Session Information
20 SES 08 B, Problem Based Learning and Personal Learning
Paper Session
Contribution
The implications of the spatial turn are attracting growing interest in a broad range of areas related to education (Soja, 2004), for example in literacy and its development, identity, attitudes to the environment, attitudes to others, social justice, and educational policy/structures. This paper reports the findings of an interdisciplinary research project that developed a theoretical framework in order to analyse the ways in which children’s responses to texts and their creation of texts shape their place-related identities. The first phase of the research involved the development of an interdisciplinary theoretical framework that influenced the empirical second phase of the research.
The research questions were:
- How can we draw upon a conceptualisation of place and space as a bundle of trajectories, and theories of reading and writing, to generate analytical tools to develop understanding of children’s representation of place-based identities?
- How do children perceive and represent their placed-related identities through reading and writing?
- In what ways do children’s response to and creation of texts shape their place-related identities?
Central to interdisciplinarity is integration (Moran, 2002): the blending or merging of concepts, methodology and/or theoretical perspectives from multiple disciplines (Repko, 2008; Rogers et al., 2005), or different fields of knowledge (Derry & Schunn, 2005), normally enacted by a group of people that is heterogeneous yet interconnected (Klein, 2005). The interdisciplinary focus of the research reported in this paper came initially from the authors’ interest in cultural geography, narratology, texts, and the processes of reading and writing that lead to texts in the educational context of schooling.
The substantive heart of the research is the idea of simultaneity of time-place or place-time, seen for example as a bundle of trajectories (Massey, 2005, p. 47, 61). Narrative theory, and particularly the Bakhtinian notion of the chronotope, were another important part of the intellectual resources included as part of the theoretical frame. In addition to focusing on the semantic components of texts in relation to place and identity, the research also analysed these in relation to the processes of reading and writing. One of a number of important theoretical ideas was the interaction (Iser, 1978) or transaction (Rosenblatt, 1994) that is part of the ‘dialogue’ between the text and the reader. The product of this interaction, the reading, was seen as an event in time rather than an object, and something centrally related to the identity of the reader and the context of the reading. An understanding of place-related identity required attention to the transaction between the reader and the text because the readers’ identity is brought to the fore when engaging with texts.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Derry, S. J. & C. D. Schunn (2005). Introduction to the study of interdisciplinarity: a beautiful but dangerous beast. In S. J. Derry, C. D. Schunn & M. A. Gernsbacher (Eds.) Interdisciplinary collaboration: an emerging cognitive science. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum: xiii-xx. Iser, W. (1974). The implied reader. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Klein, J. T. (2005). Interdisciplinary teamwork: the dynamics of collaboration and integration. In S. J. Derry, C. D. Schunn & M. A. Gernsbacher (Eds.) Interdisciplinary collaboration: an emerging cognitive science. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum: 23-50. Lewis-Beck, M. S., Bryman, A., & Liao, T. F. (Eds.). (2004). The Sage encyclopedia of social science methods. London: Sage. Massey, D. (2005). for space. London: Sage. Moran, J. (2002). Interdisciplinarity. London: Routledge. Repko, A. F. (2008). Interdisciplinary research: process and theory. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Rogers, Y., M. Scaife & A. Rizzo (2005). Interdisciplinarity: an emergent or engineered process. Interdisciplinary collaboration: an emerging cognitive science. S. J. Derry, C. D. Schunn and M. A. Gernsbacher. Mahwah, N.J., Lawrence Erlbaum: 265-286. Rosenblatt, L. M. (1994). The reader the text the poem: the transactional theory of the literary work. Carbondale & Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press. Soja, E. W. (2004). Preface. In K. M. Leander & M. Sheehy (Eds.) Spatializing literacy research and practice. New York: Peter Lang : ix-xv. Wheatley, N. & D. Rawlins (2008). My Place. Newtown, Walker Books Australia.
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