Participatory learning: Exploring place-based pedagogy for future teachers

Abstract

Place-based knowledge, a legacy from our ancestors, is inherently sustainable. However, modern lifestyles have eclipsed this wisdom, leading to environmental issues such as land and water pollution. Similarly, the current pedagogical practices often fail to connect place-based knowledge. It resulted in a deviation of students’ contextual learning. Thus, this paper explores the integration of place-based knowledge into pedagogy, fostering students’ contextual engagement and promoting sustainable living. The guiding research questions for this study are how can integration of place-based knowledge in the pedagogical practice lead to contextualized learning and sustainability? and how can researchers, teachers, and community members incorporate place-based knowledge into pedagogical practices for contextualized learning and sustainability? This article identifies pertinent issues by subscribing to participatory action research and devises collaborative solutions with teachers, co-researchers, and the community. The study involved four teachers from a seventh-grade class in a school in Lalitpur, Nepal. The findings revealed that integrating place-based pedagogical practices helped students connect with their ancestors’ knowledge about their local and its relationship with nature, thereby facilitating contextual knowledge construction. This study asserts that integrating place-based knowledge into pedagogical practices equips learners to effectively address present and future environmental issues.