What I’m Reading: ‘Interdisciplinary Approaches to Pedagogy and Place-Based Education’

“Where are we?” is the sentence that opens Interdisciplinary Approaches to Pedagogy and Place-Based Education: From Abstract to the Quotidian (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). Together, the essays in the collection make a compelling argument that teachers and students need to be asking that question in college classrooms. Place-based education, which emphasizes getting students into the local community and environment, has been most popular in primary and secondary schools. The contributing writers consider what the approach might look like in higher education.

The book, edited by Deric Shannon, of Emory University, and Jeffery Galle, of the University System of Georgia, showed me that the university does not need to be the placeless backdrop to universal learning. Instead, it can offer exciting and intellectually rigorous opportunities for students to ground their knowledge in specific places, whether that be the campus itself or the setting of a novel. Higher education can also help question the boundaries of our definitions. The book treats both interiority and digital communities, for example, as places. As place-based education begins to be taken seriously at colleges, I wonder, will we productively expand the meaning of “place,” or will we theorize it until the term is no longer relevant to an educational movement meant to connect learning with the environment?

Jennifer Horwitz is a graduate instructor in English at Tufts University.