The stories and histories relating to your school’s geographic location will assist you to instill a deeper sense of personal identity and belonging for every student. Focusing history learning in a familiar place allows assumptions to be challenged and new perspectives to be explored. While you may choose to show the links between local, national and global history, place-based history also acknowledges the different experience of Māori across Aotearoa, and allows students to explore local tikanga and the events that have shaped their own community.
Professor Wally Penetito, Ngāti Hauā, describes place-based education as having three strands:
a place-based curriculum that lets students examine knowledge and events from where their feet stand
a place-based pedagogy that takes into account the tikanga of where you are teaching;
the idea of challenging your own “taken-for-granted” world
