Listen to the episode:

You can find the transcript through this link.

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Are you interested in how to embed Aboriginal perspectives in early childhood education regarding space?

Our summary today works with the chapter titled Engaging with place – Foregrounding Aboriginal perspectives in early childhood education from 2017 by Catherine Hamm and Kelly Boucher, from the book titled Found in Translation: Connecting reconceptualist thinking with early childhood education practices.

This episode is a great preparation for our next interviewee, Kelly Boucher in episode 114.

Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see the different aspects of how to engage with place, and in a broader sense with our environment. This chapter presents the Aboriginal worldviews which are in a relationship with space including human and non-human elements.

As the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects:

1. Pedagogy and curriculum can be situated as knowledge mobilization – ways to enact knowledge, rather than just storing content and in situating place as a pedagogical contact zone, we acknowledge that places are always in a state of entanglement of human and more-than-human others.
2. Being present opens spaces to rethink pedagogies as a way to think with concepts and ideas, rather than thinking about or consuming content.
3. Learning to be affected’ term can be useful to make room for understanding place as a generative pedagogical zone which attends to the ways in which places are entangled in all kinds of bodies and works to disrupt the linear thinking of place.

You can find the chapter through this link, and the book through this link.

Abstract: This chapter shares everyday moments of practice from the university classroom and the professional experience placement engaging with Place, undertaken by first year students in a Bachelor of Education program in Australia. The university classes and the professional experience placement have been designed to work in tandem as a way to engage with complex concepts. Kelly has become a mentor teacher in the Engaging with Place program. The chapter provides different perspectives to the shared commitment to embed Aboriginal perspectives in everyday teaching and learning practices in early childhood. In contrast, Aboriginal worldviews are non-linear and situated in relationships, not just exclusively with humans, but also include learning with/from place and more-than-human others, as important actors in knowledge processes. Engaging with place by foregrounding Aboriginal perspectives requires attending to the ethics and politics of living on land that was taken by force.

Connecting episodes you might be interested in:

• No.078 – Interview with Ammon Beyerle highlighting the importance of aboriginal ideas;
• No.114 – Interview with Kelly Boucher about creating new pedagogical appraoches;

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