Palimpsest of place: an exploration of an alternative place pedagogy in key stage 3 geography

Brown, Alison (2018) Palimpsest of place: an exploration of an alternative place pedagogy in key stage 3 geography. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia .

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Abstract

This study explores an alternative place pedagogy in key stage 3 Geography based on work with a Year 9 secondary class of 13-14 year old students in an East Anglian mixed comprehensive school. The conceptual and pedagogical approach draws from the academic understanding of place developed through the work of Doreen Massey (1994, 2005a, 2014) alongside the pedagogical work of Australian educationalist Margaret Somerville (2010, 2013a, 2015) and her work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. This thesis’s pedagogy is particularly influenced by Somerville’s (2010) trilogy of learning about place through the body, stories and other representations and in this western context local issues. It was additionally influenced by the work of Gruenewald (2003a) and North American place-based educators. Woven together, these approaches provide the platform for developing an approach for educating young people to know and care for local places which are part of a global world.
To introduce this pedagogical approach required the students to experience a place using their senses. This was supported through geography fieldwork that enabled them to walk and explore a place in groups. This place pedagogy involved students contributing to the design of their investigations and in the process becoming reflective, active and engaged learners in taking photographs and making sensory recordings. Each activity formed a layer of a complex palimpsest, building on earlier understanding to develop students’ geographical place knowledge. During follow-up activities the students produced multi-modal presentations to express their sense of place and in the process developed their ability to use geography’s vocabulary and grammar (Lambert, 2011, 2017) to think geographically (Jackson, 2006). The analysis of these representations was informed by the multimodal work of Kress (2010, 2014). As the researched outlined in the thesis demonstrates, this pedagogy extends ways of engaging students in the study of place.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Education and Lifelong Learning
Depositing User:	Zoe White
Date Deposited:	19 Jun 2019 14:27
Last Modified:	17 Oct 2019 11:41
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/71494
DOI:

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