Place pedagogies research

Body/place
Living on the ground
And learning a language of place.
Breathing the air of trees
Walking with exquisite notice and care
Listening with the ruffled surface of the body.

(Source: Body/Landscape Journals, 1999)

Through my research I have reconceptualized place as a pedagogical practice. I draw on contemporary feminist poststructural and postcolonial philosophies as a basis for an alternative place pedagogy. Within this, I outline three key principles; our relationship to place is constituted in stories and other representations; place learning is local and embodied; and deep place learning occurs in a contact zone of contestation. These principles give rise to new emergent arts-based methodologies for researching place-responsive pedagogies.

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Margaret Somerville is Professor of Education (Learning and Development) and Research Director of the Institute for Regional Studies.

Bubbles on the Surface: a place pedagogy of the Narran Lakes

ARC Discovery Grant 2006-2008 DP 0666376

Investigator: Professor Margaret Somerville

The project will provide Aboriginal, ecological humanities, and pedagogical input into the problem of environmental sustainability in the Murray-Darling Basin, complementing current physical science initiatives. It will have immediate national benefit in the production of educational resources based on alternative and previously invisible stories of water in the Narran Lakes area, an icon site in the Murray-Darling Basin. The findings will have longer term national benefit by identifying the elements of a general pedagogy of place, drawn from the specific local case study of the Narran Lakes, which will be applied in adult and community education.

Enabling Place pedagogies in rural and urban Australia

ARC Discovery Grant 2006-2008 – DP 0663798

Investigators: Professor Margaret Somerville (Monash Gippsland), Prof Bronwyn Davies (University of Western Sydney), Dr Kerith Power (Monash Peninsula) and Dr S.M Gannon (University of Western Sydney).

This project will tell us how children and adults learn about place in the local areas where they live and work. The findings will be applied in action research with teachers in early childhood, school, and adult education settings, and in the preparation of teachers. It will address two Research Priority areas:

1. An environmentally sustainable Australia, and
2. Strengthening Australia’s economic and social fabric, which we argue are inseparable. Incorporating the findings into the curricula of teacher education will ensure that the project will have sustained long term benefits as well as the immediate application built into the study.