Alan Reid

Amy Cutter-Mackenzie

Phillip Payne

Recent scholarship on children’s literature displays a wide variety of interests in classic and contemporary children’s books. While environmental and ecological concerns have led to an interest in ‘ecocriticism’, as yet there is little on the significance of the ecological imagination and experience to both the authors and readers – young and old – of these texts. This edited collection brings together a set of original international research-based chapters to explore the role of children’s literature in learning about environments and places, with a focus on how children’s literature may inform and enrich our imagination, experiences and responses to environmental challenges and injustice. Contributions from Australia, Canada, USA and UK explore the diverse ways in which children’s literature can provide what are arguably some of the first and possibly most formative engagements that some children might have with ‘nature’. Chapters examine classic and new storybooks, mythic tales, and image-based and/or written texts read at home, in school and in the field. Contributors focus on exploring how children’s literature mediates and informs our imagination and understandings of diverse environments and places, and how it might open our eyes and lives to other presences, understandings and priorities through stories, their telling and re-telling, and their analysis. This book was originally published as a special issue of Environmental Education Research.

Experiencing Environment and Place through Children's Literature

The Regality of Kirriemuir

Bjarne Bruun Jensen

Jutta Nikel

Venka Simovska

This ground-breaking collection brings together a range of perspectives on the philosophy, design and experience of participatory approaches within education and the environment, health and sustainability. Chapters address participatory work with children, youth and adults in both formal and non-formal settings. Authors combine reflections on experience, models and case studies of participatory education with commentary on key debates and issues.

Perspectives on Education and the Environment, Health and Sustainability

Participation and Learning

An Anthology of the Counties

The Bards of Angus and the Mearns

Warm Equations is a monograph thats not a monograph but more of a chorus of voices on the mercurial new collage paintings by New Yorkbased artist Alan Reid. The concept of this substantial book pivots around the artists deferral of authorial closure, shifting the emphasis from his work to multiple contributors. Edited by independent curator Rachel Valinsky, Reids paintings are interleaved with writings and poems by eight authors including Matthew Brannon, Corinna Copp, Jill Gasparina, Kristen Kosmas, Ella Kruglyanskaya, Lisa Robertson, Chris Sharp, Rachel Valinsky and Jamieson Webster, who pronounce their own concerns and set textual tempos and rhythms that run amok non-hierarchically, latching onto Reids metaphors or installing their own. Valinskys multi-voice concept is the perfect response to Reids mixed-media collaged portraits of androgynous models. Sketched over with references to music, poetry, sex, clothing, dresses and decorations, they hover aloof, between kitsch and the elegantly sublime.

Warm Equations

Australian education policy for the past 40 years has been heading in the wrong direction and is entirely unsuitable for preparing young people for the 21st century. Exaggeration? Sadly not. For a teacher, there is nothing more exhilarating than encouraging young people to realise the power of learning. But in our schools today, teachers spend so much time preparing their students for high-stakes tests, gathering data and filling in forms, that many of them feel like the life has been squeezed out of their role. Schooling has been turned into a market, and school leaders are forced to spend precious time and resources competing with other schools. Their professional experience is disregarded as policy makers turn to the corporate world and self-appointed commentators to determine curriculum and school funding. The outcome? Our schooling system is becoming more segregated; children from poorer backgrounds are falling behind; public schools are starved of funds; and good teachers are leaving. One of the most highly regarded educational leaders in Australia, Alan Reid, argues it's time to reconsider the purposes of education, the capacities we need for the future, and the strategies that will get us there. He outlines a new narrative for Australian schooling that is futures-focused and prizes flexibility, adaptability, collaboration and agility, with students, teachers and school communities at centre-stage. 'A provocative and persuasive argument for the necessity of a new narrative for Australian schooling so as to meet better the demonstrable demands of the twenty-first century...' - Emeritus Professor Bob Lingard, The University of Queensland 'At the heart of the book is a penetrating critique of neoliberalism and the damaging effects it is having on education and society. It should be essential reading for policy makers, educators, parents, and anyone interested in the current state of Australian education.' - Professor Barry Down, Murdoch University

How policy is taking us backwards and what can be done about it

Changing Australian Education

This unique story, The Tokelosh Man, is a fictional tale based on true-life events. It follows the transference of authoritarian power in the classroom over the last half century from teacher to pupil, its exploitation and consequences. It broaches the introduction of Gang Culture and its consequences. The use of knives by young children is one of the most depressing subjects of today; it affects us all. Somewhere in Spencers career there is a possible Utopian balance between morality, healthy activities and use of the cane which has been by-passed by those in charge!

Alan Reid

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