Abstract
Knowing your learners is at the heart of effective education and schooling. Young people's experiences are unique. They develop in spaces and places which they alone can interpret. Hence, we owe it to them to provide opportunities to learn about and share their interests, concerns, and solutions. Their places and spaces are part of their home and personal views. Providing opportunities to access their inner thoughts will inform the process and enable capacity building, developmental progression, and improved learning outcomes. As illustrated through case studies, place, geography, and nature are implicit features of this process. The agent and structure of each are intertwined.
“True education must develop from within outward… It cannot be imposed from without.” —Maria Montessori
TopDevelopmental Challenges
A favourite place can be revealing. Our research dating back two decades highlights the similarity in young people’s choices. ‘My bedroom’ is their clear favourite along with the local café for girls and sports grounds and parks for boys (Abbott-Chapman & Robertson, 2001; Robertson & Burston, 2015). Through interviews it is possible to drill down for more expansive explanations. Most of these can be summarised as the need for privacy away from the ears and eyes of parents or adults. Young people’s chosen favourite places are spaces free of structure and external control. Spaces for sharing, gossiping, and learning the latest from their peer group chat friends. Individual and collective spaces as well as public and private, responses can also be revealing when trying to help troubled young people. Consider Matthew who is a school refuser. That means he has been deemed too disruptive by local education authorities for ‘normal’ school and now attends a youth-based program operated by the local council located on the fringes of Melbourne, Australia. When times are ‘tough’ as he describes, his solution is to board a public bus and travel the long distance to the centre of the city and remain on the bus until he feels calm. The passing images of light, buildings, some green spaces, and people are a stimulant that help diffuse his dark thoughts and refocus. Matthew belongs to a group supported by youth workers who liaise with authorities to run an education program more suited to their temperaments. Two elements that are key to the success of the program are consistency and friendship. Implicit in both is trust. There are hundreds of stories that could be added. They suggest the need for hitting the pause button and reflecting on the efficacy of current education visions. Is it tunnel vision that drives the educative process? At this moment, contemporary education settings seem vulnerable. Perhaps the victims in the systems are not victims at all – they simply do not fit the current vision of how to act and live. It’s the educative systems that are out of synch with world realities. Raised in early chapters reflecting on development theory could help our understanding of the process and possible solutions on how best for schooling to respond to the needs of all learners including learners like Matthew who appear not to ‘fit the mould’.