Place-Based Science Teaching
Connecting Students to Curriculum, Community, and Caring for Our Planet
Jumpstart your imagination and transform your science classroom by centering place-based learning
Identity, community, and place are tightly connected and can be leveraged to deepen science learning for students. Place-Based Science Teaching offers K–12 science educators an innovative approach to building learning experiences that embrace the rich and varied knowledge held by people, both past and present, about the places we call home. This book helps teachers to foster greater personal investment of students in their learning, as well as develop NGSS-informed authentic problem-solving and critical-reasoning skills. The book will also help teachers create and find joy in their classrooms by connecting lessons to local environments, cultural heritage, and global issues.Written by nationally recognized STEM educators Whitney Aragaki and Kirstin J. Milks, the book blends inspiring storytelling with practical frameworks and resources. Chapters take you behind the scenes into innovative classrooms, detailing high-impact, standards-aligned activities and sharing educator stories from diverse settings.
Grounded in cutting-edge research and real-world examples, Place-Based Science Teaching
- Introduces the Place Based Science Teaching Framework that asks Where are you? When are you? Who are you? and Who are we together? as a way to connect learning to local and global contexts
- Provides classroom-ready lessons and case studies from many educational settings, aligned with NGSS and centered on belonging, access, and engagement
- Offers strategies for virtual spaces and digital perspectives to enhance teaching in an increasingly online world
- Includes actionable reflection prompts designed to help teachers explore their own positionality and better connect with their students and communities
This book encourages educators and administrators alike to transform science learning into an opportunity for building empathy, connection, and hope. Place-Based Science Teaching is designed to help teachers foster a sense of place and stewardship among their students, and address peace- and justice-focused solutions that encourage students to care for their communities, think critically about global challenges, and develop the agency to lead for generations to come.
As an educator of color, I have long searched for authentic resources that center culture, community, and justice in ways that go beyond performative land acknowledgments or one-off lessons. Place-Based Science Teaching: Connecting Students to Curriculum, Community, and Caring for Our Planet is a call to action and a guide for educators to lead with culture, justice, and humanity at the heart of science. It invites us to reclaim science as something that lives in our communities, in our stories, and in our relationships to place.
An essential, resource-abundant guide for more meaningful, relational, and authentic place-based science education. Nurture your science instruction through grounding, spirit, accountability, intentionality, and importantly: criticality.
Aragaki and Milks offer a powerful case for place-based learning as an essential tool for navigating today’s polycrisis. By honoring identities, histories, and lived experiences, they invite educators and students into inquiry around a more expansive view of knowledge. This book is both a toolkit and an inspiration, encouraging reflection on our relationship with place and affirming our stories as critical testimonies. It is capable of sparking and sustaining action for a more joyful and just future.
The power of this book is felt from its very first sentence, posed as a question to unlock the power within us: What if the way forward is just under our feet? This question encourages educators to think holistically about how we can expand our connection and humanity through place-based science practices. This book is the way forward, recommitting us to lifelong learning through curiosity, wonder, and awe of the natural world!
The work I do every day is founded in place-based teaching and learning, and few people have taught me more about how to do that well than Whitney Aragaki. Her vision for education rooted in place is both revolutionary and anchored in ancient wisdom. Aragaki and Milks have written the essential guide to the future of place-based education, which is truly the heartbeat of any valuable education at all.
