Reconstruction site: excavating and elevating place-based education in Winnipeg K-12 teacher practice

Abstract

Many K-12 students who attend public school in Canada will spend their day learning about the world outside of the school, while remaining in their classroom. The rich potential provided from learning in, with and for places, and people that live and work in them, remain severed from their lessons. This has been the model of public schooling for most Canadians since the standardization of the common school over a hundred years ago. In recent years, educational reform movements, such as 'place-based education' (PBE) (Anderson, 2017; Gruenewald, 2003a, 2003b; Gruenewald & Smith, 2010; Vander Ark, et al., 2020), have sought to reconceptualize what, where, how and why learning takes place in an effort to reconnect youth to the communities in which they live, in a social, cultural, historical and ecological sense, while simultaneously bringing to life the curriculum teachers are tasked with facilitating. However, the ways in which K-12 educators utilize the school neighborhood as a site of ongoing learning remains unclear. If, how and why teachers utilize 'places' in their practice is under-researched in Canada (Webber, 2021), and yet, there is no research on the role of place in Manitoba teacher practice. This dissertation comprises a mixed methods research method to understand the current landscape of PBE in the K-12 Winnipeg public education system and specific practices of a group of K-12 teachers. Firstly, a survey on PBE distributed to three school divisions provided four findings: that teachers across the K-12 system, disciplines and locations are utilizing place in their instructional design; that the use of place is focused on cultural appreciation over critical investigation; that place is used to supplement classroom instruction rather than a starting or end point; and, that most survey informants were using constructivist pedagogies, offering a foundation from which to expand PBE practices. Secondly, Greenwood and Levin's (2007) 'Cogenerative Model' of action research (AR) and operating as a 'reciprocal collaboration' (Herr & Anderson, 2012) was undertaken between the lead researcher and three Winnipeg K-12 teachers. The AR study documented the experiences and reflections of the researcher and participants as they designed and facilitated place-based education units between two weeks and five months. Data was collected throughout the project through 'arenas' (Greenwood & Levin, 2007) such as ongoing conversations, pre- and post-interviews and member checking. Findings from this study included participants expressing that place-based education was a powerful pedagogical that aligned with their philosophy of teaching, simultaneously increasing student engagement and inclusion, and offering particularly strong impacts on student understanding the numbered treaties and reconciliation. When Winnipeg is both considered by scholars as "ground zero for reconciliation" (Sinclair, 2024) and facing a number of broader challenges around attendance, engagement and teacher recruitment and retention, the findings of this study suggest that place-based education offers a powerful lens through which to understand, organize and facilitate teaching and learning in the K-12 system, in particular to offer a response to addressing the 94 Calls to Action.