Book cover for Learning on Location: Place-Based Approaches for Diverse Learners in Higher Education by Ashley J. Holmes. Series on Engaged Learning and Teaching
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ISBN: 9781642674217

November 2023

Chapter 4 highlights a series of walking tours, beginning with Hilary Green’s work with The Hallowed Grounds Project at the University of Alabama and expanding to include examples from history, English, and teacher education courses, as well as research and mapping-based projects outside of the curriculum. The chapter also showcases how faculty development initiatives—such as the interdisciplinary Atlanta Studies Faculty Learning Community’s walking tour of historic Auburn Avenue—can successfully enact learning on location pedagogies as a way of helping instructors “try on” a pedagogy by participating in walking tours themselves. Chapter 4 engages with interdisciplinary research on embodied learning, cultural geography, and disability studies to argue that the practices of walking and mapping are central to developing place-consciousness for learning on location. Bringing in scholarship on disability studies, the chapter broadens traditional definitions of walking to include the diverse ways students may access and engage with places.

Discussion Questions

  1. Chapter 4 provides several different examples of walking on location pedagogies, including on-campus or near-campus, curated, and instructor-led walking tours, as well as open-ended, exploratory site-based walking assignments. What do you see as the advantages or challenges to these different models for incorporating walking on location?
  2. How can educational practitioners expand traditional definitions of walking to include more inclusive ways for students to access locations, engage in embodied learning, and use movement in their education?
  3. Create a quick map of places of significance that are walk-able on your campus and/or within your nearby local community. How might you incorporate these sites into meaningful location-based learning within your course or program?
  4. What are the possible advantages and limitations of incorporating digital media or mobile technologies into writing on location initiatives?