Rural Education and Sustainability
in a National Curriculum
Philip Roberts,
Faculty of Education, Science,
Technology & Mathematics.
University of Canberra, A.C.T, Australia
Conflicting values
‘I was bailed up on
the main street,
with people all
around, and
absolutely abused
by a students father
because of the
greenie bullshit I
was apparently
teaching his son. He
was absolutely wild,
I thought he was
going to punch me.’
Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-11-17/young-men-burn-copies-of-the-guide-to-themurray/3678418
From ego-centric to eco-centric
• Paul Clarke (2012)http://www.popup-foundation.org
• New ways of thinking and knowing for
innovative forms of action
• ‘there is little evidence of new concepts of
sustainability in the Australian syllabus’
(Skamp, 2010, p.10)
• Sustainability education = genuine
professional learning (Leonard 2013)
National Goals of Schooling: From
Social Justice to Excellence & Equity
• Adelaide declaration 1.7
– have an understanding of, and concern for,
stewardship of the natural environment, and the
knowledge and skills to contribute to ecologically
sustainable development
• Melbourne Declaration pg. 14
– In addition, a focus on environmental
sustainability will be integrated across the
curriculum
Sustainability in the AC
Sustainability addresses the ongoing capacity of Earth to maintain all life.
Sustainable patterns of living meet the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.
Actions to improve sustainability are both individual and collective
endeavours shared across local and global communities. They necessitate
a renewed and balanced approach to the way humans interact with
each other and the environment.
Education for sustainability develops the knowledge, skills, values and
world views necessary for people to act in ways that contribute to more
sustainable patterns of living. It enables individuals and communities to
reflect on ways of interpreting and engaging with the
world. Sustainability education is futures-oriented, focusing on
protecting environments and creating a more ecologically and socially
just world through informed action. Actions that support more
sustainable patterns of living require consideration of environmental,
social, cultural and economic systems and their interdependence.
Somerville & Green (2013)
• ‘the most exciting and innovative •
sustainability education initiatives
are emerging at the grassroots
community level, but do not
appear in the formal curriculum of
school education’ p. 73.
• ‘They typically involve place and
community-based experiential
pedagogies shaped within and by
the communities and places in
which they arise’ p.74
• ‘in the school system … relied on …
the dedication of particular
visionary teachers to contribute
over and above their normal
teaching work’ p.74
Storyline analysis:
– Region-based spatial
framework
– Place-based focus
– Philosophical
foundations
– Scarcity of funding and
resources
– Partnerships
– Innovative approaches
to teaching and
learning.
Green & Reid (2004)
• Relationship between education and ruralregional sustainability.
• Education as situated practice.
• Teacher education as renewal, education as
representation, and staffing
• ‘special forever’ project.
• Relationship between Quality Teaching &
rural-regional sustainability.
• What is education for? What skills &
understandings do teachers need?
Any warm body?
• Who staff’s these schools?
• What schooling do they imagine?
• What is their professional self-efficacy measured
against?
• staffing rural schools involves four components:
– the economic, that is making rural teaching
economically attractive;
– the social, offsetting or compensating for social
isolation; professionalism,
– that rural teaching is a distinctive professionalteaching activity;
– and rural difference, recognition that the rural is a
distinct educational context (Roberts, 2005).
RRRTEC.net.au
• Need to prepare rural and regional teachers to be:
– community ready,
– school ready, and
– classroom ready.
• The development of a conceptual framework design
that emphasised the importance of understanding
place.
• five themes were identified and formed the basis of a
set of curriculum modules
–
–
–
–
–
Experiencing rurality
Community Readiness
Whole school focus
Student learning and the classroom
Professional experience and advice for working in
rural/regional settings
• ‘the way we imagine space has effects…’
– Massey
2005:4
• ‘space is fundamental in any form of communal
life; space is fundamental in any exercise of
power’
– Foucault 1984:252
John Glover. Mount Wellington and Hobart Town from Kangaroo Point 1831-33 oil on canvas
•
The truth is that centralization is the best form of educational rule for a young country with a
vast hinterland. It ensures that the children of the rural pioneer receive as good an education
as the children of the banker or artisan in the city.
– Browne 1927:xvii-xviii
Conceptualizing rurality
• Three-fold model of
(rural) space
– Rural locality
– Formal representations
of the rural
– Everyday lives of the
rural
• Halfacree 2006
• 3 theoretical frames
– Functional (land use &
life linked to land)
– Political-economic
(social production)
– Social (culture & values)
• Cloke 2006
• Generative Theory of Rurality
–
–
–
–
Rurality as context
Forces (Space, place & time)
Agencies (Movement, systems, will)
Resources (Situated, material &
Psychosocial)
• Balfour, Mitchell & Molestone 2008
• The multiplicity of rural places and perceptions of the
rural remind us of the forces that have become
otherwise invisible and that inevitably place matters.
– Reid, Green et al 2010
Howley & Howley 2010
• 3 rural community types
– Durable-Agrarian
– Resource extraction
– Suburbanizing
• Each has particular equity challenges and
opportunities
Place
‘Bourdieu viewed individual lives as taking place within social and
physical spaces that are connected to cultural and symbolic capital’
- Reed-Danahay (2005) P.132
‘place is space filled up by people, practices, objects and
representations’
– Gieryn (2000) P.465
‘The point of becoming more conscious of places in education is to extend
our notions of pedagogy and accountability outward toward places. Thus
extended, pedagogy becomes more relevant to the lived experience of
students and teachers, and accountability is reconceptualised so that
places matter to educators, students, and citizens in tangible ways. Placeconscious education, therefore, aims to work against the isolation of
schooling’s discourses and practices from the living world outside the
increasingly placeless institution of schooling.’
- Gruenwald (2003) p. 621
Curriculum & Pedagogy
•
•
•
•
•
•
Placelessness
Performativity and place
Assumptions of (rural) (in)equity
Relationship between Curriculum & Pedagogy
Cosmopolitanism & erasure
A place conscious curriculum
A cosmopolitan nation
• ‘the cosmopolitan child is not born but made,
and that schooling is the central site of this
production’ (Popkewitz, 2008 p.3).
• Metro-centric, cosmopolitan values (Popkewitz
2008, Corbett 2010)
• Curriculum as policy (Rizvi & Lingard 2010, Luke
et al 2013)
• Policy dominated by human capital ideas
• Neoliberal social imaginery
– Standardisation, regulation, accountability & choice
– Placeless
Curriculum ‘relevance’ or ‘acceptability’
• Commonwealth Schools Commission, 1987; McKenzie,
Harrold & Sturman, 1996; HREOC, 2000
• Country Areas Program
• Learning to leave (Corbett 2007)
• AC
– Year by Year
– Local history to high stakes
– No local studies
– Choice of texts
• Local studies were:
‘unnecessary in an essential learning curriculum and will
free up time for the essentials’ (ACARA, 2010, p.157).
• ‘What we know, we may choose to care for.
What we fail to recognize, we certainly won’t’
– Pyle, 2001, p.18.
• ‘Curriculum that does not challenge the standard
syllabus and conditions in society informs
studnets that knowledge and the world are fixed
and are fine the way they are, with no role for
students to play in transforming them and no
need to change.
– Shor 1992, P. 12.
• Somerville, M., Plunkett, M., &
Dyson, M. (2010). New
teachers learning in rural and
regional Australia. Asia Pacific
Journal of Teacher Education,
38(1), 39-55.
– In-depth interviews with 15
beginning primary teachers in
Vic (and some survey data)
– Place a central concept.
– To explore how teachers learn
about place and community.
– New teachers knew their new
‘place’ and therefore took
community for granted.
– Teachers primary
understanding of place was
their classroom.
– Classrooms as places that are
produced.
• Somerville, M. & Rennie, J.
(2012). Mobilising
community? Place, identity
formation and new teachers’
learning, Discourse: Studies in
the Cultural Politics of
Education, 33(2), 193-206
– In-depth interviews with 35
new primary teachers over 3
years.
– Place again a main theme and
same aim.
– Funds of knowledge ideas.
– School and community taken
for granted or separated. The
‘self’ or the ‘other’
– Attitudes to community
became more fixed over time
Two ways of Being
Place-conscious
• (Rural) schools are different
• Locate their practice in
place
• Situated curriculum
• Curriculum as pedagogy
• Quality related to place
• Positive language
• Optimistic language
• Positive about profession
Placeless
• All schools are the same
• Practice reflects imagined
cosmopolitan norms.
• Bureaucratic approach
• Separating curriculum &
pedagogy
• Quality is placeless
• Negative language
• Limited opportunity
• Negative about profession
NST8
• ‘of course we’re totally isolated here, pretty much
all inexperienced and it’s hard to get teachers …
and the kids face lots of challenges, there are big
literacy issues and getting to school for a whole
week is pretty tough for most of them’
• ‘we can’t change that, we’ve just got to work
with it’
• ‘they’re [sic] really got into that, it was so good
to see and work they produced was fantastic,
well beyond what I hoped when I started’
A Curriculum Hierarchy,
with stratified access
Our views of equity don’t fully account for what’s happening.
Identified equity
categories used
by the NSW DEC
There is no
overwhelming
pattern to this
distribution by
equity category
Spatially differentiated access & Achievement
% of subject enrollment
HSC English Level (by RA)
Weighted subject
enrolments by ASGS
(remoteness) and
achievement bands.
NSW HSC English.
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Major Cities of Inner Regional Outer Regional
Australia
Australia
Australia
RA Category
HSC English Advanced
Remote
Australia
Very Remote
Australia
HSC English Standard
HSC English Advanced (Bands by RA)
% of Students
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
Band 1
Band 2
Band 3
Band 4
Bands
Major Cities of Australia
Inner Regional Australia
Remote Australia
Very Remote Australia
Band 5
Band 6
Outer Regional Australia
Some options are removed
The little grey dots are
secondary departments
where students didn’t access
Advanced English in 2012
Distance
education
reinforces
knowledge and
views of
elsewhere
Towards Place-based Education
• Roberts, Caffery, Spriggs (UC) Green & Rafferty (CSU) &
MDBA.
• Some questions:
– How is sustainability understood by different
communities?
– What are communities doing in relation to sustainability?
– How is sustainability positioned in the curriculum & how
does this relate to community views?
– How is place knowledge incorporated in the curriculum?
• Method
– Mapping as Method
– Spatial analysis of views
– Collaborative Action Research as Curriculum
When we separate curriculum & pedagogy
we separate people from places.
Sustainability connects people to places,
for our collective futures