Plants + Places + Pedagogies Research Group
Plants + Places + Pedagogies Research Group
Interdisciplinary research that investigates the way plants + places + people intersect with educational futures.
About the group
As an interdisciplinary group, we engage in education-focused scholarship and research that considers the role of plants, place and people in educational futures. We are interested in connections to diverse communities, healing, belonging, placemaking, wellbeing and foodways. We collaborate on the challenges and possibilities of plants and place for educational practices, curriculum, climate justice, First Nations-settler cultures and histories.
- critical plant studies
- gardens, landscapes and Country
- sensory and embodied engagements
- deep observation
- plants as co-conspirators
- care, conservation, liveable worlds and custodianship
These are some of the questions we investigate:
- What can we learn from plants in worldmaking?
- How do schools and educational sites engage with socio-spatial dimensions of garden-based learning?
- What impact do interdisciplinary plant-forward approaches have for conservation, social and community health?
- How might place and land-based pedagogies support inclusive communities?
- What’s the role of creative, collaborative and critical practices, such as intergenerational a/r/t/ographies in transforming our relationships with plants and places?
Please get in touch if you are interested in our work.
Group members
Leaders
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Affiliates
Recent visiting guests
Some of our Publications
Rudolph, S., Mayes, E., Molla, T., Chiew, S., Abhayawickrama, N., Maiava, N., Villafana, D., Welch, R., Liu, B., Couper, R. and Duhn, I., (2024). What’s the use of educational research? Six stories reflecting on research use with communities. The Australian Educational Researcher, 1-24.
Burke, G., Bedford, M., Bonini, M., Briggs, C., Day, C., & Pestana, G. (2023). Learning-to-Learn-With a Boon Wurrung Tree. International Journal of Education & the Arts, 24(Special Issue 1.1).
Cumbo, B., & Welch, R. (2023). What counts as nature in designing environmental links to health education curriculum in initial teacher education?. Sport, Education and Society, 1-17.
Kidman, G., & Schmeinck, D. (2022). Defining geography in the Primary School: classroom experiences and understandings. In Teaching Primary Geography: Setting the Foundation (pp. 1-11). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
lisahunter. (2020). Sensing the outdoors through research: Multisensory, multimedia, multimodal and multiliteracy possibilities. Research methods in outdoor studies, 218-228.
Mahady, A., Takac, M., & De Foe, A. (2023). Differences between autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) and biophilia: A pilot study. Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice.
Ma Rhea, Z. (2018). Towards an Indigenist, Gaian pedagogy of food: Deimperializing foodScapes in the classroom. The Journal of Environmental Education, 49(2), 103-116.
Rhea, Z. M. (2017). Frontiers of Taste. Springer.
Rhea, Z. M., & Russell, L. (2012). Introduction: Understanding Koorie plant knowledge through the ethnobotanic lens. A tribute to Beth Gott. Artefact: the Journal of the Archaeological and Anthropological Society of Victoria, The, 35, 3-9.
Solarte, A., & Couper, R. (2022). Mass timber buildings: The good, the bad and the ugly. In Structures and Architecture A Viable Urban Perspective? (pp. 1394-1401). CRC Press.
Welch, R., Taylor, N., & Gard, M. (2021). Environmental attunement in the health and physical education canon: emplaced connection to embodiment, community and ‘nature’. Sport, Education and Society, 26(4), 349-362.
