Through Community: Connecting Classrooms to Community

Abstract

This chapter will focus on the challenge of connecting students’ classroom experiences to their communities and their day-to-day physically active lives. Throughout the chapter we build upon the concept that a school curriculum that is situated (place-based) and responsive to student and community needs, can result in a range of benefits for learners and their communities. Benefits can extend to deeper levels of student learning, the establishment of productive community partnerships and the creation of change makers who have capacity to influence future experiences of movement without prescribing exactly what that change should look like. The use of situated and ‘authentic’ learning in schools has long been supported. What is less clear for educators, however, is what a place-based and interdisciplinary curriculum would look like in practice, with Health and Physical Education as the driver. The aim of this chapter is to shift the focus and draw attention to the everyday expressions of movement that are low in organisation but high in meaning and available to all. To do this we draw on research that was carried out in four Australian schools within the state of Victoria, to explain how a socio-ecological place-based curriculum – ‘Connect our Community’ – might be used to promote active, strong and connected communities.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has. – Margaret Mead (anthropologist)