Collective hope and action in a time of transition : kitchen table conversations with Gippsland sustainability change agents
- Authors: Green, Monica , McClam, Sherie
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Located Research: Regional Places, Transitions and Challenges p. 223-251
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- Description: This chapter stems from a broader research initiative involving a collective of eight Australian and US academics investigating the conditions that affect Education for Sustainability (EfS) educators’ capacity for agency. As part of the wider collective, the two authors of this chapter (one Australian and the other American) collaborated on a small study that examined how sustainability and climate change advocates and educators in Gippsland, Victoria, gain traction in effecting change. Study participants were recruited from two regional committees-RCE Gippsland (Regional Centre of Expertise in Education for Sustainable Development) and the GCCN (Gippsland Climate Change Network)-who each mobilise and disseminate sustainability and climate change information across the region. Using a narrative ethnographic methodology to explore participant perceptions of how they effect change in the region, the authors facilitated two conversational dialogues around two distinctive farmhouse kitchen tables in West Gippsland. Drawing on theories of new materialism and the concept of collective hope, this chapter engages with conversational vignettes generated via the agency of the kitchen tables and shared food. Emergent themes explored in the chapter include the work of EfS change agents and the importance of ‘the collective’ to deal with the challenges and tensions associated with creating change in the regions. © The Author(s) 2020.
Cultivating whole-heartedness in the academy during a time of COVID : insights from/within an inter-collegial friendship
- Authors: Green, Monica , McClam, Sherie
- Date: 2023
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Reflections on Valuing Wellbeing in Higher Education : Reforming Our Acts of Self-care Chapter 9 p. 111-124
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- Description: This chapter explores how we, Sherie (American) and Monica (Australian), two feminist teacher educators and collaborators, used reflective dialogic exchanges to examine our academic lives during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The underpinning personal and emotional layers of our wholehearted conversations sit within our robust inter-collegial friendship, which offers us critical support and reminders about the importance of self-care/compassion in our navigation of academic complexities and obligations. The chapter is framed by three of Brene Brown’s ‘wholehearted’ provocations or prompts that we used to explore our respective lived COVID-19 experiences within the broader milieu of contemporary academia. The chapter concludes with insights about the ways in which collegial friendships contribute to academic wellbeing and self-care. © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Narelle Lemon.