Learning on the Run refers to the educational experiences of the primary
school children travelling along the agricultural show circuits in coastal and
western Queensland. This thesis examines those educational experiences by
drawing on the voices of the show children, their parents, their home tutors
and their teachers from the Brisbane School of Distance Education, which
from 1989 to 1999 implemented a specialised program of Traveller education
for these children (in 2000 a separate school was established for them).
The thesis focusses on the interplay among marginalisation, resistance
and transformation in the spaces of the show peoples itinerancy. It deploys
Michel de Certeaus (1984, 1986) concept of tactics of consumption and
Mikhail Bakhtins (1986a) notions of outsiddness and creative understanding
to interrogate the show peoples engagement with their absence of
place, the construction of their otherness and forms of seemingly
unproblematic knowledge about their schooling. Data gathering techniques
included semi-structured interviews with forty-two people between 1992 and
2000 in seven sites in Queensland - Mackay, Bundaberg (over two years),
Emerald, Brisbane, Rockhampton and Yeppoon - and document collection.
The thesiss major finding is that the show peoples resistance and
transformation of their marginalising experiences have enabled them to initiate
and implement a significant counternarrative to the traditional narrative (and
associated stereotypes) attending their itinerancy. This counternarrative has
underpinned a fundamental change in their schooling provision, from a
structure that worked to marginalise and disempower them to a specialised
form of Traveller education. This change contributes crucially to understanding
and theorising the spaces of itinerancy, and highlights the broader
significance of the Queensland show peoples learning on the run.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/217302 |
| Date | January 2001 |
| Creators | Danaher, Patrick Alan, danaher@usq.edu.au |
| Publisher | Central Queensland University. Education and Innovation |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://www.library.cqu.edu.au/cqulibrary/disclaimer.htm), Copyright Patrick Alan Danaher |
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