SPOKE: Knowledge exchange for pedagogical and community change
SPOKE LEADER:
Linda Newman
RESEARCH QUESTION:
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How does teacher and community participation enable, challenge and constrain pedagogical change and community building and how do these benefit educators, children, families and communities? |
PROJECT SUMMARY:
Newman’s spoke explores how through re-envisioning pedagogical leadership and by creating enabling learning environments, teachers, parents, children and communities re-interpret, enact and resist educational policies in Chile, Australia and South Africa. Newman’s interest is in the challenges to policy provided by participants acting at ground-level (Freire, 1992) and the relationships between policy and practice. The theoretical foundations of her work lie in socio-cultural theories (Vygotsky, 1978; Woodrow & Newman, 2011) and is underpinned by the explicit goal of re-positioning adults and children as active agents in learning encounters where learning is co-constructed within social, cultural and historical contexts (UWS, 2011). Methods currently in use and informed by these theoretical approaches include Participatory Action Research (Furlong & Oancea, 2005), visual methods such as photovoice (Pink, 2001), and ecologically informed environmental (early childhood literacy environment) rating scales.