Regenerating Our Place: Fostering a Sense of Place Through Rehabilitation and Place-Based Education

This study examines the effects of a place-based intervention program on the sense of place of Bedouin elementary school students. These students live on the banks of the polluted Hebron Stream in Israel, where a three-pronged restoration program has recently been established, including the stream’s rehabilitation, the establishment of local waste treatment, and an environmental education program. Our study follows groups of fifth-graders (n = 107) throughout a 2-year, place-based learning program in the Hebron Stream area. The program’s purpose is to teach students about authentic environmental phenomena in the stream’s surroundings, while fostering their sense of attachment to the stream. Data were gathered, before, during, and after the intervention, via drawings and individual interviews, and analyzed using quantitative and qualitative content analysis. The findings show that after the intervention, Hebron Stream became part of the students’ sense of place, with many students drawing a cleaner, more esthetically pleasing stream, and about a third drawing the stream as a “healthy” ecosystem. The students’ explanations of their drawings showed a rise in their awareness of the stream’s importance as a natural resource, and an increased awareness of the relationship between the stream, the community, and political-economic situation. Though they were openly critical of flaws in the current progress of the restoration process, they also expressed optimism regarding the improvement in the stream’s conditions that contrasted sharply with their earlier fatalistic attitudes. This change in attitude was also expressed in declared changes in the students’ personal environmental behaviors. The results of this study provide a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between people and their immediate environment. It offers both pedagogical and theoretical recommendations for studies of sense of place and place-based education initiatives undertaken in contaminated natural environments

Teaching systems thinking through game design

In this mixed-methods study, we examined if students benefitted from a game design course offered during an enrichment hour in terms of gains in their system analysis and design skills. Students at a rural middle school in Southeast US (n = 19) attended a 1-hour game design course offered weekly during an academic enrichment class period, for the duration of a school year, learning basics of digital game-design and practicing system design skills such as making flowcharts. The results of quasi-experimental data indicated that the treatment group’s pretest–posttest system analysis and design skills, compared to the control group, which did not receive any training, further improved, F(1,33) = 16.516, p \u3c 0.001. Results from the interviews showed that the participants were able to verbalize how they applied system analysis and design skills developed during the course to problem-solving in different contexts. We discussed the instructional aspects of learning game-design that align with systems thinking. We also explored the possible influence of initial cognitive skills on student learning outcomes from such interventions