Country as Teacher

About

A primary focus of this program of research is to develop alternative educational practices which honour Indigenous and non-Eurocentric ways of being, knowing and doing. Integral to alternative educational practices is engaging place-based methodologies which enact learning with, and from, Country. Our engagements with Indigenous learning and teaching aim to shift to more sustainable human-nature relationships where humans are conceived as part of, and connected to, ‘nature’.

The aims of this research program are:

• Reinvigorating sustainable communities through enabling people to know, understand and care for their Country: This involves exploring the capacity of all people to know, understand and care for the places where they live. This requires us to relearn the capabilities and practices to relate with, and learn from, Country.
• Deeply connecting with old Aboriginal ways of being, knowing and doing: Listening to and learning from the traditional knowledge systems of Australia is a way of honouring the knowledge carried for thousands of years, that works to care for the places where we live, in ways sustainable for all Earth-kin.
• Building upon experiential rather than abstract learning: This theme explores the educational importance of building hand-on experiences of Country and place, rebalancing the theory-focussed teaching and learning most often found in classrooms.
• Rebalancing multiple ways of being, knowing and doing: Caring and listening require the capacity to engage with the world through more than a rationale analytic mindset. Whilst rationale analytic knowing is important, a theme in our work is bringing it back into balance with affective, embodied, intuitive and spiritual ways of knowing the world.

Current Projects