Place-Based Learning is rooted in the unique history, culture, environment and economy of a particular place. The community provides a context for learning, student work focuses on community needs and interests, and community members serve as resources and partners in every aspect of teaching and learning. The local focus has the power to engage students academically, pairing relevance with rigor, while opening windows to the world and promoting genuine citizenship.

To enhance and promote place-based learning, the Rural Trust set about the task of creating tools and strategies capable of documenting and measuring the full impact of learning that unfolds both inside and outside a school’s walls, and for using the evidence that these strategies yield to improve place-based learning efforts. These tools and strategies evolved into the Place-Based Learning Portfolio, a self-evaluation system in which school and community groups gather evidence of their place-based learning efforts, tell the story of their work while drawing on that evidence, and then analyze and reflect on their progress toward their goals. Because place-based learning has multiple facets and values, the portfolio involves three distinct components, or entries, each dedicated to examining the work through a different lens:

• Entry 1 - Student Learning and Contributions
  
• Entry 2 - Community Learning and Empowerment
  
• Entry 3 - Deepening and Spreading Place-Based Learning

Each entry is supported by a set of directions for how to compile evidence and write the story of your place-based work, as seen through that entry’s particular focus. Each entry also has a rubric, which delineates place-based learning values with respect to the entry’s focus, as well as developmental stages in making place-based work meaningful and sustainable.

For the complete story on the why’s and how’s of the Place-Based Learning Portfolio, consult the Place-Based Learning Portfolio Workbook, published by the Rural School and Community Trust. You will also want to see some examples of how schools and communities around the country are engaging in place-based learning and documenting that work using the Place-Based Learning Portfolio. That is the purpose of this web-site, which provides you five different examples of Place-Based Learning Portfolio entries. The makers of these five examples are to be commended for the vitality of their efforts, the power of their impact, and the courage they have shown in making their work available in the public realm.

Each example documents a different place-based learning project or set of projects, viewed through one of the three entries of the Place-Based Learning Portfolio. Each example includes a narrative that tells the story of the project and evidence that supports and amplifies it. References in the narrative to specific pieces of evidence are dynamically linked, so if you click on a reference you can easily travel to the documentary evidence being discussed.

To help you analyze place-based learning in practice, each example is also annotated. The annotations connect the specifics of the place-based learning project to the overarching values of place-based learning. Simply roll your mouse over any of the highlighted sections of the portfolio entry, and a box will appear with comments about that section of the entry. Or double click on any highlighted section to open a file with all the comments. Within the comments are references to specific parts of the rubric for the entry, called the themes and aspects. These will be bolded or italicized in the text of the annotation. To see the part of the rubric associated with a particular theme or aspect, click on the theme or aspect in the annotation.

As you read these examples and the annotations, it is important to remember that place-based learning is simultaneously a new and an old idea. Getting schools and communities to learn to work together in ways that move students, teachers, and community members into new roles and relationships has its own growth curve. Consequently, meaningful place-based learning evolves over time and follows a developmental course that is unique to each place. Like any work worth doing, the examples we show here are in various stages of learning-from-practice, often showing great strengths in some areas and weaknesses in others. Thus, the annotations (and your own assessments of what you read here) should in no way be considered a "judgment" of the quality of the effort or of the ultimate outcomes of the featured projects. The annotations are offered simply to help readers analyze place-based learning efforts against the values articulated in the themes and aspects of the Place-Based Learning rubrics.

Examples of Place-Based Learning Portfolio entries: