Developing sense of place through a place-based Indigenous education for sustainable development curriculum

Abstract

The life experiences of Indigenous students are often overlooked in school learning, thereby causing dissonance in learning. To address this issue, this study incorporated local and traditional ecological knowledges of community in this year-long course of ‘place-based Indigenous education for sustainable development’, using place-based design principles, which provided many experiential learning opportunities for the students to develop cognitive, socio-emotional, and behavioral aspects of sense of place. To ensure self-determination of Indigenous peoples in educational research, this study engaged and empowered knowledgeable Elders, community members, and Indigenous teachers in this community-based participatory design research. From student worksheets, student interviews, classroom observations, and teacher feedback, we found that students began to think about hometown and its sustainability issues in a broader perspective as they enhanced their local knowledge and sense of place. Follow-up research can be conducted to determine the generalizability of this model in cross-cultural contexts or for Indigenous youth, as the notion of sense of place is rather holistic and contextualized.

Keywords:

• education for sustainable development
• Indigenous education
• sense of place
• sustainability
• traditional ecological knowledge

Acknowledgements

The authors are deeply grateful for the participating Indigenous Elders, community members, teachers, students, and research team members, who have made this study possible. We would also extend our gratitude to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Indigenous is marked with capital I to refer to original inhabitants in unique cultures who have experiences in colonialism (Wilson 2008).

2 The student population in many Indigenous schools in remote areas are decreasing and face the possibility of closure. The targeted school used to have about 100 students before 2004, but as of 2021 serves only 30 students.

3 Gender may play a role in the development of sense of place; however, this study did not explore the gender issue due to limited student participants.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan under Grant MOST 106-2511-S-110-008-MY4 and MOST 110-2511-H-110-012-MY3.

Notes on contributors

Paichi Pat Shein

Wei-Ting Li is a Ph.D. student at the Institute of Education, National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan, and the director of Taichung Shalu Maker Education and Technology Center, Taiwan. His research areas are Indigenous science education, curriculum development, and place-based education.

Paichi Pat Shein is a professor at the Institute of Education, National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan. Her research areas are Indigenous science education, place-based education, environmental education, and education for sustainable development.