Professor Amy Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles

‘To reach, not the point where one no longer says I, but the point where it is no longer of any importance whether one says I. We are no longer ourselves...we have been aided, inspired, multiplied’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 3). Collaborative methods have historically been promoted and applied in the field of educational research, often assuming the form of collaborations between multiple researchers, or collaborations between researchers, teachers and students involved with a research project. Collaboration is often heralded as an ethical and empowering practice that contributes to the authenticity of a given study by weaving multiple voices into both the research process and its forms of dissemination. Despite this proliferation of collaborative methods in educational research, very little analysis has so far been applied to the varieties of collaboration, how these methods actually function, or what might constitute an authentic collaboration in education and its research. Each of the three authors of the paper has come to educational research from a different professional background: one as an environmental educator, another as an arts educator, and a third as a contemporary artist. Educational research offers a unique space for us to collaborate, and indeed reflect on our own experiences of collaboration in our professional and personal lives. In moving between our own and each other’s narratives, we attempt to unravel the harmonics of the collaborative voice in educational research, in which the singular voice of the ‘author’ also gives voice to multiple others. We explore the differences between direct and indirect collaborations, what Carter (2004) has also called ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ collaborations, and collaboration as a certain kind of ‘correspondence’ between people, places and things in the world (Ingold, 2013). What then are the particular attributes and flexibilities of educational research which afford such interdisciplinary collaborations, correspondences, and ultimately, transformations? In addressing this question, we posit collaboration in educational research as more than just working with each other towards mutual goals. Rather, we suggest that authentic collaboration involves a mutual transformation of each and the other, a harmonic re-imagining of individual voices to the point that ‘we are no longer ourselves’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 3).

As it stands, climate change is absent within the Australian curriculum for children under 1 The Australian curriculum utilises watered-down language such as ‘environmental change’ instead of well-recognised and accepted terminology in climate change science (Whitehouse, 2013). The curriculum in many respects is blindly stuck in the Holocene past. Such revelations support Kagawa and Selby’s (2009, p.242) work contending that ‘climate change is too urgent and important to suffer 'death by formal curriculum'… calling for emergent curriculum approaches that embed climate change learning and action within community contexts’. This paper is drawn from the initial findings of a NSW Environmental Trust grant entitled Climate Change + Me. The first stage of the project is a 1.5 year participatory youth-led research project which deeply considers children and young people’s (9-14 years) beliefs and concerns about climate change. The research methodology is child-framed in nature utilising visual ethnography (Barratt, Cutter-Mackenzie & Barratt, 2013). In this session we represent our co-researchers’ voices drawing upon their narratives and images. We then consider such research in the context of the Holoscence, Anthropocene and broader environmental philosophy, history and education.

This highly interactive workshop provides a unique opportunity for researchers (including early career researchers and research students) and aspiring writers to work with the Editor and Editorial Board members of the Australian Journal of Environmental Education in ‘getting published’. We will initially discuss the past, current and future directions of the Journal, followed by an interactive writing workshop. Participants are encouraged to bring their abstract, conference paper or other ideas to the workshop, along with ideas for furthering and advancing the Association’s journal.

Cutter-Mackenzie et al* claim that children’s literature provides “some of the first and possibly most formative engagements that some children may have with ‘nature’” 253). They go on to say that children’s literature can: … afford openings for dialogue both with and against dominant cultural texts, images, narratives and figurations of eco-cultural relations, and may offer incompatible as well as compelling understandings of childhood, adulthood, place and nature. It may also encourage a ‘comparing and AAEE National Conference 2012, 30 September – 3 October, Melbourne Page 31 contrasting’ of these alongside questions of the ecologies and cultures depicted in children’s literature, including children’s and adults’ conceptions and constructions of environment that might be experienced with or through them, their senses of an eco-identity, -citizenship or -responsibility related to such places and nature, and the significance that immersive pedagogies might play in engaging these themes and their challenges (254). Their book contains the only dedicated research in environmental education that deals with how children experience environment through children’s literature. Through their own admission though they note that their work (to date) has not seriously considered children’s voices of/about/in environment. This trend can be seen in environmental education research more broadly where much of the work on children’s voices is over two decades old, not taking stock of the pace of today’s society and ever-changing environment. In this highly interactive workshop we will explore ways to understand and enable children’s environmental voices through the creation and sharing of child-framed children’s books. The session will feature examples from the Environmental Education program at Berwick Fields Primary School where students have begun to develop their own texts which express their experience of the environment. What do they produce and what does it tell us about the ways they see their future?

The paper addresses the most salient contextual issues that underpin and extend the concepts of environment and place previously considered by Movement, Environment and Community (MEC) researchers. More specifically, the environmental context of their focus is on place- based imperatives as they occur in and through diverse environments, including natural/physical, wild/more-than-human, built/human-made, social/community and personal/individual environments. To contextualise place as a locus and focus of inquiry for pedagogical and research development this paper addresses two main contextualising concerns. The first is clarification of some central underpinning themes such as the moving body in space-time and, therefore, the ecocentric meaning-making qualities of experience that have been touched on previously by MEC researchers as they occur in various geographies and communities of physical activity at a larger macro level of social coordination and arrangement. The authors' second concern in this paper is to extend or apply the underpinning notions by providing some illustrative examples, or case study snapshots. At the deepest level of human experience, with powerful implications for education, such deep experience is constituted by time-space and the social contexts in which time and space are constructed, often in isolation from each other thus rendering any conception of place as problematic. Various social constructions of time—as cyclical, linear or digital will significantly shape the embodied nature of experiences of place and our perceptions and responsiveness to it. That is, time as a context in which various social constructions occur is, indeed, enigmatic. The enigmatic nature of various times sometimes makes its experience dissonant, even contradictory. In a 'fast' postmodern culture the embodied time-space experience is too often intensified and individualised. Such fast, accelerating and slow contexts of time remain a risk and challenge for how we might critically examine and experience place, sensing it, or even attaching to it, in education. Through drawing upon everyday issues in a built school environment the authors consider the intersections of environment-place and time-space within a broader social ecological framework. In presenting this case in 'context' they gesture towards a transdisciplinary understanding of environment-place signified by time-space.

'Environment,' like 'nature,' is an ambiguous term because of the many environments that do exist and the different ways in which they are perceived and socially constructed over time and through space. Educators must be careful about the way meaning is ascribed to 'environment' and 'nature' if sustainability is to remain a plausible proposition. For example, the same school 'environment' may simultaneously be perceived by teachers and students as a sporting arena for testing human physical performance, a landscape of shapes, light and colours for the art class, or as a ecology in need of examination and management in a science subject. These examples mark only the beginning of a very long list of the multiple, complex and even contradictory ways that various pedagogic environments may be viewed and therefore experienced. Environments can be personal, social, historical, built, natural, tame or wild. The integrity of each environment warrants study and requires a particular pedagogic response. Educators should be mindful of the various ways in which teachers and students shape and are shaped by these learning environments physically, emotionally and intellectually. Hence, a 'social ecology' of the complex term 'environment' is urgently required to enhance our pedagogical and research efforts in outdoor, environmental, movement, physical and health educations. What is needed is a conceptual shift in our thinking and bodily practices towards an 'ecocentric' or place responsive posture; a philosophical frame quite different from the anthropocentrism, or human centredness of most educational discourses. In practical terms, a social ecology of the environment, in relation to the study of movement and community experiences, entails in pedagogical practices a range of human- environment interactions, be it open-space play, active art projects, walking to school, or outdoor education expeditions. A constant in these examples is the taking of education away from the environmental constraints of the 'indoors,' and its privileging of mind/learning/knowing, to the environmental enablements of the 'outdoors' and body/mind doing, meaning-making and becoming. A social ecology of these human-environment interactions and relations address various 'other' and 'wild' forms of expression and performance - be it strenuous activity in space, graceful movement in place, or kinaesthetic appreciation over time in different places. This paper addresses some of the more 'ecocentric' and wild, less tamed concerns outlined above and leaves others to the 'Movement' and 'Community' papers. Simply, the authors' aim is to outline the major distinguishing characteristics and dimensions of 'environment' so that inquiry of an ecological type can proceed into the qualities of movement, physicality, their spatialities and geographies, and generation of active and sustainable communities. To ground this in their research efforts, they focus on 'place' study - an important derivation of the nature/environment concepts. The authors offer vignettes about 'the experience of river places in outdoor education, children's gardens and artistic representations of pedagogies of place. [Author abstract, ed]

Using eco-literacy, this theoretical paper examines the highly contentious relationship between content and pedagogy in early childhood education. Early childhood education has a historical commitment to play-based pedagogy which emphasises pedagogy over content knowledge. This is problematic because research suggests that children do not automatically acquire content through play-based learning. Furthermore, whilst socio-cultural theory has recently challenged traditional practices, its potential to inform the content-pedagogy relationship has not been realised. This paper in interfacing eco-literacy and early years pedagogy creates a unique marriage between two research fields in order to develop a theoretical framework for interfacing content and pedagogy in early childhood education.

This paper presents the findings of a small-scale research project about novice teachers’ perceptions and experiences of environmental education. The context of this study is a pre-service teacher education faculty in rural New South Wales Australia. A combined methods approach was applied, with a survey designed from rich data elicited through focus group interviews. The focus of this paper is on the findings of the survey, revealing that prospective teachers’ preparedness in environmental education is diluted by their teacher education experience and that such experiences are not providing a stimulus for novice teachers to practise environmental education.

Since the 1990s professional teaching associations have commenced the process of developing teacher and/or teaching standards1 and associated professional learning and assessment models in the key discipline areas. The intent of this approach is to capture the depth and range of accomplished educators’ teaching. Despite the increasing work on teacher standards in Australia, currently there are no professional teacher standards in environmental education (Cutter-Mackenzie, 2005). Up until the recent implementation of the sustainable schools initiative there was little or no recognition of environmental education practice in Australia. Through an accreditation process, the programme recognises schools as ‘sustainable schools’. However, such recognition focuses upon environmental management, rather than students’ or teachers’ ‘understanding of, and concern for, stewardship of the natural environment, and the knowledge and skills to contribute to sustainable development’ (Ministerial Council on Education Employment Training and Youth Affairs, 1999).

Over the past thirty years, it has often been stated that primary school education should endeavour to improve and protect the environment through producing an 'environmentally informed, committed and active citizenry'. Even so, existing research shows that the implementation of environmental education in primary schools is problematic and has had limited success. However, the reasons for these shortcomings are far from clear, with present research merely speculating about barriers to effective implementation. This paper presents a detailed discussion and analysis of primary school teachers' knowledge and beliefs about environmental concepts and environmental education. In so doing, the paper identifies a perceived gap within the field of environmental education research and literature. This field has neglected studies of Australian primary school teachers' knowledge and beliefs about environmental education as a factor affecting the capacity of schooling to achieve environmental education goals. To these ends, I utilise the concept of 'environmental literacy' to assess primary school teachers' knowledge and beliefs about environmental education. Based upon preliminary data analysis, I tentatively claim that current Queensland primary school teachers are variably committed to and demonstrably lack content knowledge of environmental concepts and environmental education. More significantly, these primary school teachers tend to dismiss the importance of content knowledge, preferring to focus upon attitudes towards environmental education and environmental concepts. Clearly these levels of environmental literacy are inadequate if environmentally literate students and thus an environmentally literate citizenry are to be achieved within schools. I conclude that the introduction of environmental literacy in educational policy would advance the goals of environmental education, namely the production of an informed, committed and active citizenry.