A rooted curriculum: Explorations of local living and learning through land, food, body, and community

This dissertation reveals effects of a global economy on a curriculum of place through land, food, body, and community. In a globalizing world, humans become mobile creatures, prepared to move toward better jobs and better education. Mobility destroys a rooted connection to place; we find difficulty in connecting our living and learning to location. Finding a rooted curriculum, or a curriculum of place and land, means reconnecting to one's home and soil as a radical response to globalization. This research hermeneutically discusses the literature relevant to home education, globalization, curriculum of place, food curriculum, the embodied curriculum, and community curriculum. The work contains personal narrative and artistic responses as alternatives to the hegemony of globalization. The author also offers other suggestions for local living and learning as possible alternatives to an industrialized and global curriculum. This study adds to the emerging literature on globalization and its impact on education; the study also enriches the curricular research of learning outside of schools. These explorations may lead to further studies of curriculum of place, added use of narrative inquiry, and additional conversation on the significance of ecological practice for the future of education.