EARTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE STUDENT LEVELS OF COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT IN PLACE-BASED EDUCATION CLASSES AND PROGRAMS

Place-based education can increase student engagement in STEM programs, including students not commonly represented in the geosciences. In this work, I present a systematic literature review identifying the relationship between place-based education and students’ values in their environment and community. Three databases (Proquest, Web of Science, Scopus) and the Journal of Geoscience Education were searched using a common search phrase: ("place-based education" OR "place based education") AND (geology OR geoscience OR "earth science"). Over 300 documents were identified and included documents were analyzed using the PICO framework to focus on Population, Intervention, Comparison, and Outcomes reported in each study. Initial findings indicate that some of the most successful place-based instruction in geoscience focuses on delivering content that draws from the interdisciplinary aspects of geoscience including how environmental change influences communities. This focus on culturally relevant content and on collaborative research practices may draw in underrepresented students. This work suggests that teaching students about geosciences from a place-based framework – including sub-content on the connections between geoscience, history, culture, and environment – will increase students’ engagement with their environment and community, which can also increase the engagement of diverse students in STEM.