EDUCATION AND PLACE: A REVIEW ESSAY

In this review essay, Jan Nespor uses three recent contributions to place-based education, Paul Theobald's Teaching the Commons, C.A. Bowers's Revitalizing the Commons, and David Gruenewald and Gregory Smith`s edited volume Place-Based Education in the Global Age, to examine some fundamental conceptual and practical issues in the area. One is how "place'' is defined in place-based education theory, and in particular how moralizing idealizations of place woven into problematic distinctions (place/nonplace, urban/rural, local/global, and so on) may actually make it harder for us to understand education and place. A second is how class, ethnicity, gender, and other forms of difference are addressed or not - in the field's theoretical formulations. Finally, Nespor explores problems of articulating the visions of place-based education in these texts with larger social or political movements to transform schooling and environmental practices.