Place literacies

Abstract

In this paper I will explore the application of a place pedagogies framework to the development of new place literacies. The framework of place pedagogies has evolved from my long-term research about relationship to place, especially partnership research with Aboriginal communities (e.g., Cohen & Somerville, 1990; Somerville, 1999, 2005). This framework offers three broad and interrelated principles that underpin a critical place pedagogy: place learning is necessarily embodied and local; our relationship to place is communicated in stories and other representations; place learning involves a contact zone of contested place stories. The pedagogies developed within this framework offer deep insights into how we can learn about place in ways that address the necessity for ‘decolonisation’ and ‘reinhabitation’ (Gruenewald, 2003a). In this paper I will apply the place pedagogies framework to researching pedagogies of water in the Murray-Darling Basin. Through the application of this framework I will propose a new theory of place literacy that embraces Australian Indigenous and non-Indigenous environmental knowledges. This new theory of place literacy brings into question the epistemologies and ontologies of print literacy and proposes different pedagogies of place literacy learning.