Journal of Public Pedagogies, Number 3, 2018
Karen Charman
Victoria University
For the last three years the Public Pedagogies Institute has undertaken research in a defined geographical area in order to understand from the people who live and work there what they consider to be significant knowledge. The premise of this research is the idea that each geographical area has defined knowledge. Despite the shift by Local Governments or City Councils to define larger areas as connected and bounded spaces there persists strong identification with much smaller pockets in the form of suburbs or neighbourhoods. We have named this work the ‘Knowledge Project’.
In last year’s issue of this Journal I contributed to an article that explored this research and the subsequent Pop Up School event in Footscray (Charman, K, et al Journal of Public Pedagogies, No 2. 2017). Since that article we have undertaken projects in Werribee and Point Cook, both in the City of Wyndham, in Melbourne. These projects have confirmed the distinct identity that place carries. This identification might be read as resistance to the imagined homogeneous site of nationalism. As Benedict Anderson (2006 p.6) notes in Imagined Communities when he comments, ‘It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them…’.
More significantly the communities of Footscray, Werribee and Point Cook continue to bring into life spaces that push against one national homogeneous imperative and that is to imagine Australia as under threat from those ‘others’ who seek refuge here. Instead in their own distinct ways they look to how to re-settle and grow communities with people who are newly arrived and in this sense people are met, known and listened to. In Werribee and Point Cook, The Wyndham Community and Education Centre continues to be at the forefront of this work and is an exciting site of learning and teaching that is outside of formal educational institutions. This organisation is indicative of the role Community Education Centres and Neighbourhood Houses play in contributing to inclusive communities. This work encapsulates a form of public pedagogy because it provides the broader public with the knowledge that communities are never static but are always evolving in ways that can enrich all of us.
Most of the articles in this edition speak to place in some way. Looking to the future Dr. Tanja Beer, Ms Kate Kantor and Dr Andrea Cook in ‘Running Wild: Engaging and empowering future custodians of place through creative nature-based play’ demonstrate the importance of creative nature-based play to contribute to children’s identity and understanding of the natural world. This is significant because unless successive generations connect with nature in place we are in danger of continuing to disconnect from the environment.
In their article ‘The role of pedagogy in peace building: A case from Sri Lanka’s non-formal secondary education sector’ Dr Jeremy Cunningham and Suren Ladd bring to light the necessity of healing and peace building since the end of the Civil War in 2009. One way this is occurring is through a non-formal curriculum in secondary schools around the themes of truth-seeking, social cohesion and active-citizenship.
Place also functions in our connections to the past. This is something that Charlotte Clemens takes up in ‘The Threads that Bind Us’ when she writes about her connection to the Solomon Islands through her Father, who had been stationed there during the Second World War, and her own subsequent involvement in a UNESCO funded arts project with Dr Irene Paulsen that takes her to the Solomons. The aim of the project is to link students in the Solomon Islands with children here in Australia in order to learn from each other by sharing artworks and stories.
Flossie Peitsch takes us back further in history in her article ‘Caroline Chisholm: public pedagogy personified’. In this article, we can re-visit Chisholm’s creative social intervention that the author reads through contemporary theory on public pedagogy.
Lastly, moving us away from material spaces in both the present and the past Alison Holland challenges us to think of the web as a site of public pedagogy in her article ‘Public pedagogy for the Web: An emergent theory via the spiral of inquiry.’
In our ongoing dialogue at our yearly conference we continue to collect responses to the question What is Public Pedagogy? The following sequence speaks to the breadth of understanding of this term and is a great way to finish this editorial.
I hope you enjoy this issue!
Dr. Karen Charman
The following videos can be viewed at: https://vimeo.com/album/4216671
Video Link: https://vimeo.com/296318161
Video Link: https://vimeo.com/296318109
Video Link: https://vimeo.com/296318118
Video Link: https://vimeo.com/296318135
Video Link: https://vimeo.com/296318145