Place Studies in Education

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Place Studies in Education

• Node leaders
• Professor M. Somerville
• Dr. A.C Hickey-Moody

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Initial membership of the node

• Ms. Geraldine Bourke (Lecturer, Peninsula)
• Ass. Prof. Laura Brearley (RDC Gippsland)
• Dr. Phoenix de Carteret (Research Fellow,
  Gippsland)
• Dr. Anita Devos (Senior Lecturer, Clayton)
• Ms. Monica Green (Lecturer, Gippsland)
• Dr. Alex Kostagriz (Senior Lecturer, Clayton)
• Dr. Anna Hickey-Moody (Lecturer, Gippsland)
• Dr. Zofia Pawlacek (Senior Lecturer, Gippsland)
• Dr. Margaret Plunkett (Lecturer, Gippsland)
• Dr. Kerith Power (Senior Lecturer, Peninsula)
• Dr. Mary Lou Rasmussen (Senior Lecturer, Clayton)
• Dr. Jennifer Rennie (Senior Lecturer, Gippsland)
• Professor Margaret Somerville (Research Leader,
  Gippsland)
• Dr. Robyn Zinc (Lecturer, Peninsula)

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Leadership and governance of the node

• Governance will be based on mentor leadership and
  consensus decision-making. Professor Margaret
  Somerville will mentor Dr Anna Hickey-Moody to
  take leadership in order to develop the next
  generation of research leaders.
• To facilitate cross campus liaison, communication
  and decision-making, Dr Kerith Power will take
  leadership at Peninsula campus, and Dr Mary-Lou
  Rasmussen at Clayton.
• Meetings will be held via video link and research
  programs will be developed in off campus retreats
  initiated by all members. These will be based on
  readings, research project development and
  creative methodology exchange and will be
  supported by a web platform for group access and
  record maintenance.

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Place Studies in Education A conceptual framework

• Place Studies is an important framework though
  which to address significant questions of our
  time.
• As a conceptual lens, Place Studies foregrounds
  the mutual constitution of identities, bodies and
  places in relation to questions of climate
  change, water, sustainable place practices, and
  new postcolonial identities. Clearly, these are
  areas of critical contemporary concern.
• Yet Place as a constitutive category has been
  identified as under researched and
  under-theorised in education (Gulson and Symes,
  2006).

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Place Studies in Education A conceptual framework

• This node will focus on the distinctive
  contribution that educational research and
  practice can make in addressing such significant
  questions.
• This inquiry will be undertaken through the
  development of creative methodologies, innovative
  conceptual and theoretical resources, and by
  making interdisciplinary connections that extend
  outside Arts and Humanities.
• We will do this by sharing our current individual
  research expertise in this area and developing
  collective capacity in a sustained five-year plan
  for building research aptitude, in relation to
  our national and international standing.

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Place Studies in Education methodologies

• While specific methodological and conceptual
  thematics will run across the work of this node,
  the questions we take up through these
  methodologies will necessarily change.
• Some of the methodological specialties housed
  within the Place Studies node include qualitative
  methodologies such as place-based global
  ethnography, arts-based emergent research, deep
  listening, storylines and other critical
  poststructural approaches to research. Quantative
  research methodologies currently housed within
  the node include survey and statistical analysis.
• Our collaborative inquiry will begin by
  responding to the suggestion of a National
  curriculum a political move that clearly
  performs particular notions of place and
  education.

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Broad research interests of the node

• Foundation researchers in this node are grouped
  around the following common themes
• identity and climate change
• place pedagogies in education
• literacy and place and place literacies
• places of learning
• reconciliation pedagogies,
• postcolonial identities and place
• creative arts pedagogies, methodologies and
  place.

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Relationships with other Faculty nodes

• The research activities of Place Studies in
  Education will strengthen existing relationships
  between the node and the Research Education,
  Globalisation and Inclusion nodes.
• Based on existing resonances in our areas of
  research, we will also invite research
  conversations with Movement, Environment and
  Community and Centre for Research in Teaching
  of Indigenous Students.

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Scholarly contexts and relationships

• We will draw on the substantial international
  connections of several members for collective
  capacity building. This will include building on
  the following relationships
• The node is linked to the Institute of Regional
  Studies through the role of Somerville as
  Research Director of the Institute. Through the
  partner Institute of Urban and Regional
  Development at the University of
  Newcastle-on-Tyne, international links have been
  established for ongoing researcher development
  and capacity building.
• The Koori Cohort, led by Dr Laura Brearley, has a
  growing number of Indigenous research students
  with links into international indigenous research
  that will be further enhanced through the SILCAR
  project.
• Dr Anna Hickey-Moody brings links with the
  University of East London and the TATE Modern
  Education Program, and Dr Mary Louise Rasmussen
  with the University of Newcastle.

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Additional node links

• Further international links in place research
  have already been established with Canada, UK,
  and the US, which will be further enhanced
  through the framework of this node.

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Projected research and group output

• Publications
• Place Studies in Australia 2008 (Eds). K. Power,
  M. Somerville P. de Carteret. Melbourne
  University Press, Victoria.
• Research projects in preparation
• Young People at the Flashpoint of Climate
  Change DP Requested Somerville, Harwood,
  Rasmussen, Hickey-Moody
• Emplacing Diversity Re-Enculturation through
  Music and Dance Hickey-Moody, Power, Rennie
• Storylines of the Morwell River Wetlands
  Rennie, Somerville, Pawlacek, Hickey-Moody

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Works cited

• K. Gulson C. Symes (Eds.), Spatial Theories of
  Education . New York Routledge, 2007.

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scraps

• " Most people would agree that the study of
  geography has, at its core, the understanding of
  place. Recently enjoying an upsurge in popularity
  in academic geography, place is often a
  relatively uncontentious part of school
  geography, with textbooks and schemes of work
  generally referring to it in one of two ways as
  a general 'country study' taking a rather
  touristic perspective of a far away place or as
  a 'case-study' that examines one aspect of a
  place in detail. Both of these strategies fulfil
  particular functions and can be very effective
  learning tools. However what they do not achieve
  is a deep, holistic appreciation of place as it
  is currently understood in geographical
  thinking. -- Brooks and Morgan, 2006
• "We are unlikely to achieve anything close to
  sustainability in any area unless we work for the
  broader goal of becoming native in the modern
  world, and that means becoming native to our
  places in a coherent community that is in turn
  embedded in the ecological realities of its
  surrounding landscape." --Wes Jackson, Becoming
  Native to This Place

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