Teaching strategy deepens student connection to place

One goal of geography education is to encourage students to respect and protect places through developing a deeper connection with those places. The sense of and attachment to place has been widely studied and is very important in a person's life. The two components of place attachment are place identity, which gives meaning to one's life, and place dependence, which influences one's goals. Individuals who have a strong place attachment develop a better sense of self, and also typically engage in more positive behaviors on social, cultural, and environmental issues. This study focused on how the existing strategy of selecting and presenting favorite places (SPFP) can impact the development of place attachment in students.

Selecting and presenting favorite places (SPFP) is a strategy that aligns with a person's psychological tendency to do, or believe in, the same thing despite being in different situations. SPFP involves asking a participant to select their favorite place, and present it to a group. Human nature veers one away from inconsistency. This is called the preference for consistency. Once someone develops an opinion, human nature kicks in and the person stands by that opinion moving forward based on the principle of the preference for personal consistency. The working assumption of the researchers in this study was that asking students to choose a favorite place and share with the group in one instance would yield the same answer in future situations, thereby promoting place attachment.

The study was conducted with 95 high school students in Gumi, South Korea. The students were given basic instruction on how to use Google Earth. Then, the students were divided into three groups: an experimental group with 32 students, control group 1 with 30 students, and control group 2 with 33 students. The researchers asked students in the experimental group to choose their favorite place they would show a tourist in the town of Gumi. In control group 1, the students were asked to choose a place they would not show a visitor. In control group 2, the students were asked to choose any place in Gumi. The places were chosen using Google Earth, and the students presented their choices to classmates. All students were given a 12-question questionnaire before and after the activity, based off a model from researchers Williams and Vaske, which assessed place attachment and ascribed quantitative values to responses. Question responses included options on a five-point scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Five students from the experimental group, two students from control group 1, and two students from control group 2 were selected to do an interview with the researchers at the end of the study to provide more context to the questionnaire results. The researchers analyzed and verified the quantitative data from the questionnaires through the sample interviews, transcribed the qualitative interviews and identified themes, and these themes were compared with the main themes from the questionnaire.

Using the results from the questionnaires for each group before and after the activity, the researchers concluded the SPFP strategy is effective in developing place attachment. For the experimental group, the mean score differences for each component of place attachment (identity and dependence) were statistically significant. Therefore, the experimental group saw a large increase in place attachment based on their activity. For control group 1, who were asked to select a place that they would not bring a visitor to, the group had little change in place attachment. For control group 2, who were asked to select any random place in Gumi, each component and the sum difference scores were statistically significant and showed an increase in place attachment. However, this increase was relatively small compared to the experimental group and not as significant, suggesting that asking participants to specifically select their favorite place as opposed to any random place has a stronger impact on place attachment. The interviews largely confirmed these results, as well. The five students interviewed from the experimental group shared that the activity deepened their connection to Gumi. The two students from control group 1 and two students from control group 2 that were interviewed shared that the activity was fun but did not change their connection to Gumi.

This study has some limitations. First, the study was conducted in a single city in South Korea and with a relatively small sample size, making it less generalizable across diverse locations and contexts. Second, the questionnaire used was modified by the researchers based on their interpretation and perspective of South Korean culture which may skew the results via bias. Finally, the researchers point to some variation in the results at a granular level suggesting that more studies should be conducted to understand the strategy and individual response patterns.

The researchers recommend that SPFP be used in geography education to help students foster place attachment. In addition, SPFP can be used for other, similar environmental and educational goals. They also assert that because SPFP is rather straightforward and easily adaptable, educators should be able to successfully implement the strategy. Specifically, educators should implement SPFP in high school geography classes.