Art teacher candidates, recently beginning their internships/student teaching experiences, engaged in a form of arts-based educational research (ABER) to examine their larger teaching contexts – the communities surrounding their placement schools – through a performance-based, map-based approach. Much like the Situationists’ psychogeographies of the 1950s and 1960s, where artist geographers wandered the urban landscapes in attempts to construct interpretive readings of well-known European cities, interns began by playfully ‘drifting’ through the geographic environments of their school zones. Through the act of drifting, interns conducted enquiries into their own sense of place. ‘Maps’ of place embodied these explorations and discoveries. Such explorations of place are vital as educators seek to construct rich understandings of their students’ lived worlds and to provide appropriate, relevant learning experiences. This visual essay explores the value and possibilities of one ABER approach for teacher education.

Research on the impact of place-based education (PBE), in which educational experiences are situated in the local environment (Smith, 2002), consistently suggests academic, social, and affective benefits across demographics. Traditionally, professional development supporting PBE has been designed to support large-scale initiatives. In this study, a bottom-up approach for expanding the reach of place-based art education (PBAE) was implemented with teachers (n=11) from a school district in the southeastern United States through two sequential professional development workshops. We examined the extent to which this minimal intervention impacted teachers’ understanding, buy-in, and creation of PBAE curricula. Results suggest that this organic approach, with teachers positioned as agents of change, can build upon pre-existing teacher interest and equip teachers to expand PBAE into their teaching contexts.

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