2026 UNBC Teaching and Learning Conference Keynote - Day 1.
Place-based education fosters what Robin Wall Kimmerer calls “authentic whole-person learning.” Experiential learning in community offers an embodied and holistic pedagogical experience rooted with meaning and motivation for both students and educators. In avoiding rootless professors, we can embrace the natural world and the plethora benefits of nature-based education: heightened focus, creativity, purpose, and GPA. Yet we must avoid an anthropocentric approach that uses nature solely for human benefit. Given the climate crisis, sixth extinction, and biodiversity collapse, an ecocentric education values the inherent worth of the more-than-human world and invites nature to be a co-teacher. Decolonizing educational practices is explicitly tied to place-based education since intentional engagement with the land needs to involve an understanding of the history, culture, and impacts of colonization. Land-based and place-based learning are both pedagogies of place: they aim to build community through hands-on experiences outside the classroom in local environments. Wild Pedagogies is a theory and practice that promotes ecological education through re-imagining an educational system that is learner-centred with nature as an active and agential co-teacher, which can synergize with neuroinclusive and universal design for learning practices (UDL). Both UDL and Wild Pedagogies complement the neurodiversity framework by cultivating a sense of belonging.
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