Community Asset Mapping for Science Investigations

Background/Summary

Community Asset Mapping is a process of uncovering and highlighting resources within a place, including those found to be relevant to an investigation. This process and the resources created as an outcome of this process are grounded in the belief that all communities have a variety of positive forms of natural, human, social, and constructed capital that can be used in understanding contexts, uncovering needs, and advancing solutions.

Within the context of science teaching and learning, community asset mapping allows students and teachers to connect with their communities, both physical and social, in order to identify resources, engineering design problems, or questions for scientific study.  Mapping can be done through both low and high tech methods, from walking the neighborhood to using ArcGIS.

Community Asset Mapping Activities

The following websites contain procedures for conducting community asset mapping.

Questions for Consideration

With respect to using community asset mapping for place-based education in science: