APERA 2010The Third Asia Pacific Educational Research Association Conference

The Ecology of Human Growth and Sustainable Social Development: Contributions from Educational Research and Innovations

The Ecology of Human Growth and Sustainable Social Development: Contributions from Educational Research and Innovations

Sustainability and educational research: Working with teachers for curriculum relevance and intergenerational justice

Jo-Anne ReidCharles Sturt University

• WERA• Australian Association for Research in Education

Sustainable development?

Key terms:•eco-social justice•intergenerational justice

Murray-Darling Basin Commission1983 - Plan to save the Basin

Education for sustainability….It was anticipated that this process would

achieve the following aim (by peaceful means):

To contribute significantly to the achievement of an informed, ecologically literate, empowered and active community with a Basin (holistic) ethic,

in one generation (2015).

Special Forever

Two projects• Literacy and the environment: A situated

study of multi-mediated literacy, sustainability, local knowledges and educational change (River Literacies)

Australian Research Council Grant 2003-2007 • Teacher Education for rural/regional

sustainability: renewing Teacher Education for Rural Regional Australia (TERRAnova)

Australian Research Council Grant 2008-2010

1. Literacy and the environment

Project goals

1. To support primary teachers to design curriculum and pedagogy for:▫ developing critical knowledge about

the environment

2. To support primary teachers to design curriculum and pedagogy for:▫ developing skills for communicating

this knowledge in multi-media and multimodal texts

Literacy and the environmentSpecial Forever 1993-2010 Intervention for change

• Identity work - curriculum• The human subject in

landscape• Aesthetic curriculum• English and art• Hearts and emotions• Performance of self

(identity formation) through Special Forever,

• young people are labelled (and see themselves) as particular sorts of identities.

• Document analysis• Professional Development

and participant observation• Case Study

• Eco-social justiceEco-social justice• Environmental sustainabilityEnvironmental sustainability

• Focus on teachers’ and students’

Sensitivity Awareness Knowledge ActionJeronen & Kaikkkonen (2002).

Classroom education and the formal curricula … are narrowly focused on informational content that is more or less unique to school experience, when the major developmental processes of these years appear to be about the formation of identities...

Whatever we offer in the classroom becomes an opportunity to pursue this longer-term agenda of identity building

(Lemke, 2000: 286)

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Cooleman Ridge• The Year 2 students have taken a keen interest in looking after Cooleman Ridge. Many of the children live near the ridge and have seen the effect that drought and the bushfires have had on the environment.

• Each term Chapman students engage in Integrated Inquiry studies.

• Integrated Inquiries encourage the children to take action in the community, to learn about and look after this special place.

24/04/23

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What we do at the Ridge

• Pull out the Verbascum, blackberries and other weeds• Plant new plants that are native to Cooleman Ridge

such as wattles, Hardenbergia, native grasses and many others

• Water the new plants• Mulching• Learn about the effects of the bushfires and drought• Appreciate our local environment• Put pamphlets into the pamphlet box for visitors to

read.

There was only a little bit of water … the river was so low then. So we had three different schools, Bourke, Walgett and Brewarrina, we’ve got the fish traps there … forty thousand years old natural fish traps, so they talked about those... and talked about … anglers and other groups … so that prompted the kids to talk about what’s the best environment for fish? What happens when there’s a change in the environment, what do we do about that, can we do anything about it? Should we be responsible for cleaning up our area of the river, where plastic fits in.

So kids know all of those things, but for them to actually do something about it makes them think : ‘We can do this, we can clean up our area, we can make sure we keep the snags in the river so that the fish can breed,’ and all those sorts of things. … once you think about environmental studies, you can include any literacy activities you like ...

(extracted from Reid 2007).

River Health Conference

Farmers call for Murray-Darling plan to be thrown

out More than 70 elected leaders of the state's peak farming body have

called on the Murray-Darling Basin Authority to ditch its draft plan aimed at rescuing the rivers and to recalculate the irrigation water cuts it says are needed in every valley. … The authority had done nothing to justify the 37 per cent average water cuts to agriculture across the state and its draft plan was ''a huge black cloud'' hanging over farmers and their communities, he said.

''The ability of people to invest, the ability of banks to continue to back farmers and other businesses in regional areas is really under question. We will see a huge restructure of this area … Maybe it will mean a vacant NSW and [a state which becomes] a huge national park, where a whole lot of people go hungry. We feel a responsibility, unlike some, to continue to feed the 60, 70, 80 million people that we feed in Australia and around the world.''...

(Sydney Morning Herald, October 28 2010).

Sustainability and educational research: Working with teachers for curriculum relevance and intergenerational justice

Education for sustainability

A Acknowledging the Other for in eco-social justice

A project for education….?

Sustainability … … an intergenerational concept that means adjusting our current behavior so that it causes the least amount of harm to future generations.

(Owens 2001: xi)

Disadvantage on a global scale• 840 million undernourished people;• 1.5 billion people who live without access to safe

drinking water;• 2 billion people who live without electricity;• 860 million illiterate adults, more than half of

whom are women;• 130 million children out of school;• 14 million children who have lost their mothers or

both parents to AIDS.Within each of these groups–and many of them

overlap–the majority live in rural areas. Indeed more than 70 per cent of the world’s poor are rural poor.

Education for rural development: towards new policy responses, p. 23

Education for Rural Development: Towards New Policy Responses (Atchoarena & Gasperini, 2003)

More than half of the world's population and more than 70 per cent of the world's poor are to be found in rural areas where hunger, illiteracy and low school achievement are common.

Educating a large number of people in rural areas is crucial for achieving sustainable development. Poverty reduction strategies are now placing emphasis on rural development that encompasses all those who live in rural areas.

Such strategies need to address the provision of education for the

many target groups: children, youth and adults, giving priority to gender imbalances.

This complex and urgent challenge should be addressed systematically, through an intricate set of policy measures, at all levels of education systems.

2. Teacher Education for rural/regional sustainability: Project Goals•Teacher education that better prepares

professionals for rural social space

•Clearer understanding of what keeps teachers in rural places

Focus with teachers on sustainability as intergenerational justice

TERRAnovarenewing Teacher Education for Rural Regional Australia

http://www.anra.gov.au/topics/people/images/individuals/d_seifa_sm.jpg

Estimate of Indigenous and non-Indigenous population in Regions -2006 Census data

Pop. Region Est. non Indigenous pop.

Est. Indigenous pop.

Major Cities of Australia

13,996,450 165,804

Inner Regional Australia

3,975,154 110,643

Outer regional Australia

1,854,026 113,280

Remote Australia 267,199 47,852

Very Remote Australia 88,008 79,464

Total 20,180,837 517,043

Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2006

Indigenous population is more geographically dispersed

Population distribution by age group and Indigenous status, Australia, 2009

Source: ABS 3101.0 Australian Demographic Statistics, Jun 2009; ABS 3238.0 Experimental Estimates and Projections, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, 1991 to 2021

In the Australian context, rural teacher education is neither high-profile nor well resourced, nor is it well-understood.

(White & Reid 2008)

At the risk of feeling themselves out of place, individuals who move into a new space must fulfil the conditions that that space tacitly requires of its occupants.

(Bourdieu, 1999:128)

Placing teachers in Australia

“See you when you don’t come back….”

Placing Teachers in Malaysia• need to “focus on rural secondary schools […] and

problems of teacher deployment according to option and location; and the need to ensure all secondary school teachers are graduates by 2010” (2003:5).

• challenge in promoting “access to and equity in primary education [including] increasing the participation rate particularly among the children of indigenous groups such as the Orang Asli in Peninsular Malaysia and the ethnic groups in rural and remote areas of Sabah and Borneo” (2003:3)

Ministry of Education Malaysia Education Development Plan 2001-2010

(Reid et al, 2010)

‘Site effects’ ( Bourdieu, 1999)Rural social space is not a universal concept:• it is an event, a performance, a practice • it is produced through the interaction of field and habitus • it operates in accordance with the capitals that define it.

What attributes and capacities do professionals need to have if they are to contribute to rural places?

What forms of capital do they need to be able to invest to produce a return on professional work in a rural place?

We argue that professional education needs to produce a professional with certain forms of social capital, as well as the symbolic ‘professional’ and cultural capital that is their warrant to be there.

Access to services by locationfrom Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2006

Conclusion Sustainability and educational research:

Working with teachers for curriculum relevance and intergenerational justice in these two projects:

• Working from the premise that there is a significant need for teacher education to focus on eco-social justice through place-conscious education (Gruenewald, 2003)

• Working from the premise that there is a significant need for teacher education to focus on the professional in a rural social space (Reid et al 2010)

we pose these questions for teacher educators around the world…

•How do teachers contribute to rural-regional sustainability?▫not just as individuals, but ▫as a school / as a profession?

•What attributes and capacities do teachers need to have if they are to contribute in this way?

•How does teacher education foster an eco-socially aware teacher , with a highly developed sense of rural places, communities and their sustainability.

•What is the responsibility of teacher education in this regard?

ReferencesAtchoarena, D. &Gasperini, L. (2003). Education for rural development: Towards new policy

responses. Rome: FAO and UNESCO/IIEP.Australian Bureau of Statistics, 3238.0.55.001- Experimental Estimates of Aboriginal and Torres

Strait Islander Australians, Jun 2006 Canberra. Accessed 19 .1.2009. http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/ abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/3238.0.55.001Jun%202006?OpenDocument

Bourdieu. P. (1999). Site Effects. In P. Bourdieu et al., The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society, (pp. 123-129). Cambridge: Polity Press.

Comber, B., Nixon, H. & Reid, J. [Eds] (2007). Literacies in Place, Newtown: PETA.Gruenewald, D.A. (2003). The best of both worlds: A critical pedagogy of place. Educational

Researcher, 32(4), 3-12. Jeronen, E. & Kaikkkonen, M. (2002). Thoughts of children and adults about the environment and

environmental education. International research in geographical and environmental education 11(4), 341-353.

Jopson, D. (2010). Farmers call for Murray-Darling plan to be thrown out. The Sydney Morning Herald [Online, October 28]. Retrieved 4.11.2010, http://www.smh.com.au/ environment/water-issues/farmers-call-for-murraydarling-plan-to-be-thrown-out-20101027-173y2.html.

Lemke, J. (2000). Across the scales of time: Artifacts, activities and meanings in ecosocial systems. Mind, Culture and Activity, 7(4), 273-290.

Owens, D. (2001). Sustainable Composition. In C. R. Weisser & S. I. Dobrin (eds), Ecocomposition: Theoretical and Pedagogical Approaches, (pp. 27-38). New York: SUNY Press.

Reid, J., Green, B., Cooper, M., Hastings, W., Lock G. &White, S. (2010) Regenerating Rural Social Space? Teacher Education for Rural-Regional Sustainability, Australian Journal of Education, 54(3), 262–276.

White, S. &Reid, J. (2008). Placing teachers? Sustaining rural schooling through place-consciousness in teacher education. Journal of Research in Rural Education, 23(7), 1-11.

Sustainability and educational research:

Working with teachers for curriculum relevance and intergenerational

justice