The impact of place-based education on middle school students’ environmental literacy and stewardship

Abstract This article centers on the use of place-based education (PBE), an internationally known and employed pedagogy. This yearlong, mixed-methods study centers on a grant-funded program aimed at supporting secondary teachers’ implementation of environmental place-based education (PBE), specifically meaningful watershed education experiences (MWEEs). Intended outcomes of this grant-based program included increasing middle school students’ environmental stewardship capacity; expanding their Great Lakes literacy; building teachers’ capacity for implementing robust environmental PBE; and increasing teachers’ capacity for teaching Great Lakes content. Situated in the Midwestern United States, two experienced PBE teachers and their middle school students (N = 226) from two separate schools participated in this study. Findings indicate that PBE teaching and learning experiences are impacted by multiple factors, including those that are program- and school-based as well as external factors such as weather and community partnerships. Moreover, when students perceive that they have opportunities to make choices and share ideas when engaged in PBE, they are more likely to see direct connections between PBE-based learning and the ways their stewardship endeavors can and do positively impact their local community and environment.


Introduction
A type of environmental education, place-based education (PBE) (Sobel, 2004) programs have emerged across the United States and internationally, including Great Britain, Norway, China, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, New Zealand, India, Japan, and Bhutan (Bertling & Rearden, 2018). The PBE reconnects education with local places by providing teachers and students with knowledge rooted in local phenomena and a deeper understanding of the processes and outcomes of natural and social systems essential to the health and well-being of all living things (Gruenewald ABOUT THE AUTHORS Erica Hamilton is an assistant vice president of academic affairs and an associate professor of education at Grand Valley State University. Her research interests. include preservice and in-service teacher learning and development, place-based education, and curriculum design and development. Lisa Marckini-Polk is owner of Civic Research Services, Inc. and serves as an independent evaluator and researcher, with expertise in place-based education, environmental education, and program evaluation. (1) What types of PBE teaching and learning experiences occurred and what factors impacted participating teachers' abilities to facilitate PBE?
(2) To what extent, if any, did middle school students increase their Great Lakes literacy?
( 3) To what extent, if any, did middle school students increase their environmental stewardship capacity?

PBE and experiential education
According to Dewey (1938), humans learn through experience. Moreover, experiential learning is a process in which learners construct understanding, knowledge, and skills directly through and from their experiences. Building on Dewey's ideas, Quay (2019) noted that pedagogies associated with outdoor education, such as PBE, are especially valuable in supporting teachers' and learners' experiences and learning, which results from melding pedagogy and content throughout the learning experience.
As a form of experiential learning, PBE provides teachers and their learners with opportunities to engage in applied learning, which is mediated by their experiences and directly supported by their place (Quay & Seaman, 2016). PBE situates teachers and their students in local places, in which they can directly interact with and learn from cultures, landscapes, opportunities, and experiences connected to their community(s). Examinations of PBE research and program evaluation in an environmental context suggest that students report engaging in more environmentally responsible behaviors when their learning is engaged and active, most often as a result of a direct experience. This is in contrast to teaching and learning situations in which information is passively transmitted, devoid of context and locale (Zint et al., 2014). When teaching and learning is rooted in real-world problems and issues that are relevant to local communities, teachers' and students' understanding of science can increase (Authors, 2022;Hmelo-Silver, 2004;Vander Ark et al., 2020). Research also confirms that K-12 students often have better, longer-term retention and an increased ability to apply new material if an instructional method actively engages them and provides opportunities to put learning and ideas into action.
Moreover, PBE becomes a vehicle providing teachers and students opportunities to identify, support, and create patterns of sustainability and connectedness in local communities and places (Gruenewald & Smith, 2010). Thus, teachers use local places as experiential, educational contexts to facilitate doing, being, learning, and sharing (Gruenewald, 2003a;Gruenewald, 2003b). As a result, there exists the potential for "action competence" (Barratt & Barratt Hacking, 2011) as teachers and students are empowered to use and apply their learning to positively impact local places (Authors, 2022(Authors, , 2018. As a pedagogy, the PBE emphasizes real-world, hands-on learning experiences directly connected to local places (Gruenewald, 2003a;Smith & Sobel, 2010;Sobel, 2004). Although often conceived as a science-based pedagogy, PBE can include multiple disciplines (Demarest, 2015;Vander Ark et al., 2020) and often draws on elements of project-based and problem-based learning (Authors, 2022(Authors, , 2018. Local places provide a foundation for the study of language arts, mathematics, social studies, science, and other subjects across the curriculum. Additionally, through PBE teachers see an increase in students' ability to develop teamwork and social responsibility skills as they take ownership of and identify purposes for their learning (Authors, 2022).

Environmental literacy
Environmental PBE is intended to foster environmental literacy, a multidimensional construct spanning affective, skill, knowledge, and behavior domains. To develop environmental literacy is to develop learners' capacity to understand and respond to environmental challenges in their world and motivate them to identify and take appropriate actions to address these challenges (North American Association for Environmental Education, 2020). McBeth and Volk (2009) reported findings from a national survey-based study of environmental literacy in which they and colleagues examined data from more than 2,000 middle school students. Their assessment included measures of ecological knowledge, verbal commitment (i.e., willingness to act), environmental behavior, environmental sensitivity, environmental feelings, issue identification and issue analysis skills, and action planning. Findings indicated that although older participants demonstrated more knowledge and cognitive skills than their younger peers, younger participants indicated more positive feelings connected to the environment, greater willingness to engage in helpful environment-based actions, and more participation in positive environmental actions.

Meaningful watershed educational experiences
Discussed earlier, meaningful watershed educational experiences (MWEEs) align with the principles of PBE and focus on fostering environmental literacy in the watershed context. As a specific programming structure for the implementation of environmental PBE, MWEEs are experiential, outdoor inquiries into local environmental issues affecting students' watersheds (NOAA, n.d.a). MWEEs are intended to directly connect to and be integrated into the learning taking place in K-12 classrooms (NOAA, n.d.b & n.d.c). As a result, MWEEs afford teachers opportunities to address and meet academic standards through authentic, purposeful content, within local contexts (Ernst & Erickson, 2018). MWEEs also afford connections between ecology, history, culture, and economy, which support and inform teachers' and their students' investigations of the local watershed issues. When situated in students' local communities and connected with academic content and learning standards, MWEEs have the potential to develop students' environmental stewardship characteristics associated with responsible environmental behavior (Zint et al., 2014).

Context
GLO provided periodic PBE-based professional learning throughout the 2018-2019 school year and required participating K-12 teachers to complete and submit an application for up to $1,000 in grant funding to support students' learning through PBE/MWEEs. Through these grants, teachers identified what type of PBE work they planned to do with students, learning goals and state standards, and anticipated costs (e.g., transportation, materials, and substitute teachers for field days). GLO also required teachers to propose MWEEs tied to one of the LRI action goals. Specifically, participating teachers were expected to 1) work with students to select one of the four LRI action goals as a yearlong focus; 2) engage with one or more community partners; 3) facilitate classroom learning and a related PBE stewardship project with students; and, 4) provide opportunities for communicating results.
To kick off the GLO project, in October 2018 teachers and students attended a Watershed Festival at a local museum. Attendees spent a full day at the Watershed Festival, engaging in interactive sessions where they learned about the LRI's four focus areas (i.e., toxic pollution, habitat degradation and loss, invasive species, and stormwater runoff) from local community organizations involved in watershed monitoring and health. This kickoff event was intended to help school groups engage with potential community partners, and to develop a foundational understanding of threats to the Great Lakes as represented in the LRI.

Participants
Although the grant engaged five teachers and their students in four separate schools, the dataset was incomplete for two schools. Therefore, this study focuses on data and findings for two participating teachers and their students (N = 226). Both teachers are experienced Grounded educators. A three-year veteran of the Grounded program, Teacher A taught seventh-grade science in an urban middle school with approximately 50% Hispanic students (32% English Language Learners). According to free and reduced lunch eligibility data, 85% of the students in this school were classified as economically disadvantaged. The LRI action goal Teacher A and their students (n = 95) focused on was habitat degradation.
A ten-year veteran of Grounded, Teacher B taught in a suburban middle school. In this role, Teacher B taught a combined seventh and eighth grade, semester long communications elective focused on environmental service. According to Teacher B, this course was an exploratory class, which integrated writing, science, math, communication, and teamwork skills. At this school, 81% of the students were white and, drawing on free and reduced lunch eligibility, 11% were classified as economically disadvantaged. It is important to note that Teacher B taught this elective in the fall and spring semesters, so there were two different classes of students who participated in this study. Of note, Teacher B's first semester students did not complete a stewardship action project, nor did they complete pre-or post-essay responses. In both semester classes (n = 129), Teacher B also focused on the LRI action goal connected to habitat degradation.

Data
To address this study's research questions, data connected to teacher (Table 1) and student participants (Table 2) were collected and analyzed.
For purposes of the GLO program and this study, Great Lakes literacy was defined as knowledge and understanding of selected content of the Great Lakes Literacy Principles and of the LRI focus area selected by each school group (which in both cases turned out to be habitat degradation). The definition of environmental literacy-also termed "stewardship" in this article-was influenced by McBeth andVolk's (2009) andMcBeth et al.'s (2011) work and included affective dimensions as well as skills and behaviors.

Data analysis
Qualitative analysis centered addressing the first research question, namely the types of teaching and learning experiences that occurred and the factors that impacted teachers' ability to facilitate PBE within the GLO program. Descriptive coding (Miles et al., 2014) was utilized to examine participating teachers' 1) post-experience semi-structured interview responses; 2) their Grounded end-of-project reports; and, 3) the final GLO grant evaluation report. Researcher field notes were also analyzed, particularly those related to the initial Water Festival experience. Initial analysis centered on looking for and identifying factors impacting teachers' abilities to facilitate PBE. Once factors were noted, A1 then conducted an additional review of these factors using content analysis (Miles et al., 2014), noting that there appeared to be three overarching factor types (i.e., programbased, school-based, and additional (capturing those not connected to school or program)). These three types were used to code the identified factors (Table 3).
Throughout the analysis process, we often met and engaged in inter-rater reliability and member-checking (Miles et al., 2014), which included comparing coded data sets as well as noting and reconciling differences to ensure the reliability of analyses and findings.
Before quantitative data were analyzed, students' pre-and post-experience data (i.e., pre-and post-surveys and tests) were hand-matched on the basis of student identifying information. Only students with both pre-and post-program data across all instrumentation fielded were included in this study's data set (n = 224). For the pre-and post-survey, each prompt was aligned with one of the four aspects of stewardship (i.e., environmental sensitivity, place attachment, responsible environmental behaviors, and civic capacity). Scaled scores were adjusted for missing items (no more than two for any student on any scale), and the vast majority of students completed all items (Appendices A, B, E, and F). Then, scales were evaluated for reliability using Cronbach's alpha, which measured .740 for environmental sensitivity, .805 for place attachment, .705 for responsible environmental behaviors, and .848 for civic capacity.

s) Administered Purpose
Post-experience selfassessment (Appendix D) Self-assessment centered on MWEEs using the RSI's rubric.
Responses indicated the degree to which the participants' MWEEs aligned with 10 principles of PBE. Teachers' selected responses aligned with one of four descriptors (i.e., "baseline/ beginning," "developing," "advancing," and "exemplary," Eight multiple-choice items in the pre/post-knowledge test (Appendix A) were analyzed as the simple percent correct; these items were mandatory responses yielding no missing data. Students' Great Lakes pre-and post-experience essay responses were collected in hard-copy format and later read and scored by A2 (Appendix B). Scores were converted to percentages. Pre-to-post changes in knowledge were calculated as the post-program score minus the pre-program score. For multiple-choice questions, Great Lakes essays and each student's scaled scores on the pre-and post-experience surveys, Cohen's D was calculated as a measure of effect size at two levels, namely for all participants in the study and separately for Teacher A and Teacher B.

Findings
To guide readers' understanding of findings, we present findings for each of the three research questions separately. The first question centered on the types of PBE teaching and learning experiences that occurred during the GLO program and the factors that impacted teachers' abilities to facilitate PBE.

Experiences
Although both sites in this study focused on habitat degradation within their MWEEs, the projects and teaching/learning experiences, including specific foci, varied between sites (Table 4). Table 3, Teacher A and their students' PBE experiences centered around studying local water quality, with one goal being to identify the healthiest location to release salmon they grew in their classroom. Teacher B's work focused on learning about invasive species and more indepth understanding of issues of water quality, particularly those connected to their school ground and local community.

Factors
As qualitative data analysis revealed, there were multiple factors that impacted these teachers' abilities to facilitate PBE in their specific contexts. At the conclusion of the GLO program, both teachers were asked to self-assess their MWEEs using a rubric developed by the Regional Stewardship Program (RSP), of which Grounded is a part. The rubric was tied to the RSP's Ten Guiding Principles for Exemplary Place-based Stewardship Education and covered a wide variety of features linked to positive student impacts in published research. This rubric was 15 pages in length. At the end of the school year, each teacher submitted a self-scored rubric. Each of the ten principles had 1-5 subparts and participants scored themselves and their projects as "baseline/ beginning," "developing," "advancing," or "exemplary" (see Appendix C for excerpted rubric

Measure Description Date(s) Administered Purpose
Post-experience, end-ofproject final report Using the provided Grounded template, participating teachers were required to submit a final report, detailing the outcomes of their grant-funded project. Teacher reports were captured via individual Word documents and submitted to the Grounded team via email at the conclusion of the project.
example, connected to principles one and two). Findings related to each principle are summarized in Table 5.
As evidenced in Table 5, both teachers were able to implement some guiding principles at relatively high levels and other principles in a limited way or not at all. Although they felt there was room for improvement, teachers were proud of their PBE projects and the impact on students' learning. Additionally, A1 also drew on teachers' self-assessments to identify factors that impeded teachers' ability to implement their MWEEs. The semi-structured focus group discussion was used to explore these factors, to better understand participating teachers' experiences and perspectives. Findings from content analysis (Miles et al., 2014) of teachers' self-assessments, their Table 3

Factors Selected Data Samples
Program-Based Water Festival supports on-site, external partnerbased support and programming. At each station, facilitators show and tell students how their learning is "all connected to water and their community". Each station is hands-on and led by area experts. This is all due to Grounded's planning, partnerships and programming. By themselves, teachers couldn't pull this off nearly as well if they tried to facilitate this type of learning on their own. Definitely helps to have Grounded planning and facilitating this event, so students and teachers can show up and learn. (

Additional
Managing student behavior in a public space seems to be challenging at times. At one station, one student asked, "Do we have to play the game?" How do you engage and motivate students who are already in a new location with hands-on activities available; this already seems great-why are they not all interested? (Water Festival Researcher field notes) Our partnership with [neighborhood association] did not work out due to fear on the part of the association president so we couldn't assess the water quality of Peace Lake. (End-of-project report) Projects must be meaningful for students; there is a connection between a student's perceived positive experience and their perceptions about themselves as agents of change in their community. (Final GLO grant evaluation report) Due to the death of a family friend, I was not able to attend the [local water event]. Another teacher ran the station and used some of the resources students created, but no students were there. (End-of-project report) The weather. It always impacts PBE. (Post-experience semi-structured interview) Festival at local museum Engaged in a field trip at a local private company to learn about stormwater runoff, alternative energy, zero waste, and green infrastructure Evaluated water quality factors connected to school campus runoff (i.e., examined a detention pond located on the middle school grounds and followed water flow to Peace Lake, a local neighborhood lake) Worked with Peace Lake neighborhood homeowner to determine waterbody health and where rain falls on the property as well as make recommendations for best-management practices to ensure water quality Shared knowledge of invasive garlic mustard, including removal practices, with middle school student body Pulled 90 bags of garlic mustard from local commons area, local bike path, and on school grounds Planned, hosted, and facilitated a "Healthy Forest Fieldtrip" for local 3rd graders on the middle school campus Collaborated with six community partners (i.e., private company whose headquarters are located near the school; county department of public works; local resident; area council in support of rainscaping; local native plant expert) Table 5. Teacher PBE Implementation Self-Assessment, Based on RSP's Ten Guiding Principles

Self-Assessment Results
Principle 1: Situate environmental learning and stewardship in the places students live, grow, and play Teachers' self-assessments indicate that they were reasonably able to incorporate place into their students' exploration of environmental issues and that they and their students were able to get into the community for learning and action projects. Teacher A selected "developing" to describe how their project drew on local natural resources: while they were able to use natural resources to support students' learning and engagement with the MWEEs, they were generally not able to consider how the local natural resources were important to the community or to draw on students' own connections to place and the environmental features of their communities.
Principle 2: Equip students to understand how 1) humans affect and are affected by the natural environment; and, 2) the community's environmental resources, laws, beliefs, and perspectives influence and are influenced by broader physical and social systems Teacher A rated their MWEE as "advancing" or "exemplary" in the two subparts of this principle. Teacher B-who is not a science teacher-rated their effort as "exemplary" on the question of addressing human impacts, but only "developing" on the goal of situating environmental issues in their broader natural, social, economic, and legal systems.
Principle 3: Build place-based stewardship education efforts out of rigorous experiential learning, supporting it with appropriate teaching practices and integrating it into the local educational system Areas of strength in this five-part principle for participating teachers included establishing clear and flexible learning goals and incorporating assessments that generated evidence of learning. Areas of challenge included cross-disciplinary approaches and using evidence from assessments to improve their stewardship work over time.
Teacher A indicated some challenge in achieving deep inquiry-based learning, indicating that their effort fell between the "developing" and "advancing" levels.
Teacher B indicated challenges in the areas of using assessments "for learning"-that is, assessments that promote students' reflection and synthesis and result in real-work products supported by feedback to students. Teacher B also indicated challenges connecting the GLO project to school priorities. Both teachers reported challenges in influencing their schools' priorities through their MWEE work.
Principle 4: Develop collaborative, mutually beneficial school-community partnerships Partnerships emerged as an area of relative strength for the MWEEs enacted under the grant. The only areas for improvement noted by teachers lay in thinking about and exploring partnerships in ways that went beyond their immediate GLO projects, in order to consider long-term possibilities for both the school and the partner organizations.
Principle 5: Support and maintain students' exploration of local environmental issues over a period of weeks or months, with sufficient time for engagement in the inquiry cycle and relationship development as well as opportunities to repeat the process over the years of schooling MWEEs were both rated highly with regard to the projects' duration. Teacher A felt their effort had accomplished a full inquiry cycle, while Teacher B indicated some room for improvement on completing a full inquiry cycle. Both teachers acknowledged that their MWEEs were isolated efforts within their broader school contexts.
Principle 6: Deliver meaningful benefits to the local environment and community Teachers indicated that the MWEEs delivered legitimate benefits to the environment and/or the community. Both teachers indicated that they did not feel they had been able to establish a management plan involving students, teachers, and partners, which left some of their efforts vulnerable to breakdowns related to time, scheduling, permits, and partner engagement. ) contributions to the follow-up focus group discussion, their end-of-year Grounded reports, and their final reports to GLO are included in this section.
Program-based factors. Teachers reported constraints on the focus of their place-based learning originating with the funder and GLO program expectations. Teachers perceived that they were expected to generate fresh, different MWEEs each year (or other PBE learning experiences if supported by different funding). The annual shifting of the focus of PBE made it difficult for

Self-Assessment Results
Principle 7: Cultivate student voice and involve students in democratic practices In both MWEEs, this element was rated as "developing," indicating that students made some choices from within teacher-generated parameters and had limited opportunity to express their perspectives.
Principle 8: Use and incorporate deliberate processes to identify and consider multiple perspectives regarding a stewardship issue or project.
This principle was least evident in the MWEEs according to the participating teachers. For subpart 1, teachers' ratings indicated that "students only minimally explored varied viewpoints regarding the environmental issue or stewardship project." For subpart 2, ratings noted that "students only minimally explored the potential consequences of various project choices from environmental, economic, and equity perspectives." Principle 9: Incorporate opportunities for students to develop and clarify their personal values related to nature and community, and to develop the social competencies essential to stewardship This principle was also less fully implemented than other principles. Teachers' self-assessments on the first subpart, focused on values clarification, indicated that "students have very limited opportunities to explore their own values about nature and community in the context of the effort." Principle 10: Support and enable students' visible and meaningful participation in their communities' public discourse Both teachers indicated that by the end of the GLO projects students identified the broader themes connected to their projects and discussed the public process but did not engage in discussions in public forums. A small group of students participated in events organized by Grounded to celebrate placebased learning throughout the region. Teacher A's students learned from four separate community partners, working with one to participate in a local park clean up activity as well as develop posters intended to share information about their project with the community. While these posters were developed, they were not distributed or posted within their community and students did not have opportunities to talk with community leaders about water quality or other environmental issues. Similarly, although not an MWEE experience, Teacher B's students participated in a "garlic mustard pull" event that took place in a local neighborhood, pulling 90 bags of garlic mustard from the neighborhood commons area as well as near a local bike path and in the forest adjacent to the school. In partnership with the neighborhood association, a student-created flier about the invasive garlic mustard plant was generated and mailed to 253 homes in the neighborhood. However, students did not have an opportunity to discuss invasive species matters, and how the community is addressing them, in any public forum.
them to fine-tune and improve their approaches to include more of the recommended practices. They asked for more flexibility to repeat the core of an already established PBE effort (e.g., Teacher B's long-term focus on invasive species), with the goal of adding new components or exploring new practices to improve PBE experiences offered to students. Notably, Grounded program staff did not expect all teachers to develop fresh new efforts annually, but they did want teachers to stretch each year, which resulted in some misunderstandings across teachers and Grounded program staff.
Teachers also struggled to reconcile the goal of fostering student voice and choice with the need to specify, in advance, the focus of an MWEE-which was required to qualify for a subgrant to offset costs of transportation, materials, and other direct costs. They also noted that when funders support only certain kinds of environmental efforts, this can compromise teachers' ability to facilitate and respond to student input. Based on their descriptions of the PBE projects they each facilitated, both teachers inserted opportunities for choice and voice when possible and feasible.
Finally, both teachers commented on issues they experienced connected to learning resources recommended for use within the program. In both settings, the teachers worked to use recommended informational resources in their teaching and when facilitating various MWEEs but noted that the texts were not always easily understood by their middle school learners, particularly second language learners. This finding did not appear to be an issue related to the quality of the texts but, rather, some students' additional learning needs. This is not surprising as many curricular materials, particularly those designed for large, mainstream K-12 audiences, are not always readily accessible by individual students with particular learning needs (e.g., second language learners, students receiving special education services, and students with lower reading levels).

School-based factors.
The amount of support each teacher received from their school administration directly impacted the way these teachers viewed their ability to facilitate and promote PBE-based pedagogies and practices. During the focus group interview, the idea of teacher isolation (i.e., not having access to other colleagues with whom to implement MWEEs in their school and/or district) also came up. Not having other colleagues to talk and plan a PBE with or, at a minimum, reach out to and connect with, also impacted the teachers' self-assessments, particularly related to student learning outcomes. Although both actively participated in Grounded professional development opportunities, where they met with other area teachers engaged in PBE, both teachers were the only ones in their respective schools engaged in PBE and working with the GLO grant. While they had modest involvement of other teachers in their buildings, the great bulk of the focus and effort lay with them and during their classroom time.
Even for experienced PBE teachers there exist different challenges when doing a new PBE project. Although both teachers had experience facilitating MWEEs in previous school years, this was Teacher A's first time facilitating their "Suitable Salmon Habitat Study." At the conclusion of the project, Teacher A noted school administration had decided to move Teacher A to a different content area the following academic year, due to personnel changes and certification shortages. As a result, Teacher A would not be able to build on this year's work with future students.
Additional factors. The weather where this study took place, particularly January 2019-April 2019, provided additional challenges for being outdoors and engaging in PBE. There was a record amount of snowfall during this time, and the duration of both cold and snow was unseasonably long, presenting challenges for planning and executing aspects of both projects, particularly those which needed to occur outdoors in the spring months.
Another challenge that emerged unexpectedly related to Teacher B's field site and partnership. Despite having initial support, when attempting to work with a local neighborhood association to gain access to Peace Lake (which Teacher B's middle school holding pond feeds into), the association rescinded its willingness to work with Teacher B and their students, citing concerns about liability. While Grounded teachers generally have success finding community-based sites to partner with owners and carry out PBE stewardship studies and services, neighboring sites that are within walking distance are premium sites and when these do not work out, it presents additional challenges, which remain outside a teacher's control.
Participating teachers also noted that their students had limited opportunities to consult with stakeholders and/or explore the consequences of their GLO stewardship projects from varied perspectives. Citing multiple reasons, teachers explained that their students did not engage in meaningful public discussion about the underlying issues of their stewardship projects. For Teacher A, only "a handful" of students were engaged in public outreach, while in Teacher B's project, "many, but not all students shared information about their place-based effort." Thus, this was an additional factor impacting PBE implementation and impact on student learning. Since these projects took place before the COVID-19 pandemic, it is possible that these consultations and discussions may have been largely expected to occur in face-to-face settings. However, virtual meetings and conversations have become another viable mode for facilitating human-to-human connections. In such instances where face-to-face meetings with stakeholders may not be possible (for whatever reason), virtual collaborations and visits may potentially be used to facilitate meaningful public discussions.

Middle school students' great lakes literacy
The second question centered on the extent to which participating GLO program middle school students' Great Lakes literacy increased. To address this question, we analyzed students' pre-and post-tests of Great Lakes literacy, including their completed essay responses that were completed pre-and post-experience.
In the multiple-choice component of the pre-and post-tests of Great Lakes literacy, all participating students increased their scores by 5% (.24 effect size). Students' pre-and post-experience written responses were evaluated and scored 0-2 (0 = low and 2 = high) (Appendix C). This score was based on the degree to which the students answered and fully addressed the prompt (Appendix B). In both pre-and post-tests, students' responses ranged from single words to phrases to multiple sentences. The overall change in the scores on the two-point essay was +0.14. The effect size was also 0.14, indicating no meaningful effect. When separated by instructor, Teacher B's students had more substantial pre/post-improvements, with a gain of 10% on the multiplechoice component of the Great Lakes test (0.47 effect size) and a gain of 0.27 on the four-point scale (0.27 effect size). Teacher A's students exhibited no change on either the multiple choice or essay elements.

Middle school students' environmental stewardship
The third question centered on the extent to which middle school students increased their environmental stewardship capacity as a result of participating in the GLO program. To measure potential increases in students' environmental stewardship, participants' pre-and post-experience survey responses were evaluated (Appendices D and E). Based on students' responses to the scaled questions, changes in the pre-to-post stewardship indices showed no meaningful effects for all scales. When examined separately, Teacher A's students had more substantial pre-/postimprovements, exhibiting small gains on the measures of environmental sensitivity (0.21 effect size) and a small-to-moderate improvement in civic capacity (0.37 effect size). Teacher B's students did not exhibit any nontrivial changes in any of the stewardship measurement dimensions.
To specifically explore what factors might account for variation in stewardship outcomes, we considered students' responses to two questions, using a strongly agree-strongly disagree rating for both, on the post-experience survey only (Appendix E). Specifically, we asked students to respond to the statement, "Students in this project got to make some choices about what to do and how to do it." For most of the stewardship attributes, students who indicated that they did not feel they had choice in the MWEE sustained losses in the stewardship indicators between pre-and post-program measures, while students who agreed that they had choice exhibited more positive changes. Each analysis of variance (four in total) was statistically significant, with p < .05 in the three analyses and less than 0.10 in the fourth. Related to the pre-and post-experience Likertstyle questions, changes in students' stewardship attributes showed positive and statistically significant correlations of approximately 0.20-0.30. However, it is important to note that changes in the scores on students' pre-/post-multiple-choice test questions connected to Great Lakes literacy do not appear to have a relationship to their perceptions of voice/choice in the MWEE.
We conducted a similar examination with a second post-program question (i.e., strongly agree to strongly disagree) related to meaningful projects. Students responded to the following statement, "I saw how my work in our stewardship project helped protect or improve the environment" (Appendix E) and we solicited additional feedback at the end of the program (Appendix F). Again, in most cases, students who believed their work made a difference had stronger pre-/post-change in the four stewardship dimensions than students who did not see the impact of their work. The data collected for this evaluation show a correlation between students having a positive experience (i.e., positive perceptions connected to choice and its successful impact) and experiencing positive growth in feelings about nature and one's community as well as about one's capability as a civic actor. Whether those feelings are truly earned and remain permanent or a temporary "glow" from a satisfying experience is beyond the scope of this study.

Discussion and implications
There are multiple PBE teaching and learning experiences teachers can facilitate in their local contexts. Moreover, there exists a variety of factors that impact teachers' abilities to facilitate PBE (e.g., Demarest, 2015;Vander Ark et al., 2020). In addition to the depth and duration with which participating teachers engaged their students in MWEEs, they reported that they 1) used teachergenerated assessments to identify and attend to student learning; 2) provided students with regular access to learning in their local community; 3) and engaged in meaningful and reciprocal partnerships with community organizations. Moreover, both teachers selected and utilized clear, yet flexible learning goals to support and extend students' learning. Teachers also indicated that despite challenges they experienced (e.g., weather and lack of participation from a community partner), their GLO projects resulted in the delivery of meaningful environmental and community benefits.
Some of the most impactful components of PBE center on learning rooted in and aimed at serving and supporting local contexts (Demarest, 2015;Rønning et al., 2018;Vander Ark et al., 2020). Both teachers engaged their students in a variety of PBE experiences, with the express goal of positively impacting their local environments and communities. On all PBE dimensions in the self-assessment (Appendix D), teachers rated the MWEEs they facilitated as "advancing" or "exemplary." Moreover, as dictated by the GLO grant, both teachers reported that their students' learning extended beyond classrooms to include MWEEs within their communities, which presented students with additional learning opportunities (e.g., attending a Water Festival, testing local water, participating in environmental stewardship opportunities, sharing learning with school and surrounding community members).
Both teachers, even though they were alone in their work and schools, drew on the support Grounded provided as part of GLO, and they consciously and consistently chose to keep engaging their students in PBE. These teachers' beliefs in the power of PBE ensured that their students, no matter the factors, had opportunities to learn beyond their classroom walls and positively contribute to their local communities. It is important to note that Teacher A and B are both experienced Grounded teachers, who have multiple years of experience planning and implementing PBE with students. They are also self-described environmental advocates. Thus, despite the challenges they experienced, it is not surprising that they continued to utilize PBE to support their students' learning and engagement with local communities. Arguably, they are predisposed to value and want to engage their students in PBE.
Based on findings from this study, there are positive factors that impact teachers' ability to implement PBE in various contexts, including facilitating field trips, garnering local organization support and partnerships, and aiding students' positive perceptions related to the importance of their PBE work within their community. That said, we know that teachers who utilize PBE spend an incredible amount of time behind the scenes making contacts, securing permissions and planning for all the logistics needed for students to spend time in the field for experiential learning. Thus, it is possible that teachers' energies, which might be spent addressing and meeting other PBE principles, are no longer available as they navigate various factors that impact PBE implementation, including somewhat unyielding school and curriculum structures built for more traditional classroom settings and instruction. As a result, for funders and organizations working with teachers who are new to PBE or who may not have much experience with PBE, it is important to provide additional support and resources to ensure teachers' stamina, commitment, and ability to engage in PBE with their students.
While PBE can be richly rewarding and beneficial for students and communities, the teachers who facilitate PBE remain central to the work. This means that organizations and funders need to ensure that teachers and their students have as much support as possible. Moreover, there are program-and school-based factors, which present challenges for teachers implementing PBE, such as the way secondary school days are structured, inclement weather, lack of administrative support, and the siloed structure of secondary schools. Given these challenges, it is important for funders and local organizations who support teachers and students engaged in PBE to try and address those factors within one's control, while also remaining flexible and responsive when things may not go as planned due to factors outside one's control.
Although student learning outcomes connected to their students' Great Lakes literacy did not reflect statistically significant increases in this study, both teachers noted that their students' overall learning was positively impacted by participation in the respective GLO projects. Thus, it could be that the measurements used to assess this aspect of the project were not effective in capturing students' learning or, perhaps, only captured one component of their learning related to Great Lakes literacy. In addition to the assessments used for this study, both teachers explained that they utilized additional assessments to identify and measure student learning outcomes, which informed their observations of students' overall learning (beyond the scope of this study). Thus, it is possible that on these teacher-based assessments, students' learning gains may have been of greater magnitude. For example, throughout the duration of the GLO projects both teachers engaged in ongoing, formative assessment of their students and their learning. These assessments included addressing student questions, listening to students' discussions, monitoring their engagement during PBE-centered tasks and field trips, and facilitating interaction with peers, community partners, and local environments. So, when considering the impact of these MWEE projects on students' learning, it is important to remember that in addition to utilizing GLO's measurements, both teachers also drew their own experiences and expertise and utilized additional summative and formative assessments throughout the project to understand, support, and extend students' learning and development. As a result, it may be necessary to utilize multiple measures of students' learning throughout a PBE project when assessing students' learning and growth over time.
Participants noted that in their MWEEs, students' voice and choice as well as opportunities for student-selected and led learning were limited, as were students' opportunities to explore their own values. As research indicates, the more students perceive and experience voice and choice, whether in the classroom (Tomlinson, 2014) or engaged in PBE (Vander Ark et al., 2020), the more vested they are in their learning. As findings from this study indicate, students who perceived that they had opportunities to exert choice and contribute to their learning when participating in PBE as well as those students who perceived that their PBE-based stewardship work protected and/or improved the environment exhibited greater learning gains than peers who did not share these perceptions. Thus, to further maximize PBE learning outcomes, it is important for teachers and PBE funders to ensure, when possible, that students can and do exert voice and choice in their learning. Additionally, students should be made aware of the opportunities they have to make choices and share their opinions and feedback when engaged in PBE. Furthermore, students' learning outcomes will likely be positively impacted when direct and clear connections are made between students' PBE-based stewardship work and the ways in which their work explicitly improves and supports local environments and communities.
Teachers' self-assessments (Appendix D) also indicated that addressing certain LRI principles in their GLO projects was more challenging. Specifically, they noted challenges related to 1) student voice; 2) democratic decision-making; 3) stakeholder consultation; 4) perspective-taking; and, 5) public discourse. Teachers also reported that they experienced challenges with aspects of PBE, specifically those that emphasized deep connections with community and the significance of natural resources in everyday life. As this study's findings demonstrate, it is not always easy to integrate these elements into PBE projects. There are multiple factors that impact teachers' ability to engage and utilize PBE, including if funders' or agencies' pre-determined project parameters and foci are not readily or directly aligned with teachers' available resources. This can also be challenging if PBE efforts are constrained to a single classroom or discipline such as science, and if teachers are working in isolation and, thus, remain responsible for all the planning, logistics, and grant compliance.
Funders often have important and well-researched goals. Thus, when designing PBE funding opportunities it may not be possible to embed voice and choice at the point of selecting an area of focus, as a project's scope and goal may already be determined-as was the case with the GLO project. In these instances, teachers should share with their students how these already established goals were determined and why they are important, inviting students to work in partnership to accomplish these goals, while also positively impacting their community. In such instances, it is important for teachers and funding agencies to find ways to support and incorporate, when feasible, student voice and choice within PBE centered teaching and learning opportunities. Moreover, as other researchers have found, having school administrative support for PBE endeavors empowers more opportunities for voice and choice, support for community partnerships, curricular engagement within and beyond school grounds, and civic change within local environments (Williams & Labelle, 2016).

Conclusion
Through PBE, the curriculum is connected to and integrated within the local community, including accessing and studying local resources and places (Demarest, 2015). As Gruenewald (2003a) notes, "place-based pedagogies are needed so that the education of citizens might have some direct bearing on the well-being of the social and ecological places people actually inhabit" (p. 3). As evidenced in this and other scholars' work, K-12 teachers and students need to have regular, sustained opportunities to directly engage in the natural, social, and cultural environments in which they live (e.g., Authors, 2022Authors, , 2018Gruenewald & Smith, 2010;Vander Ark et al., 2020). Drawing on principles that ensure PBE-centered teaching and learning opportunities (Table 4), it is clear that although there are many factors that impact the implementation and impact of PBE, it has many benefits, including an increase in teachers' engagement and motivation and student achievement as well as a strengthening of ties to the local community and a growth in appreciation for and awareness of the natural world (Demarest, 2015;Smith & Sobel, 2010).
To address barriers to fully realize environmental PBE, it is important for program operators like Grounded and the RSI to cultivate building and district administrators and help develop teachers' skills as in-building leaders (e.g., "coaching up"), to help create the needed conditions for teaching and learning in a given year and over time. Moreover, as experienced PBE teachers already know, teaching about stewardship as a responsibility to one's community and world is different from actually engaging students in community-based stewardship activities and learning. In the service-learning literature associated with PBE, research has demonstrated that projects that feature student voice, achieve meaningful benefits for others, and have developmentally appropriate learning goals and themes result in meaningful outcomes for students (Waters et al., 2018).
One thing this study makes clear is that robust PBE is particularly challenging in the absence of additional on-site colleagues and intentional, interdisciplinary teaching and learning opportunities. However, when students see and come to believe that their learning and stewardship endeavors positively impact their local community and environment, and when they feel they have opportunities to shape their work in the community, their stewardship attributes further develop. As such, it is important for new and experienced teachers to understand that the most impactful PBE learning experiences will be those that empower teachers to integrate voice and choice for students, ensure that students' learning and work connects to their local communities, and make clear the ways students' work directly and positively impact their local environments.

Citation information
Cite this article as: The impact of place-based education on middle school students' environmental literacy and stewardship, Erica Hamilton & Lisa Marckini-Polk, Cogent Education (2023), 10: 2163789.

Appendix A Pre-and Post-Test Multiple Choice Questions. Read each multiple-choice question carefully and select the one best response
Fill in the blanks: The Great Lakes hold approximately ____% of the fresh surface water in the North American continent and _____% of the fresh surface water in the world. (Select one option) 5% (North America) and 3% (world) 20% (North America) and 10% (world) 70% (North America) and 30% (world) 95% (North America) and 20% (world)

Which of the following statements is FALSE? (Select one option)
The Great Lakes are connected to each other, to groundwater, and to the Atlantic Ocean through the St. Lawrence River. The Great Lakes are an important source of drinking water, food, mineral resources, and energy resources for the people of the region. More fish are harvested from the Great Lakes today than at any time in the past. Glaciers were an important natural force that created the Great Lakes Basin, and Earth's crust is still slowly rebounding from the weight of the ice.

A watershed is: (Select one option)
The headwaters, tributaries, and mouth of a river All of the land area that drains water to a lake or river A governmental organization that manages water quality in a given territory None of the above Why are invasive species of concern to the Great Lakes? (Select one option) They can disrupt native ecosystems by preying on native species and competing with native species for food and habitat They can cause economic loss for people who use the Great Lakes for shipping, fishing, and tourism Both A and B Neither A nor B Nutrients include fertilizers, pet waste, and other organic materials that can enter rivers and lakes when rain washes them off the land into drains and waterways. Which of the following is NOT a consequence of excessive nutrient runoff into the Great Lakes?
There can be increased levels of toxins and bacterial growth that can enter the drinking water supply There is less dissolved oxygen in the water for fish, reptiles, and other creatures that live in the water More algae grows in the Great Lakes, putting stress on Great Lakes ecosystems There are more invasive mussels like zebra mussels and quagga mussels Which of the following describe ways in which the Great Lakes affect weather and climate in the Great Lakes states? (Select one option) The lakes make it cooler in the spring and warmer in the fall than it would be without the Great Lakes The lakes can produce lake-effect snow Both A & B Neither A nor B Scores of both portions ranged from 0 to 2 using the following guide.
• A rating of "0" was only given if the response was off topic, wholly inadequate, or, in a few cases, not an accurate identification of something that is inherently damaging to the environment or a behavior reasonably defined as "pro-environmental." • A rating of "1" was given to behaviors or topics that were appropriately identified as environmentally significant but were not necessarily linked to habitat (or could be linked, but had not been effectively linked by the student) • A rating of "2" was given to a response that identified issues or behaviors that are linked to aquatic or terrestrial habitat and described them sufficiently to establish the students' understanding of those links.
A few adjustments to scores were offered: • Students who listed multiple "simplistic" or non-habitat-specific positive environmental behaviors were scored at a 1.5 or part two of the essay. What could you do? If you found out about an environmental situation in your school or community that you wanted to do something about (for example, running buses are creating too much exhaust in the school parking lot, or a local beach has been closed for swimming due to water quality problems), how well do you think you would be able to do each of the following? Please circle one number in each row.