Centre for Educational Research Seminar: Literacy and Place

Professor Barbara Comber will explore how a synthesis of insights from theories of space and place and literacy studies can underpin the design and enactment of culturally inclusive curriculum for diverse student communities. Geographer Doreen Massey writes that “through the practising of place, the negotiating of intersecting trajectories’, place can be seen ‘as an arena where negotiation is forced upon us’. She notes that people are ‘thrown-together’ and that they must negotiate how they will interact. Schools and classrooms have always been sites of thrown-togetherness and negotiation.

Drawing on two decades of collaborative research with teachers, Barbara will explore how a synthesis of insights from theories of space and place and literacy studies can underpin the design and enactment of culturally inclusive curriculum for diverse student communities. She argues that making place and space the objects of study can provide productive resources for teachers to design enabling pedagogical practices that extend students’ literate repertoires.

Barbara Comber is a Research Professor in the Faculty of Education. She is particularly interested in literacy education and social justice in contexts of high poverty. Her current research explores ethical educational leadership and the affordances of place-conscious pedagogies for developing critical and creative literacies. She has co-edited a number of books including the International Handbook of Research in Children's Literacy, Learning and Culture (Hall, Cremin, Comber & Moll, 2013) and Literacies in Place: Teaching environmental communications (Comber, Nixon & Reid, 2007).

To confirm your attendance plase RSVP to Tracy Buckridge: t.buckridge@uws.edu.au