Judith L Wilks

Child-Friendly Cities: A Place for Active Citizenship in Geographical and Environmental Education.

This research 1 was designed to investigate innovative practices associated with child-friendly cities 2 initiatives in the United Kingdom and Italy and how civics and citizenship initiatives are being applied into practical programmes of exploration and learning in geography and environmental education. The Child-Friendly Cities Initiative (CFCI) of the United Nations Childrens Fund was launched in 1996 at the UN Conference on Human Settlement (Habitat II). At this conference it was declared that the well-being of children is the key indicator of a healthy habitat, a democratic society and good governance committed to childrens rights. The CFCI was closely allied to the 1990 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, in which the right of children and young people to participate in the life and decision-making of their communities became a human right. Child-friendly cities initiatives have provided a framework and a myriad of programmes in which to create ways for children and young people to develop and exercise citizenship and participation skills. These projects assist young people to investigate issues relevant to their social and spatial worldviews, to interact with local government and community resources, to develop research skills and to promote the development of spatial competence and confidence.

Digital technology in the visual arts classroom: an [un]easy partnership

This article scrutinizes the dichotomy of the uneasy and easy partnerships that exist between digital technology and visual arts education. The claim that by putting computers into schools “we have bought ‘one half of a product’… we’ve bought the infrastructure and the equipment but we haven’t bought the educational piece” (McKenzie, 1999 as cited in Joyce, 2005, p. 52) is considered. Despite the ease with which many art educators have embraced technologies and tools for artistic practice in their classrooms in the past, maximizing the Internet and information communications technology usage in the visual arts classroom has been somewhat problematic. This issue and the largely absent “educational piece” of the product, that is, art made for the Internet and purpose built for Internet-as-gallery, are addressed.

Second life, first experiences: using virtual worlds in teacher education

Innovating in a higher education teaching context is never a straightforward matter. There are many factors influencing how, what, and when we teach, and the students’ experiences of these things. This is especially so in the context of pre-service teacher education, forever evolving in response to rapidly changing technological, political and socio-cultural landscapes. In this paper we relate and reflect on the innovation of utilising the 3D immersive virtual world of Second Life in two secondary education units of study. We discuss and interrogate our own and our students’ experiences when we used Second Life to teach in during the first unit, and to teach about in the second.

Australian Indigenous higher education: politics, policy and representation

The growth of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participation in Australian higher education from 1959 to the present is notable statistically, but below population parity. Distinct patterns in government policy-making and programme development, inconsistent funding and political influences, together with Indigenous representation during the last 50 years have shaped the higher education participation of Australia’s Indigenous populations. In this article, the authors identify a constant ideological flux between welfare, equity and economic priorities in successive Australian government approaches impacting on equal opportunities for Indigenous Australians in higher education. Maintaining and increasing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participation in higher education requires a continued focus on targets for higher education enrolments, governance and working with Indigenous educators.

Research with Indigenous children and young people in schools: ethical and methodological considerations

The involvement of young Indigenous people in research is a key emphasis in current approaches to both sociology of childhood and Indigenous research. This article discusses how the two research methodologies, both of which emphasise participation rights, intersect in research focusing on the participation and perspectives of Indigenous children and young people in education. The article examines ethical requirements of Indigenous and childhood research and institutional ethics procedures, along with methodological considerations, potential constraints and opportunities in undertaking research that aims to facilitate children and young peoples participation. Drawing on empirical data it discusses how these processes have shaped participative research studying the views of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students learning Indigenous knowledge and perspectives in New South Wales schools.

A review of “Child space: an anthropological exploration of young people's use of space”

Child Space has arisen out of Malone’s on-going research interests based around the UNESCO Growing Up in Cities Project (Malone is its Asia-Pacific Director), and the UNICEF Creating Child Friendly Cities initiatives, in which she has had involvement at many levels. Although the editing is at times scratchy and the production anything but polished, Child Space brings together an intriguing collection of studies about young people’s use and experience of space set in eight different countries. The contributors come from diverse backgrounds and cultures but are however united by their primarily anthropological approach to the study of young people’s relationships to space. Their research settings range from the remote grazing lands of Rajasthan to the basketball courts of inner North East Portland, from the rainforests of Sri Lanka to the urban intensity of Rio de Janeiro and from a squatters’ camp in South Africa to a suburban New Town in South East England. Malone’s own chapter compares her studies in Papua New Guinea and the Cook Islands. The final chapter takes the study of young people and space beyond physical space into the realms of cyberspace. As the book’s title suggests the contributions stem from the anthropological tradition of studies of humans, their cultures and environments, yet, paradoxically, one of the book’s main aims is to take understandings of the relationship between young people and space beyond traditional anthropological conceptions. At times the anthropological legacy is apparent more in a methodological sense than in the construction of the contributors’ analytical frameworks. The methodologies utilised were a mixture of discussion groups, individual interviews, subjective accounts, visual methods, such as drawing, photography and videotaping, and participant-observation. However, as Gold and Gujar point out, in the case of participantobservation there are limits to the effectiveness of this methodology, as it is a fallacy to propose that adults could ever truly be participant-observers amongst children. As far as the book’s analytical frameworks are concerned, there are indeed some distinctly sociological “moments” in Child Space. This is most especially apparent in the utilisation of post-modern sociological theory. A number of the contributors draw upon post-modern theories of space, spatiality and place preoccupations so resonant of the urban sociological literature of the early 1990s. The following quote demonstrates the infusion of this literature into Malone’s book where she comments on “. . . the very active way in which children are taking up space; negotiating the politics and differences in space use, being resourceful and competent in its use while all the time conscious of the ways they are often ignored or worse still, marginalised in controlling how space is organised” (p. 15).