Session Information
20 SES 04 C, WRePlace: Exploring place-Related Identities Through Reading and Writing
Research Workshop
Contribution
Within an increasingly globalised educational context and with greater movement of information and individuals between places, the connections between place, identity and texts are of growing educational interest.
The WRePlace project is an 18-month interdisciplinary project that explores place-related identities through reading and writing. Funded by the Transforming Practice Research Programme in the Faculty of Education at Cambridge University, and beginning in August 2009, the project has seen the development of an interdisciplinary theoretical framework, empirical research in two primary schools in England, and the application of the framework to the readings the children made of texts and to the texts they designed.
Three research questions frame this project:
- How can we draw upon a conceptualisation of place and space as a bundle of trajectories (Massey, 2005: 119), and theories of reading and writing, to generate analytical tools to develop understanding of children’s representation of place-related identities?
- How do children perceive and represent their placed-related identities through reading and writing;
- In what ways do children's responses to and creation of texts shape their place-related identities.
Empirical research has involved an in-depth interpretive case study of two year 5 classes (ages 9-10) in two schools in Eastern England engaged in aspects of place and identity. One was a large primary school in a densely populated, multi-ethnic inner city location while the other was a very small primary school in a sparsely populated rural location. Although geographically not far apart, these two schools represent different forms of cultural identity and transition – the more urban school has a largely Pakistani heritage student population while the more rural school has a largely White British heritage student population with a small number of other European, Asian and African students. Thus both schools reflect in different ways how migration and globalisation directly relate to children’s intercultural educational experiences within a European context.
The relevance of this project within a European context is its exploration of the importance of the interconnection between place and identity in education. Europe in particular is experiencing the effects of increased migration, and the impact of changes in the intercultural contexts where education takes place. By setting the project at points where the local and global intersect, we are able to reflect in particular on the educational implications of such intercultural change.
This workshop will begin with an introduction to the project and the interdisciplinary theoretical framework. Then participants will be invited to examine aspects of the key text used as a stimulus for the children in the empirical research in thinking about place and identity – My Place by Nadia Wheatley and Donna Rawlins – and one or two additional related texts selected by teachers involved in the project. Participants will also examine some of the texts the children produced as well as audio/transcriptions of children’s talk that indicate connections between place and identity. Participants will then consider the application of the theoretical framework to this data.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The dialogic imagination. Austin, University of Texas. Massey, D. (2005). for space. London, Sage. Wheatley, N. and D. Rawlins (2008). My Place. Newtown, Walker Books Australia.
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