Explore the Hub
Place-Based Learning Resources
Place-Based Learning is a high-impact practice rooted in the philosophy of John Dewey and drawing from decades of praxis connected to experiential learning, service-learning, and civic engagement. In “Engaging Place as a Partner,” Cheryl K. Siemers, Barbara Harrison, Patti H. Clayton, and Talmage A. Stanley offer four guiding principles that will also guide the HILL initiative:
1) Integrating ecological perspectives and values, thereby taking into account systemic interconnectedness and leaving all partners with greater appreciation for their own relationship with and responsibility for the natural world
2) Incorporating diverse ways of knowing and being embedded in distinct places, which generates both learning and change strategies that integrate multiple cultural and disciplinary lenses
3) Taking seriously the power of story to make meaning and build community, or inviting and inquiring into the stories “engraved on the landscape” and embedded in the fibers of community life (Stanley, 2012, “Building in Place,” p. 153)
4) Grappling with contradictions and tensions that often surface when we realize the past is always with us as a living legacy and that embracing both its joys and its sorrows is necessary to understand who we are and to envision who we might become
