Science education in a 'classroom without walls': connecting young people via place

Edmund Rice Education Australia Flexible Learning Centres (EREAFLCs) operate within a social inclusion framework to 'walk with' young people who have disengaged from the traditional schooling system. Students attending the centres face multiple stressors in their everyday life as well as significant barriers to achieving success in the classroom environment. Addressing the immediate literacy and numeracy concerns of students as they present at the centres has left little time to formalise strategies for engaging students with traditionally 'difficult' subjects such as science. In addition, there is very little research material available to assist teachers in the development of teaching and learning strategies for science education that deal with the unique situation of the flexible learning context. The aim of this research project has been to work with Flexible Learning Centre staff to identify and trial a range of science teaching strategies to enable the conceptualisation of a general framework to guide future science curriculum development. This article details one unit of work undertaken with an Outreach annexe of the Flexible Learning Centre Network located in a regional area of North Queensland. The trial involved implementing an environmental regeneration unit based on the philosophical principles of a Place-Based Education Approach in order to ascertain the potential of such an approach to engage disadvantaged young people