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Action, an ‘encompassing ethic’ and academics in the midst of the climate crisis

  • Authors: Plowright, Susan
  • Date: 2016
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Educational Philosophy and Theory Vol. 48, no. 14 (2016), p. 1442-1451
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  • Description: In the midst of a crisis like the climate crisis and calls for ‘all hands on deck’, what do academics, as a microcosm of humanity, see? In Hannah Arendt’s terms, an ‘abyss of freedom’ to act or a paralysing ‘abyss of nothingness’? Some from the academy themselves, including Tamboukou, Apple and Bourdieu, make judgements more akin to the latter and mount arguments to urge action. This paper joins their call and theorises ethical and demonstrably plausible resources as a potentially generative heuristic for political action by academics in the face of ‘dark times’. I develop these resources by initially drawing on Arendt’s ethical, but limited, action process. Then, through interpreting and expanding her unfinished theory of judging and echoing Karl Jaspers' concept The Encompassing, I propose the notion of an ‘encompassing ethic’. This ethic, synthesised with Arendt’s action process, ameliorates action’s limitations and suggests the idea of ‘encompassing action’. The paper concludes by bringing these conceptual resources to life through two inspiring historical examples of such action involving academics. © 2016 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia.

Reimagining and transforming identity as rural researchers and educators : A (con)textual fugue

  • Authors: Plowright, Susan , Glowrey, Cheryl , Green, Monica , Fletcher, Anna , Harrison, Dianne , Plunkett, Margaret , Emmett, Susan , Johnson, Nicola
  • Date: 2016
  • Type: Text , Conference paper
  • Relation: Association for Research in Education (AARE)
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  • Description: This paper presents the educational and research journey of a group of rural academics as a (con)textual fugue. We understand a fugue as a contrapuntal composition in which a short melody or phrase is introduced by one part and is successively taken up by other interweaving parts. Through weaving the multiple motivations and methodological underpinnings of the authors‟ individual research and education aspirations, a collective composition emerges. Our „fugue‟ represents the sum of the parts but it also challenges individualised conceptions of research and researcher identity. By conceptualising an assemblage of relational research presences and intentions for „disruptive transformations‟ in the rural context to which we are all deeply committed, we present another way of imagining or "seeing" research. Our „place‟ is Gippsland, Victoria, a distinctive and extensive area encompassing regional, rural and remote communities; diverse natural environments and localities; and correspondingly complex social, cultural and economic underpinnings. The establishment of Federation University in this setting, where the authors are situated, has precipitated what Mezirow might describe as a sudden, dramatic, reorienting insight and a reframing of habitual interpretations. Through coming together, we create a fresh impetus to pursue a collective but polyphonic purpose, impact and researcher identity.

'Little school, big heart' : embracing a new partnership for learning generous and ethical judgements

  • Authors: Plowright, Susan , Boyd, Gabbi , Callcott, Sophie
  • Date: 2019
  • Type: Text , Book chapter
  • Relation: Educational researchers and the regional university : agents of regional-global transformations 3 p. 41-56
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  • Description: For educators and educational researcherswho value democracy and planetary sustainability, our times present pedagogical challenges. The (re)emergence of populism, alt-right violences and the pressing climate crisis, among other global matters, present a dilemma. How do we simultaneously foster the will to form generous, ethical, judgements and actions in students, while meeting their immediate needs and themyriad curricula and governance demands placed on schools, from the context of local circumstances? In response, Susan, a Federation University Gippsland Education (FUGuE) researcher; Gabbi a principal/teacher; Sophie a part-time teacher; and a year's 4-6 class, embarked on a yearlong project to seewhat might be possible from the context of a relatively isolated and tiny Victorian government primary school in the rural/coastal area of SouthGippsland, on the southern coast ofmainland Australia. Together, in a new partnership, we aimed to simultaneously expand students' oral language experiences while cultivating an 'encompassing ethic', an idea from Sue's doctoral thesis. This is the will and capability to visit standpoints of others-human, non-human, past, present and future-in order to encompass the widest possible range of perspectives before forming judgements, speaking and acting. We synthesised this 'going visiting' with the Speaking and Listening mode, and the Ethical Capabilities area of the Victorian Curriculum. The project emerged as a productively and inspirationally transformative one for many of us. So, this chapter reflects on and theorizes the factors that produced transformational possibilities from a small rural school, which enacted its motto of Little School, Big Heart. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019. All rights are reserved.

Geographical dimensions of imagined futures : Post school participation in education and work in peri-urban and regional Australia

  • Authors: Webb, Susan , Black, Rosalyn , Plowright, Susan , Morton, Ruth , Roy, Reshmi
  • Date: 2014
  • Type: Text , Conference paper
  • Relation: Annual meeting of the Australian Vocational Education and Training Research Association 2014
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  • Description: This paper discusses preliminary findings from a sub-set of empirical data collected for a recent NCVER study that explored the geographic dimensions of social exclusion in four locations in Victoria and South Australia with lower than average post school education participation. Set against the policy context of the Bradley Review (2008) and the drive to increase the post-school participation of young people from low socio-economic status neighbourhoods, this qualitative research study, responding to identified gaps in the literature, sought a nuanced understanding of how young people make decisions about their post-school pathways. Drawing on Appadurai’s (2004) concept ‘horizons of aspiration’ the paper explores the aspirations of two young people formed from, and within, their particular rural ‘neighborhoods’. The paper reveals how their post-school education and work choices, imagined futures and conceptions of a ‘good life’, have topographic and gendered influences that are important considerations for policy makers.

Educational researchers and the regional university : agents of regional-global transformations

  • Authors: Plowright, Susan , Green, Monica , Johnson, Nicola
  • Date: 2019
  • Type: Text , Book
  • Relation: Educational researchers and the regional university : agents of regional-global transformations
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  • Description: This book showcases a compilation of research partnerships produced by the Federation University Gippsland School of Education. Through this book, readers will gain valuable insights into how education research initiatives can help adapt to an age characterized by massive regional/global economic, environmental, identity, cultural and social shifts. The respective chapters address the universal human and researcher condition in a regional setting, highlighting how individuals and groups are seeking to achieve transformation with their regional, educational research. On the whole, the compilation showcases a specific university in a regional context that is now responding to change by rejuvenating, reinventing, re-envisioning and rethinking its research, its identity and its relationality. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019. All rights are reserved. All rights are reserved.

Agents of regional-global transformation : Federation University Gppsland education (fugue) researchers

  • Authors: Plowright, Susan , Green, Monica , Johnson, Nicola
  • Date: 2019
  • Type: Text , Book chapter
  • Relation: Educational researchers and the regional university : agents of regional-global transformations 1 p. 1-19
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  • Description: The lived particulars of Gippsland, the region, the land, the people and all life, are the heart and impetus of Federation University Gippsland Education (FUGuE) researchers, the chapter and collection authors. To us, Gippsland is portentous as both a wonderful place and prophetic of the transformations required for a sustainable and just regional-global future. The Latrobe Valley, for example, home of our small, new, regional university campus, is both bucolic rural locale and site of several coal-fired power stations. For many years, non-Indigenous residents enjoyed a fairly self-contained place of financial and intergenerational security.However, decades of seismic shifts have written new layers of trauma onto the Gippsland palimpsest that began with European invasions.With global imperatives to transition to a low-carbon economy, Gippsland is a canary in the global coal mine. Assertively locating our research in this region, we address moral and institutional imperatives to act as agents in generating a new regional-global modus vivendi from hinterland and a range of other minority positionalities. To set the regional scene, we map territorial and ideational incongruences that the toponyms of 'Gippsland' and 'region' conjure.We narrate how FUGuE contrapuntally emerged from this context and argue that through 'word and deed', FUGuE challenges hegemonic positivist and dominant discourses of what counts as notable research. Like a Bach fugue masterpiece in which each voice has intrinsic integrity but in counterpoint transforms into something new, our interwoven research voices of transformative agency through educational research, disruptively reveal our appreciable, but largely underappreciated, 'impact'. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019. All rights are reserved.

Preface : idylls, smoke plumes and educational research from the south-eastern tip of mainland australia

Higher education and social cohesion: Universities, citizenship, and spaces of orientation

Reflecting on a nascent south gippsland birth-year 6 oral language partnership

  • Authors: Glowrey, Cheryl , Plowright, Susan
  • Date: 2019
  • Type: Text , Book chapter
  • Relation: Educational researchers and the regional university : agents of regional-global transformations 2 p. 23-39
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  • Description: Addressing inequality gaps between and within countries is number 10 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 2016-2030. In Australia, regional and remote area dwellers are disproportionately more likely to experience low socioeconomic circumstances, thus as Federation University Gippsland Education (FUGuE) researchers and neighbours, knowing this and that geographical context is an important factor in children's outcomes, it is not surprising we found ourselves meeting with the acting principal of the local primary school to offer our services. From this emerged a partnership between educational leaders from two small primary schools, a kindergarten and a local-government facilitated supported playgroup. Addressing delays in oral language development was considered to be a pressing educational and social justice concern in this relatively geographically isolated area with limited resources for maximising children's engagement, educational aspirations and outcomes for a just future. The partners co-designed a 12-month action plan with three strategies: shared professional learning workshops; extended placement of two fourth-year pre-service teachers in the schools; and trialling of an oral language enrichment programme for senior students. The accompanying research intended to evaluate the impact of these strategies and the partnership, however, was implemented in a limited way because of disruptions and complexities we report on. Rural communities though have resilience and rhythms that extend over longer timeframes than the average research project so as regional researchers and residents deeply committed to 'our place', we will continue to address the inequality gap we see around us by reinvesting in our region through our research. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019. All rights are reserved.

The lived experiences of graduate students : transforming university education in an online space

  • Authors: Harrison, Dianne , Plowright, Susan
  • Date: 2019
  • Type: Text , Book chapter
  • Relation: Educational researchers and the regional university : agents of regional-global transformations p. 191-208
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  • Description: Reflective of a global trend, there has been a notable increase in online learning enrolments in the Australian higher education sector. Online learning has a critical place in widening access and participation to higher education particularly for those from backgrounds historically underrepresented in Australian universities, including regional and remote students. However, both retention and completion rates for online and distance students are considerably lower in comparison with oncampus students. Among the barriers are a lack of social interaction, technical skills, costs and access to the Internet.Of all of these issues, it is the lack of social interaction that can be seen as themost severe barrier to online learning enjoyment, effectiveness and the possibility of a student taking another online class in the future. In this chapter, Di thus draws on the 'lived experiences' of a cohort of graduates who completed an online graduate programme through Federation University School of Education, to identify ways to improve social presence between online learners and teacher educators. After achieving ethics approval, and through a hermeneutic phenomenological lens influenced by Heidegger, she conducted in-depth, individual interviews. She sought insights into the students' positive experiences, frustrations, barriers (both structural and individual) and challenges encountered during their online learning experiences, as well as professional practice ideas for improved learning experiences in the online environment. She analysed and interpreted the interview data using an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) methodology, and the findings have deepened her understanding of online pedagogical practices and transformed her own online education practices. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019. All rights are reserved.
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