Rebecca Bilous

Challenging ideals of reciprocity in undergraduate teaching: the unexpected benefits of unpredictable cross-cultural fieldwork

Geographers are increasingly grappling with the theoretical and practical implications of integrating an ethics of reciprocity into undergraduate learning and teaching. This paper draws on the unexpected experiences of a third-year human geography research methods fieldtrip to examine the process of balancing undergraduate student learning and assessment outcomes, with tangible outputs often-desired by Indigenous tour operator partners. Reflections from students and academic staff highlight the challenges of realizing ideals of reciprocity within the complex and ever shifting cross-cultural research context.

Geographic contributions to institutional curriculum reform in Australia: the challenge of embedding field-based learning

Abstract In the context of continuing pressures from managerialist and neoliberal drivers of university reform in Australia, Macquarie University’s recent undergraduate curriculum innovation, based on “People,” “Planet,” and “Participation,” has resulted in the embedding and integration of experiential learning in its curriculum and institutional framework. Such an approach challenges academic and administrative staff, students, and partners in industry, the community and public sector settings, to engage and collaborate across significant boundaries. This article outlines the scope and nature of the curriculum reform, then considers the way geographers have both shaped and responded to the opportunities it created. In so doing, it proposes a number of challenges and recommendations for geographers who might seek to extend their longstanding commitment to field-based learning through similar reforms. In this regard, the discipline of geography and its tendency to engage with the “field” can offer much in fostering deeply transformative learning.

Macassan/Indigenous Australian ‘sites of memory’ in the National Museum of Australia and Australian National Maritime Museum

Abstract For over two centuries people from Makassar on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi came to northern Australia with the onset of the northeast monsoon winds. They came in search of trepang that, with the help of Indigenous Australians, they collected and traded on to China. Their impact on the Indigenous communities in Arnhem Land was considerable. Along with sharing language, technology and culture, they built relationships, many ongoing, that are celebrated in Yolngu art, song and stories. These stories of contact are well known to many archaeologists and anthropologists but for many Australians the only place where they come into contact with these stories is in a museum display. In this paper I examine the ways in which these stories are disseminated by two national museums, the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney and the National Museum of Australia in Canberra. As important ‘lieux de mémoire’ or ‘sites of memory’, they tell of Macassan visits to northern Australia as part of Australian history. In both cases not only are the stories situated in the past but both Macassan and Indigenous Australian voices are largely absent.

'All mucked up' : sharing stories of Yolnu-Macassan cultural heritage at Bawaka, north-east Arnhem Land

From the eighteenth-century Macassan traders from the Indonesian Island of Sulawesi made regular visits to northern Australia, where with the help of Yolŋu, Indigenous Australians living in north-east Arnhem Land, they collected trepang (sea cucumber) for trade. Along with sharing language, technology and culture, the Macassans and Yolŋu involved built relationships that are celebrated today in Yolŋu art, songs and stories. While the trepang trade had officially stopped by 1906, resonances of this complex relationship continued and still continue today. This paper shares a number of stories told by one particular Yolŋu family about this heritage and reflects on the ways in which for Yolŋu, the tangible heritage (artefacts), intangible heritage (stories) and the land itself are locked in a symbiotic relationship where each depends on the others to define their existence. Looking after, or protecting this heritage, is therefore about attending to place, and the nature, storytellers, objects and stories contained within it.

‘All of us together in a blurred space’: principles for co-creating curriculum with international partners

ABSTRACT This paper shares an innovative methodology to ‘co-create’ a curriculum with eleven international community development organisations from seven countries to prepare undergraduate students for international work-integrated learning activities. The co-creation process was complex, messy, and always evolving. Here we reflect on and document the process, identifying three key methodological principles that might guide the co-creation process for others. These principles embrace the unpredictable, emotional, and personal reality of bringing together diverse ideas and perspectives, as well as opening up possibilities for more creative ways of communicating and listening to what is seen, heard, and felt.

PACE at a Glance: Case Studies of the Student Experience

This chapter is a set of case studies illustrating the student and partner experience of PACE in a wide variety of disciplinary and geographical settings.

“Classroom of Many Cultures”: Educational Design Opportunities in Intercultural Co-creation

Many international programmes include work-integrated learning (WIL) and community-based service learning (CBSL) in order to teach students to collaborate and increase their intercultural sensitivity. The support curriculum for these experiences, however, may implicitly emphasize a divide between overseas “experience” and “reflection” facilitated by staff from home. This chapter describes the Classroom of Many Cultures project, a curriculum design project that used principles of co-creation for a series of learning modules to support international WIL and CBSL. These modules use pedagogical principles and activities that originated with host country staff, incorporating intercultural respect and collaboration into pedagogical design. The project involved significant refining of the co-creation method itself over time; the chapter explores the lessons that the research team learnt during the co-creation process.

Co-creating support curriculum with PACE international community partners

PACE has been the work of many people – students, university staff, industry and community partners foremost amongst them. The challenge for the future development of PACE is, given what we have learned from our past and current activity, how do we use the learnings, insights and unintended outcomes to shape and optimize imagined futures for the program? There will be many challenges to confront in the years ahead as the program continues to ‘engage and serve the community’ and ‘improve and refine a curriculum that has personal transformation at its very core’ (Sachs, J, Preface. In: Sachs J, Clark L (eds) Learning through community engagement: vision and practice in higher education. Springer, Dordrect, 2016). How best can we meet these challenges, key amongst them being to ensure that PACE continues to deliver quality experiences and impact for its key constituencies as the number and diversity of students, partners and activities grows? Befitting the centrality of reflective practice to PACE (Harvey M, Baker M, Semple AL, Lloyd K, McLachlan K, Walkerden G, Fredericks V, Reflection for learning: a holistic approach to disrupting the text. In: Sachs J, Clark L (eds) Learning through community engagement: vision and practice in higher education. Springer, Dordrecht, 2016, Chap. 11), this chapter looks both back and forward to offer reflections on this and related questions.

Exploring the reciprocal benefits of community-university engagement through PACE

Multiple understandings of reciprocity inform and underscore diverse ways of engaging in community-university partnerships. Although the benefits to students of such engagement are relatively well-documented in the literature (Eyler J, Giles DE, Jr. Stenson CM, Gray CJ, At a glance: what we know about the effects of service-learning on college students, faculty, institutions and communities, 1993–2000, 3rd edn. Vanderbilt University, Nashville, 2001; Tryon and Stoecker, J High Educ Outreach Engage 12(3):47–59, 2008), little empirical research currently supports claims that programs and partnerships result in reciprocal learning and engagement opportunities, especially from the perspective of community partners. This chapter conducts a preliminary empirical inquiry into the diverse ways reciprocity manifests as benefits for key stakeholders in the PACE context, taking the analytical framework proposed by Dostilio et al. (Mich J Commun Serv Learn 19(1):17–32, 2012), and Hammersley’s (2016) favourable critique of it as primary points of departure. We draw on the reflections and perceptions of a range of staff, students, and partners involved in PACE activities in local, regional and international settings and identify, organise and articulate some of the diversity and complexity of the relationships that exist within the PACE program and the beneficial outcomes it has spawned for different stakeholders.