Fran Martin

Power and representation: a postcolonial reading of global partnerships and teacher development through North–South study visits

This paper critically analyses the neo-liberal discourse informing global education policy and practice. We use postcolonial theory to deconstruct the contexts for global educational partnerships, highlighting how issues of power and representation are central to their development and the learning that takes place within them. Teacher development through North–South study visits is one way of challenging teachers’ worldviews, but these are not always effective. We argue that study visit courses, where learning is facilitated by differently knowledgeable others, have the potential to be more effective, but only if the courses are underpinned by postcolonial theory and informed by socio-cultural pedagogy.

Knowledge Bases for Effective Teaching: Beginning Teachers' Development As Teachers of Primary Geography

This paper reports the findings of a research project into beginning teacher development conducted in the United Kingdom. A model for beginning teacher development in the field of primary geography is proposed which looks at the relative knowledge bases needed for effective geography teaching. The model is used to aid analysis of data gathered from a series of lessons observed for two beginning teachers, providing an overview of their development over an eighteen-month period. Personal Construct Theory, specifically Mairs (1971) ‘Community of Self’, provides a framework for theorising about the similarities and differences between the two. This leads to the generation of a number of ideas about beginning teacher development in primary geography, including the possible need to develop a new paradigm for geography suited to the primary context, that of ethnogeography.

Ethnogeography: A Future for Primary Geography and Primary Geography Research?

A common theme of the papers presented in this forum is that of the importance of listening to children’s voices. They key messages conveyed by the authors are synthesised in this paper and the implications for the development of the subject and research within it are considered. This is then placed in the context of some recent doctoral research that draws on beginning teachers voices and proposes a new way of conceptualising primary geography – ethnogeography – that might set an agenda for the future development and direction of primary geography research.

Ethnogeography: towards liberatory geography education

In the context of education in England, an argument is put forward that Geography, as it is conceptualised in the National Curriculum, does not connect to either primary school pupils or their teachers. Reasons for this are explored and a proposal is made for a new paradigm for primary geography: ethnogeography. This proposal parallels work on ethnomathematics, which provides a political agenda to the study of maths and itself draws from Paulo Freires politicization and consciousness raising through adult literacy. This pattern is applied to learning in geographical education. Drawing on the findings of a recent research project, a case is argued for ethnogeography and the implications for primary Initial Teacher Education courses, learners and the curriculum in primary schools and are considered.

Relating to the ‘Other’: transformative, intercultural learning in post-colonial contexts

In this paper we use Transformative Learning Theory as a lens for making sense of teachers’ learning from study visits to the Global South. Transformative Learning theory is made up of two main elements: the form of transformations and the processes that support transformations. ‘Life changing’ experiences as expressed by study visit participants have been interpreted as transformational, but questions about who and what are transformed, and whether this is at the expense of the ‘Other’, are rarely addressed. Drawing on data from a project investigating study visits for UK teachers to Gambia and Southern India, we analyse the form that changes take and discuss whether these can be seen as transformational. We argue that without an explicit focus on relational forms of knowledge about culture and identity, self and other, the potential for transformations in how we relate to, and learn from, each other in postcolonial contexts is severely diminished.

Formative experiences of primary geography educators

This paper reports the initial findings of a study in the UK and the Republic of Ireland of teacher educators and teachers who are involved in promoting geography education in primary schooling. Following research by Buttimer, Chawla, McPartland, Palmer and others, it sought to investigate the connections between early formative life experiences and adult engagement in geographical studies and education. The research asked respondents to record those “autobiographical memories” they considered had “turned them on” to geography. A grounded theory approach was used to analyse the 37 responses received. It emerged that informal/personal experiences and formal educational experiences were influential. Several significant features emerged, including experience of “freedom to roam” locally, family holidays, outings and trips abroad, access to and using maps, fieldwork activities at primary or secondary school and with other organisations and the impact of a good teacher. While the outdoor findings echo Chawlas reviews of environmental educators, the love of maps is an additional finding. Traffic and other factors have inhibited childrens outdoor experience in recent decades, and school fieldwork has declined. This study re-emphasises the essential impact of such experience in stimulating peoples geographical engagement and encourages the need to foster learning outside the classroom for all children.

Towards Decolonising Teacher Education: Criticality, Relationality and Intercultural Understanding

ABSTRACT This paper critically examines two studies that investigated pre- service teacher learning in contrasting contexts: an international study visit and a local service-learning experience. We argue that it is useful to conceive of these experiences as intercultural, and propose that how ‘intercultural’ is theorised in the western academy is object-based with roots in colonialism. We contrast this with a relational logic described by Burbules [1997. A grammar of difference: some ways of rethinking difference and diversity as educational topics. The Australian educational researcher, 24 (1), 97–116] and Osberg [2008. The logic of emergence: an alternative conceptual space for theorising critical education. Journal of the Canadian association for curriculum studies, 6 (1), 133–161]. Using alternative framings we interrogate teacher–learner relationships, highlighting how they were adversely affected by hegemonic practices. Findings indicate that when an object-based, colonising logic is the dominant frame, pre-service teachers were more likely to use ‘Othering’ discourses. When relational, decolonising pedagogies were used, pre-service teachers were more able to begin to teach otherwise. We conclude by making a case for intercultural education to take on a critical relational stance that counters the hegemonic violences that continue to be caused by a colonial abyssal line.

Culturally Responsive Pedagogies: Decolonization, Indigeneity and Interculturalism

The introductory chapter provides a rationale for the book, centring on a critique of what Grosfoguel (2011) calls a “global colonial power matrix” – a modern/colonial, capitalist/patriarchal world-system of intersecting global hierarchies “produced by thinkers from the North” (p. 10). We use critical theory “to de-center grand narratives of social and political subjugation” (Martinez-Aleman 2015, p. 8), in this case those of colonialism and race, with the goal of emancipating people from the structures that support white privilege and marginalize all those who are culturally different. We then focus on culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) and its inception in the civil rights movement in the USA (Ladson-Billings 1995). At the time, CRP was developed to address the deficit theorizing (Berryman et al. 2013) about African Americans that was characteristic of White American teachers. We offer a critique of CRP, and drawing on our own work in teacher education contexts, we set out the core ideas and arguments that form the foundation of the book, concluding with a brief summary of the ways in which each chapter addresses these ideas.

Beyond Culturally Responsive Pedagogy: Decolonizing Teacher Education

In this concluding chapter, we wish to make the case that culturally responsive pedagogy/relevant teaching is never going to be effective in the ways in which Ladson-Billings (Research and multicultural education (pp. 106–121). London, UK: The Falmer Press, 1992; Theory Into Practice, 34(3), 159–165, 1995) and Geneva Gay (Journal of Teacher Education, 53(2), 106–116, 2002) originally intended because it does not speak to mainstream educators in ways that are intelligible to them – much is “lost in translation”. We identify themes that recur in Chapters 2– 10 and discuss them in relation to the ways in which systems, structures, and practices mitigate against effective culturally responsive pedagogy. We conclude by arguing that there is a need to move beyond culturally responsive pedagogy towards a much more radical project: that of decolonizing education, and thus teacher education. To this end, we set out an agenda that identifies key barriers and issues and suggests a number of processes and dispositions that may provide ways forward.

Service Learning as Post-Colonial Discourse

In this section, we define service-learning (SL) and show how, whether enacted locally or internationally, it can take on a neo-colonial form. Service-learning is experiential and thus is ‘active’ citizenship.