Children and Place Mapping Group Cluster
Using place to develop citizenship
Children and Place Mapping Group Cluster, Western Australia
- Kerry Street Community School
- Lance Holt School
- Moerlina School
- Nyindamurra Family School of Creativity
- Strelley Community School
Project proposal summary
The project will build students’ attachment to place and their ability to exercise ethical judgement and social responsibility about how their place is managed. Through connecting to place and becoming active citizens in the process, students can increase their resilience, self-esteem, optimism and commitment to personal fulfilment, all values identified in the National Framework for Values Education in Australian Schools. It will encourage students to examine the various ways that culture, social relations, local economies and the environment can shape each other to create sustainability.
Specifically students and teachers will use conventional and digital media to develop base and overlay maps showing cultural, social, economic and ecological values of their places. The resultant compilation will show the ‘hot-spots’ or extra-special places where sustainable values and practices are most intense. Students from different schools will compare and contrast the diversity of values in relation to place and understand how others manage their relationship to place.
Lance Holt School have dedicated a website to the Children and Place Mapping Group project. Read about how the project has unfolded and visit the different schools in the cluster to see the student’s work.
All of these schools are in Western Australia and are separated by huge distances. Strelley Community School is the oldest continually operational independent Aboriginal Community School in Australia and is in the north-west Pilbara region, while thousands of kilometres away is Nyindamurra Family School in Margaret River in the south of the State.
The Children and Place Mapping Group seeks to build students' attachment to place and their ability to exercise ethical judgement and social responsibility about how their place is managed. Through connecting to place and becoming active citizens in the process, students can increase their resilience, self-esteem, optimism and commitment to personal fulfilment.
The Children and Place Mapping Group August 2005 newsletter details the amount of work schools, teachers, parents and students are doing individually and collectively to achieve their project aims. The newsletter is also an example of how the tyranny of distance can be overcome to achieve common aims and goals.
Final Report
Stage 1 Of the Values Education Good Practice Schools Project has now been completed. An extract from Implementing the National Framework for Values Education in Australian Schools: Report of the Values Education Good Practice Schools Project – Stage 1: Final Report September 2006 for Children and Place Mapping Group Cluster can be downloaded as a PDF document.
