A pedagogy of "organized chaos": ecological learning in primary schools
- Authors: Somerville, Margaret , Green, Monica
- Date: 2011
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Children, Youth and Environments Vol. 21, no. 1 (2011), p. 14-24
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- Description: In this paper we theorize an “enabling place pedagogy” drawn from the findings of two studies of exceptional place-based teaching and learning initiatives in primary schools in low socio-economic communities in rural and regional Australia. In each case the place-based teaching and learning involved the whole school community and was extended to the communities outside of the school. Children across all grade levels participated in the programs, which were enacted in varying degrees across the curriculum. We propose the notion of “organized chaos” as a way to understand the extraordinary nature of the pedagogical encounters offered by the two leading teachers. Through a pedagogy of organized chaos, infinite connections are made possible, opening the way for alternative learner subjectivities, especially for children who are different and those who do not achieve well in conventional classroom teaching. We argue that through a pedagogy of organized chaos in diverse outdoor learning environments, deep ecological learning takes place that enables different ways of being in and knowing the world.
Children, Place and Sustainability
- Authors: Somerville, Margaret , Green, Monica
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Book
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- Description: This book sets out to give close and careful attention to the intimate and often surprising nature of children's sustainability learning in the context of their local places. The authors draw on new materialist and posthuman theory to consider the challenges posed to conventional environmental education by the advent of the new geological era of the Anthropocene and global climate change. Individual chapters explore the role of place and the material world in the development of literacy and language, the contribution of student-led design, arts-based approaches and indigenous knowledges as well as scientific pedagogies to provide unique insights into how children learn in their everyday places. The book is distinctive in its grounding in a range of empirical research studies with children and their teachers about their sustainability learning in a number of different locations in Australia. (From back cover).
New teachers learning in rural and regional Australia
- Authors: Somerville, Margaret , Plunkett, Margaret , Dyson, Michael
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education Vol. 38, no. 1 (2010), p. 39-55
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- Description: This paper reports on a longitudinal ethnographic study of beginning primary school teachers in rural and regional Victoria, Australia. The study uses a conceptual framework of place and workplace learning to ask: How do new teachers learn to do their work and how do they learn about the places and communities in which they begin teaching? In this paper, we focus on data from the first year of the three-year longitudinal study, using a place-based survey and ethnographic interviews. We found that the space of the classroom was the dominant site of learning to become a teacher for the new teachers in this study. This learning was understood through the discourse of classroom management. Analysis of these storylines reveals the ways in which the community and classroom are not separate but intertwined, and the process of learning about their communities began through the children in their classes.
Place and sustainability literacy in schools and teacher education
- Authors: Somerville, Margaret , Green, Monica
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: The Joint Australian Association for Research in Education and Asia-Pacific Educational Research Association Conference p. 1-14
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- Description: The development of sustainability literate teachers has been identified as a key challenge for the implementation of education for sustainability in Australian schools (Skamp, 2010)and elsewhere (Nolet, 2009). This paper reports on the first year of a participatory action research project that investigates the learning of school teachers, teacher educators, school children and teacher education students, in relation to the integration of place-based sustainability education across the curriculum of a low SES primary school. The methods of data collection included digital visual and audio recorded observations and reflections by teacher educators; reflective observations, focus groups, and interviews with teachers and principals; and the collection of student artefacts from school and teacher education students. A number of different conceptual and theoretical lenses are brought to the analysis of this data including 'thinking through country'; sustainability literacies and new technologies; and contemporary theories of space, place and body. In this baseline paper, the overall findings are summarised under the categories of the participating groups: - teacher, teacher educator, school student, teacher education student, and the school/place/community nexus.
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.
Thirty teachers go to school : New teachers learning in rural and regional communities in Australia
- Authors: Somerville, Margaret , Plunkett, Margaret , Dyson, Michael
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: British Educational Research Association (BERA) Annual Conference 2008 p. 1-17
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