This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Gannon, S. Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Rewriting "the Road to Nowhere"

Place Pedagogies in Western Sydney

University of Western Sydney, Australia

Negative representations of parts of our cities are endemic in the Australian media, where certain suburbs function as motifs for failure—past, present, and future. Indeed, as one journalist put it after invoking the "interchangeable" triumvirate of Sydney’s Mount Druitt, Melbourne’s West Heidelberg, and Brisbane’s Inala, "geography is destiny" (Wynhausen, 2006). This article critiques the discourses at play in the media and explores the possibilities and limitations of a pilot project wherein an urban place-based pedagogy is taken up as a mode of critical response as high school students begin to document in text and images what they love about "Our place." Further possibilities for engaging critically with place are explored in the concluding section of the article.

Key Words: disadvantage • critical place pedagogies • visual methodologies • media • high school

Urban Education, Vol. 44, No. 5, 608-624 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0042085909339377


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?