Photo-Elicitation Methods in Studies of Children's Sense of Place

Abstract

Sense of place is attracting interest as a theoretical framework for place-based education. Photo-elicitation has emerged as an effective method to understand sense of place, and has been applied to studies of adults’ sense of place. Sense of place among children, however, is understudied, and the use of photo-elicitation to explore this topic is rare. Using the literature and findings from our pilot study, we examine photo-elicitation as a means to study children’s sense of place, and argue that more widespread application of this method is likely to yield new insights that will be useful in theorizing and assessing the outcomes of place-based education.