Place-based education (PBE) is anytime, anywhere learning that leverages the power of place and connects learners to communities and the world around them. Teton Science Schools’ Place Network defines “place” as the ecological, cultural, and economic aspects that make up a community. Research in PBE indicates that a student’s sense of self, motivation to learn, and community engagement are enhanced through meaningful interactions with immediate physical and cultural environments. This is because students learn best when they are able to situate their learning in a relevant context. The Place Network brings Teton Science Schools’ innovative teaching practices, enduring relationships, integrated curriculum, and global awareness to students and teachers anywhere in the world.
The PBE model has reached thousands of students and over 500 educators in 21 schools in communities across the country and worldwide, where students experience greater engagement, academic outcomes, and sense of belonging. Teton Science Schools offers comprehensive resources and supports, including their Place Network partnership and resources, to help schools interested in implementing the PBE model.
What Makes this Model Innovative?
Relevance
Customization
Anytime, Anywhere Learning
Related Models
EL Education
EL Education’s comprehensive school model builds student capacity for three Dimensions of high achievement—character, mastery of skills and content, and high-quality student work—through the application of Core Practices centered on real-world learning and teamwork.
EL Education
EL Education’s comprehensive improvement model transforms schools into hubs of opportunity where all students are able to reach their unique potential. The model redefines student achievement to align with what is most celebrated in adulthood—mastery of knowledge and skills, high-quality work, and character—and outlines a set of Core Practices that help bring these to life. Grounded in the belief that greater engagement leads to achievement, EL Education’s Core Practices support students in becoming self-directed learners as they grapple with complex, real-world issues like professionals. The model positions students as active and collaborative learners alongside their teachers, or as part of a crew rather than just as passengers.
The full EL Education model requires intensive in-person training and coaching over multiple years, and 152 schools spanning 35 states currently employ the full model. EL Education also has an open-source K-8 Language Arts Curriculum and a menu of professional development opportunities to support its implementation.
New Tech Network
The New Tech Network Model is a K-12 systemic approach to creating scalable and sustainable change so that all students are college and career ready.
New Tech Network
New Tech Network (NTN) is a national nonprofit dedicated to systemic change in education. NTN centers K-12 schools as the units of change, working closely with district leaders, school principals, and classroom educators to co-design an implementation approach that enables the model to be adapted to local context. With more than 25 years of supporting schools and districts in change-making, NTN has the ability to recognize common patterns across systems and what is unique about each school and district community. NTN has worked with over 350 schools committed to these key focus areas: college- and career-ready outcomes, supportive and inclusive culture, meaningful and equitable instruction, and purposeful assessment.
NTN schools use project-based learning (PBL) and problem-based learning (PrBL) methods to ensure that learning is complex and authentic and to, in turn, help students develop the targeted outcomes. The student experience is tied directly to deeper learning outcomes. Students gain skills and use their voices in ways that prepare them for life beyond school. PBL and PrBL allows students to engage with material in creative, culturally relevant ways, experience it in context, and share their learning with peers.
In addition to the research-based, whole school model, NTN offers Individual Services to build Deeper Learning Capacity, a selection of professional development services designed to build educator capacity and develop leadership skills that enable schools to strengthen instruction, culture, assessment, and college and career readiness.
Goals
PBE aims to increase levels of engagement, boost academic outcomes, and impact communities, in both the short and the long term.
Engagement
Students are more engaged because of the interest and relevance of the curriculum and emphasis on learner-centered, inquiry-based learning. Long term, students believe that they have the skills and resources to accomplish goals and build agency.
Academic Outcomes
Student learning increases because the curriculum is not only more relevant but also engaging and connected to the community. This contributes to advancing equity by ensuring that all students have access to the social capital and tools and are thus able to make a difference.
Community Impact
Students understand themselves and their communities on a higher level, which leads to their becoming engaged citizens, making a positive impact, and seeing themselves as part of a thriving and vibrant society.
Experience
PBE is an approach that connects learners and communities to increase student engagement, boost learning outcomes, impact communities, and promote understanding of the world. What is Place-Based Education? An Inside Look at Teton Science Schools
The model is grounded in four core elements: learner-centered practices, community as classroom, community impact, and integrating content and place. Place-Based School Implementation Model
In addition to these four core elements, Teton has identified additional practices to amplify PBE. These are not required to implement the model but can further support implementation and student outcomes. These include:
- Cultural curiosity and culturally sustaining pedagogy
- Cross-content teacher collaboration
- Personalized learning
- Work-connected learning
- Social-emotional learning
- Competency-based learning
With learner-centered instructional practices at the core, students are active participants in their learning and become resilient, lifelong learners. They feel deeply connected to learning about place and they demonstrate agency and self-efficacy. Students influence their learning through sharing their interests and making choices about their learning. They choose what and how they will learn, as well as how they will assess their own learning. Curriculums and projects reflect learners’ customs, characteristics, experiences, and perspectives, and they provide opportunities for learners to pursue their own locally relevant interests and passions in the context of their learning. The teacher, who serves as a guide or learning facilitator, provides students with multiple avenues through which to engage in learning and demonstrate their understanding. Learner-Centered Practices Examples
Community as Classroom expands the definition of the classroom beyond the four walls to include community experts, experiences, and places. The school is a center of community engagement and impact, and the school’s identity as a place-based school is visible and widely communicated. Learners, teachers, and school leaders develop understanding about current events and historical contexts within the local community, including an awareness of their own identities and cultures—as well as the identities and cultures of others—as they relate to the context of the community. Community as classroom makes developmentally appropriate and culturally aware and culturally curious connections about local, state, regional, national, and global events and issues. This can be carried out in three learning environments by:
- Bringing the community into the classroom through guest speakers and content
- Bringing the students into the community on learning journeys
- Simply going outside the classroom to do things that could have been done inside
These environments develop strong relationships between students and their communities. Breaking down the barriers between classroom and community enhances students’ appreciation for the natural world, as well as their interest in improving both community vitality and environmental quality. Emphasizing hands-on learning grounded in community increases academic achievement, develops stronger student commitment to community, and encourages the development of active, contributing citizens. Community as Classroom Examples
PBE goes beyond surface exchanges between learners and the world around them; instead, through inquiry, design thinking, and project-based learning, students ask questions, codesign solutions to real problems, and execute projects that have an authentic audience and practical application.
The connections developed in Community as Classroom, evolve into community impact projects. Project-based learning enables collaboration around relevant, complex, and impactful learning experiences. University Charter School, a Place Network Partner Teachers guide learners to identify problems or needs, help students codesign solutions with their users, and facilitate locally relevant projects designed to lead to learners’ mastery of outcomes, ideally from multiple domains. Learners and teachers actively contribute to their community’s vitality, and the school helps the community to be more ecologically resilient, economically vibrant, and culturally inclusive. Community Impact Examples
In a place-based approach, content is contextualized—situated where it is relevant and applicable—as well as engaging and relevant. Teachers leverage transferable place-based tools for learning experience design to connect standards and curriculums to place at scales from local to global, along a spectrum from history into the future. To the extent possible, units are interdisciplinary and teaching is collaborative. Learning is not watered down, and students meet or exceed academic targets. Integrating Content and Place Examples
Supporting Structures
The model can be integrated into a school’s existing overall model but will require shifts in instruction, culture, adult learning, and community partnerships.
While the model is curriculum agnostic, teaching and learning must be grounded in the elements of place-based learning.
PBE is curriculum agnostic. The principles and strategies can be used to enhance and adapt any existing curriculum. For example, The Mountain Academy Upper School team adapted a place-based unit over multiple years to integrate more disciplines and more place-based principles. Building a Place-Based Unit The Place Network shares a range of place-based projects that have emerged in recent years on its free database. Place Network Student Projects
Teachers facilitate locally relevant projects designed to lead to learners’ mastery of outcomes, ideally from multiple domains. They create—or guide learners in creating—authentic and varied assessments that are embedded in a project, benefit the community, and meaningfully assess specific learning outcomes. Finally, teachers provide an opportunity for learners to present their public products to local audiences and to receive structured, authentic feedback.
School and community leadership must be committed to PBE.
Context matters, and successful PBE starts with engaged and committed school and community leadership—specifically with a public and coherent commitment to and vision for PBE, allocation of resources (such as funding and teacher time), and an intentional approach to change management.
Adult learning must be aligned to and modeled after the type of learning experiences they seek to create for students.
There is often a disconnect between the learning experiences educators receive and those they seek to create for students. Teacher preparation and professional learning can be aligned to—and modeled after—the types of deeper learning environments they also seek to create for students. Teton Science Schools’ professional learning “models the model,” by facilitating adult learning experiences that are:
- Learner-centered
- Connected to place at scales ranging from local to global
- Intended to lead to positive community impacts, driven by inquiry, design, and projects
- Grounded in practical tools that help teachers plan place-based learning experiences that support academic mastery
Schedules must block time for interdisciplinary, place-based projects.
The schedule does not need to be modified in a particular way to enable placed-based learning. However, it is essential to protect time in the schedule for teacher collaboration, logistical planning, and long-form, place-based projects.
At Mountain Academy, the schedule includes core blocks for literacy and math in the morning. Then the afternoon includes time for interdisciplinary projects where students’ interests drive their application of learning from across subject areas in authentic, relevant project-based learning. Sample Schedule At Pinnacles Prep, students have a dedicated “Passion Project” time once per week.
Teaching and learning must extend beyond the four walls of the classroom and include the community and community members.
Each stakeholder—learners, parents, educators, graduate students, community members—has an essential role in positively impacting local places and making PBE come to life. Communities serve as learning ecosystems for the school, where local and regional experts, experiences, and places are part of the expanded definition of a classroom. Schools build reciprocal relationships to impact the community and enable immersive student learning.
PBE must be tied to the place where learning is happening, but this can be any place.
PBE can happen anywhere—not only outside—because it centers place, not just venue. The key is to make place—meaning the ecological, economic, and cultural conditions in a specific context—highly relevant to what the students are learning and experiencing.
While learning does happen in the traditional classroom, it is often extended to other spaces such as the outdoors, community organizations and spaces, at home, online, and more. For example, students may go outside for a reader’s workshop lesson, or to spend a day visiting a local bike shop, or an entire course—like Farm and Garden—may take place outside. 5 Places Where Placed-Based Learning Is Possible
While a key emphasis of PBE is to extend learning outside the classroom, it’s also important to consider the design of the classroom itself. The physical space of the classroom can, and should, be designed to be a more learner-centered environment. Designing Learner-Centered Environments
While the model is curriculum agnostic, teaching and learning must be grounded in the elements of place-based learning.
PBE is curriculum agnostic. The principles and strategies can be used to enhance and adapt any existing curriculum. For example, The Mountain Academy Upper School team adapted a place-based unit over multiple years to integrate more disciplines and more place-based principles. Building a Place-Based Unit The Place Network shares a range of place-based projects that have emerged in recent years on its free database. Place Network Student Projects
Teachers facilitate locally relevant projects designed to lead to learners’ mastery of outcomes, ideally from multiple domains. They create—or guide learners in creating—authentic and varied assessments that are embedded in a project, benefit the community, and meaningfully assess specific learning outcomes. Finally, teachers provide an opportunity for learners to present their public products to local audiences and to receive structured, authentic feedback.
School and community leadership must be committed to PBE.
Context matters, and successful PBE starts with engaged and committed school and community leadership—specifically with a public and coherent commitment to and vision for PBE, allocation of resources (such as funding and teacher time), and an intentional approach to change management.
Adult learning must be aligned to and modeled after the type of learning experiences they seek to create for students.
There is often a disconnect between the learning experiences educators receive and those they seek to create for students. Teacher preparation and professional learning can be aligned to—and modeled after—the types of deeper learning environments they also seek to create for students. Teton Science Schools’ professional learning “models the model,” by facilitating adult learning experiences that are:
- Learner-centered
- Connected to place at scales ranging from local to global
- Intended to lead to positive community impacts, driven by inquiry, design, and projects
- Grounded in practical tools that help teachers plan place-based learning experiences that support academic mastery
Schedules must block time for interdisciplinary, place-based projects.
The schedule does not need to be modified in a particular way to enable placed-based learning. However, it is essential to protect time in the schedule for teacher collaboration, logistical planning, and long-form, place-based projects.
At Mountain Academy, the schedule includes core blocks for literacy and math in the morning. Then the afternoon includes time for interdisciplinary projects where students’ interests drive their application of learning from across subject areas in authentic, relevant project-based learning. Sample Schedule At Pinnacles Prep, students have a dedicated “Passion Project” time once per week.
Teaching and learning must extend beyond the four walls of the classroom and include the community and community members.
Each stakeholder—learners, parents, educators, graduate students, community members—has an essential role in positively impacting local places and making PBE come to life. Communities serve as learning ecosystems for the school, where local and regional experts, experiences, and places are part of the expanded definition of a classroom. Schools build reciprocal relationships to impact the community and enable immersive student learning.
PBE must be tied to the place where learning is happening, but this can be any place.
PBE can happen anywhere—not only outside—because it centers place, not just venue. The key is to make place—meaning the ecological, economic, and cultural conditions in a specific context—highly relevant to what the students are learning and experiencing.
While learning does happen in the traditional classroom, it is often extended to other spaces such as the outdoors, community organizations and spaces, at home, online, and more. For example, students may go outside for a reader’s workshop lesson, or to spend a day visiting a local bike shop, or an entire course—like Farm and Garden—may take place outside. 5 Places Where Placed-Based Learning Is Possible
While a key emphasis of PBE is to extend learning outside the classroom, it’s also important to consider the design of the classroom itself. The physical space of the classroom can, and should, be designed to be a more learner-centered environment. Designing Learner-Centered Environments
Supports Offered
Teton Science Schools’ Place Network offers the following supports to help you implement its model.
Place Network created a Readiness Review, which allows school leaders to reflect on the extent to which School Leadership and Community Foundational Supports for PBE already exist. Readiness Review
Place Network Partnership
Cost Associated
As Place Network partners, schools and districts have the opportunity to immerse themselves in a multi-year, place-based, professional development experience.
- Affiliate Schools are schools that want to be connected to a larger network but do not want or need professional learning or coaching.
- Introduction Year Schools are schools seeking to establish essential school and community leadership supports, prior to implementing a comprehensive professional learning program for teachers.
- Place Network Partner Schools are schools seeking in-depth partnership including in-person and virtual workshops, virtual consulting, tools, structures, and implementation coaching and strategy sessions.
Resources
Free
The Teton Science Schools Professional Learning team and The Place Network share a plethora of resources to learn more about and implement place-based learning, from their white papers to their blog.
Reach
Demonstration Sites
The following sites are examples of learning communities that have successfully implemented the model.
Teton Valley Campus of Teton Science Schools
Jackson, WY
PK-8
Independent
Summit Charter School
Cashiers, NC
K-12
Charter
University Charter School
Livingston, AL
K-12
Charter
Impact
Students who experience Place Based Education report higher levels of engagement. Place Network Student Engagement
There’s a positive relationship (R2 = 0.335) between students’ self-reported levels of engagement and how much place-based teaching and learning they experience.
PBE students are more engaged due to increased interest in and relevance of the curriculum.
- 3rd–5th graders are in the 80th percentile nationally in school engagement (using Panorama’s 2 million student database). 6th–12th graders showed a 2 percentage-points increase in school engagement in 2020–21 over 2019–20.
Learning increases owing to the increased relevance of the curriculum, which is engaging and connected to the community.
- All schools in The Place Network are performing at or above the district mean in math and science proficiency.
- All but one Place Network school is performing at or above the district mean in ELA proficiency.
PBE allows students to understand themselves and their communities on a higher level, which leads to their becoming engaged citizens, making a positive impact, and seeing themselves as part of a thriving and vibrant society.
- 3rd–5th graders showed improvement over the 2019–20 school year in School Climate, School Safety, and School Engagement (2019–20 survey taken before the COVID-19 pandemic).
- School Belonging results for 3rd–5th graders (fall 2020) were in the 90th percentile nationally. In addition, all surveyed constructs with national norms were in the 60th–80th percentile nationally.
- 6th–12th graders showed gains in School Safety, School Climate, and School Engagement (improvement over the 2019–20 school year, surveyed before the COVID-19 pandemic).
- School Safety results for 6th–12th graders (fall 2020) were in the 90th percentile.
Students in PBE make gains beyond academics–they also show gains in social emotional skills.
- 3rd-5th graders showed growth on three out of four SEL constructs in 2020-21 (Social Awareness, Growth Mindset, and Self-efficacy, no change in Self-Management). In addition, all surveyed constructs were in the 60th-80th percentile nationally.
- 6th-12th graders showed gains in Self-Management and Social Awareness (improvement over the 2019-20 school year, surveyed before the COVID-19 pandemic).
PBE increases teachers’ well-being and ability to find meaning in their work. Place Network Teacher Survey
- 97% of teachers at Place Network schools who took the survey indicate that they find their work to be meaningful.
- Teachers with higher levels of PBE implementation generally report higher overall well-being across dimensions such as self-efficacy, affect, and the quality of teacher–student interactions.
Families whose children attend Place Network Schools indicate that those children are engaged in their learning and supported academically. Place Network Family Survey
- 85% agree or strongly agree that their child is engaged with their learning.
- 80% agree or strongly agree that their child is supported to achieve academically.