The affordance of place in developing place-responsive science teaching pedagogy : reflections from pre-service teachers
- Authors: Ma, Hongming , Green, Monica
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Science Teacher Education Vol. 32, no. 8 (2021), p. 890-910
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- Description: Despite being increasingly popular within broader educational discourse, place-responsive pedagogy is less apparent in science teacher education. This paper investigates the perspectives of pre-service teachers in a science education course informed by place-responsive pedagogy in a Bachelor of Education (primary) program at an Australian regional university. The place-based study belongs to longitudinal research that examined the impact of the modified science course hallmarked by university–school partnerships and science lessons conducted by pre-service teachers with children from rural and regional schools in Gippsland, Victoria in a wetland and school ground setting. The study and science course were framed by a place pedagogy framework. Using this framework, we examine how pre-service teachers view and understand the affordance of places for teaching science. The study employed a document analysis of coursework essays as well as follow-up semi-structured interviews with two pre-service teacher cohorts (wetland and school ground). Findings indicate that pre-service teacher’s exposure to place-responsive frameworks helped build their awareness about the affordance of place for science teaching. Challenges associated with taking science beyond the conventional classroom are also identified and discussed. © 2021 Association for Science Teacher Education.
Sustainability education : Researching practice in primary schools
- Authors: Green, Monica , Somerville, Margaret
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Environmental Education Research Vol. 21, no. 6 (2015), p. 832-845
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- Description: Many teachers are keen to implement sustainability education in primary schools but are lacking the confidence, skills and knowledge to do so. Teachers report that they do not understand the concept and cannot integrate sustainability into an already overcrowded curriculum. Identifying how teachers successfully integrate sustainability education into their teaching practice can offer important insights into how these perceived problems can be overcome. The paper is based on data from the third year of a longitudinal study about teacher education and teacher professional learning for sustainability in primary education. The third year of the study investigated teachers’ understandings of sustainability and how sustainability education is manifested in eight rural and regional primary schools in Victoria, Australia. Data included photographs of school grounds and sustainability projects, audio recordings of focus groups with teachers and principals, and field notes of meetings with school staff. Sustainability education was found to be an emergent practice necessarily constituted in the relation between teachers, students and community members and the materialities of local places. Partnerships were found to be an essential part of integrated sustainability programmes which extended into communities and places beyond the schools. The processes of learning involved pedagogies of creative problem-solving and inquiry learning that enabled children to lead the way. © 2014 Taylor & Francis.
Reframing primary curriculum through concepts of place
- Authors: Power, Kerith , Green, Monica
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education Vol. 42, no. 2 (2014), p. 105-118
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- Description: Australian curricula name "sustainability" as a key priority area with implications for preparing pre-service teachers. In the research that generated this paper, we asked: How can framing teaching through space and place inform pre-service teachers' pedagogical thinking and practice? In new third year Bachelor of Education (primary) subject Understanding Space and Place, Australian teacher education students shared online responses to focus questions and readings framing education through place, designed and taught a unit of study "beyond the classroom" to children in their professional placements and reflected on changes in their theoretical, philosophical, and curriculum goals. Data from these forum posts were analysed through Somerville's three "enabling place pedagogy" categories of embodiment, storylines, and cultural contact zones. Many students came to re-imagine their teaching roles and understand how a place pedagogy framework can operate to expand the possibilities of teaching and learning sustainability through creative and embodied place-making experiences in local places. © 2014 © 2014 Australian Teacher Education Association.
Place matters: pedagogies of food, ecology and design
- Authors: Green, Monica
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Environmental Education Research Vol. 19, no. 2 (2013), p.
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- Description: This study uses theories of place inhabitation, relationships to food, place ecologies, and place-based pedagogies to examine the educational value of food gardens and related environmental and health initiatives in primary (elementary) schooling in Australia. It assumes that food gardens and their school ground contexts are important ecopedagogical sites for renewing children’s relationships with proximal, everyday places. The study highlights how schools are engaging with socioenvironmental challenges through pedagogical frameworks that support education for sustainability. These frameworks are significant in that they position children as active agents who experience deep levels of embodied learning. A key premise of the thesis is that young learners are experientially capable of developing an ecoethical awareness if they are to become ecologically proactive subjects and citizens. Empirical work drew on case study approaches and arts-based auto-ethnographic methodologies to identify the pedagogical potential of food gardens and school ground ecologies. Fifty-three children aged 8–12 years, three gardening/environmental education teachers and three principals from three Australian primary schools (2×Victoria; 1×Tasmania) worked ethnographically with the researcher during 2007–2009. Data were primarily derived from semi-structured, face-to-face interviews. Other key sources included children’s mapping work, field notes, photos, and the researcher’s journal. Key features of the data collection were: many of the students participated in ‘walking interviews’ that encouraged garden- and school ground-based stories at sites of their choice, coupled with 15 days of participant observation of garden and classroom-based lessons to provide further contextualization. Analysis of interviews and lessons involved a ‘storyline’ approach to interpreting findings. Theoretically informed discussions of the empirical data highlight the following: across the three schools, recognizing the role and significance of teachers’ work and the value of integrated approaches to pedagogy are central requirements for designing, implementing, and evaluating place-oriented curricula. In each case study, relational pedagogies of connection and responsibility afford learning opportunities that can bring children into deepened contact with local places and people. Collectively, the initiatives undertaken by the schools and their wider communities are ‘positive’ and ‘hopeful’, and their examples show how school garden-based ecopedagogies can play a critical role in the renewal of more sustainable people–place relations.
The person in the tree: shared writings from space, place, body
- Authors: Collins, Susan , Whyte, Susan , Green, Monica , Vella, Karen , Crinall, Sarah , Dent, Faith , Foley, Angela , Potts, Miriam , Oates, Colleen , Peterken, Corinna , Albon, Nerissa , Howard, Marcia
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Reconceptualizing Educational Research Methodology Vol. 3, no. 2 (2012 2012), p. 56-70
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- Description: This paper was generated as an experimental collaborative writing exercise as part of the development of conceptual, theoretical and methodological resources of the Space, Place, Body Faculty of Education Research Group at Monash University. A group of higher degree research students undertook an exercise in body/place writing by going on a walk in the nearby Morwell National Park and producing a piece of writing in response to that experience. The responses became the data for the collaborative writing of a paper which followed the standard format of a thesis. Key theoretical influences included the writings of Elizabeth Grosz, Bronwyn Davies and Margaret Somerville. The process was found to generate a wide range of embodied walking stories. Analysis of the written reflections highlighted individually complex and different responses to place and ways of experiencing place. Through the collaborative process, intersections of meanings and new learnings about the ways in which we interact with place were facilitated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
The person in the tree: shared writings from space, place, body
- Authors: Collins, Susan , Whyte, Susan , Green, Monica , Vella, Karen , Crinall, Sarah , Dent, Faith , Foley, Angela , Potts, Miriam , Oates, Colleen , Peterken, Corinna , Albon, Nerissa , Howard, Marcia
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Reconceptualizing Educational Research Methodolog Vol. 3, no. 2 (2012 2012), p. 56-70
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Learning in place: Pedagogical pathways for place-making
- Authors: Green, Monica
- Date: 2009
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: AARE 2008 p. 1-19
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- Description: Abstract: This paper examines the position and role of 'place' in primary school curriculum. Drawing on the research literature and preliminary data the paper analyses a re-imagined environmental education program at a primary school. Innovative and collaborative processes that depict children as integral designers of a new garden place are discussed. Focus is given to the school ground as an important site for teaching and learning. The role of an ecological centre designed to teach children about sustainable building principles is discussed. Attention is drawn to the importance of children as place makers via endeavours that encourage and support children's fascination and affinity with outdoor places in the school ground. Tending a food garden is proposed as a significant pedagogical pathway for nurturing children's sense of wonder and enabling familiarity and a love of the natural world. Keywords: place, place makers, children, school ground, natural world, gardening
Food gardens : Cultivating a pedagogy of place
- Authors: Green, Monica
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
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- Description: Place-based education attempts to position the individual in relationship with the human and non-human elements of the life-world, at a place that is welcoming of educational experience and a knowledge base from which to construct a more ecologically sustainable culture. Food gardens, along with ecological restoration projects within schools are experiencing a significant renaissance and are important sites for place-based education. Many of these places are located in and around the immediate environment of a school ground and become significant educational portals through which children explore their world. This paper reports on the literature reviewed for a study on how a pedagogy of place is cultivated within garden experiences. There is limited research about the use of school gardens as an educational tool and the specific pedagogies that support learning in this context. A number of themes emerge from various bodies of literature that provide a conceptual framework for the study of food garden pedagogies. These themes include placebased education, ecological literary, and nature as teacher. It is useful to think about primary school gardens in the light of this literature because it helps frame a research question for a study into how pedagogies of place can be cultivated within food gardens. [Author abstract, ed]