PLACE-BASED EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING: GROUNDING ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE IN SUSTAINABILITY AND CIVIC ENGAGEMENT

To address the growing need for effective thought and praxis around sustainability, educators must experiment with engaged learning strategies that push students to learn how to apply their academic knowledge and skills to address our current socio-environmental crises. This work examines student development in civic-mindedness and place attachment, and their ability to create place meanings within a sustainability framework through place-based experiential learning (PBEL) on a campus farm. PBEL and the reflective assessment strategies that often accompany quality PBEL implementation contribute to the realization of civic-minded action by providing students with opportunities to apply technical knowledge, make meaning for themselves, and connect with the community and environment. Thus, this work examines whether place attachment, situated sustainability meaning making (SSMM), and environmental science literacy predict dimensions of civic-mindedness (i.e., relational constitution of the self, valuing civic duty, applying interpersonal knowledge, and micro- and macro-awareness to intervene). A total of N = 427 students completed surveys at a private, mid-sized, midwestern university at the start and end of each semester across three years in ten PBEL courses. Paired-sample t-tests showed that students experienced statistically significant (two-sided ps < .01) gains in the five dimensions of civic-mindedness, environmental science literacy, place attachment, SSMM, and environmental science literacy. Hierarchical linear regressions (model ps < .01) showed that SSMM and environmental science literacy significantly predict relational constitution of the self, valuing civic duty, applying interpersonal knowledge, and micro-awareness to intervene. Place attachment to the campus farm also significantly predicts micro-awareness to intervene, while only SSMM predicts macro-awareness to intervene. This suggests that: (1) increasing student environmental science literacy and their capacities to make sustainability meanings could lead to broader shifts in student abilities to civically engage and intervene in social life and (2) PBEL conducted in campus and/or local food system places can provide an educational environment to effectively accomplish this at other institutions.