Place-Based Education in High School Science: Situating Energy and Climate Change in Students' Communities

Abstract

The field of physics education has struggled to create culturally based, responsive, and relevant curriculum to engage students of color. This may be partly due to the perception that physics is apolitical and acultural, despite many concepts, such as energy and climate change, being socio-politically situated in our current society. To the extent that physics maintains an acultural and apolitical stance, physics education cannot be place based because the notion of place is politically and culturally situated to students' environments. To bridge this gap, the authors of this article worked with physics teachers in a yearlong professional learning community (PLC) to incorporate place-based education into their science curriculum. Place-based education teaches students to take care of their environments by situating potential actions they can take to support their local communities in addressing climate change impacts. The two case studies described herein demonstrate how physics teachers situate the concepts of energy and climate change in students' local environments. Physics teacher Molly German situated water resources to the students' farming community and the impacts climate change and energy have on their water resources. Physics teacher Rey Horowitz localized energy and climate change impacts to power plants that are visible in many neighborhoods in the city, and which operate on fossil fuels. These case studies demonstrate that physics education can indeed become culturally based, responsive, and relevant through the integration of place-based education.