Literacy, places and identity: the complexity of teaching environmental communications.

Literacy, places and identity: the complexity of teaching environmental communications. In this article we explore the relationship between literacy,place, and teacher identity as they intersect In a relational database, to match two files and produce a third file with records that are common in both. For example, intersecting an American file and a programmer file would yield American programmers. around Special Forever, aprofessional learning program with a focus on environmentalcommunications and place based education. Teachers participating inSpecial Forever speak from different positions, histories, and alliancesas local landowners, farmers, users of Murray-Darling Basin The Murray-Darling Basin being 3430km long, drains one-seventh of the Australian land mass and is currently by far the most significant agricultural area in Australia. Most of the 1,061,469 km² basin is flat, low-lying and far inland, and receives little rainfall. resources,and environmental activists; they teach in places to which they areconnected in multiple ways and in which they have particular investmentsthat shape the design of their environmental communications curriculum. We draw on an analysis of the Special Forever Guidelines forschools to discern dis��cern?v. dis��cerned, dis��cern��ing, dis��cernsv.tr.1. To perceive with the eyes or intellect; detect.2. To recognize or comprehend mentally.3. how the Murray-Darling Basin is represented withinthe program, and read this alongside interview data in which teachersspeak about the complex relationships they have with 'theirplace' in the Murray-Darling Basin. We suggest that theinterrelationships between the politics of places, the politics ofliteracy pedagogy, and the multiple subject positions that teachersnegotiate deserve closer attention if we are to develop more groundedapproaches to critical literacy Critical literacy is an instructional approach that advocates the adoption of critical perspectives toward text. Critical literacy encourages readers to actively analyze texts and it offers strategies for uncovering underlying messages. and place-based pedagogies. Furthermore,we argue that an important element for making literacy critical isattending to the politics of the places that are important to childrenand their teachers. Introduction In a period where literacy education has come under serious andcontinued public scrutiny and where critical educators are enduring abacklash (see Doecke, Howie & Sawyer, 2006) against versions ofliteracy which purport To convey, imply, or profess; to have an appearance or effect.The purport of an instrument generally refers to its facial appearance or import, as distinguished from the tenor of an instrument, which means an exact copy or duplicate. PURPORT, pleading. to deal with justice, equity or anything remotelypolitical, it is important to consider how much room to move teachershave in designing their curriculum (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001).Literacy teaching, whether governments acknowledge it or wish itotherwise, has always been political. Literacy is always aboutsomething; it is not simply a process; people don't communicateabout nothing. How teachers orient o��ri��entv.1. To locate or place in a particular relation to the points of the compass.2. To align or position with respect to a point or system of reference.3. themselves towards the objects ofstudy, where they are located, and the ways in which teachers'out-of-school lives and histories impact upon the design and delivery oftheir curriculum, however, receive too little attention. When the objectof study is itself a focus of debate, such as is the case with 'thestate of the environment', the political nature of teacherdecision-making may be more obvious. At the heart of this paper is our desire to explore therelationships between literacy teaching, place and teacher identity. Weare interested in what difference, if any, place makes toteaching--where teachers are located, their relationships with thatplace, in and out of school, and their identification with particularplaces. This paper represents our preliminary exploration into theseareas. (1) Our involvement in researching the fifteen-year-long SpecialForever environmental communications program Software that manages the transmission of data between computers, typically via modem and the serial port. Such programs were very popular for connecting to BBSs before the Internet took off. presents us with anextraordinary opportunity to hear how participating teachers understandtheir work as situated in their particular communities, in specificplaces across the MDB (Message-Driven Bean) An Enterprise JavaBean (EJB) generated by the Java Messaging Service. See EJB. , and their accounts of perceived changes overtime. (2) Rarely in educational research, or in literacy studiesspecifically, are teachers' decision-making and pedagogical ped��a��gog��ic? also ped��a��gog��i��caladj.1. Of, relating to, or characteristic of pedagogy.2. Characterized by pedantic formality: a haughty, pedagogic manner. practices considered across time and space and as placed within a widersocio-political and material ecology. As part of the larger River Literacies research project (3) weinterviewed the Special Forever coordinators about their involvement inthe program, their environmental autobiographies, their histories asliteracy educators, and their takes on environmental communications. Weasked them to provide us with a retrospective account of how and whythey had come into Special Forever, to discuss an artefact See artifact. whichrepresented their work in the program, and to give us a sense of how theprogram had evolved during their period of involvement. We alsoconsidered the rich archival data developed throughout theprogram's history. We begin with a brief discussion of selected literature concernedwith teachers' professional identities to indicate our interest inteachers' stories as located in different discourses, as narratingmultiple selves. We then consider how Special Forever represents itself,and the Murray-Darling Basin, in the published Guidelines for Schools;we focus on the Special Forever Murray-Darling Basin writing projectguidelines for schools, published in 1993, which established the aimsand purposes of the program, and comment in general terms on theGuidelines published from 1993-2003. In the third section we turn toteachers' different entry points into the Special Forever programand illustrate how their different histories and localities relate totheir reported approaches to teaching environmental communications. Weconclude that place is a significant dimension of these teachers'professional and personal identities and suggest that this raisesfurther questions for literacy studies. Teacher identity--a place-free zone? Over the past two decades, a number of qualitative studies ofteachers' professional identities have produced detailedunderstandings about teaching and teachers' professional selves(e.g. Clandinin & Connelly, 1995, 1996; Goodson & Cole, 1993;Nias & Aspinwall, 1995). In these studies, narratives of teachingexperience tend to interweave the personal and professional lives ofteachers to produce a unified and stable teacher self. Also alluded tois the interplay in��ter��play?n.Reciprocal action and reaction; interaction.intr.v. in��ter��played, in��ter��play��ing, in��ter��playsTo act or react on each other; interact. of social, cultural and personal relations that impacton teachers' sense of professional self, yet without an explicitfocus on place as constitutive constitutive/con��sti��tu��tive/ (kon-stich��u-tiv) produced constantly or in fixed amounts, regardless of environmental conditions or demand. in those relations. Rejecting the notion of a unified self, recent studies informed byfeminist poststructuralism poststructuralism:see deconstruction. poststructuralismMovement in literary criticism and philosophy begun in France in the late 1960s. Drawing upon the linguistic theories of Ferdinand de Saussure, the anthropology of Claude Lévi-Strauss ( argue that teacher selves are always inprocess, produced and reproduced through social interactions and dailynegotiations in classrooms and schools (e.g., Britzman, 1994; Marsh,2002a, 2002b). Such studies locate teachers in their professionalcontexts and describe their struggles to negotiate boundaries betweencompeting discourses about what and how a teacher should be. Identitiesare represented as multiple and shifting, neither singular nor fixed.This theorising of the self as a site of disunity dis��u��ni��ty?n. pl. dis��u��ni��tiesLack of unity.Noun 1. disunity - lack of unity (usually resulting from dissension) and tension generatesmore complex understandings of the ongoing identity work that teachersdo; later in the paper, we hear Special Forever coordinators speak fromshifting subject positions in their narratives of complex and uneasyrelations around difficult environmental questions in particular places. Our own work in critical literacy has considered the complexidentity work that teachers do and how their work engages with thelocale in which they are situated (Comber comb��er?n.1. One, such as a machine or a worker, that combs something, such as wool.2. A long wave that has reached its peak or broken into foam; a breaker. , 2006; Comber, Thomson &Wells, 2001; Comber & Nixon, 2005), without, however, fullyanalysing their complex place histories. Place remains a relativelyunexplored dimension of teacher identity and professional practice. Thefew exceptions include studies of immigrant teachers (Elbaz-Luwisch,2004), newly graduated teachers (Santoro, Kamler & Reid, 2001), andMaguire's (2001, 2005) studies of working-class women teachers.Maguire asks 'How do they place themselves--as women, as teachers,as working class women who teach?' She explores the'contingency, historical specificity and ongoing-ness' ofteacher identity formation, illustrating how identity is marked by classand place, and manifested in language, speech and appearance: the womenshe interviewed 'are placing and being placed by embodied em��bod��y?tr.v. em��bod��ied, em��bod��y��ing, em��bod��ies1. To give a bodily form to; incarnate.2. To represent in bodily or material form: factorsas well as by cultural artefacts--and these are points of distinctionthat separate out groups of people' (Maguire, 2005, p. 10).Maguire's notion that identity is placed and positioned in aculture and a history is a move towards taking account of place asdeeply implicated im��pli��cate?tr.v. im��pli��cat��ed, im��pli��cat��ing, im��pli��cates1. To involve or connect intimately or incriminatingly: evidence that implicates others in the plot.2. in identity formation and teachers' work. Elbaz-Luwisch (2004, p. 388) writes that what is missing in theresearch literature is 'a sense of the teacher teaching in aplace--a given location that is not only specific, describable anddistinct from other locations, but that holds meaning, that matters tothe persons who inhabit in��hab��it?v. in��hab��it��ed, in��hab��it��ing, in��hab��itsv.tr.1. To live or reside in.2. To be present in; fill: Old childhood memories inhabit the attic. it'. This argument resonates withLefebvre's conceptualisation (artificial intelligence) conceptualisation - The collection of objects, concepts and other entities that are assumed to exist in some area of interest and the relationships that hold among them. of the inherent spatiality of humanlife (Soja, 1996, p. 2); place can neither be separated from ourexperience of social relations, nor relegated to the periphery periphery/pe��riph��ery/ (pe-rif��er-e) an outward surface or structure; the portion of a system outside the central region.periph��eral pe��riph��er��yn.1. ofexplanations of historical or social events. As McDowell (1999, p. 7)argues: social practices, including the wide range of social interactions at a variety of sites and places ... and ways of thinking about and representing place are interconnected and mutually constituted. We all act in relation to our intentions and beliefs, which are always culturally shaped and historically and spatially positioned. And literacy as a social practice, as identity work, is alwayssituated. Gruenewald (2003b) argues that 'places make us', andmoreover, that place is 'profoundly pedagogical' and that ourways of knowing and being are deeply related to lived experiences ofplace. 'Places produce and teach particular ways of thinking aboutand being in the world. They tell us the way things are, even when theyoperate pedagogically ped��a��gog��ic? also ped��a��gog��i��caladj.1. Of, relating to, or characteristic of pedagogy.2. Characterized by pedantic formality: a haughty, pedagogic manner. beneath a conscious level' (Gruenewald,2003b, p. 627). Further, he suggests that places 'teach us abouthow the world works and how our lives fit into the spaces we occupy ...places make us: as occupants of particular places with particularattributes, our identity, our possibilities are shaped' (2003b, p.621). We tentatively explore this notion of ontology ontology:see metaphysics. ontologyTheory of being as such. It was originally called “first philosophy” by Aristotle. In the 18th century Christian Wolff contrasted ontology, or general metaphysics, with special metaphysical theories of place as itconnects to teacher identity and literacy pedagogy as we consider theways in which teachers who are multiply situated undertake environmentalcommunications work with their students in different locations in theMurray-Darling Basin. Before turning to the teachers' accounts oftheir environmental communications work, we briefly consider how theMurray-Darling Basin is represented and the stances towards place andthe environment that are evident in the Special Forever Guidelines. Weconsider these texts as examples of an authorised standpoint with whichteachers had to negotiate and relate to both their sense of place andtheir priorities for literacy. Special Forever Murray-Darling Basin Writing Project Guidelines forSchools: Competing discourses about the Murray-Darling Basin The Guidelines, sent to all 1600 primary schools in the Basin upuntil 2003, provide themes and planning ideas for integrating SpecialForever into the primary curriculum. They include information about theBasin, 'largely as background for teachers' to develop'[children's] understanding of how their locality 1. locality - In sequential architectures programs tend to access data that has been accessed recently (temporal locality) or that is at an address near recently referenced data (spatial locality). This is the basis for the speed-up obtained with a cache memory.2. fits intothe larger picture of the Murray-Darling catchment catch��ment?n.1. A catching or collecting of water, especially rainwater.2. a. A structure, such as a basin or reservoir, used for collecting or draining water.b. area' (ThePrimary English Teaching Association & The Murray-Darling BasinCommission 1993, p. 9). The Special Forever Guidelines then are intendedfor a specifically-located teacher audience who work within theMurray-Darling Basin; thus to some extent these curriculum materials aresituated. Unlike other similar materials for teachers, theirdistribution depends on where the school is located within thebio-region, rather than within political jurisdictions. The Basin, an extensive catchment area catchment areaor drainage basin,area drained by a stream or other body of water. The limits of a given catchment area are the heights of land—often called drainage divides, or watersheds—separating it from neighboring drainage that spans most of inlandsoutheastern Australia, is mapped across state borders. The descriptionof the Basin invokes it as a 'special' geographical location,listing its natural heritage features, climatic zones, fauna faunaAll the species of animals found in a particular region, period, or special environment. Five faunal realms, based on terrestrial animal species, are generally recognized: Holarctic, including Nearactic (North America) and Paleartic (Eurasia and northern Africa); and flora.But it is also a social space in which uneasy histories andpost-colonial economies and politics criss-cross within and beyond its(imagined) boundaries. The Basin is both a 'precious resource'and a damaged place; there are hints of tensions around differentpriorities for, and investments in, management and conservation of theBasin's scarce resources. These competing representations of the Basin and its'environmental challenges' have implications for what teachersattend to in their environmental communications curriculum, as well asthe kinds of texts that teachers and students produce for SpecialForever. The Guidelines, read as multi-vocal or heteroglossic (Bakhtin,1981) texts, suggest the ongoing struggle over meaning, politics andresponsibility, and at the same time open up spaces for teachers todesign curriculum that invites students to explore 'their ownimportant slice of the Basin' in a variety of ways. This becomesparticularly salient when considering the ways in which teachers nameand frame 'special places' and 'environmentalproblems' in their environmental communications curriculum, as wellas the different potentials for teaching in, about and for theenvironment (Bishop, Reid, Stables, Lencastre, Stoer & Soetaert,2000; King, 2000), as we discuss later. Special Forever constructs the Basin as an object of study, and anobject of literacy, particularly the literary (see Cormack & Greenthis volume). From the outset Special Forever described itself as'a major writing project' (e.g., The Primary English TeachingAssociation & The Murray-Darling Basin Commission 1993, p. 5), withan emphasis on communicating beyond the classroom and the school.Providing students with 'real purposes' and 'realaudiences' for their writing, and 'education of the presentand future custodians For more meanings of this word. Please see Custodian.The Custodians is terminology in the Bah��'�� Faith, which refers to nine Hands of the Cause assigned specifically to work at the Bah��'�� World Centre in attendance to the Guardian of the Faith. of the Murray and Darling Rivers and theirtributaries [which] is crucial to the Basin's future' (ThePrimary English Teaching Association & The Murray-Darling BasinCommission 1993, p. 6) are two principles that continue to shape SpecialForever and the work that Special Forever teachers and coordinatorsundertake 15 years on. In the first years of the program priority was given to writing ina range of genres, both expressive and factual. Teachers were encouragedto have children 'not only think but write' about their'pride in and concern for their own important slice of the Basin,(The Primary English Teaching Association & The Murray-Darling BasinCommission 1993, p. 6). The imagined teacher reader was positionedpredominantly as one who facilitated children's personal responseand expressive writing in the early years of the program, althoughfactual writing was included. In 1993 a discourse of'specialness' and a somewhat romantic view of childhood andthe environment dominated, but discursive dis��cur��sive?adj.1. Covering a wide field of subjects; rambling.2. Proceeding to a conclusion through reason rather than intuition. shifts over the history of theprogram have influenced, and been influenced by, a stronger and moreovert orientation to active eco-citizenship. Knobel and Lankshear intheir introduction to the Changing Landscapes (The Primary EnglishTeaching Association, 2003), for example, foreground foreground - (Unix) On a time-sharing system, a task executing in foreground is one able to accept input from and return output to the user in contrast to one running in the background. 'activecitizenship' as key to sustainable futures, both environmental andsocial, in the Murray-Darling Basin. They write that 'activecitizenship': is supported by experiences that teach students to live productively, responsibly and sustainably within a range of environments. It also takes seriously the need to provide spaces within the curriculum for students to explore what it means to be a committed and participatory citizen--not one necessarily bound by regional or national borders. (The Primary English Teaching Association, 2003, p. 3) Our detailed critical discourse analysis Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is an interdisciplinary approach to the study of discourse, which views "language as a form of social practice" (Fairclough 1989: 20) and focuses on the ways social and political domination is reproduced by text and talk. of the fifteen years ofSpecial Forever corpus of anthologies and guidelines indicates that overthe course of the program thus far there has been a significantdiscursive shift away from an unproblematically conservationistconstruction of a 'special' place towards an emphasis onenvironmental sustainability. It is important to understand thatteachers volunteered to be coordinators of Special Forever and thatteachers around the Basin have submitted children's art anddrawings (and other artefacts) under the auspices of a changing view ofthe Murray-Darling Basin with implications for their teaching ofliteracy and environmental communications. Here we have simplysummarised the major trends and shifts in order to provide some contextfor the teachers' accounts of their engagements with SpecialForever. We now consider their multiple motivations for being involved,their experiences of the program and the complexity of teachingenvironmental communications in their sites, noting that teachers livingand working in different parts of the Murray-Darling Basin aredifferently positioned with respect to curriculum opportunities andconstraints. Different entry points into Special Forever Many of the Special Forever coordinators were initially attractedto the Special Forever program because it promoted the publication ofchildren's writing and artworks in the annual anthology. It was theliteracy, or at least the representational rep��re��sen��ta��tion��al?adj.Of or relating to representation, especially to realistic graphic representation.rep , component of theenvironmental communications curriculum, the opportunity for children toproduce what they saw as 'real writing', that originallyengaged them. Real challenges, real opportunities, real person, real audience, yeah, I think that's the important thing--purpose, audience, the challenge, and the cooperation and collaboration, and it's inclusive--everyone has got something to offer, and I think that's important, it's inclusive. Special Forever was providing an avenue for the ... kids, to use their end product so that they'd have an audience for it, and a purpose for it ... Special Forever was something they enjoyed, and they enjoyed seeing their work in the book. The coordinators reported that the anthologies of children'spublished work were very popular with parents and the broader localcommunity. Clearly for teachers it was consistent with the'conference' approach to writing, dominant at that time, whichemphasised authentic publication of children's writing as a goal. Confirming the discursive shifts we had noticed in the Guidelines,teachers also talked about the different 'sides' of SpecialForever--the 'literacy side', the 'scientific side',the 'environmental side'--as having prominence at differenttimes, with a stronger environmental focus emerging gradually: when it first started, it was very much just in favour of the kids appreciating their environment, and what were the good things about their environment, what made it special, and then it went on to the special people, and then it's moved on to the environmental focus ... Initially if you'd said it was an environmental project in 1993, you wouldn't have got many people on board, so making it a writing one and then bringing it more round to an environmental focus I think sort of got people on board. The initial appeal of the program for many teachers arose less fromthe politics of the environment and more from a romantic and aesthetictradition, sometimes invoking unproblematised approaches toconservation. Yet in other cases, teachers had been recruited ascoordinators because they had a reputation for their knowledge about theenvironment and their commitment to environmental action: I was asked ... if I would take on the role of Special Forever coordinator ... because of the work I was doing in my classroom, a lot of integrated curriculum work, involved in Special Forever, and it always ended in some sort of action--community action was the end result, so it wasn't just the writing, it was the action that became important. Yes, and it's important, it's always been important to me. So with the PhosWatch, we went through the process of making alternatives to dishwashing detergents and that sort of thing, and go back to using things like bicarb to clean windows, without the chemicals, so changing practice, and from that the message got home. We note that teachers read the Guidelines and activated the text indifferent ways; this teacher, already a committed environmentalist environmentalista person with an interest and knowledge about the interaction of humans and animals with the environment. ,emphasised environmental action from the first year of the program, eventhough our analysis of the Guidelines suggests that this was understatedat the time. From the start this teacher saw the potential of SpecialForever as action-oriented and as attending to specific identifiedenvironmental issues. She was able to bring together her approach to theexplicit teaching of literacy with her critical orientation to theenvironment. Her resultant curriculum design and associated literacy andcommunication tasks were developed with the discursive resources ofenvironmental science. Her students were making, advertising and sellingbio-degradable cleaning agents, and bartering their compost compost,substance composed mainly of partly decayed organic material that is applied to fertilize the soil and to increase its humus content; it is often used in vegetable farming, home gardens, flower beds, lawns, and greenhouses. and wormcastings. Special Forever provided different entry points for differentteachers and different kinds of curriculum spaces for the emergence ofvarious pedagogies under the name of environmental communications, andindeed over time teachers' positions changed, became morecomplicated or were maintained, shifts which are also evident in theofficial guidelines. Teacher identities in place Teachers who live and work in the Murray-Darling Basin and who takeon the role of Special Forever coordinators in their region grapple withcomplex relationships with the pedagogies of place and indeed thepolitics of the pedagogies of places. Their own politics and practicesare inextricably in��ex��tri��ca��ble?adj.1. a. So intricate or entangled as to make escape impossible: an inextricable maze; an inextricable web of deceit.b. related to their histories as indeed they are to theircurrent ways of life in and out of school. In addition, they take intoaccount the authorised approaches as indicated in curriculum documentsand in guidelines for programs such as Special Forever in assemblingpedagogical resources for environmental education and literacy. In thefollowing quotes, two of the long-term coordinators reflect on thesedilemmas and work towards a standpoint: Trying to influence other teachers in our region to be involved in Special Forever, and be involved in environmental education--a lot of people think you're just a greenie. Yeah, I am a greenie but I'm not a radical greenie, I'm dead against radical greenies, because my family have been making their living off the land for generations. To see the importance of looking after the environment and planting more trees, and what have you, and having a good balance ... I guess I was always a bit of a greenie, perhaps, myself, but now I guess I can understand more fully the balance that we need to create, and that there's not a clear answer to any of these problems. I'm also very aware that this ... more aware about decision making, the political decision making, and that sort of thing, and how people are very concerned about themselves, rather than being able to see the whole picture, and particularly when it comes to their living. How teachers name themselves in relation to the environment, theorientations that they openly adhere to adhere toverb 1. follow, keep, maintain, respect, observe, be true, fulfil, obey, heed, keep to, abide by, be loyal, mind, be constant, be faithful2. and those they handle with careare complex matters. Above we see two different teachers explore the'greenie' label with reference to their own environmentalpolitics. As people who make their living off the land, they argue for'balance' and against 'radical greenies'. They claim'greenie' status tentatively. Teachers repeatedly pointed outthat ways of making a living in regional areas made them rethink re��think?tr. & intr.v. re��thought , re��think��ing, re��thinksTo reconsider (something) or to involve oneself in reconsideration.re theirstance on a given environmental issue. Hence teachers report that theirown histories and present locations play a part in what they tackle inthe curriculum and how they approach it. 'Balance' was akeyword when they described their curriculum, often designing tasks(debates, talk-back radio, written discussions) to ensure that studentswere required to consider different points of view about an issue,including economic, environmental and social. Given our interest in critical literacy, we note the way thatteachers' location in specific places and history of relationshipswith those places relates to the standpoint they take towardsenvironmental issues. Here one teacher articulates the impossibility ImpossibilitySee also Unattainability.belling the catmouse’s proposal for warning of cat’s approach; application fatal. [Gk. Lit. ofbeing a 'radical greenie' when one's life is so deeplyconnected with the land; the other, a teacher who was married to afarmer who ran stock in an area in the Murray-Darling Basin affected bydrought and the closure of the town's major industry, juggles her'greenie' perspective with an awareness of the economicrealities of her local peers. Working on environmental communicationsfor these teachers meant helping students to understand competingperspectives on environmental problems and to aim for balance. Thustaking a critical environmental perspective is not easy when one liveswithin the Murray-Darling Basin and when one's livelihood dependson it. Yet, as we discuss below, developing a more complex ecologicalunderstanding about their place in relation to others allowed teachersto design complex and challenging environmental studies. Other teachers believe that some issues are just too hot to handlein terms of the potential of local backlash and also in terms of theiridentification with 'the farming community': a few years ago, yeah, the water issue would be a big issue, but I'm also from a farming background, so I take the farmers' side.... And from a rice farming area too, so, you know, the water issues, you know, I wouldn't be rocking the boat in our area, I'd be agreeing with the farmers in our area, so ... In the statement above, the teacher points to the importance of the'water issue', as she describes it, before observing that shewouldn't be 'rocking the boat'. She does not ignore herfarming history, or her current situatedness in a 'rice farmingarea too.' In this instance her affinity with the farming communityresults in her taking the farmers' side. It matters who the teacheris, how she is known in the community and where she is as she decides toavoid the central topic of water rights. Places are sites of discursiveintersections and contestations. Her particular place in a rice-growingfarming community offers some affordances for place-based pedagogies buther reading of the politics of her situation means that this particularoption is not explored. The issues that teachers believe that they canproperly tackle pedagogically are at the heart of an environmentalcommunications curriculum. It is difficult to imagine how teachers couldignore their own identities and situatedness, yet some approaches tocritical literacy do downplay down��play?tr.v. down��played, down��play��ing, down��playsTo minimize the significance of; play down: downplayed the bad news.Verb 1. teachers' histories, standpoints andpositions. The extent to which teachers can approach an issue as theobject of pedagogical study without the intrusion of their own placedhistories and investments remains an open question. How teachers name and frame themselves (as greenies, farmers,activists) and the environment (in terms of making a living, issues,problems) is significant in understanding how teacher identity impactson curriculum and pedagogical design: They've also seen me as advocate for environment issues where two years ago--we live on a property right on the ... river, and upstream from us there was an issue where the local football club wanted to change the sporting ground to a full-blown football field where they were going to have to remove a huge number of trees, and I fought that, up against local members and a lot of local big-wigs that thought that they would win, but it showed the children that one little lone voice, and that you could then get other people on side and get them to see the issue rather than just going 'Oh well, I don't think I'll even go and bother to have a look as to what's going to happen'.... so I think the children see that, that they've got a teacher that's not only teaching them about issues, but someone that actually stands up for local issues as well. The environment is an integral part of this teacher'scurriculum and central to her personal and professional identities. Sheis prepared to go public about a decision impacting on her ownenvironment; indeed she sees it as part of her pedagogical role to takeup an activist stance on this matter and involves herself in visiblelocal political action. We see here, too, traces of her environmentalautobiography as a riverside-dweller. In the process of participating inher environmental communications curriculum, young people are inductedinto particular relationships with places--particular environments--withwhich their teacher identifies. Environmental psychologists stress theimportance of childhood environmental biographies in adults taking upactivist positions with respect to environmental sustainability (seeHeft & Chawla, 2006 for a review), that is they argue that actualphysical connections with the environment in childhood are crucial informing activist subjectivities. Yet teacher identities are not fixed and many teachers report thattheir approach had changed over the time they had been involved withSpecial Forever. Learning more about the Murray-Darling Basin as anecological system had complicated their views and their practice withcolleagues, as two teachers comment: it's far more now than getting children's writing published. My own environmental knowledge has increased enormously and probably even some of my ideas have changed over the years, through my involvement. Where ... just going to visit Goolwa, and sort of seeing what happens there, being part of the Living Murray Debate and having to really question my ideas living on a farm, yeah, that was really challenging, and every time I learn more, I think my ideas are challenged further, yeah, lots of debate, lots of discussion. When Special Forever first came in people were saying 'We're not part of the Murray-Darling Basin.' But we're right on the edge of it, we get our water from it, our food from it, and so we then looked at how we impact, and what the impact is on us and the people up river, so that's really helped. The environmental frame in these cases broadens as the teacherscame to understand ecological relationships Ecological Relationships result from the fact that organisms in an ecosystem interact with each other, in the natural world, no organism is an autonomous entity isolated from its surroundings. beyond the local, anddebates about water at cross-state levels. How teachers frame theenvironment as an object of study affects how they design literacyactivities within an environmental communications curriculum. Therecognition of bio-diversity and the complex ecological system that isthe Murray-Darling Basin, results in changed curriculum design whereyoung people investigate not only local issues but the complexinterdependent relationships between people and places. These teachersbegin to contest the extent to which 'place-based politics areplace-bound' (Harcourt & Escobar, 2002, as cited in Horelli,2006) and to work with young people to think beyond the here and now. As the teachers grappled with naming their own positions andstances with respect to the environment, they were also conscious ofpossible differences in students' orientations to the environmentand believed them to be to some degree contingent on Adj. 1. contingent on - determined by conditions or circumstances that follow; "arms sales contingent on the approval of congress"contingent upon, dependant on, dependant upon, dependent on, dependent upon, depending on, contingent their parents'views, locations and occupations. Pedagogical relationships are formedin particular places with children whose lives are located in places,albeit with different histories of relationships to that place: T: I've become probably more sensitive to other people'sfeelings and their opinions in the community, and particularly likehaving town children in my class, and the farmers' children. R: So the different positioning of the children? T: Yes, yes, and how much they're influenced by theirparents' opinions, but also how they still have the ability to comeup with their own opinions, and that was quite striking, but yeah, justtrying to work out a balance. Whereas I think earlier I would have justsaid, 'This is what should happen'. This teacher teases out her competing hypotheses. On the one handshe believes she needs to be sensitive to whether they are'town' or 'farmers' children; on the other hand sheis surprised that the children can develop their own opinions quiteapart from those of their parents. The relationships are notstraightforward here. For instance, the teacher cannot assume thatfarmers' children will take a particular stance, but she needs tobe aware that they might. She perceives the need for 'abalance'--a keyword for the coordinators located in the Basin. Wewould like to explore further the notions of pedagogical'balance'; here we simply note that the multiple and competingdiscourses evident in the Guidelines are echoed here. There are noclear-cut and simple responses to the 'environmentalchallenges' that confront local communities; as with other teacherswho struggle over the politics of places, meaning and responsibility,this teacher broadens the scope of her teaching, and pushes theboundaries of what she does within the parameters of Special Forever.She avoids taking up a normative nor��ma��tive?adj.Of, relating to, or prescribing a norm or standard: normative grammar.nor position about what should happen withrespect to specific environmental issues where different communitymembers may have opposing views. However, she is much clearer about thekinds of educational goals and long-term aspirations she has for herstudents: The most important one, I think, is getting them to think about the environment, and the future, and I really hope that, you know, we can make a difference and that these children will grow up to be much more aware of the environment, and hopefully some of them will go on to be politicians, members of water boards, on local councils, but just informed citizens, and I think we have a real, wonderful opportunity as teachers to make a difference. It is clear that the teacher's objectives for herenvironmental communications curriculum are ambitious in the long term.She has taken up Special Forever's calls about the next generationbeing the custodians of the land. She is committed to 'making adifference' by enhancing children's awareness of theenvironment and ultimately to produce key decision-makers, or at least'informed citizens'. Teaching environmental communications: Looking ahead In these classrooms at least, it appears that Special Forever hasbeen the impetus for change within one generation in terms of practicalaction in caring for the environment. This goal was optimistically op��ti��mist?n.1. One who usually expects a favorable outcome.2. A believer in philosophical optimism.op envisioned in the large-scale environmental communications strategydeveloped by the MDBC MDBC Murray-Darling Basin CommissionMDBC Metrolina Duplicate Bridge Club (Charlotte, NC)in the late 1980s. Eastburn (2001, p. 3), writingabout 'a generation-long education strategy' that includedSpecial Forever, notes that its aim was: to contribute significantly to the achievement of an informed, ecologically literate, empowered and active community with a Basin (holistic) ethic, in one generation (2015). Led by their teachers, these children are positioned asresearchers, debaters, activists, and importantly as people who have asense of global practices with local consequences, and local practiceswith global effects: children can debate that issue [selling dairy herds to Dubai], and perhaps when they get into a position where they're able to determine what's happening in their community, they can have an influence on the government to say 'Look, this is not what our community wants. We want our milk produced locally', and hopefully we're empowering the children of today to do that. I think that's what's helped me stay involved in Special Forever, because I could see that we can educate the children of those people in the local community. They're going to be going home and start talking about the issues. Yeah, and even methods of irrigation, I think it's important that the children are educated on ... why there is underground irrigation and I think that's a local community issue. Once again we can hear echoes of the rhetoric of 'futurecustodian'. These teachers are consciously equipping young peopleto be the next generation of informed decision-makers, even as theyinduct in��ductv.To produce an electric current or a magnetic charge by induction. them into researching habitats and endangered species endangered species,any plant or animal species whose ability to survive and reproduce has been jeopardized by human activities. In 1999 the U.S. government, in accordance with the U.S. , plantingtrees and indigenous plants, recycling, and so on. In terms of theirliteracy repertoires, these children were assembling purpose-driven,audience-aware and well-researched texts of various kinds--scripts fordebates, powerpoint presentations and photostories on endangered en��dan��ger?tr.v. en��dan��gered, en��dan��ger��ing, en��dan��gers1. To expose to harm or danger; imperil.2. To threaten with extinction. plants,animals and habitats, letters to local groups and media, radiobroadcasts, advertising for alternative cleaning products and wormcastings, brochures on environmental trails and more. Hence, as thesubjects of environmental communications pedagogies, they werepractising and accomplishing quite specific situated literacy practiceswith specific communication goals. As this research project has unfolded, we have become more attuned at��tune?tr.v. at��tuned, at��tun��ing, at��tunes1. To bring into a harmonious or responsive relationship: an industry that is not attuned to market demands.2. to the ways in which teachers and students are exploring the complicatedrelations between identities and places, belonging and knowing. Pinar(1991, p. 165) observes that 'place as a concept has largely beenabsent in the curriculum literature.' He goes on to explain thatthe tendency of the curriculum to be abstract and homogenised Adj. 1. homogenised - formed by blending unlike elements especially by reducing one element to particles and dispersing them throughout another substancehomogenizedblended - combined or mixed together so that the constituent parts are indistinguishable , ratherthan specific, is partly to blame, and makes a case for a curriculumthat would 'recover memory and history in ways that psychologicallyallow individuals to re-enter politically the public sphere The public sphere is a concept in continental philosophy and critical theory that contrasts with the private sphere, and is the part of life in which one is interacting with others and with society at large. inmeaningful and committed ways' (Pinar, 1991, p. 174). In this paperwe have illustrated how Special Forever has provided an opportunity forsome of the coordinators to foreground their place in curriculum. We further suggest that teachers' multiple relationships withplace(s) play a significant part in how they think about their work: howthey frame an environmental communications curriculum, how theyunderstand their students as located (geographically and politically),and ultimately in the kinds of literacy tasks they design. We haveprioritised teachers' comments about how they tackle (or not)different environmental issues as they pertain to pertain toverb relate to, concern, refer to, regard, be part of, belong to, apply to, bear on, befit, be relevant to, be appropriate to, appertain to the Murray-DarlingBasin and offered a glimpse of how those decisions are made. We see thisresearch as raising further questions for literacy studies and inparticular critical literacy. How do teachers' placed identitiesinteract with their curriculum design? 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Curriculum as social psychoanalysis psychoanalysis,name given by Sigmund Freud to a system of interpretation and therapeutic treatment of psychological disorders. Psychoanalysis began after Freud studied (1885–86) with the French neurologist J. M. : On thesignificance of place. In J.L. Kincheloe & B. Pinar (Eds.),Curriculum as Social Psychoanalysis (pp. 165-186). Albany: StateUniversity of New York Press The State University of New York Press (or SUNY Press), founded in 1966, is a university press that is part of State University of New York system. External linkState University of New York Press . Primary English Teaching Association & The Murray-Darling BasinCommission. (1993). Special Forever Murray-Darling Basin Writing ProjectGuidelines for Schools. Newtown: Primary English Teaching Association& the Murray-Darling Basin Commission. Primary English Teaching Association. (2003). Changing Landscapes:Integrated Teaching Units. Newtown: Primary English TeachingAssociation. Santoro, N., Kamler, B. & Reid, J. (2001). Teachers talkingdifference: Teacher education and the poetics of anti-racism. TeachingEducation, 12(2), 191-212. Soja, E. (1996). Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles Los Angeles(lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. and OtherReal-and-imagined Places. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers. (1) Lyn Kerkham is currently engaged in a doctoral study,'Teachers in their place: teachers at work in an environmentalcommunications project', which further explores the relationshipsbetween teacher identity, place and pedagogy. (2) A book of teacher case-studies based on this work entitledLiteracies in Place: Teaching Environmental Communications (Comber,Nixon & Reid, 2007, in press) is to be published by the PrimaryEnglish Teaching Association. (3) River Literacies is the plain language title for 'Literacyand the environment: A situated study of multi-mediated literacy,sustainability, local knowledges and educational change', anAustralian Research Council (ARC) Linkage project (No. LP0455537)between the University of South Australia South Australia,state (1991 pop. 1,236,623), 380,070 sq mi (984,381 sq km), S central Australia. It is bounded on the S by the Indian Ocean. Kangaroo Island and many smaller islands off the south coast are included in the state. , Charles Sturt University Charles Sturt University (CSU) is an Australian multi-campus university in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. It has campuses at Bathurst, Albury-Wodonga, Dubbo, Orange and Wagga Wagga. , andThe Primary English Teaching Association, as the Industry Partner. Chiefresearchers are Barbara Comber, Phil Cormack, Bill Green, Helen Nixonand Jo-Anne Reid.