Smith, G. (2001). Learning Where We Live. San Francisco, CA: Funders Forum on Environment and Education.

Greg Smith teaches in the Graduate School of Education at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. He also serves on the board of the Rural School and Community Trust, a national organization that sponsors place-based educational reforms throughout the United States.

In this article Smith discusses place-based education, its goals, and how it works in real world scenarios. The author does not explicitly define place-based education, but states that it is “characterized by its practices” and proceeds to discuss what these are. The article addresses what research says about place-based education and lists some of the outcomes associated with it. Finally the article describes how the Annenburg Rural Challenge helped the field of place-based education by funding 39 projects in the 1990s. The author describes some of these projects as well as some examples of urban schools using place-based education. This piece serves as a valuable introduction to the concept of place-based education.