Sense Of Place Identity And The Revisioning Of Curriculum

This book explores intersections between sense of place, the formation of identity, indigeneity and colonisation, literature and literary study, the arts, and a revisioned school curriculum for the Anthropocene. Underpinning the book is a conviction that sense of place is central to the fostering of the change of heart required to secure the survival of human life on earth. It offers a coherent overview of seemingly disparate realities on a geographically and historically sprawling canvas. The book is a work of literary non-fiction, drawing on a range of sources: literary works and criticism, theoretical research, empirical studies and artworks. Of its very nature, the book enacts an extensive cultural critique. After establishing a cross-disciplinary foundation for “sense of place”, the book describes its relationship to identity with reference to such terms as attachment, dispossession, reclamation and representation. It shows how a hopeful narrative for planet stewardship can be developed by the uptake of indigenous and traditional discourses of place. It concludes with the envisioning of a place-conscious curriculum, and ways in which an activist agenda might be pursued in the Anthropocene.

In the struggles for political and cultural hegemony that Taiwan has witnessed since the 1980s, the focal point in contesting narratives and the key battlefield in the political debates are primarily spatial and place-based. The major fault line appears to be a split between an imposed identity emphasizing cultural origin (China) and an emphasis on the recovery of place identity of ‘the local’ (Taiwan). Place, Identity and National Imagination in Postwar Taiwan explores the ever-present issue of identity in Taiwan from a spatial perspective, and focuses on the importance of, and the relationship between, state spatiality and identity formation. Taking postwar Taiwan as a case study, the book examines the ways in which the Kuomintang regime naturalized its political control, territorialized the island and created a nationalist geography. In so doing, it examines how, why and to what extent power is exercised through the place-making process and considers the relationship between official versions of ‘ROC geography’ and the islanders’ shifting perceptions of the ‘nation’. In turn, by addressing the relationship between the state and the imagined community, Bi-yu Chang establishes a dialogue between place and cultural identity to analyse the constant changing and shaping of Chinese and Taiwanese identity. With a diverse selection of case studies including cartographical development, geography education, territorial declaration and urban planning, this interdisciplinary book will have a broad appeal across Taiwan studies, geography, cultural studies, history and politics.

Pedagogy of Place focuses on the embodiment of purposefully created space resulting from the creation and enactment of its participants' cultural and social conditions. It is also about education, the purposeful creation of spaces that comprise learning environments, and the aesthetic dimensions of the created space called school. The essays present the concept of space--the place where learning happens and where the lives of student and teacher can thrive or wither--a place rich in human potential. In an attempt to address the diversity of what we define as space, Pedagogy of Place addresses issues around place and identity in three distinct strands: as social, as aesthetic, and as political and historical. As a collection, these essays are attempts to open conversations with persons interested in what counts as curriculum, teaching, and learning within the spaces and places that release human potential and nurture the human spirit.

Can we have more teacher/intellectuals in our classrooms? This book demonstrates that we can. But many things have to change before intellectual standards appear again in public schools. David Owen attempts to show, but not in outline form, how we can revise our schools. Can we escape the rut in which public education finds itself, dominated by the inane (tests), the stifling (reduction of school to job training), and the insane (transformation of a life-affirming odyssey of the mind to clichés, information gathering, and slogans)? We can reclaim the beauty of an education if we join David and re-vise our classrooms. Education is uncertain, risky, wonderously adventurous—yet schooling has become stale. No—tediously dreadful. There is a need to revise. Reject standardized tests! Repeal pay for performance! Eject No Child Left Behind before no child has a thoughtful mind left. It is time to revise, and David’s book explains why. Are we still interested in the mind, soul, and substance of the individual? Does it matter who we are and become, or just what we do? If these questions still matter, dwell carefully with David’s ideas and transform yourself, your students, school, community, state, nation, and world. It is time to revise them all. John A. Weaver, Georgia Southern University

In Knowing Our Place over 400 young Australians respond to ideas about belonging, identity and social and political power. The book explores the complex mindsets of young people in their search for identity within the broader society. While the fundamental aim of the book is to identify and describe aspects of children's thinking as they grapple with their developing sense of being in the world, there are evident implications for the project of citizenship education. [Publisher].

Covering the period between 1984 and 2003, this authoritative sequel picks up where the earlier volumes (Braddock et al., 1963, and Hillocks, 1986), now classics in the field, left off. It features a broader focus that goes beyond the classroom teaching of writing to include teacher research, second-language writing, rhetoric, home and community literacy, workplace literacy, and histories of writing. Each chapter is written by an expert in the area reviewed and covers both conventional written composition and multimodal forms of composition, including drawing, digital forms, and other relevant media. Research on Composition is an invaluable road map of composition research for the next decade, and required reading for anyone teaching or writing about composition today.

This book focuses on information literacy in higher education from Asian countries. It explores the changing concepts, philosophies, learning environments, and technological environments of information literacy and discusses how information literacy education in universities should be carried out in the context of the information literacy framework. It also analyses the research focus and trends of information literacy education in universities in the past ten years worldwide and Asia by using the bibliometric method as well as the information literacy education models of universities in Asian countries. In addition, this book also explains the current status of information literacy education and related issues in Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. The target audience of this book is mainly university librarians, school librarians, the faculty and students of library and information sciences, information education and technology education related departments worldwide.