How place characteristics promote undergraduate’s sense of place development: an exploration based on mapping and map-aided interviews

Various place characteristics have been assessed by scholars aiming to identify the components of a sense of place, but how students develop a sense of place remains under-explored. Establishing such an understanding can facilitate program designs for implementing place-based pedagogy. In this study, we examined how undergraduates, who would soon join the workforce and play individual professional roles in sustainability promotion, formed a sense of place through a field trip to the countryside in Hong Kong. A total of 27 undergraduates participated in the study, and 13 participated in map-aided interviews. All of them were asked to assign values and weightings to different locations on a map to indicate the relative importance of these locations. The maps were digitalized for analysis, and individual hand-drawn maps were used in the interviews. The findings revealed that the participants connected with the place via visiting it in person, interacting with the guides, and drawing on previous knowledge/values. We found that having a solid idea about place characteristics, either by visiting it or through a previous understanding of the place, appeared to be a prerequisite to valuing the place and thus connecting with it. The guides’ representations of the place via storytelling and interpretation offered new perspectives and directly shaped the participants’ perceptions of the place.