.A zoo when I was unable to go to the Bioblitz in Central Park. Although I had visited the zoo many times before, in addition to teaching us about the different animals, the tour guide that helped my group spent a lot of time talking about conservation and preservation of the environment. The tour guide taught us about how important it is to save the trees not only for the animals that live there, but also because they provide countless benefits for all humans. He showed us the polar bear habitat and taught us about the effects f global warming on the environment, and how it directly affects organisms such as polar bear.  In addition, he showed us the different plants and bushes that harvested different foods and natural plants that are commonly used to make medications. Although I have learned about the importance of environmental conservation through school, the idea did not really resonate with me until I got a first-hand look at what it really means to preserve the environment, and I was able to see the direct results of neglecting proper treatment of environment.

Ilanit Zada

Professor Adams

10-14-2013

There were two readings assigned for this week. Both readings were very interesting, however, there was one that I felt I could really identify with. “Learning in Your Own Backyard: Place-Based Education for Museums” by Janet Petitpas, discussed the importance of place-based education and how every community, rural or urban, can provide its residents with some sort of an (informal) education. I found this to be an eye-opener; I was under the impression that the most important thing for an informal education was the wilderness (obviously museums are also an option, but I did not think that buildings in a city could play any role in it.) Maggie Russell-Ciardi then writes an excerpt entitled “Lower East Side Tenement Museum” where she specifically writes about Manhattan and the way in which it can serve as an educational setting.

Ciardi states that no matter when the immigrants came to America, most of them found their home in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. As soon as I read this statement, a light bulb went off in my head. My mother is an immigrant and she too settled in the Lower East Side when she first arrived in America. That alone piqued my interest in what was going to be said, which in Surrounded by Science would be considered “connecting talk.” When an immigrant’s son/daughter walks into the Tenement Museum, they automatically think back to the place their parent lived when he/she came to the United States. As that son/daughter sees the different things the museum has to offer, he/she makes connections to the stories told by his/her parents and is automatically interested in what they are viewing. For example, if I were to enter the museum, I would think back to the place my mother used to live, a place that she took me to visit, and I will want to learn more and delve into all the information the museum has to offer.

Jennifer Mikhli

Professor Adams

October 12, 2013

Science and Technology in NYC

The article entitled “Learning in Your own Backyard: Place-based Education for Museums,” by Janet Petilpas, Salles Russell-Ciardi, Lori Salles, and Mary Jo Sutton explores the realm of place-based education. It describes three examples, two of them geared towards educating science, while one promotes historical learning. The Turtle Bay Exploration Park offers such a place-based curriculum, allowing people to explore the 300-acre campus and engage in activities “that interpret the relationship between humans and nature,”(50) as is noted in the article. Visitors can engage in sights such as the far-reaching roots of an oak tree. This knowledge can then be applied to future situations, such as lessons in soil erosion. The reason that educational situations like this one, along with other placed-based curriculums, are so effective is because of the tangibility that it offers for learners. This real experience of observing these sturdy tree roots serves as a connecting tool upon which other scientific knowledge can be applied. This connects back to the interactivity strategy of informal science learning, as well as the connecting category of perceptual talk.  Walking through the Turtle Bay Park Museum allows onlookers to interact with the environment around them, sparking their interest, engaging them, and providing them with sense of reasoning that they can later apply to other situations. This can manifest itself with connecting talk that could later occur in a formal setting, where the observation of the tree roots can serve as an earlier experience from which connections to the current lesson can be made.

David A. Gruenewald proposes a blending of the aforementioned placed-based curriculums with critical pedagogy in his article entitled “The Best of Both Worlds: A Critical Pedagogy of Place.” Critical pedagogy from an ecological standpoint promotes the transformation and conservation of the landscapes around us. While this concept is essential, it must first be preceded by a placed-based curriculum, to instill a love for the environment within students and other citizens of the environment. This fosters a sense of empathy for the environment, which can then inspire rehabilitation of it. This is summed up with a quote from Sobel saying, “what’s important is that children […] learn to love it, before being asked to heal its wounds” (7). This relates back to the last strand of science learning: identifying with the scientific enterprise. Through an individual’s bonding with the natural environment, he/she comes to identify him/herself as somewhat knowledgeable in that field of science, allowing him/her to develop a deeper connection with the surroundings that can materialize through learning about ways to help it.

I have seen the interdependent relationship of placed-based learning and critical pedagogy in my own life. From a young age, I, along with dozens of students, have been imbed with the notion of environmental conservation. We are told time and time again, “the environment is important and we must actively promote its preservation!” As I got older, reasons for the importance of the environment were explained in my ninth grade Biology class and once again in Earth Science, as I reached eleventh grade. The message has traveled with me throughout all these years, but had I really internalized the issue? Not quite. It was not until this past summer when I began to form a bond with the outside rural environment, that I fully appreciated all the conservation efforts that were being made. I remember hiking up alongside Kaaterskill Falls and being grateful for the opportunity to gaze upon the waterfall. Along all my hiking trails, I developed an appreciation for the crew of park rangers who were responsible for their upkeep. I recognized myself developing empathy for my environment and wanting to know more about how humans can contribute to environmental upkeep. Really grappling with the dirt and soil around me has inspired me to want to learn more about how I can take a more active effort in preserving the bucolic areas around me. Since then, I have made small changes in my life to reduce my carbon footprint. I pay careful heed to the amount of water that I use daily, remembering to close the faucet as I brush my teeth, and I try to walk more when I can, trying to reduce the amount of car rides I am responsible for. Essentially, my own personal place-based curriculum has allowed me to forge an intimate relationship with mother-nature, transforming me into a “greener” individual.

In this chapter, we learn about how conversation can be utilized as a tool to understand learning.  The types of talks that we can have can be broken down into perceptual, conceptual, strategic, connecting, and affecting. A perceptual talk describes the process of identifying and sharing what is significant in a complex environment, which include things like identification, naming, pointing out certain features, and quoting from a label. Conceptual talks focus more on the inferences or interpretations one would make based off observation. Strategic talks focus on two things, how to use and manipulate an exhibit and expressions of evaluation of ones own or partner’s performance. A connecting talk works to establish a connection between an exhibit and a personal association. And finally, an affective talk refers to emotional responses.  Based off conversations like this, researchers can find out what learners know and understand, what emotions have been evoked by an experience, and what gaps in learning may remain. This is extremely effective since it provides a threshold in improvement on how researchers may better convey their information to the general audience, as well as what areas they might want to manipulate to better reinforce their information.

In this chapter, we also learn that roles that support learning can range from simple acts of assistance to long- term, sustained relationships, collaborations, and apprenticeships.  Children are easily impressionable and always in a state of constant inquiry and learning, so even the simplest of interactions can have a huge impact on how they learn about science. It does not even have to necessarily be about science, but just activities that help inspire a science related pursuit, such as a Girl Scout leader can encourage members of the troop to pursue a science badge. For science learning relationships to be productive they must involve sustained individual inquiry and also social interaction with interest groups. The social interaction is actually quite important, because it can lead to learners developing relationships with experts, who can help hone their scientific understanding and skill over sustained time periods. It also allows for less knowledgeable individuals to interact with more knowledgeable peers and mentors. This is important, because with the knowledge that social interactions help form, certain people can utilize this information to help improve people’s informal science experiences.

I think reading through this answer on Quora will give a lot of insight on how people learn: this

It’s lengthy so make sure you have some time to spare!