OUR PLACE Western Sydney Stage 1: Sustainability Educators€¦ · (governance) model to a region-based (place) model for the Office of Environment and Heritage. For this purpose

1

OUR PLACE

Western Sydney

Stage 1: Sustainability

Educators

Place story map: Chris Tobin, Darug Sustainability Educator, 2012.

OUR PLACE, WESTERN SYDNEY

STAGE 1: COMMUNITY ENVIRONMENTAL and

SUSTAINABILITY EDUCATORS

PROJECT REPORT

March 2013

Margaret Somerville

Lin Brown

Karin Mackay

iii

CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................................... iv

LIST OF FIGURES .................................................................................................................. iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ....................................................................................................... v

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ....................................................................................................... vi

INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................... 1

What is „Our Place, Western Sydney‟? .................................................................................. 1

BACKGROUND ....................................................................................................................... 1

Social/Cultural ....................................................................................................................... 2

Economic ............................................................................................................................... 2

Environmental ........................................................................................................................ 2

Educational ............................................................................................................................ 3

THE PROJECT .......................................................................................................................... 4

Aims ....................................................................................................................................... 4

Scope of the project ............................................................................................................... 4

Key questions ......................................................................................................................... 4

Methodology .......................................................................................................................... 4

Methods .................................................................................................................................. 5

Survey/invitation .................................................................................................................... 5

EDUCATORS‟ PLACE MAPS AND STORIES ....................................................................... 8

Outer Western Sydney Focus Group ...................................................................................... 8

Representative Place Story Maps ......................................................................................... 10

Mid Western Sydney Focus Group ...................................................................................... 14


Inner Western Sydney Region .............................................................................................. 20


CHALLENGES AND BARRIERS TO COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT ............................ 26

Educators‟ statements about the challenges of their work ................................................... 28

ENABLERS OF COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT ................................................................ 30

Strategies to engage the disengaged .................................................................................... 32

EDUCTORS‟ LEARNING AND SUPPORT NEEDS ............................................................ 35

Professional learning needs .................................................................................................. 35

Educators‟ support needs ..................................................................................................... 37

Priority needs ....................................................................................................................... 38

LIST OF APPENDICES .......................................................................................................... 39

Appendix 1: List of Acronyms ............................................................................................. 40

Appendix 2: Invitation Email ............................................................................................... 41

Appendix 3: Story Maps and Pedagogical Practices: The Educators‟ Discussions ............. 42

Appendix 4: Indepth Analysis of Individual Story Maps .................................................... 56

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Participants per Region ................................................................................................. 5

Table 2: Outline of Workshop Content ....................................................................................... 7

Table 3: Outer Western Sydney Educators‟ Summary ................................................................ 9

Table 4: Mid Western Sydney Educators‟ Summary ................................................................ 15

Table 5: Inner Western Sydney Educators‟ Summary ............................................................... 20

Table 6: Challenges/Barriers to Community Engagement ........................................................ 27

Table 7: Strategies to Enable Community Engagement ........................................................... 31

Table 8: Educator Professional Learning Needs ....................................................................... 36

Table 9: Educator Support Needs for Community Engagement .............................................. 37

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: „Our Place, Western Sydney‟: Relevant Local Government Areas ............................. 1

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

As lead author of this report I would like to begin by acknowledging that this research was

conducted on Darug Lands, to pay my respects to elders past and present, and to

acknowledge the Australian Aboriginal people who have participated in this project.

I would like to acknowledge the twenty five community sustainability educators who

participated in this research and shared so generously of their time, commitment and passion.

If the wellbeing of the planet was in their hands the world would be a better place.

I would like to acknowledge the very close working collaboration and support from Sue

Burton, Karen Paroissien and Amy Nancarrow of the Office of Environment and Heritage

and Jen Dollin of the UN Regional Centre of Expertise in Education for Sustainable

Development, Greater Western Sydney. Without this three way partnership the project would

not have been possible.

Finally I would like to acknowledge the wonderful work of research assistants Karin Mackay

and Lin Brown. Karin has been embedded in community arts and sustainability education for

many years and had just the right approach for engaging community educators in the drawing

task that yielded such rich insights for us all. Lin applied her expertise in making sense of the

proliferation of lists and quotes to manageable and accessible tables so that the reader of this

report can gain access to the complex and multiple data the educators generated.

We hope that readers will find this report informative and engaging and that it will make a

difference.

Margaret Somerville

Professor of Education

Director, Centre for Educational Research

University of Western Sydney

vi

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Introduction - What is Our Place, Western Sydney?

„Our Place, Western Sydney‟ is a collaborative project between the Centre for Educational

Research, University of Western Sydney, the UN Regional Centre of Expertise in Education

for Sustainability Development, Greater Western Sydney, and the Office of Environment and

Heritage, NSW. The project was designed to find out how community sustainability educators

and community members can be assisted to achieve environmental and sustainability

outcomes in the region. It was organised in two stages. Stage 1: Community educators aimed

to investigate how community sustainability educators in the Western Sydney region are

engaging with their communities and how they can support their communities to get more

involved in looking after their local places. Stage 2 aimed to find out what local places are

important to communities in western Sydney and how to support community members to

look after their local places.

Background

„Our Place, Western Sydney‟ is developed in the context of the transition from a state-based

(governance) model to a region-based (place) model for the Office of Environment and

Heritage. For this purpose the western Sydney region is defined as comprising 8 local

government areas:- The Blue Mountains, Hawkesbury, Penrith, Blacktown, The Hills,

Auburn, Holroyd and Parramatta.

Figure 1: „Our Place, Western Sydney‟: Relevant Local Government Areas

vii

The Western Sydney region has a population of 1.2 million people and is one of the fastest

growing urban populations in Australia. The majority of Australia‟s new immigrants (60%)

settle in GWS. 35% of the total population of Greater Western Sydney were born overseas,

having migrated from over 170 countries, often as refugees, and speaking in excess of one

hundred languages. The region is home to the Indigenous Darug, Tharawal and Gandarra

peoples, and has the largest single Aboriginal community in the country with Aboriginal

people who have relocated from all over Australia.

The region features rural and agricultural lands, and natural bushland, including the remnants

of the critically endangered native Cumberland Plain Bushland and World Heritage-listed

areas of the Blue Mountains. The Hawkesbury-Nepean River system is Sydney‟s primary

water source, the backbone of the region‟s agricultural and fishing industries, and a major

recreational attraction. The demand for land development is threatening natural bushlands

and the local food industry. There is an extensive body of Indigenous knowledge about the

river and its local environments that is a crucial resource for sustainability education.

Despite the fact that western Sydney‟s economy is the third largest in Australia behind the

Sydney CBD and Melbourne, the region has higher than average unemployment and lower

than average salary levels. More than half of the local government areas are rated as having

the highest levels of disadvantage on the SEIFA index of socio-economic disadvantage.

Educational outcomes are marked by the low socio-economic status of many communities in

the region. The overall high school retention rate for years 7 to 12 is the lowest in the Sydney

metropolitan area and in 2009 twice as many people in GWS aged 15 or older had not

attended school compared to the rest of Sydney and NSW. The University of Western Sydney

is the only university located in Western Sydney and it offers a range of courses and research

programs to some 36,000 students. The area is also supported by seven colleges that form the

Western Sydney Institute of Technical and Further Education (WSI TAFE). These two

institutions are the major providers of further education in the area.

Based on discussions with regional leaders and contributions from individuals on the NSW

2021 „Have your Say‟ website, the NSW Government has identified the following priorities

for the Western Sydney region:

Grow the economy of Western Sydney

Improve access to jobs and facilitate employment growth, particularly for young

people

Improve strategic planning to protect valuable agricultural land

Provide greater access to affordable housing options

Reduce travel times

Deliver appropriate services to disadvantaged and vulnerable members of our

community

Improve local natural environmental assets and the health of the Hawkesbury-Nepean

River.

Within these broad priority areas a number of priority actions have been identified relating to

„Local Environment and Communities‟:

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Manage river health

Limit the impacts of urban development on the environment

Protect wildlife

Increase green skills education and training opportunities


Community-based sustainability educators are key to achieving these sustainability outcomes

in western Sydney but we know little about their work or how to support them.

THE PROJECT

Our Place, Western Sydney Stage 1 aims to identify how to community-based

environmental and sustainability educators in the Western Sydney region are engaging with

their communities and how they can support communities to become more involved in

looking after their local environments.

Key questions

What is your role in sustainability education and who is the community you work with?

What have you found helps to engage people in your community/ies to look after their local

places?

What are some of the challenges in engaging people in your community?

What are your professional learning needs and what support do you need to facilitate

communities to look after their local places?

Methodology and methods

The project was framed within the concept of Place, as aligned with the new directions of the

Office of Environment and Heritage and the structure of RCE, Greater Western Sydney. We

used the map of the region to group the eight local government areas into three clusters

according to distance from the centre of Sydney and apparent population density. This

resulted in an Outer Western Sydney cluster (Hawkesbury-Nepean and Blue Mountains); a

Mid Western Sydney cluster (Penrith, Blacktown and the Hills); and an Inner Western Sydney

cluster (Auburn, Holroyd and Parramatta). Educators were invited to attend a Focus Group in

their cluster and were subsequently linked to the Community Forum (Stage 2) held in the

same cluster. In this way the educators‟ Focus Group and Community Forum workshop

discussions were focussed on similar issues connected to the characteristics of these local

places.

The focus groups aimed to explore the nature and location of community sustainability

educators‟ work; the enablers and barriers to them engaging with their communities; and their

professional learning and support needs. Within the focus groups the research used a different

method for each of these aims. The educators were first asked to individually map their work

and their communities on A3 paper and to verbally introduce themselves using their place

story map. They then took part in a group discussion about the enablers and barriers to

engaging their communities, and finally they listed their learning and support needs in pairs.

The resulting data was analysed according to the storylines of place and identity in their place

ix

story maps; the categories and themes that emerged in the group discussion of enablers and

barriers; and the nature and frequency of their learning and support needs.

THE OUTCOMES

Educators place maps and stories

The analysis of the educator‟s 25 place story maps reveals how important it is to understand

the nature of sustainability educators‟ community engagement work. Each educator‟s unique

place story was analysed according to the two main storylines that emerged from this data,

the story of their identity and their pedagogies. Unlike educators in schools, their identities,

and the nature and places of their work, are diverse and complex. They tended to fall into

similar groups according to the place-based clusters of Outer, Mid and Inner West, and

therefore individual profiles are presented of typical and atypical place story maps for each

cluster.

Educators in the Outer cluster were well networked and focussed on experiential learning,

protection of natural eco-systems and food production networks. Educators from the Mid

West cluster were more fragmented, their focus was on engaging the disengaged and the

challenges of peri-urban development including loss of community cohesion and rural lands.

The Inner West educators on the other hand found many commonalities in issues of urban

density and urban low SES community needs, and the needs of high migrant and

multicultural communities.

The atypical place story maps reveal the importance of understanding and respecting the

diversity that exists within the field if we are to understand the work of community

sustainability educators. The place story map of a Darug educator was selected as one of two

Aboriginal participants, both in the Outer West group. His map shows concentric circles of

country with the outer circle representing the ancestors, the middle circle representing the

current generation and the inner circle representing the future generations. His map is

uniquely different to all of the rest. Eight brightly coloured circles within the outer circle

represent other organisations working for environmental sustainability, all contained within

the Aboriginal notion of Country.

The place story map of a volunteer educator was chosen as atypical in the Mid West group.

This artist-educator‟s map revealed a strong sense of personal meaning through her central

identity as educator, which connected diverse places and communities of engagement. The

place story map of a Moslem childcare centre owner/director was analysed as the atypical

map from the Inner West, although in some senses it could be said to be typical as half the

focus group were new migrants. This learning map is distinctive in it representation of three

childcare centres each under an arc of brightly coloured rainbows with sun, rain, trees, and

multiple community connections in all directions. The central image is a heart shaped of

home and family. The profiles and place story maps of these educators are represented fully

in the report and appendices.

x

Challenges and barriers

A total of 50 challenges and barriers to engaging communities were recorded across the three

focus groups. These were divided into four meta-level categories to better understand their

nature: (1) engaging different sections of the community; (2) collaborating with other

educators; (3) designing successful programs/workshops and (4) bureaucratic and work

conditions. Under (1) educators specified attitudes within particular community groups,

separation of communities from the environment and socio-economic factors as barriers. In

category (2) educators identified difficulties of engaging with teachers and schools, and

differences in educators own sustainability „journey‟. In relation to (3), designing successful

programs, credibility, information overload, problematic terms (climate change) and the

general difficulty of language and terminology were discussed. Bureaucratic concerns (4)

included over regulation for educators and community members, and lack of time and

resources for filling out complex grant applications. Quotes are provided to illustrate each of

these themes. Many of these challenges and barriers appear again in „Enabling factors‟ in

relation to potential resolutions.

Enablers of community engagement

Educators recorded a total of 76 responses when discussing successful strategies for engaging

community members in sustainability activities. These were categorised into the meta-level

categories of HOW, WHO, WHAT and WHERE to engage the community. Under HOW,

educators discussed successful workshop and program design; strategies for motivating and

engaging their communities; tailoring the approach to specific audiences in terms of

language, age and socio-economic factors; and strategies for informing the community; as

key enabling factors. Under WHO educators described the importance of getting to know

their communities and engaging networks as significant. Under WHAT they covered issues of

content appeal; and in relation to WHERE, they discussed the need to be visible in the

community. Again, each of these strategies is illustrated with key quotes from the data in the

full report.

Educator learning and support needs

The educators proposed a total of 136 learning and support needs that are analysed according

to „Professional Learning Needs‟ and „Support Needs‟. The topics proposed by the educators

in relation to their ongoing professional learning in order of the frequency were: 1)

establishing and maintaining formal and informal networks; 2) updating their knowledge and

skills in the areas of grant writing, information technology and pedagogies of engagement; 3)

participating in formal learning opportunities and 4) learning local knowledge and resource

availability. In terms of support required they listed: Additional staff (a wide range of support

staff named); information resources; money/funding; organisational support; time; support

from media for advertising; and ongoing professional development. The final focus group

was asked to prioritise their professional learning needs and came up with the following list

that is typical across the three groups if we interpret „language education‟ in the broad sense

of communication education.

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More financial resourcing - insufficient funding, money

Needing more volunteers

Language education, support to get the message across to non-English speakers

Mobilising partnerships and connections with other organisations and

Having time to access information about sustainability education programs, resources,

case studies already available through the internet (e.g. Sustainability Reading Hub)

This priority list from the educators themselves confirms findings from other research about

the community sustainability education sector (Somerville & Green, 2013). While

community sustainability initiatives are emerging worldwide as a source of innovative

responses to urgent planetary problems, the sector is the most poorly resourced and the least

understood. The location of highly innovative teaching and learning, community

sustainability education is an essential source of innovation for the formal education sector. It

is the most efficient and cost effective form of sustainability engagement in terms of the

potential of local partnerships, local networks, and the ability to mobilise committed

volunteers. The project has identified the unique place-based nature of sustainability

educators‟ work and the importance of building connections across the sector to leverage

momentum for transformational change. Educators identified the proliferation of information

on the web but welcomed the opportunity for authentic face to face connections and

information sharing as essential to their own professional development.

These research findings are limited to the perspectives of the 25 educators who participated in

the focus groups in the western Sydney region. The project is ongoing, however, in the sense

that the sustainability educators are connected to community members through the

community forums conducted in Stage 2 of the project. It is also ongoing in the sense that the

Our Place project will be extended to other regions in NSW. The findings about the work of

these community sustainability educators in each different region will add cumulative weight

to our understanding of their work in engaging their communities to look after their local

places.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Disseminate the findings of this research

Elicit feedback about the research and its findings from organisations and educators

within the region, and more broadly through face to face and online forums.

Continue to build on this knowledge through cumulatively considering the outcomes

of the research in other regions.

Develop professional learning modules through the UWS Education Knowledge

Network (EKN) that can be accredited into a Master of Education.

Establish and maintain regular network meetings across the region through the

Education for Sustainability strand of the UN RCE Greater Western Sydney.

Provide local and regional professional learning to enhance access to available

resources.

Introduction

1

INTRODUCTION

What is ‘Our Place, Western Sydney’?

„Our Place, Western Sydney‟ is a collaborative project between the Office of Environment

and Heritage, the Centre for Educational Research, University of Western Sydney, and the

United Nations Regional Centre for Expertise in Education for Sustainable Development,

Greater Western Sydney (RCE, GWS). The project is organised in two stages, Stage 1:

Community educators and Stage 2: Community members. Stage 1 of the project aims to

identify how community-based environmental and sustainability educators in the Western

Sydney region are engaging with their communities and how they can support their

communities to get more involved in looking after their local environments. Stage 2 aims to

find out what local places are important to community members and how to support them to

look after their local places. Community educators participating in Stage 1 are connected with

community members participating in Stage 2 through the research process.

BACKGROUND

„Our Place, Western Sydney‟ is developed in the context of the transition from a state-based

(governance) model to a region-based (place) model for the Office of Environment and

Heritage. For this purpose the western Sydney region is defined as comprising 8 local

government areas:- The Blue Mountains, Hawkesbury, Penrith, Blacktown, The Hills,

Auburn, Holroyd and Parramatta.

Figure 1: „Our Place, Western Sydney‟: Relevant Local Government Areas

Introduction

2

The Western Sydney region has a population of 1.2 million people and is one of the fastest

growing urban populations in Australia. While there are marked local differences across the

region, the following summarises the broad cultural, environmental, economic and

educational characteristics identified by the UN RCE Greater Western Sydney and the Centre

for Educational Research.

Social/Cultural

The population of the Region is culturally diverse as the majority of Australia‟s new

immigrants (60%) settle in GWS. 35% of the total population of Greater Western Sydney

were born overseas, having migrated from over 170 countries, and speaking in excess of one

hundred languages. Over the past decade 50% of the total immigration came from Iraq and

Sudan, often as refugees escaping the trauma of war torn countries. In addition to the high

cultural diversity resulting from incoming migration, GWS is home to the Indigenous Darug,

Tharawal and Gandarra peoples, and has the largest single Aboriginal community in the

country with Aboriginal people who have relocated from all over Australia.

Economic

Despite the fact that GWS‟s economy is the third largest in Australia behind the Sydney CBD

and Melbourne, the region has higher than average unemployment and lower than average

salary levels. GWS also has high levels of mortgage and rental stress. Seven of the ten local

government areas rated as having the highest levels of disadvantage on the SEIFA index, are

in the GWS region; that is half of the total number of local government areas rated as having

high levels of disadvantage. The SEIFA index is derived from such signifiers of disadvantage

such as low income, low educational attainment, high unemployment, and jobs in relatively

unskilled occupations.

Environmental

The region is subject to the impacts of human induced climate change and the sustainability

imperatives of transitioning to a low carbon economy, developing sustainable housing and

transport, ensuring agricultural sustainability and food security and conserving biodiversity

and river health. The region features rural and agricultural lands, and natural bushland,

including the remnants of the critically endangered native Cumberland Plain Bushland and

World Heritage-listed areas of the Blue Mountains. In particular, the Hawkesbury-Nepean

River system is Sydney‟s primary water source, the backbone of the region‟s agricultural and

fishing industries and a major recreational attraction. The demand for land development is

threatening not only the natural bushland but also the local food industry. There is an

extensive body of Indigenous knowledge about the river and its local environments that is a

crucial resource for sustainability education.

Introduction

3

Educational

Educational outcomes are marked by the low socio-economic status of many communities in

the region. The overall high school retention rate for years 7 to 12 is the lowest in the Sydney

metropolitan area (69.5% compared to 95.2% in Northern Sydney). In 2009 twice as many

people in GWS aged 15 or older had not attended school compared to the rest of Sydney and

NSW. The high cultural diversity of the region, especially waves of incoming migration

produces pressure on early childhood, schools and adult education provision in terms of

language and basic social integration skills. The challenges facing students with refugee

backgrounds are especially acute. UWS is the only university located in Western Sydney and

it offers a range of courses and research programs to some 36,000 students. The area is also

supported by seven colleges that form the Western Sydney Institute of Technical and Further

Education (WSI TAFE). These two institutions are the major providers of further education in

the area.

Based on discussions with regional leaders and contributions from individuals on the NSW

2021 „Have your Say‟ website, the NSW Government has identified the following priorities

for the Western Sydney region:

Grow the economy of Western Sydney

Improve access to jobs and facilitate employment growth, particularly for young

people


Provide greater access to affordable housing options

Reduce travel times

Deliver appropriate services to disadvantaged and vulnerable members of our

community

Improve local natural environmental assets and the health of the Hawkesbury-Nepean

River.

Within these broad priority areas a number of priority actions have been identified relating to

„Local Environment and Communities‟:

Manage river health

Limit the impacts of urban development on the environment

Protect wildlife

Increase green skills education and training opportunities


The involvement of the community is crucial in achieving these goals and the work of

community based environmental and sustainability educators is the means by which

communities can be supported. This collaborative project between the Centre for Educational

Research, the UN Regional Centre of Expertise in Education for Sustainability Development

and the Office of Environment and Heritage is designed to find out how community

educators and community members can be assisted to achieve these environmental and

sustainability outcomes.

The Project

4

THE PROJECT

Our Place, Western Sydney Stage 1 aims to identify how to community-based

environmental and sustainability educators in the Western Sydney region are engaging with

their communities and how they can support communities to become more involved in

looking after their local environments.

Aims

To connect and communicate with educators from different sectors in the region to

identify their strengths, weaknesses, and useful support needs in their roles

To identify current approaches, difficulties and gaps in engaging a broad cross-section

of the local communities including CALD communities, new arrivals, businesses,

Aboriginal communities and schools

To identify locally appropriate opportunities to build networks, skills and capacity of

educators

To create a local plan or framework for supporting educators to build networks and

skills and provide resources for engaging their communities in looking after their

local environments.

Scope of the project

The definition of „educators‟ is broad. It refers to those in the region whose role includes

environmental or sustainability education and engagement. This broad range of „educators‟

could include sustainability officers from councils or businesses, education officers from

CMAs, rangers or guides, and volunteers from community organisations.

Key questions


What have you found helps to engage people in your community/ies to look after their local

places?


What are your professional learning needs and what support do you need to facilitate


Methodology

The project was framed within the concept of Place, as aligned with the new directions of the

Office of Environment and Heritage and the structure of RCE, Greater Western Sydney.

Using Place as a conceptual framework offers a common language across different

knowledge systems (such as Indigenous and western knowledge frameworks). It can provide

a link between people‟s local places and global phenomena such as climate change by

focussing on impacts in specific local places such as fire, flood and drought. People‟s

relationship to Place is a way to engage community members on an emotional and spiritual

The Project

5

level as well as a more abstract governance or bureaucratic level. Place as a conceptual

framework has been central in this project.

In asking the question „How can environmental and sustainability educators engage

community members in looking after their local places?‟ it became clear that we needed to

divide the region into clusters of local government areas with similar sustainability

challenges. We used the map (see p.2) to group the eight local government areas into three

clusters according to distance from the centre of Sydney and apparent population density.

This resulted in an Outer Western Sydney cluster (Hawkesbury-Nepean and Blue Mountains);

a Mid Western Sydney cluster (Penrith, Blacktown and the Hills); and an Inner Western

Sydney cluster (Auburn, Holroyd and Parramatta). Educators were invited to attend a Focus

Group in their cluster and were subsequently linked to the Community Forum held in the

same cluster. In this way the educators‟ Focus Group and Community Forum workshop

discussions were focussed on similar issues connected to the characteristics of these local

places.

Methods

Survey/invitation

The Office of Environment and Heritage distributed an invitation to environmental and

sustainability educators across the western Sydney region using established email networks

(see Appendix 1). Educators were asked to respond with an expression of interest stating their

contact details, the local government area in which their work was located and a paragraph

explaining their community engagement roles and practices. Twenty-three educators

responded online. In order to balance the numbers of participants across the three regions,

additional community educators were contacted through personal networks, resulting in the

recruitment of an additional seven participants, bringing the total expressions of interest to

thirty.

Table 1 below provides an overview of the expressions of interest by educators and actual

attendance at the Focus Group.

Table 1: Participants per Region

LGA Expressions

of interest

received

Phone

confirmation

to attend

Final numbers

attending

Outer 14 11 8

Mid 15 10 8

Inner 10 8 9

All three Focus Groups were conducted within the same week to ensure cohesiveness and

consistency in the research design. Time-wise, each was scheduled to enable maximum

participation by educators employed full-time.

Each Focus Group was planned as a three-hour workshop/discussion including:

The Project

6

an introductory story mapping activity

a recorded whole group discussion specifically generating data of the enablers and

barriers to their work and

a paired activity where participants compiled a list of their professional learning and

support needs.

Story map making activity

Participants were provided with a range of high quality drawing implements including

pastels, chalks, textas, and coloured pencils and an A3 sheet of paper in order for them to

create their story map. They were asked to create a visual representation of where they

worked and which community/ies they worked with. Educators spent 10-15 minutes on their

story maps. On completion they were asked to speak to their place map and explain their

representations to the others present. Each educator spoke approximately 5 minutes. The

storytelling was recorded by passing the digital recorder from person to person as a „message

stick‟.

Focus group discussion – enablers and barriers to community engagement

During the second phase of the Focus Group, the educators were asked to reflect on their own

daily practice, to share their successes but highlight the challenges and barriers they face with

their efforts to engage community members in local sustainability activities. This discussion

section was scheduled to take 30-45 minutes, recorded and transcribed verbatim utilising the

services of a professional transcription service.

Paired activity – Professional learning and support needs

The third element to the Focus Group divided the educators into pairs to discuss and list their

professional learning needs and to nominate what support they needed to enhance their

community engagement work.

An overview for participants

The Focus Group workshop format, content and the guiding questions for the session were

provided for each participant prior to commencement (Table 2).

The Project

7

Table 2: Outline of Workshop Content

Part A Your Story

The location of your work

What work you do?

Who are the community/ies that you work with?

Include any special interest individuals or communities you work with.

Part B Discussion

What have you found helps to engage people in your community?

What are some of the challenges to engaging people in your community?

Part C List of Needs

What are your professional learning needs?

What help do you need to engage your communities?

How can we support you in this?

Guiding Questions:


What have you found helps to engage people in your community/ies?


What are your professional learning needs and what supports do you need to facilitate


Educators‟ Place Maps and Stories Focus Group Summaries

8

EDUCATORS’ PLACE MAPS AND STORIES

The following data generated through the educators‟ place maps and stories is presented by

Region: Outer Western Sydney Region, Mid Western Sydney Region and the Inner Western

Sydney Region. Within each of these Regions data are presented in three sub-sections. Firstly,

the Regional Overview is discussed, followed by a table summarising identity and

pedagogical information expressed by the educators in their stories and concludes with

representative story map/s accompanied by a descriptive analysis.

The full data set for all educators‟ story maps is presented in Appendix 2: Story Maps and

Pedagogical Practices: The Educators‟ Discussions and Appendix 3: Indepth Analysis of

Individual Story Maps.

Outer Western Sydney Focus Group

Regional Overview

The first focus group was held at the Hawkesbury campus of the University of Western

Sydney and included eight educators from the Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury-Nepean local

government areas. Two of the educators identified as Indigenous. The overall data gathered

from this focus group reflected the outer western Sydney cluster with large areas of

wilderness and rural lands and low population density. Participants were well networked

within their specific locations with a noticeable division between the Blue Mountains and

Hawkesbury-Nepean educators. The Blue Mountains participants were more focussed on

community sustainability activities, while the Hawkesbury-Nepean interests encompassed

such things as organic food production, and harvesting and marketing. Both groups shared

similar preferences for experiential learning in outdoor places and the protection of local

wilderness sites.

The Educators

Table 3 provides a summary of the Outer Western Sydney educators.


9

Table 3: Outer Western Sydney Educators‟ Summary

ID Place Pedagogies Communities

O-1-1 Mt Tomah;

occasionally

into

community.

Place Based – Community comes

to Botanical Gardens; workshops,

tours Eco-trail treasure hunt.

EarthCare; Hawkesbury, BMtns

communities Lithgow (power

station); Aboriginal Community-

Darug women.

O-1-2 Aboriginal

Centre Echo

Point

Presenting Aboriginal idea of

Country as including all living

things. 15min message to tourist

visitors.

Visits by individuals community

members, Local councils, Special

Interest Groups (Migrants and Arts)

National Parks and Wildlife State

Officers, Educational Institutions,

UWS, Schools, Environmental

groups, Bushcare, Aboriginal

Organisation

O-2-1 Rural farms in

Hawkesbury

area, farmers‟

markets.

Networking, farmers‟ markets. Rural communities; residents;

Schools, Agric Ref Group HEN,

OHN. UWS.

O-2-2 UWS site

rented by

Earthcare,

Henry

Doubleday

Seed Savers &

Alternative

Tech.

Earthcare Centre as a model of

community participation;

networking with other

organizations through partnerships.

UWS students; Botanical Gardens;

Hawkesbury Rainforest Network,

HH, RCE, PDR, ATA. „A node on a

network‟.

O-2-3 Hawkesbury

area;

Creek regen.

Bringing groups together;

developing packages of

engagement and trialling these.

Need more than plant identification

and bush regen.

Redbank, Rivo Kija, BMtn, Uni Vet

Sci, CSIRO, Schools, Illawarra,

TAFE CLM, Plant Society, ACF-

AABR.

O-3-1 Agricultural

education in

school

School (Terra Sancta–Sacred

Earth), students learn they are on

Sacred Earth, Permaculture

principles, garden chickens.

TAFE

O-4-1 Hawkesbury

bushlands –

activities along

river system.

Hands on regen with volunteers. Bushcare groups; Hawkesbury

community nursery, volunteers,

retirees, scouts, Aboriginal group.

O-4-2 Aboriginal

youth in

secondary

school

Project for pathways, ground work,

bush regenertaion, culture, native

plants.

Richmond TAFE – Cert 3

Horticulture.

ID Codes:

The ID Code for participants has three components as follows:

Letter indicates region: O = Outer; M = Mid; I = Inner;

First Number indicates occupation: 1 –Community Education Officer-Sustainability

Education Officer; 2 –Centre Coordinator; 3 –Secondary Teacher; 4 –Environmental Officers;

5 –Project Manager; 6 –Freelance Consultants; 7 –Early Childhood Centre Staff ;

Second Number indicates participants‟ consecutive number.


10

Representative Place Story Maps

1. Eric, Coordinator of Earthcare Centre

…we‟re not trying to be all things to all

people, but provide a place where people

can have experiential learning…but there‟s

links too…we network…I see us as a node

on a network.

Place, identity and community

Earthcare is its own little culture in that it‟s a small group, it‟s a tribal nature, it‟s Henry

Doubleday‟s Research and the Alternative Technology Association so it‟s two organisations

come together on the site and rent the land off the uni. So we connect university, UWS is

there, I think we offer a lot of benefit to UWS, mainly students but also to the staff and people

who are in there – there‟s actually 10 students over there working on gardens just, it‟s just

taken off at the moment. The other context we work in too of course, is in the Hawkesbury

area because we are local sort of thing and we‟re getting a reputation there too and a lot of

people know the centre and we‟re dealing with technological ATA issues, like solar power and

things too. But the organic growing side of things, we‟ve got a bit of bushland now too and

permaculture, so it‟s a bit of everything, and then we attract people from all over, the

Hawkesbury River is here of course too, sense of place, geographic, it‟s a major geographic

icon of the area I think.

Pedagogical practices

… the globe is here too of course, and we relate to that too, the RCE. A lot of things we

identify with are global problems anyway, over population and waste and pollution and

decreasing agriculture and decreasing natural environment and all that sort of stuff too so we

obviously have that in the back of our mind. And also there‟s other direct links too like with

the Botanic Gardens in terms of plant knowledge. Within here there‟s a closer connection with

the Hawkesbury Rainforest Network which of course I‟m involved with as well too, which

focuses on people identifying their own plants in their area. The Centre itself is a bit of a

model, I actually started the Earthcare Centre with a group of likeminded people. We‟re not

trying to be all things to all people, but provide a place where people can have experiential

learning. I see ourselves as part of a node on a network.

Place map

The central image is the Earthcare centre building with stick people encircled by greenery and

bush and the initials ATA (Alternative Technology Centre) and HD (Henry Doubleday) for

key partners. Wavy concentric circles, initials, and doubled ended arrows represent multiple

two way connections with RCE (United Nations Regional Centre of Expertise in Education

for Sustainable Development), HH (Hawkesbury Harvest), HEN (Hawkesbury Environment

Network), UWS (University of Western Sydney). In the top left corner a large black smudge

with symbolic buildings is labelled „western Sydney‟ with no connection to the central image

or any other part of the story map. A bright blue river enters from the side indicating it flows

in from elsewhere and shortly below forks into two with one labelled the Hawkesbury flowing


11

close by the central Earthcare image and out the bottom of the A3 sheet. A small globe of the

world is connected by double ended black arrows to the central image but it is dwarfed by

vivid red angular on each side. Five of these bright red angular scribbles surround the

Earthcare central image and Eric describes them as representing „chaos‟.

It is interesting that these red symbols of chaos contain the most vibrant energy of the story

map and it is likely that the red symbolises danger. They are not connected to the black

smudge of western Sydney so they possibly also represent free floating energy that can

potentially be drawn on in relation to the Earthcare Centre.


12

2. Chris, Aboriginal Education Officer, Echo Point Tourist Centre

I mean social justice and the

environmental outcomes to me are the

same. We work for those. We want a

healthy community, sustainable one. I get

a chance to share with people that we

have a heritage of good custodianship of

the country.


The large circle represents country and the smaller circles represent the various groups within

country. And so I‟ve worked for country, I get a chance to deliver, have some input into

various groups that are all working for the same good cause - there‟s Bush Care, we‟ve got an

Aboriginal Organisation, National Parks, visitors to the place, special interest groups,

environment groups, local councils, State Government groups, education, all these, they‟re all

within country and they overlap at different times. What I get the chance to do sometimes is

just connect people, and it‟s all - social justice and the environmental outcomes to me are the

same, we work for those. We want a healthy community, sustainable one, I get a chance to

share with people that we have a heritage of good custodianship of country, and it‟s not the

short term aims that we often have to abide by these days. And so the outer circle actually is

the ancestors, the people gone before us, this is us here [middle circle] and then the ones that

come up behind us are the children. And these are all part of our identity and they have to be

taken into consideration and we do make decisions about country and that sort of thing.


I get lots of opportunities to share that with people and my real theme at the moment is that

human beings can fit beautifully on this planet. Aboriginal ancestors – we‟re lucky in

Australia we‟ve got Aboriginal history that has shown us that human beings can live on the

planet without trashing the place. One of the school teachers a few years ago alerted me to the

fact that whereas my generation grew up in fear we‟re going to blow each other up with a

bomb, young people these days often think the environment‟s going to kill us, and how tragic

is that? So that‟s why the stuff that we do is got to be done with hope and purpose. I work at

the Aboriginal Centre at Echo Point. I get 15 minutes to cram in a real quick message, so it‟s

challenging but you do, even in that 10 minutes if you just present things like people haven‟t

seen it before, you see little lights go on. I say, that we human beings can live in harmony

with the environment. I love to overturn the idea that it was a primitive culture. They also

need to know that human beings lived beautifully with the other creatures, we have to work

within their rhythms and that sort of thing. It‟s a message of hope, I explain that by working at

the uni here actually, I learnt that the river‟s far cleaner than it‟s been for 30 years, which is

exciting, but it‟s still not safe to swim in anymore.

Central image, icons and connections

Chris is a Darug man from the Western Sydney area. His story map is different from all of the

others. It consists of three concentric circles outlined in thick yellow/gold. The outer circle is

labelled „Country‟ in three places. There is nothing outside Country in this story map. The two


13

inner circles are unlabelled but we know from Chris‟s verbal story that the outer circle

represents the ancestors (who are country), the middle circle represents the present generation,

and the inner circle represents future generations. Drawn over these three large central circles

are eight smaller concentric circles in red, pink, blue and green as if they are orbiting within

the larger circle. Each is composed of three concentric circles labelled with the names of all of

the organisations who work to care for country:- local councils; special interest groups;

visitors; National Parks and Wildlife; State Offices, educational institutions, schools, UWS

etc; Environmental groups; Bushcare and Aboriginal organisations.

While the whole is embraced within country and the ancestors, the image has a mobile

dynamic quality about it akin to the symbolic images of the solar system with its orbiting

planets. The sense of the three circles spiralling inward towards future generations adds a

cyclical time dimension that is absent in other story maps. The colours are bright and hopeful

without any attempt at realism in any part of the map.


14

Mid Western Sydney Focus Group

Regional Overview

The second focus group was held at the Penrith campus of the University of Western Sydney

and included eight educators from the Penrith, Blacktown and the Hills local government

areas. The conversation again confirmed the use of Place as a conceptual framework and the

clustering of a distinctive mid-western Sydney group with a focus on peri-urban development,

pressure on farming lands and farming knowledge. The educators in this group predominantly

represented government and local council. The story maps produced by this group were more

dominated by text and lists and there was a marked difference between the volunteer or part

time community educators and those with a full time government role. Two educators from

Sydney Water attended this Focus Group with roles that crossed local government boundaries,

and extended beyond the western Sydney region, however, their work was located at the

interpretative centre at Warragamba Dam.

The Educators

Table 4 provides a summary of the Mid Western Sydney educators.


15

Table 4: Mid Western Sydney Educators‟ Summary


M-1-3

Community based

Behaviour change through education,

reskilling community, workshops (30

p.a), festivals, grants programs, external

forces for behaviour change.

Community members to

attend workshops and

events, Coles Program.

M-1-4 Penrith – senior

officer (wide range of

activities and has 10

staff to implement).

Events, workshops, blog, website,

festivals, info nights and sessions;

professional development for staff

Schools, Childcare

orgs, government,

businesses, UWS, RCE.

M-1-5 Visitors‟ Centre,

Warragamba Dam,

Community sites.

Ed for primary and high school students

(water cycle and water efficiency, HSC

chemistry, biology), Water for Life expo,

dam visits, classroom sessions.

Pre-, primary and

secondary schools.

M-1-6 Visitors Centre,

Warragamba Dam

Field days on farms

Community-based conservation (e.g.

Streamwatch), Rural Living Handbook,

16 Sustainable Grazing Programs, Grants

Program, Science informs behaviour

change.

Community members.

M-1-7 On-site education

throughout

community

Programs tailored to community and

service provided (face to face; ed

materials, bin stickers). Agenda is

negotiable.

Councils, Residents via

bin pick up.

M-6-1 Outdoors, Council

locations.

Workshop facilitator, hands on,

experiential

Agenda determined in the consultancy.

Work with Councils

(less as councils

employ their owned.

Staff).

M-6-2 Outdoors, Council

locations.

Horticulture degree, workshop

facilitation.

Councils (wants full

time work).

M-3-2 Agricultural

education in school

and community-based

activities.

Environmental activities – tree planting

(council);

Agenda set by HSC +

Network of schools in

Cumberland Region,

commercial operations

(Cfeeds), local

community groups

(Rotary), Council.


1. ‘Mary’, Education Officer, Cleanaway Waste Services

So, we‟re working with all the different

core communities in each of the different

councils and they‟re all going to vary,

looking at different areas of housing,

whether its single unit dwellings or multi-

unit dwellings, and they all have their own

specific needs for education when it comes

to using their base services correctly.


16


My map shows us being in the middle, like our depot is sort of in a central location, and then

we‟re travelling out to all the different areas across Sydney metro and we‟re providing

specific services to each of those different councils and we have different contractual

requirements for each of those areas, as well. I‟m probably a little bit more concentrating

around the inner west with some of the specific projects I do, but we do also work with

Blacktown – sorry, Blacktown that was my attempt at your logo. So, we have a number of

different education programs that we need to tailor for each of our customers, depending on

the community and the services that we are providing in those areas.


Mary‟s work involves school education programs with pre-schools, primary and secondary

schools and community workshops related to using the services correctly, to avoid

contamination. She also teaches people about farming, composting, shopping correctly, to

minimise waste. They use a combination of face to face with residents, educational materials,

and public education strategies such as stickers on bins.


The central image is a big blue garbage truck driving along the two black lines of road. The

garbage truck is connected by single lines to five circle hubs all around it representing the

different councils. Each circle hub is connected by lines to four further circles representing the

different entities such as schools, businesses, single resident dwellings and multiple resident

dwellings. Icons represent the dwellings and stick figure people are beside the dwellings.

Garbage bins are prominent in every location, with their three different coloured lids - yellow,

green and red. The main road is central to the place story map and leads into and out of the A3

sheet. There are many connections via the roads and these have been grouped into particular

communities. It feels as if the work of picking up refuse is never ending, symbolised in the

road that twists off into the distance. Interestingly there are no trees or bush landscapes,

gardens or yards in the image so it is very much about the built environment. There is no

connection made to where the refuse goes after it is collected and no recycle station is evident

in this place story map.


17

2. Suze, Freelance consultant

At Longneck we‟re doing an interpretive

trail to try and introduce the kids as they

walk in, because they‟ve got to walk in

about 300 or 400 metres from the road; to

try and introduce an understanding of the

aboriginal terms for the local flora and

fauna.


My involvement is actually is fairly organic compared to most people here, who have got a

steady role. I have my own business heading called Eco … which has a little side-line of

educating for environmental responsibility. And in doing that over the years I have done a lot

of facilitation of workshops at Blacktown Council, at Balkham Hills Council, Hawkesbury

and a few other different places. That has lessened somewhat over the years, as the councils

have taken on more of their own education programs. I used to do a lot more for Blacktown

council before a lot of their own staff had taken over a lot of the workshops which involved

composting, worm farming, gardening and those sorts of things, attending festivals.


18


Suze has been involved with writing the national curriculum sustainability objectives across

the different key learning areas, particularly the arts. She sees „teaching and learning about

sustainability in the environment as something that is experienced, something that‟s hands-on,

and that‟s why I like to work outside‟. She is interested in incorporating Aboriginal

knowledge into her work: „she and I are actually - at Longneck we‟re doing an interpretive

trail to try and introduce the kids as they walk in, because they‟ve got to walk in about 300 or

400 metres from the road; to try and introduce an understanding of the aboriginal terms for

the local flora and fauna, and to ask some of her – some of her interesting things, you know,

maybe like, did you know that aboriginal people used to paperbark for nappies and things like

that, you know, sort of things that might stick in their brain‟.


The central image in this place story map is three large words under each other printed in

colour – „Teaching‟ in red, „Learning‟ in black and „Experiencing in green. Around these

words are five symbols of activities, each with a label - compost, a stack of three books with a

black arrow to the word „outside‟, trees, blue sky, yellow circle sun and tiny human figures

sitting on a red seat, labelled „mangrove wetlands‟, a group of tall trees with two small human

figures walking on a brown track leading into the trees labelled „Cumberland plain‟, the

outline of a gecko labelled „aboriginal knowledge‟. Each image except the Cumberland plain

is shaded over with a different pastel colour but there is no connection between them. This

map suggests that each of these is a separate areas of activity that are all related by the words

teaching, learning and experiencing, but they are not well connected representing the nature of

voluntary and freelance work. Every component image relates to the outside world and

experiencing the natural environment in a physical sense. The learning symbolised by the pile

of books is taken outside. People learn in the natural environment - two people walking on

the bush track in the Cumberland plain, and two others sitting by the mangroves. The

challenges are that there is no cohesive structure of connection even though there is

knowledge about each individual area.


19


20

Inner Western Sydney Region

Regional Overview

The third focus group was held at the Parramatta campus of the University of Western Sydney

and included nine educators from the Inner Western Sydney. Eight participants were female,

one male group and this group was the most talkative of the three. Three childcare

directors/workers had immigrated from Turkey and a volunteer community worker from

Thailand. The concerns of all the educators focused on multicultural issues with a strong

focus on language translation, communication with CALD groups, basic integration teaching

and the integration of social with environment sustainability. Sustainability issues included a

focus on waste recycling as well as community gardens. Although the focus was different,

because of the more densely populated, high multicultural urban location, the passion and

enthusiasm for sustainability education was very strong.

The Educators

Table 5 provides a summary of the Inner Western Sydney educators.


21

Table 5: Inner Western Sydney Educators‟ Summary


I-1-8 Community and

school visits.

Education key to change rather than

agenda set by council. Environment is

outdoor classroom – authentic learning;

value local places in urban sites; Holistic

cycle – stewardship of environment.

Presentations in schools, workshops.

Schools, CALD community,

environ & sustain networks,

volunteers.

I-1-9 Council office

central.

Linking educational programs &

resources to the town plan and

development applications – Feedback to

residents from bin inspections.

Presentations, Events, Clean Up Australia

Day.

Waste management assoc,

LGSA contractors, VITA,

Clean Away, Busy, Wellco.

I-1-

10

Council,

Community

(Scouts-Guides)

Business –

Marine Ed in

schools.

Building relationships; at councils, scouts,

guides then intertwine these. (short term

contract work – frustrating).

Schools, Guides-Scouts,

CALD groups.

I-1-

11

Council office;

media,

newspapers.

Policy writing, Distribution of hard

devices (tanks, solar panels, energy

saving), Outsourced education short term

(sustainability ads in paper don‟t work).

Community groups already

doing workshops. Council

have funds to employ

consultants- presenters.

I-6-3 Volunteer-

vegetarian

cooking classes.

Tai Chi.

Cooking and sustainability workshops

(like to start own business Whole System

Health).

Community, healing, nature,

family Whole System Health,

Religion.

I-6-4 Business location

Community

locations.

Delivering workshops- presentations. Home; local shops, Uniting

Church ethnic groups,

community garden.

Transition Towns; Fairs,

Social, Solar panels, Uniting

Church.

Business; Ed for

sustainability, links to A2E2

committee, Envirodoc, High

Schools, Penno, Workshops,

TTA partnerships, PD.

I-7-1

I-7-2

I-7-3

5 Childcare

centres; 4 where

clients, majority

or all have non-

English speaking

backgrounds,

inclusion of

special needs

(autism).

Excursions, value and respect cultures,

Aboriginal awareness, inclusion, festival

performances, services coming in-Fire

brigade etc.

26 service links with NSW

Gov, Local Govt and NGOs,

in the areas of Health,

Education, Religion, Welfare.


22


1. Joanne: Environmental Education Officer, Bankstown Council

Getting out and exploring and touching

and feeling and that real authentic

learning is really, really important,

knowing where food comes from and

where birds live and when you throw your

rubbish on the ground, where does it end

up.

Place, identity, community

I work at Bankstown Council in the environment and education team as part of the sustainable

development unit. Going back, everyone was talking about their history and where they‟re

from and their past, I grew up the Blue Mountains and I‟ve always had a passion for nature

and protecting nature, the bush. I believe that that should be there forever and for everyone to

enjoy. So that‟s my passion for the environment. In my last position, I worked at Ashfield

Council on a project called the GreenWay Sustainability Project which was a partnership

between 4 councils and we had a number of sustainability projects over 3 years, funded by the

state government. One of the projects I worked on was a schools project with local primary

schools. I now believe, hence why I‟m in this role, that is really, really vital to work with

children, to get environmental messages across early on. Because when you‟re older and

working with adults, it‟s a lot harder to convince people.


Basically getting teachers and students out of the classroom and learning in the outdoors. And

not getting on a bus and going a few hours away but exploring what‟s in your schoolyard or

what‟s down the road, what‟s in your backyard. Bankstown people say to me, „Bankstown is

so urban‟ and you‟ve got the Georges River and some of the beautiful outdoor areas – I‟m

amazed. And with that, I think then they make more of a connection with their environment

because they see it‟s in their backyard and they think, „It‟s mine and I‟m part of this‟. It‟s that

stewardship and they feel they want to look after it and it‟s kind of that holistic – I guess that

holistic cycle or process. That‟s why I think getting children connected with their local

environment at a young age, not just talking in the classroom or looking at a whiteboard but

getting out and exploring and touching and feeling and that real authentic learning is really,

really important, knowing where food comes from and where birds live and when you throw

your rubbish on the ground, where does it end up. Looking at the whole cycle and the whole

system rather than reading about it, is one thing. Even working within Council and you‟re

talking about the area that you work in, a lot of people have probably never been out to some

of these fantastic places. I don‟t think you get the true feel for the area until you get out there

and do that


The central image in this place-story map is made up of „Environment + Education‟ in big

green letters‟ surrounded by a wriggly green line and connected by red arrows to all of the


23

different sectors of engagement: Corporate sustainability, workshops, presentations, water,

energy, transport, ws carpool; CALD community Arabic, Vietnamese; Schools, childcare,

tertiary education, tours, workshops, resources, capacity building; Business; Community and

council events - homegrown photo and gardens competition, what people love most about

living in Bankstown, food, sustainability, national tree day, clean up days, Duck river; Env

and sustainability networks; Community groups, Villawood community garden, Chester Hill

edible garden; Greenway, observatory hill, DET accredited professional teachers program and

also sustainability and environmental protection; Volunteer groups, need to connect with.

Most of the map is print text but there are some stick figures, trees and grass, dollar signs, and

a blue star accompanied by the words „Passion for education, connect with people and the

environment‟. Interestingly the arrows are all one way, out towards the activities.

2. Mona, Owner/Director, Early Childhood Education Centres

Children, I believe, learn through - not

just the interactions they have with

people - but also the environment.

Place, identify, community

I‟ll start off with my family on this side. This is my home and this is where I feel comfortable

and relaxed and time out. So then my 3 children – I‟ve got 3 girls. And basically they‟re in


24

tutoring, so we‟re networking through their tutoring. I‟m also a consultant – a childcare

consultant and help childcare services open even family day care services. Also the mosque is

another place because my belief is Islam and so the mosque is part of our family and life. I

have three childcare services - one at Busby, one at Guildford and one in Granville area.

Now, they‟re 3 locations and in those three different places there are children from different

cultures. In Busby, the main cultures and languages spoken is English and Anglo-Australian.

However, all the programs are very much similar. The main language in Guildford would be

Arabic and Indian. And in Granville, it‟s Vietnamese, Arabic, Turkish and African. I think the

more we‟re going into - learning about sustainable practices and having to enjoy outdoors

more. And that‟s why I‟ve got the sky up there – and getting some vitamin D through the sun

– has been one of those key focuses that I‟ve changed in my life. Because of a lot of its

technology and my children are on their iPods and iPads and any other i-things.


We involve the children in excursions and going out, we actually get everyone to value and

respect other people‟s cultures and a very strong Aboriginal awareness. We have a lot of

children with disabilities as well in our services and we actually get them out and perform in

festivals. They‟ll be performing on 1st of November which is the language and literacy.

They‟ve also already been at the multicultural [festival] – they did a multicultural dance, 4

different languages. And so we just – that‟s basically what we do. And then we‟ve got people

that come into our service, like the local community, like the ambulance, fire brigade, police,

nurse, the local doctors. I mean they all influence what goes on in life. I mean children, I

believe, learn through not just the interactions they have with people but also the

environment. So all of that has been put in. We did a course, a Living Green course, together

and a project on sustainable practices. And we all had to do our own project and set up our

own policy on what our thoughts and our values and philosophies. And what inspired me

about it – I really didn‟t know much about climate change. But yeah, when I did it, it opened

my eyes to a lot of other new things. So now I‟ve got a new philosophy altogether now.

We‟ve introduced, as she was saying, the recycling bins, a worm farm. This is our compost

bin. We also did a fruit and veggie garden that children can taste – they grow it themselves

and they eat from it as well. And they‟re going home and taking those practices back and

saying, „Mum, we should be doing recycling. We should be doing composting‟.


Mona‟s place story map is crowded with brightly coloured images and text. There is no one

central image but the A3 sheet is richly filled with icons with the three childcare centres under

their rainbows connected to many other icons in symbol and text: Busby Childcare Centre is

linked to local doctors, DECS, Local council, Energy saving solo power, Local dentist, digital

story sustainable practices, living green course project, main language Anglo-Aust English,

Arabic, Chinese. Rawson Road Childcare is linked to: Ambulance, SDN inclusion support,

Auburn botanical gardens, Aboriginal awareness, Local schools, Worm farms, multicultural

Granville centre, fruit and vege garden, main languages Arabic and Indian, other early

childhood services. Palm Childcare is linked to: Fire brigade, Police, fund raising charity.

In the middle left hand segment there is a dark pink love heart which has more white space

around it than the rest. The love heart is coloured pink but in fine black drawing is a house

with five figures inside and the label „My Home‟. Around the outside of the love heart linked


25

by fine black lines are all the aspects of her personal life – the mosque, the gym, boot camp,

her parents, children‟s school, consulting and tutoring. The community is the environment in

which this educator finds herself I and she is deeply embedded in the actions and experiences

of her environment spiritually, practically, socially, emotionally.

CHALLENGES AND BARRIERS TO COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

A total of 50 ideas and issues were recorded across all three Focus Groups when participants

discussed the particular challenges they faced when trying to engage their communities. The

Inner-Western Group identified 18 challenges and barriers to their work with communities,

which comprised 36% of the total. The Outer-Western Group recorded 20 comments (40%)

whilst the Mid-Western Group listed 12 challenges and barriers (24%).

The challenges the educators identified as impacting negatively on their community

engagement work could be grouped around four themes. These were the specific challenges

of (1) engaging with different sections of the community for specific reasons; (2)

collaborating with other educators; (3) designing successful programs/workshops and (4)

bureaucratic and work conditions. Table 7 provides a summary of these themes and sub-

themes and has recorded the frequency with which the comment was made by the educators.

Challenges/Barriers to Community Engagement Focus Group Summaries

27

Table 6: Challenges/Barriers to Community Engagement

Themes and Sub-themes with Representative Examples N (%) Total

N=50 (%)

Community members

Attitudes and Knowledge within Community Groups

Inability or unwillingness of people to travel to different suburb

Ambivalence, apathy, no motivation about the use and meaning of the

term „sustainability‟, seriousness of the issues

Disengaged difficult to reach (e.g. youth) and preaching to the converted

11 (22) 20 (40)

Dislocation from environment

Disaffected portion of the community, disconnection from the natural

landscape e.g. migrants „insecurity‟

Increasing separation of individuals (from community) environment

Building community dialogue about local places

5 (10)

Socio-economic factors

People with more money and time can come but those with less cannot

4 (8)

Collaborating with other educators (Schools, Community)

Constraints to participate in schools (time/resources, cultural sensitivity,

current curriculum, teacher training, better support needed, teachers‟ level

of interest)

Differences in relation to where educators are in their environmental

journey

10 (20) 10 (20)

Designing successful programs/workshops

Credibility of sustainability programs

Avoid information overload for community…they switch off

„Climate Change‟ causes people to „turn off‟

The problem of language and terminology

Invisibility and inaccessibility of community facilities that are available

10 (20) 10 (20)

Bureaucratic constraints

Regulation and institutionalisation

Compliance with bureaucracy legislation

Difficulty for community members in approaching council

3 (6) 10 (20)

Lack of support – Time

Sense of no time, Lack of time

5 (10)

Lack of support - Funding

Grant applications, writing and admin

Ineligibility to apply for some funding

2 (4)


28

Educators’ statements about the challenges of their work

A large number of educators specified that finding and engaging the „middle group‟ of parents

with young families was difficult, and that this group, in itself, is not a static, easily

identifiable group.

25 to 45 year olds especially in new developing areas don't come to

workshops. They don‟t come to a lot of things that we put on. They‟re

focussed on money and family sustainability is not a priority.

A related issue was that the educators often felt that they were „preaching to the converted‟

with the same attendees appearing over and over again in their workshops.

People that tend to come are the older community, usually they're the same

people that come to the workshops, tend to be the people that already are

doing the right thing in terms of sustainability in their homes anyway.

The location of the workshops was raised as a barrier couched in terms of the inability or

unwillingness of people to travel to different suburbs.

In Blacktown even though it is one council area everyone identifies with

where they live, they don't necessarily want to come to Mount Druitt for a

workshop or you know what I mean, it's a bit of a hike to go all the way out

to Seven Hills for a workshop.

A barrier to engaging with local communities is the issue of accessibility of Council buildings

and their institutional symbolism:

I don‟t know how many people are likely to go into a council building to find

out information because council buildings can be quite intimidating.

The educators also spoke about the challenge of addressing the credibility of their programs

and being mindful that their language and the discourse of „sustainability‟ was at times a

deterrent to participation by some of their local community members.

One of our challenges is about credibility and I think that‟s the case for all

the sustainability programs in general in terms of it's a credible source and

people have an image I think about sustainability and hippies and that type

of thing as well, we have mixed success.

„Sustainability‟ just sounds so boring, it's so kind of clichéd too, over done,

but what else is there, what other words are there?

For some educators the concept of „sustainability‟ itself was thought to be not well defined

and understood by community members and educators alike:


29

One of the challenges - we don‟t even have a corporate definition of

sustainability and if people in an organisation have different definitions to

us it's a triple bottom line or quadruple bottom line approach where it's the

people, it's the environment and it's getting people actively involved in the

governance of our area as well. To some people it's putting on a water tank

and saving money or putting on solar and saving money and for some

people it's purely a green thing so that‟s even just internally within council

… and we get the issue where we say we want to do this and do something

about social sustainability and it's like well why are you doing that, isn't

that a social thing. Why aren‟t community services doing that instead and

that‟s what the challenge is as you said so many different angles on what

sustainability could be.

For another the evolution of meaning through terms such as „environment‟ and „sustainability‟

has created a difficulty:

It hasn‟t been in great depth because before it was the environment and that

got kind of pulled out of shape and distorted and hijacked and stuff and then

sustainability appeared and that was really new and now the same sort of

things happened to that so is it then going to move into a new term?

In the cases of both Aboriginal community participation and participation by members of

culturally and linguistically diverse communities, the use of different terms and concepts

represent a challenge for community educators that many may not even be aware of. One

educator, for example, said that there is no equivalent word to „sustainability‟ in the Arabic

language. In order to research the meaning of the idea for herself she actually returned to her

birthplace in a village in Turkey and made a digital story about their simple lives in the

village – carting water from a well, cooking on a small wood fire, growing their own fruit and

vegetables in communal village gardens. She brought this back to use as a resource to explain

what the concept of sustainability might mean to her and to communicate to her immigrant

compatriots.

Similarly, Chris Tobin, a community educator of the Darug language group explained that for

Aboriginal people the concept of „Country‟ includes all of the aspects of sustainability –

social, cultural, environmental and economic.

What I get the chance to do sometimes is just connect people, and it‟s all – I mean social

justice and the environmental outcomes to me are the same, we work for those. We want a

healthy community, sustainable one. I get a chance to share with people that we have a

heritage of good custodianship of country, and it‟s not the short term aims that we often have

to abide by these days. And so the outer circle [of country] actually is the ancestors, the

people gone before us, this is us here [in the middle] and then the ones that come up behind

us are the children. These are all part of our identity and they have to be taken into

consideration when we make decisions about country and that sort of thing.

30

ENABLERS OF COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

Participants recorded a total of 76 responses when discussing successful strategies for

engaging community members in environmental and sustainability activities. The Mid-West

Focus Group recorded 35 enabling strategies (46%) of the total comments; the Inner-West

Focus Group suggested 24 (32%) of enabling strategies, facilitators of engagement and the

Outer-West Group listing 17 (22%).

The themes which emerged from clustering these enabling strategies were identified and

organised around WHO, HOW, WHAT and WHERE to engage the community. Table 6

summarises the sub-categories within these themes and also records the frequency with which

the comment was recorded across all three Focus Groups.

Challenges and Barriers to Community Engagement Focus Group Summaries

31

Table 7: Strategies to Enable Community Engagement

Themes N (%) Total

N=76

HOW – Successful workshop and program design

Experiential learning, hands on, sensory, living it, animation, context spark

Virtual workshop (online extensions to workshops, digital stories translated)

Info/knowledge exchange, (co-learning with guest speakers, presenters and peers)

Structure workshops in the format of popular TV shows, popular culture

Build on popular workshops such as bread making

Offer short courses as a taster, longer courses and information from evaluation follow up

Apply for money and funding

Aims and outcomes (focus on behaviour change, focus on goals, different programs with

different goals)

Need time

21 (28) 53 (71)

HOW – Motivate and involve the community

Look at what will motivate to create change, encourage families, enjoyable

Involve the community, (consultation/connection is the key, community sense of

ownership, their actions make a difference)

Choose issues requiring action for specific local effects, „what‟s in it for me‟ motivation

Look at achievements and celebrate these, not bogged down in negativity (acknowledge

change process is slow, accept small changes on a personal level)

Be flexible, keep up with the times, lead by example

Social pressure (Using social norms and peer pressure for some disengaged groups)

18 (24)

HOW – Tailor approach to audience (language, age, socio-economic)

Designing targeted innovative age appropriate strategies for the hard to reach

Avoiding concepts or words that some find difficult, use familiar language

Recognising the different hooks or pressure points for different audiences

Recognising the impact of peer pressure

9 (13)

HOW - Inform the community

Not just advertising (promote innovative program design, personal touch for disengaged)

General and popular media, PR, Newspapers, Council LGA surveys

Developing other avenues for producers: Radio ABC, Livestock programs, Masterchef,

getaway, good weekend

5 (6)

WHO - Know your community

Understanding diversity (migrants, indigenous youth, disadvantage, the unknown e.g.

bush)

Understanding community values (landscape, culture, history)

Identify the „middle group‟, the hard to reach

6 (8)

11 (14)

WHO - Engage networks

Forming partnerships to extend programs and resources by working with likeminded

people

Dialogue „whole of system approach‟

Sustainability officers as brokers in new developments

5 (6)

WHAT – Use content appeal in workshops and programs

What is topical? (people open to change then, real cost to the earth, political education,

global politics to local activities, what will benefit them directly?)

What is causing financial pressure? (education in energy saving-people are interested)

7 (9) 7 (9)

WHERE – Be visible in the community

Projects need to be visible not hidden away (main street, shopping centres, hook into

other public events, regular events eg. library story sessions)

Going to where people are, instead of expecting them to come to „us‟

5 (6) 5 (6)


32

Strategies to engage the disengaged

HOW to engage communities accounted for 71% of all comments relating to „enabling

strategies‟ with four sub-themes being identified from the data:

successful program and workshop design

strategies for motivating their communities

tailoring delivery approach to target group

successful lines of information dissemination into the community

A predominant focus of this discussion was how to „engage the disengaged‟. An overall sense

was that community members in general were aware of sustainability issues but felt

overwhelmed by the enormity of planetary problems. Educators said that a strong motivating

factor for „engaging the disengaged‟ was to be able to demonstrate to them that the collective

actions of individuals does make a difference:

… you need to demonstrate to people, have some proof so that they don‟t

feel overwhelmed with, „Well me - like one person doing that is just a drop

in the ocean‟. So some actual proof … the social proof is what you're

talking about. With the Melbourne Water example, that competition, … for

some social groups the suburb next door is doing better so then they want to

step up their game.

A successful strategy for engaging members of all communities was to meet people where

they are at - including their places of congregation, interests, languages and cultural

preferences. For some instances this was as simple as setting up stalls in a shopping centre:

… to go to shopping centres and we would set up our worm farm and compost

bin in the middle of the shopping centre and hail people down and go „Hi, can

I tell you something about composting. Have you seen some worms?‟ and each

day that we did that we would run a free compost set up and the person would

not only win a bin, they would win us going out to their house and setting it all

up.

Another successful strategy across all age groups was to deliver workshops on popular

interest topics. Bread-making, for example, was the most popular of all the sustainability

workshops offered by one local council with a waiting list of 80-100 people. Food and

cooking in general was a popular way of engaging the disengaged:

Sometimes it's about getting away from just the sustainability thing, the

same thing, we got an ex Master Chef contestant to do the cooking

demonstration workshop for us, this year we're going with more of a health

focus.


33

It was agreed by all educators that the most disengaged age group were middle income

parents with young families in 25-35 year age group. The most creative suggestions for

engaging in this group were to do with identifying where they meet in a public community

setting and joining in with them there:

At the library they have preschool story time and so you have a whole lot of

people that attend this. They don't really care what it is that you're going to

talk about or what book you're going to read to them. They're there every

single week with their child to attend story time and we‟re able to use that

opportunity to conduct workshops. A lot of non-English speaking adults are

there as well with their children so it means not only are we reaching the

young children who are going to be able to go home and encourage a

follow up of the content that‟s been discussed but we're also serving to pitch

at a level that some of these people that can't always understand a lot of

English, they're going to be able to get a lot out of the workshops as well.

The last workshops that we did at preschool story time I think had close to

80 people adults and children.

Younger adults in the 15-20 year old age group. The educators discussed that ensuring the

appeal of their workshops to the target group often called for creative thinking where the

sustainability education and actions are linked into fun, cultural activities:

The 15 to 20 year old age group is a very different kind of approach to the

25 to 45 year olds, for example for us we're looking at running a break

dancing competition where you‟ve got to sit on a bike and ride the bike to

power the music.

For low socio-economic status communities the pressure of finance was a strong motivating

factor for them to become engaged in reducing their energy consumption:

…we have lots of people in our area who can't afford their bills, they‟ve got

10 people living in a 2 or 3 bedroom home, we've got an aging populations

so we've got people that are 70, 80 years old who have been hospitalised

because they can't afford to put heating on in their home so it's a completely

different audience.

In the highly culturally and linguistically diverse locations in inner western Sydney there are

many specific issues of language and culture to be addressed, particularly for those of refugee

backgrounds. One educator, for example, said „there are 127 community languages - our 3

main cultural groups are our Arabic population, our Vietnamese and our Chinese population‟.

The issues raised by educators in relation to sustainability education for these groups

included food security and basic shopping education, basic education in refuse disposal and

language issues. Creative responses to these issues included the development of visual

languages for communication:


34

Our team [decided] not to translate and we‟ve done that because we found

that just because someone speaks the language, it doesn‟t mean that they

necessarily can read the language … we‟ve gone down the track of using

pictures to tell a story so - and we check our pictures with our community so

that, you can basically show them a picture and say “What does that tell you?”

and if someone can turn around to me and say „That pictures telling me that I

need to put my recyclables in the bin, loosely without a plastic bag‟ I go „Yeah‟

that‟s exactly what that picture is trying to tell you.

Special culturally appropriate strategies and pedagogies were also described as relevant for

Aboriginal communities in relation to the connection between disengaged youth, schools, and

communities:

I encourage them (teachers) to go out into the community and ask community

people – bring the community into the school and get local community, whether

its parents, friends to come into the school and talk to the kids. That‟s why it‟s

really important that schools build really strong relationships with that Aboriginal

community because a lot of Aboriginal people feel very hesitant to go into

schools.

35

EDUCATORS’ LEARNING AND SUPPORT NEEDS

When considering their learning and support needs, the educators across the three Focus

Groups proposed roughly the same number of suggestions (one third each). A total of 136

suggestions have been analysed and presented in three tables. Table 8, summarises the

Professional Learning Needs of the educators. Table 9 displays the Support Needs and

Structures the educators perceive as critical to their work and Table 10 summarises how the

educators see UWS, OHE and RCE as linking with and assisting them in their daily practice.

Professional learning needs

The topics proposed by the educators as integral to their ongoing professional learning (and

in order of the frequency with which the item was mentioned), were: 1) establishing and

maintaining formal and informal networks; 2) updating their knowledge and skills in the

areas of grant writing, information technology and pedagogies of engagement; 3)

participating in formal learning opportunities and 4) learning local knowledge and resource

availability. An overview of the specific professional learning need areas suggested by the

educators appears in Table 8.

Educator Learning and Support Needs Focus Group Summaries

36

Table 8: Educator Professional Learning Needs

Professional Learning Needs

Frequency

N (%)

Total=72

Establishing and maintaining networks – Communities of Practice

Professional development opportunities to meet and build networks with other

teachers

Partnerships with skilled people (water testing, finance, grants, bookkeeping)

I need to network to maintain professional standards at the higher academic level

How to use networks effectively, Linking into networks to share ideas

Partnership/relationship building and keeping (networks)

Not reinventing the wheel. There are lots of other groups/networks websites already

out there

What is happening in other organisations

28 (38)

Grant writing

How to write grants and where are they currently available, Reduce the loops in

the grant applications, Grant applications too overwhelming

Council to promote awareness of grants

9 (13)

Technology

IT digital media

Understanding rebates for new technologies.

Need to keep up with technology in education (e.g. QR codes, Apps, VC)

Facebook (networking opportunities), Blogs, Databases

8 (11)

Pedagogies of engagement

Engaging ways to teach topics, to teach parents and community

How to facilitate, how to engage, how to communicate, how to recruit and

empower teachers

Case studies of engagement (How, what worked, what didn‟t work)

8 (11)

Formal learning opportunities

Conference attendance

Australian curriculum knowledge

Psychology and behaviour change

Courses

Genuine evaluation of education beyond bean counting

Research/social research training - UWS (keynote speakers via video-

conferencing, evaluation, community development through informal contacts

and learning)

Strategies for professional development

13 (18)

Learning local knowledge and resource availability

Touring education facilities

Understanding of Aboriginal culture

Participating in on-the-ground work

6 (8)


37

Educators’ support needs

Table 9 outlines a summary of the type of the support the educators viewed as necessary but

which currently, is not being received. Most frequently mentioned was the need for additional

staff to ensure the ongoing success of programs and workshops. The other themes in order of

importance (the frequency with which the topic was raised) are listed below in Table 9.

Table 9: Educator Support Needs for Community Engagement

Support Needed

Frequency

N (%)

Total=63

Additional staff (wide range of support staff requested)

Facilitators, Staff to implement projects with support from local papers

Support Management

Paid project officer/coordinator to promote our work

Paid media support officer

Speakers of different languages

Volunteers

Administrators

Online staff

More people power

UWS, RCE, OHE to advocate, be a point of liaison for staff, within and external to

their organisations

18 (29)

Resources

Pool of resources which can be accessed

Centralised information and resources for council and community

Info in different languages, Language translation at local government and more

services

Books and pamphlets

Kits (environmental kits)

Venues and locations to run programs

9 (14)

Money – funding

Money, government grants and funding

Overcome costs borne by members/fund raising

Long term commitment and funding for the environment, programs and education

Problem/recognition of uncounted cost of educational engagement with community

via volunteer organisations instead of seeing volunteers as bureaucratic KPI Free

asset. Comments like increase your volunteers by 10%

9 (14)

Systemic / Organisational support

Support from my own organisation (the bureaucracy)

I want to be connected to the system that will make a difference to what we are trying

to do – Education, health, environment departments

Higher profile with council

Long term planning (strategic) for environment and sustainability

Award and encouragement for industry leaders - being valued

9 (14)

Time

Time

Time to do a program properly, realistic, measureable

7 (11)

Local media/advertising / Getting the message Out

Support from local media

Highlight positive messages and community champions

5 (9)

Ongoing professional development 2 (3)


38

Ongoing training (regulations, legislation, technologies)

Ongoing support and training to turn enviro officers into educators and change agents

Other

Flexibility - go to the community rather than the community come to us

Exposure to working with young people

More/greater access to target audience

UWS students to visit centres-recruit them into environmental pathways (messages

and methodologies in society)

4 (6)

Priority needs

The Inner Western Sydney Focus Group was asked to prioritise their support needs and to

offer for discussion their single most important need. These were:

More financial resourcing - insufficient funding, money,

Needing more volunteers,

Language education, support to get the message across to non-English speakers,

Mobilising partnerships and connections with other organisations and

Having time to access information about sustainability education programs, resources,

case studies already available through the internet (e.g. Sustainability Reading Hub)

This priority list from the educators themselves confirms findings from other research about

the community sustainability education sector (Somerville & Green, 2013). While

community sustainability initiatives are emerging worldwide as a source of innovative

responses to urgent planetary problems, the sector is the most poorly resourced and the least

understood. The location of highly innovative teaching and learning, community

sustainability education is an essential source of innovation for the formal education sector. It

is the most efficient and cost effective form of sustainability engagement in terms of the

potential of local partnerships, local networks, and the ability to mobilise committed

volunteers. The project has identified the unique place-based nature of sustainability

educators‟ work and the importance of building connections across the sector to leverage

momentum for transformational change. Educators identified the proliferation of information

on the web but welcomed the opportunity for authentic face to face connections and

information sharing as essential to their own professional development.

These research findings are limited to the perspectives of the 25 educators who participated in

the focus groups in the western Sydney region. The project is ongoing, however, in the sense

that the sustainability educators are connected to community members through the

community forums conducted in Stage 2 of the project. It is also ongoing in the sense that the

Our Place project will be extended to other regions in NSW. The findings about the work of

these community sustainability educators in each different region will add cumulative weight

to our understanding of their work in engaging their communities to look after their local

places.

LIST OF APPENDICES

Appendix 1: List of Acronyms ................................................................................................. 40

Appendix 2: Invitation Email................................................................................................... 41

Appendix 3: Story Maps and Pedagogical Practices: The Educators‟ Discussions ................. 42

Appendix 4: In-depth Analysis of Individual Story Maps ...................................................... 56

Appendices

40

Appendix 1: List of Acronyms

A2E

2 Australian Association of Environmental Education

ACF/AABR Australian Conservation Foundation/ Australian Association of Bush

Regenerators

ATA Alternative Technology Centre

BMt Blue Mountains

CALD Culturally and Linguistically Diverse

CER Centre for Educational Research (UWS)

CLM Contaminated Land Management

CSIRO Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation

GWS Greater Western Sydney

HEN Hawkesbury Environmental Network

HRN Hawkesbury Rainforest Network

HH Hawkesbury Harvest

HSC The Higher School Certificate

LGA Local Government Authority

LGSA Local Government and Shires Association of NSW

NGO Non-Government Organisation

OHE Office of Environment and Heritage,

PhD Doctor of Philosophy (degree)

RCE Regional Centre of Expertise (United Nations)

SEIFA Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas

TAFE Technical and Further Education

TTA Transition Towns Australia

UN RCE United Nations Regional Centre of Expertise in Education for

Sustainable Development

UWS University of Western Sydney

Appendices

41

Appendix 2: Invitation Email

Do you want to better engage your community in looking after the local environment?

Are you based in Western Sydney, the Hunter or the Illawarra?

The University of Western Sydney, the Hunter Wetlands Centre and the Office of

Environment and Heritage invite you to share your story at a regional Our Place for

Educators focus group. The results of the focus groups will be used to develop regional

activities to support those who engage the community in looking after the environment.

Who can participate in Our Place for Educators?

The focus groups are for people who conduct environmental/sustainability education (paid

and volunteer) that helps the community to get involved in looking after the environments of

Western Sydney, the Hunter or the Illawarra region. Participants might be from local

government, a business that has a community engagement project or a volunteer with a group

that has environmental engagement activities for the community (eg Landcare).

What will participants do?

From September to October 2012 up to 60 people in each region will participate in small

focus groups to discuss community engagement about the environment and share stories. The

focus groups will be held mid afternoon at a convenient location in each area. The focus

groups will specifically look at how educators are reaching across the community including

people from multicultural backgrounds, businesses, Aboriginal communities, early childhood,

youth, families and schools and also across a range of environmental issues.

All focus group participants in a region are then invited to a regional forum in November -

December, where the findings will be presented and future directions that can support

educators are discussed.

Our Place for Educators is part of the ongoing Our Place project. This aims to help the

broader community to get involved in looking after the local environment through forums

and events. Participants are also invited to be part of this project.

Interested?

To participate in a focus group please send an email to: [email protected] by

Monday 13 August.

In your email please include:

your name, phone and preferred email address

the region that you work in (Western Sydney, Illawarra or the Hunter)

a paragraph that tells us a bit about the kind of community engagement that you do.

Information received will be used by project partners for the purpose of invitation to the

focus groups only. For further information call Sue Burton on 8837 6007.

Please pass on this invitation and thank you for your interest.

Our Place for Educators

A collaboration between the Regional Centre of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development –

Greater Western Sydney, the Centre of Educational Research UWS, the Hunter Wetlands Centre and the

Office of Environment and Heritage.

Appendices

42

Appendix 3: Story Maps and Pedagogical Practices: The Educators’ Discussions

The educators‟ stories included below are extracts from the transcript

stories that accompanied their maps. These stories followed the

production of story maps, which allowed the educators to spatially

represent the place of their work and the communities and agencies

with whom they engage within that space. So in this sense the stories

are produced from the visual/spatial mapping rather than the other way

around, beginning with words. The analysis of the story maps

themselves is included in Appendix 2 but in a sense they are a means

to enable educators to conceptualise the place of their work and the

nature of their work spatially. A selected number of story maps are

included as examples of how the visual and spatial mapping enabled

the stories to be told. The educators‟ stories are presented according to

the three focus groups in which they participated as the geographical

clustering was the most significant means of categorizing the stories.

De-identification of the participating educators follows the coding procedure outlined on

page 9 of this Report.

Outer Western Sydney Focus Group

O-4-1: Bush Regeneration Officer

Place

I work for Hawkesbury Council so what I have tried to do is encapsulate the map of

the Hawkesbury LGA and I think that the river‟s quite important and it‟s tributary

because I said the Hawkesbury River so I started with Penrith because the LGA

comes in at Wiseman‟s Ferry. So there‟s all the smiley faces of all the Bushcare

groups, I‟m the Council‟s Community Bushcare Officer. So there‟s the Grose River,

there‟s Redbank Creek, Kurrajong Creek, Colo River, Webb‟s Creek and McDonald

River. They‟re systems through the Kurrajong and before that transition … where it‟s

a bit hilly and a bit flat and then the Hawkesbury Community Nursery that green

plant there and that‟s the smiley face as well, the community volunteers that work

there.


I do bushland regeneration where people do bush regeneration in natural areas and

usually let the bush dictate what it wants to do. With the young kids, like with the

scouts, people who want to get their badges and so on, but primarily its retirees.

We‟ve got an Aboriginal group here but non-Aboriginal people are more than more

than welcome – at Lower Portland.

O-2-1: Volunteer Co-ordinator, Hawkesbury Harvest

So this is our vista out here the Hawkesbury River and the important thing for me in

the communities I work with and what I do is, the positioning of this area, this place

with the urban and Sydney‟s development and particularly the reasons why the

interest group that I work with, Hawkesbury Harvest, came about in the first place,

which was urban development, the pressure on farmland for housing, the situation of

Appendices

43

farmers with the food system and the pressure of development with the dominance of

the retail chains in basically wiping out agriculture. I work for the University, the

Bringing Knowledge to Life thing was what they always did, my area of research is

rural communities and tourism but I activate that research through Hawkesbury

Harvest.


The kinds of groups we work with are rural community primarily through Harvest

and the peri-urban residents that live out in this particular part of Sydney.

Addressing issues of quality of life, food supply, food quality, food excess and equity.

Those original big agendas that are all linked to obesity and all those things. What‟s

really important to most of the groups that we work with, are livelihoods, the

importance of the issues in the Sydney basin about development and the way food

systems work, sustainability and particularly the landscape out there. And in this

place, Hawkesbury [campus of UWS], the heritage landscape out here, both

indigenous and the farming and European heritage that is here and is rapidly

disappearing with one set of the landscape coming in over the top of others all the

time. This here represents the role we play in trying to activate the urban to the

cause, giving them an understanding about being educated about the issues.

O-1-1: Education Officer, Mt Tomah Botanical Gardens

We‟re out here at Mt Tomah, so we get lots of communities coming to us, but we‟re

also allowed to go out to communities and we have communities coming up to us.

We run things like workshops, people like Eric come and help us deliver. We also

have Aboriginal community coming up and teaching about plants, teaching TAFE,

schools, universities coming to that place. We also are allowed to go out,

occasionally, so I‟ll work with Hawkesbury Community, the Blue Mountains

Community and the Lithgow Communities, with the power stations out there. Lots of

things with school gardens, growing plants, so that they have a sense of their school

place, or their community place. The Darug ladies will come up, I took the out

harvesting yams, they didn‟t know how to identity the yams but we went out there

and we found all these different yams.


We just got out and explore the landscape when we‟re at Tomah, or if it‟s, if I‟m

going to their place we look at their place and try and work out how their place

works or how their connections within their place and how the plants all work the

landscape. So if we go in there and work out how do we design a garden? So draw

some pictures like this and work out the garden will work, that‟s for the aboriginal

community.

We run orderly treasure hunts, self guided, for families, that‟s been running now for

10 years, which is low cost. $3 they get a treasure map and it‟s like an eco trail every

week, it‟s always different, there‟s messages embedded in there. And kids go and

they‟re actually running around the garden, like trying to find the next thing and

they‟re learning about things.

O-2-2: Earthcare Co-ordinator

Hawkesbury Earthcare Centre over here, we rent that from the University, we‟ve

been there about 21 years and we fly under the radar, mostly, and that is how we‟ve

been able to survive. There‟s a lot of things happening and all of a sudden it is in the

spotlight. Earthcare is its own little culture in that it‟s a small group, it‟s a tribal

nature, it‟s Henry Doubleday‟s Research and the ATA so it‟s 2 organisations come

together on the site and rent the land off the uni. So we get cheap rent, but of course

- and this is where we sit here in the centre, so I put us in the centre. So we connect

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university, UWS is there, I think we offer a lot of benefit to UWS, mainly students but

also to the staff and people who are in there – there‟s actually 10 students over there

working on gardens just, it‟s just taken off at the moment. So but there‟s been times

over the 20 years when there‟s been no-one there for 6 weeks in a row too, so it‟s

very much low budget kind of thing. But the other context we work in too of course,

is in the Hawkesbury area because we are local sort of thing and we‟re getting a

reputation there too and a lot of people know the centre and in indeed we‟re dealing

with technological ATA issues, like solar power and things too. But the organic

growing side of things, we‟ve got a bit of bushland now too and permaculture, so it‟s

a bit of everything, and then we attract people from all over, the Hawkesbury River

is here of course too, sense of place, geographic, it‟s a major geographic icon of the

area I think. And of course, the city‟s here on the horizon too, that‟s looming out

there.


… the globe is here to of course, and we relate to that too, the RCE. A lot of things

we identify with are global problems anyway too over population and waste and

pollution and decreasing agriculture and decreasing natural environment and all

that sort of stuff too so we obviously have that in the back of our mind. And also

there‟s other direct links too like of course with the Botanic Gardens, I work there,

but there‟s a connection in terms of plant knowledge and stuff too. Within here

there‟s a closer connection with the Hawkesbury Rainforest Network which of course

I‟m involved with as well too, which focusses on people identifying their own plants

in their area too. But the Centre itself is a bit of a model, I actually started the

Earthcare Centre with a group of likeminded people. We‟re not trying to be all things

to all people, but provide a place where people can have experiential learning. So

but there‟s links too –I see ourselves as part of a node on a network which means

any weaknesses we have can actually be directed to other people.

O-2-3: Co-ordinator, Hawkesbury Environment Network (HEN)

Mine‟s been a bit of a journey from the beginnings up here where I lived in the Blue

Mountains and was influenced by role models very early in the piece. The greens are

actually places significant to the way that I thought about ecosystems and the

origins are my formal work. I‟m now down here under that retirement line and the

trajectory off the page if you like. So the formal stuff with university where I started

off in Vet Science then went to CSIRO then became a school teacher, then that all

changed when I reared 2 children, and became tied down to what was happening on

my own place of 20 acres, looking after that up in Kurrajong. And that‟s actually

where the big change happened for me, and I became extremely bored and joined the

Australian Plant Society which I focussed on and that became unsatisfactory

because people were just doing plants and identifying things so I became involved in

other eco stuff.

On this side of retirement I‟ve realised that what I‟m really focussing on is people

actually, not place. I‟m involved in several different places still Kurrajong, Little

Weenie Creek, Redbank Creek down in North Richmond, Bowen Mountain where I

live now. And still to some extent the Blue Mountains because I‟m tracking back

through my history where we actually lived, next door to what I think was the Gully.

And that‟s where my grandparents lived, so the Gully‟s significant because I‟ve

always thought I was part Aboriginal in a sort of an inner way. Anyway,

organisations, now I suppose the big focus now is Hawkesbury Environment

Network which is an umbrella group and brings in the different organisations that

Eric referred to.

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I think mine‟s a timeline, in my own life.


North Richmond for instance, is very much an urbanised version of what used to be

an area like Kurrajong. And if you look at it, it‟s very unplanned, it‟s just grown, it‟s

bulging at the seams, it‟s got a huge lot of really disaffected people. And so the

engagement with them is going to have be quite different to just identifying plants

and going and doing a bit of bush regen, and so the idea is to develop packages of

engagement and I‟ve been trialling those over the last 3 years in different areas, to

bring groups together.

O-1-2: Aboriginal education officer, Echo Point Tourism

The large circle represents country and these represent the various groups within the

country. And so I‟ve worked for the country, I get a chance to deliver, have some

input into various groups that are all working for the same good cause … there‟s

Bush Care, we‟ve got an Aboriginal Organisation, National Parks, visitors to the

place, special interest groups, environment groups, local councils, State Government

groups, education, all these, they‟re all within, within the country like I say, and they

overlap at different times. What I get the chance to do sometimes is just connect

people, and it‟s all – I mean social justice and the environmental outcomes to me are

the same, we work for those. We want a healthy community, sustainable one, I get a

chance to share with people that we have a heritage of good custodianship of

country, and it‟s not the short term aims that we often have to abide by these days.

And so the outer circle actually is the ancestors, the people gone before us, this is us

here and then the ones that come up behind us are the children. And these have to be

– these are all part of our identity and they have to be taken into consideration and

we do make decisions about country and that sort of thing.


So I get a - lots of opportunities to share that with people and to know that we, my

real theme at the moment is that, human beings fit beautifully on this planet, or can

do. And that Aboriginal ancestors – we‟re lucky in Australia we‟ve got Aboriginal

history that has shown us that human beings can live on the planet without trashing

the place and I explain to people that‟s a really important. And one of the school

teachers a few years ago alerted me to the fact that whereas my generation one

before us, grew up in fear we‟re going to blow each other up with a bomb. She

pointed out that the kids these days, young people often think the environment‟s

going to kill us, and how tragic that? So that‟s why the stuff that we do is got to be

done with hope and purpose.

I work at the Aboriginal Centre at Echo Point. I get 15 minutes to cram in a real

quick message, actually I don‟t even get that, I get 10 minutes, and so it‟s

challenging but you do, even in that 10 minutes if you just present things like people

haven‟t seen it before, you see little lights go on.

I say, that we, that human beings can live in harmony with the environment. I love

to overturn the idea that it was a primitive culture and I explain to people that I

think what‟s happened is, that as this culture‟s been dismissed in the past because it

get‟s mistaken as a primitive culture, I explain to people that it looked that way to

Captain Cook when he arrived, was – he arrived in 1770 and the whole of Australia

was in pristine condition pretty much then. And he‟s assumed that these people have

just arrived themselves, and now we‟ve got the archaeological base, no people have

been living here for 20,000 years before he arrived, and it‟s still just lived in, people

need to know that. They also need to know that human beings lived beautifully with

the other creatures, because in our culture we respect the other animal rights to be

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here, it‟s their home as well, it‟s not just move them out of the way, we‟re here. We

have to work within their rhythms and that sort of thing, so that‟s exciting for people

to reflect on. I also share with them too that, the social possibilities of how human‟s

can live, where there‟s societies and like I say it‟s not a dream, this is normal life

used to be. No rich and poor, no homelessness, no armies, no gaols, like I said, and

then I start to broker that maybe Cook was actually looking at an advanced culture,

not a primitive culture. So they‟re things for people to chew on and take back with

them, but and also a message of hope, I explain that, so by working at the uni here

actually, I learnt that the river‟s far cleaner than it‟s been for 30 years, which is

exciting, it‟s still not safe to swim in anymore.

O-3-1: Agricultural teacher at Catholic College

I suppose mine‟s a little bit of a time story as well. I grew up in the Snowy

Mountains on 3,000 acres and it‟s a very, very harsh piece of land. My father was

one of those mountain men that used to move cattle up into the high reaches, there‟s

a … hut and he passed away in 2006 and he was of the last pasturing people that

used to move cattle up into the high country. But it was a world of monoculture,

very much sheep destroying the earth or sheep providing wool for Australia‟s

betterment. I found my way into education, as an agriculture teacher and an

interesting thing is that, where I‟m at now is a Catholic School but it doesn‟t have a

name beginning with Saint, like St. Marks, St. Pauls, St. Andrews or what have you.

It‟s - and people don‟t recognise it as being a Catholic School because it‟s names

Terra Sancta. And the model of Terra Sancta is, it‟s from the Latin is Sacred Earth.

So the students are indoctrinated right from go that they‟re on sacred earth. And the

college‟s philosophy is, The Way Passes Through This Land. So some Catholic

Schools have, Act Justly, ours is The Way that God Passes Through This Land.


I teach in agriculture to the kids, it‟s based on a lot of permaculture principles and

they really gain a lot from getting their hands dirty in the garden and looking after

chickens: „he‟s identified indigenous and he said, “Well what are you going to tell

me about my land?” And I said, “Well come along.” And I said, “Well a whole lot of

it is about respect for land, this is your place and you can make or be with the land

however you want.” And apart from that, do a little bit of work, some workshops on

permaculture up in the Blue Mountains, but that‟s my, my country story.

O-4-2: Environmental Officer

So I‟ve just recently been employed as a Catchment Officer for the Catchment

Management Authority. And working on a Project for Pathway which is in the

Hawkesbury-Nepean Catchment area. To engage them to become excited about

environmental issues in our – in the catchment and to get them to possibly do some

on ground work, whether that be bush re-generation or … all those kind of things.


But previously I worked at Druitt High School and I – they wanted to engage more

young people in this program. I actually started a horticulture course for disengaged

Aboriginal Youth. It‟s been very successful, we‟ve got kids that we really struggled

with to get into classrooms, to get to either whether getting them into class or getting

them to come to school or they‟d come to school but they wouldn‟t – they‟d just run

around the corridors and get teachers to chase them and think it‟s a good game. And

these kids have just made the majority of them, like 98% of them have just done a

complete turnaround, they‟re engaged in doing ongoing work within the school,

planting trees, and they‟re also, they‟re working with Richmond TAFE - they‟re

running a course, and they‟re doing a Cert 3 in horticulture, so it‟s really good just

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to see the engagement of these young people. And also they‟re learning about their

culture too and about native plants and how they were used and as all the reports

go, we know there‟s a closing the gap report and things like that, that engagement

with culture really improves education and health outcomes for Aboriginal people.

So it‟s really, meant getting kids out of classrooms, and doing hands on activities and

becoming engaged and excited about, not just the environment but about their

culture as well and engagement with elders.

Mid Western Sydney Focus Group

M-1-3: Environmental Officer, Blacktown Council

Spatial mapping of the relationship between eco-social relationships and her work in

sustainability:

In terms of the area that I work in it‟s very diverse in terms of the population and,

also the location and the types of areas that we have in terms of rural versus urban

we‟re quite highly densely populated in the centre of Blacktown, but then we go quite

rural. Unfortunately that will be lost in the next ten years and they are all being

developed, so, a lot of that land will be lost. So it‟s a very high growth area, we have

very high areas of disadvantaged population, but we also have areas of very new

developments which are people that are actually quite wealthy, so it really is a very –

it balances that out in terms of the statistics on the way that people live.

M-1-3 provides a very succinct overview of the peri-urban nature of eco-social relationships

in Mid Western Sydney with increasing development for housing replacing rural land and the

diversity of wealth and poverty between the older densely populated urban areas and the

upwardly mobile young families in new developments.


M-1-3‟s work incorporates the full range of sustainability education from preschool, schools,

resident and community groups and a Coles community program. She sees the purpose of her

sustainability education work as „behaviour change‟ and the Council runs over 30 workshops

a year based on food and environmental and social sustainability. General sustainability

community education programs focus on „re-skilling‟ ranging „from topics on how to make

your own bread, how to make your own cheese to how to build a garden, to how to save

money on energy bills‟ with breadmaking being so popular they typically have a waiting list

of 80-100 people. They run five festivals a year and are currently preparing a prospectus for

community groups. The Council runs preschool and school programs with an annual schools

grants program, an environmental expo, regional catchment field days and kid‟s green day

out.

Social sustainability programs with new migrant communities include „very basic

sustainability on things like, what is the rubbish bin for, what are the taps and where does the

water come from to, how to grow your own food‟. The migrant groups include many people

who have newly arrived from refugee camps including Sudanese, Sri Lankan Tamils and

Bhutanese people. They run basic sustainability programs for these groups with a focus on

food – from how to shop in a supermarket and cook the food they can buy there, to growing

your own food. Food security is a significant issue with „disadvantaged groups‟ so they

incorporate „community kitchens and access to fresh food and vegetables that are affordable‟.

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The Council has teamed up with other agencies to provide cooking classes and conducts their

own internal training for sustainability educators. They train community sustainability leaders

through the Coles program.

M-6-2: freelance consulting to Councils

I live in Dural which is a very sort of peri-urban with encroaching development type

arrangement, and it‟s going from a very rural sort of very grass rootsy kind of food

growing area to a very wealthy, you know - lawns and watering systems, and very

not much concentration on sustainability in that area at all, and people are quite -

not socially isolated but isolated in a community sense because they‟re wealthy and

they‟ve got a huge amount of land and they‟re very successful and all these sorts of

things, and that‟s the farmer with his horse getting sort of pushed out, and I‟m seeing

that every day, new bits of land being.


M-6-2 works as a freelance consultant conducting community workshops about organic food,

soil, water based on prior horticulture degree. She is trying to secure permanent work in the

sustainability area and is a current Social Ecology student. (Another person in the focus

group offered M-6-2 a job!)

M-3-2: agricultural teacher in a Catholic college

M-3-2 expresses the same peri-urban issues that the previous two participants have raised

with the added agenda of the loss of farming and food growing knowledge.

… many of the students that we have are urban based, and therefore their

understanding of the whole process of producing the food and in a sustainable

manner, looking at the environmental and ethical issues of getting the food on the

plate. It gives them a chance to explore that through agriculture, so I see agriculture

as a good vehicle.


In order to achieve this he links into extensive networks of other schools, commercial

operations such as Castlereagh Feeds, and local community groups such as Rotary. His

(place) pedagogical practice involves understanding the geological, geographical and

historical characteristics of the Cumberland Plain in relation to its formation and human uses

over time. He engages with the Council and White Water in tree planting and other

environmental activities.

M-1-5: Senior educator officer, Sydney Catchment Authority

The spatial mapping of M-1-5‟s work is quite different because of the role that water plays in

history, in people‟s lives, and in its movement through water supply distribution that connects

people who live across the whole of Sydney to the major catchment at Warragamba Dam.

…we manage all the dams and the pipelines and the canals for the water supply for

all of Sydney and Wollongong, and parts of the Blue Mountains. So we‟re a very –

we‟re a new organisation but we‟re also a very old organisation, as well in that

pretty much the history of what we‟re about, the assets that we manage, they go back

well over 100 years, and in fact, that‟s a sustainability story from the get-go because

the very first supply to Sydney was the tank stream in the city and that catchment

became incredibly polluted and no longer a viable water source, then there was

other resources, wetlands and so forth exploited for water supply and population

outgrew them and, eventually they had to develop dams and weirs on different sorts

of river systems around greater Sydney, and a lot of, I suppose sustainability

environmental issues associated with them.

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M-1-5‟s work involves educating primary and high school students at the interpretative centre

at Warragamba Dam about the water cycle and water efficiency (primary) and catchment

management issues (high school). The students come from all over Sydney and about 80-90%

come from the Sydney metropolitan area. They also teach online for HSC chemistry and

biology and he points out that their visitor numbers are about 7,000 but their online hits are

about 20,000 per year. Their onsite pedagogies are place-based with a „Water for Life‟

exhibition and a visit to the dam and a state of the art classroom in a new visitor centre.

M-1-6: Senior Education Officer, Sydney Catchment Authority

M-1-6 is based in Penrith and her education responsibilities are community focussed.


They offer community based conservation programs such as Streamwatch, in partnership

with other agencies and have a community grants program. They have a strong focus on

people who live in the rural communities in the immediate catchment area with a Rural

Living handbook for those moving from urban to peri-urban or rural areas. A major project is

the Sustainable Grazing program because „what‟s happening on the farms within the

catchment is impacting on the water and the quality of the drinking water that we‟ve got. So,

it is based on behaviour change that we‟ve got science that sits behind it and informs it. They

offer 16 courses in this program, 14 of which are short (half day) courses and two are long

courses run over 6-12 months. These courses are offered to both commercial farmers and

hobby farmers.

M-1-7: Cleanaway Waste Services Education Officer

… my map shows us sort of being in the middle, like our depot is sort of … location,

and then we‟re travelling out to all the different areas across Sydney metro and

we‟re providing specific services to each of those different councils and we have

different contractual requirements for each of those areas, as well. I‟m probably a

little bit more concentrating around the inner west with some of the specific projects

I do, but we do also work with Blacktown – sorry, Blacktown that was my attempt at

your logo. So, we have a number of different education programs that we need to

tailor for each of our customers, depending on the community and the services that

we are providing in those areas.


M-1-7‟s work involves school education programs with pre-schools, primary and secondary

schools and community workshops related to using the services correctly, to avoid

contamination. They also teach people about farming, composting, shopping correctly, to

minimise waste. They use a combination of face to face with residents, educational materials,

and public education strategies such as stickers on bins.

M-6-1: Freelance consultant

My involvement is actually is fairly organic compared to most people here, who have

got a steady role. I have my own business heading called Eco … which has a little

side-line of educating for environmental responsibility. And in doing that over the

years I have done a lot of facilitation of workshops at Blacktown Council, at

Balkham Hills Council, Hawkesbury and a few other different places. That has

lessened somewhat over the years, as the councils have taken on more of their own

education programs. I used to do a lot more for Blacktown council before a lot of

their own staff had taken over a lot of the workshops which involved composting,

worm farming, gardening and those sorts of things, attending festivals.

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M-6-1 has been involved with writing the national curriculum sustainability

objectives across the different key learning areas, particularly the arts. She sees

„teaching and learning about sustainability in the environment as something that is

experienced, something that‟s hands-on, and that‟s why I like to work outside‟. She is

interested in incorporating Aboriginal knowledge into her work: „she and I are

actually at Longneck we‟re doing interpretive trail to try and introduce the kids as

they walk in, because they‟ve got to walk in about 300 or 400 metres from the road;

to try and introduce an understanding of the aboriginal terms for the local flora and

fauna, and to ask some of her – some of her interesting things, you know, maybe like,

did you know that aboriginal people used to paperbark for nappies and things like

that, you know, sort of things that might stick in their brain‟.

M-1-4: Sustainability Officer, Penrith Council

I‟m the sustainability education officer at Penrith Council. We‟re probably quite

similar in a lot of ways to Blacktown Council, but kind of different in others. Again,

we‟re on the peri-urban fringe, so we‟ve got some rural areas but, also levels of

development as well, probably got a bit more rural than Blacktown do. We have a

growing population infrastructure issues and all those associated issues as well.

We‟ve got areas of quite high disadvantage and financially well off areas as well; so,

quite a diverse community. Probably not quite as culturally diverse as Blacktown

would be, though. But it creates a very kind of challenging and interesting

environment to work in.

One of the challenges is people go, oh sustainability that‟s your department. What

we‟re really trying to promote is, no sustainability‟s something that everyone should

be doing and it‟s just what you should be doing as common practice - it shouldn‟t be

something special, as such.


M-1-4 is responsible for about 10 workers in different departments who are involved

in sustainability education including a schools network with grants and funding,

biodiversity, water quality, environmental health (storm water program), waste

education, people looking after bushcare and landcare groups, waste education

officers dealing with composting and worm farming, managing the sustainability of

council facilities (sporting fields, childcare centres). They run lunch time workshops

for staff eg veggie gardening, sustainable fashion (op shop shopping), activities such

as mobile collection in which a chicken got donated to a family in Laos for every two

mobiles collected. They run community events such as sustainability festivals which

the library co-ordinates eg water photography wall; home power saving program,

supporting local permaculture group.

Inner Western Sydney

I-1-10: Environmental educator, Parramatta Council

So I-1-10 and I‟m from Parramatta Council. So this is me down the bottom. And

basically, I guess the 3 parts of my life. One is obviously my council work. Second is

my involvement in Guides and Scouts. And the third is my own business. So

obviously my – and then they sort of all intertwine. So my council work can work

with schools, work with community groups, work with - sort of with Guides and

Scouts - and works obviously building internal relationships. And then Guides and

Scouts works with all these. And then my business works with all these. So I guess

they all – my business does marine education in schools. So it‟s environmental

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education but from a different perspective. So they all very much intertwine, make

me me.


Building relationships, frustrated because of short term contract work.

I-6-3: Volunteer environmental and community educator

I‟m actually wearing different hats and I‟ve actually worked in my heart space. I‟m

very, very, very deep in environmental area because I believe that we all have one

home, one planet that we share no matter what colour we are, where we come from.

We all actually have one home. And I‟m also actually very passionate about

environment - not only environment but the animals as well. I believe that so far and

for a long time that animals actually have no voice. They‟re actually – people can

just eat them, kill them or whatever, doing to them. And even actually inhabit their

homes - cut down the trees and harm them and hurt them with no reasons. And I

think that‟s actually – it‟s not right. So I‟m actually passionate about that animal

area. What else? I‟m trying to actually start my own business because I‟ve actually

been doing cooking workshops, doing workshops on sustainability and various

things. … my business is called Whole System Health – it‟s not about one person but

it actually start from one person. And it actually start from the heart space. I

believe that if one is actually not healthy physically and mentally, then we can‟t

actually step out and help our family, help our friends, help the community and leave

alone the animals. So it‟s very important that one is actually happy within one‟s self

and finds peace within one‟s self.


See above. Also teaches Tai Chi, vegetarian cooking, etc.

I actually would say that from connecting with nature. And the message I get is

actually from the nature because I believe that we actually – our body – we actually

have 5 elements. Basically the earth is actually our bone and our flesh and the water

– our bodies actually have 75% of water. And our earth actually has 75% of water.

And the air – we share – our lung is actually – we share the air, the carbon dioxide

and the air with the trees, with the forest. So we are part of that 5 elements. And the

other one is the sun, the heat. Our body – actually if we don‟t have heat in our body,

we‟ll die. This body won‟t actually survive. So if we don‟t have the sun, then this is

actually – there won‟t be any life in this world.

I-1-11: Environmental educator, Auburn City Council

I work with a whole bunch of different people - different types, guises, all that kind of

stuff. Part of my role is environmental education and that goes towards a lot of

different things - so trying to clean up our local waterways, trying to reduce energy

consumption and just all the other aspects of general sustainability. I also

implement hard devices - so water saving things like water tanks, solar panels,

energy saving devices. And I also write a bit of policy when I get some time.


Previously we‟ve done environmental education through handing out pamphlets and

ads in the paper. And you don‟t get much uptake from that. Our local paper has got

an 8% readership and a third of our population in our community is from a non-

English speaking background. But that doesn‟t mean they don‟t understand English.

So when we‟ve gone out to do different language stuff, the uptake is not necessarily

there either, especially when you‟re putting it in a paper. Because – I don‟t know – it

just hasn‟t worked. Anyway, so we‟ve got this specialist environmental educator in

for a short time. She‟s doing a great job and she‟s re-jigging the way we address

environmental education in the community. So try and do less of the work ourselves

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and link with community groups that are already doing that work and need a bit of

money. Because we‟ve got the money but we‟re people poor. Once this lady goes,

there‟ll be 2 people in my unit.

I-1-8: Resource Recovery Education Officer

I work at Bankstown Council as the resource recovery education officer, which is

waste and recycling in a you beaut way. I‟ve only just sort of done my drawing

looking at my career, I guess. And that‟s only because I‟m so passionate about my

career. So my drawing is the blue ECC tower at the centre of it all. I‟m working with

our community on waste and recycling and resource recovery. So it‟s a 3 bin system

of our red, green and yellow bins. We have a 192,000 population, 62,000 households

which we‟re providing a waste service for - those SUDS and MUDS – single-unit

dwellings and multi-unit dwellings. 127 community languages - our 3 main cultural

groups are our Arabic population, our Vietnamese and our Chinese population. The

way I‟m engaging with our residential community is through planning, looking at

development applications and the actual infrastructure that they‟re using for new

development, developing the education programs and the resources that go with

that, and doing community consultation along the way. I‟m guided by the waste

hierarchy of avoid, reuse, recycle and dispose.


We‟ve been able to show that through the way that we are rolling out the program,

it‟s about giving feedback directly to households of bin inspections. It‟s the direct

feedback of: “Well done. You‟ve gone well this week.” Or, “Oh no, we found these

wrong items in your bin.” And we‟ve been able to find that we‟ve got lasting

behaviour change with just that. So yeah, so Recycle Right is kind of the big baby

that I‟ve been working on. Then I‟ve got links to all our industry groups - Waste

Management Association, LGSA, South Western and West of Sydney Rock areas.

Then I‟ve got our contractor arrangements. So as far as service provision, we work

with VITA, Clean Away, Busy, Wellco. And Council also owns and operates a tip –

Kelso Landfill. And then the whole other side of my job is contract management,

facilitation of sessions. So I go out and do presentations to community groups,

including Bankstown TAFE to some of their communities there. Program

development – I consider myself a bit of a communications specialist. And then our

event management – so we‟re running events that deal with electronic waste,

chemicals, national recycling week, Clean Up Australia Day, compost and mulch

giveaways. And then we‟ve got other programs – the hazardous waste, clothing,

food, sharps, and mattresses. So massive job but I love it and I‟m passionate about

it.

I-7-2: Owner/Director, Childcare centre

I‟m a director and the owner for 2 childcare centres in Auburn area, which is Love

& Care Childcare Centre and Kids‟ Early Education. I‟m not a very creative person

but it‟s called Love & Care so that‟s why I drew the love heart in the middle. My

husband is my inspiration after God obviously. He‟s my support in everything that I

do in my life and he‟s always there for me. We actually 3 childcare centres. We‟ve

got actually nine different languages in our service, the children all are kids from

non-English background. And there‟s a lot of them with autism and special need

children at the moment in our services, which is really hard for the staff and for us.

So attending a lot of professional development.


Sustainability is a big issue in children‟s services at the moment. We just started this

year because I-7-1 dragged me to a course that we did together about sustainability.

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And we did actually a digital story, me and her. And everyone had their own way.

And I did it on global warming and it‟s on YouTube actually. And it was excellent to

see the different things happening in the world. So I was really interested in

sustainability and the issues that are happening around us. We organised a worm

farm. I-7-1 was – she had the big hand in organising things because I was obviously

… organised a worm farm for the children. We had actually a small garden for the

service. We did the bins – the 3 type of bins that we used for the kids for different

type of recycling things that we used. We‟re using a lot of – on the internet facilities,

so it helps the sustainability. We are dealing with Energy Australia too to get some

information for the children in how to save electricity and water. And we‟re dealing

through Auburn Council with the same things. I was interested in attending this

course actually, or this project, just to see how can we get more ideas about

sustainability. And how can we pass it to the parents and to the children from a

young age because whatever you teach them from young age, they going to grow

according to that. I do speak for disadvantages and we do have disadvantages in our

services. So I am a person and I do help out of our community in organising

different issues.

So basically as one of our aims to how we‟re going to educate, it was mainly

educating the families. And we thought about how are we going to get to the

families – is through the children. And so by bringing sustainable practices within

our services, then those children will go home and follow through at home by saying,

“Mum, we don‟t need that – the bedroom light on,” and so forth. And talking about

those sort of things. And they‟re all learning now because of the introduction to the

recycling bins – about reducing, reusing and recycling.

I-7-1: Owner/Director, Childcare Centre

I‟ll start off with my family on this side. This is my home and this is where I feel

comfortable and relaxed and time out. So then my 3 children – I‟ve got 3 girls. And

basically they‟re in tutoring, so we‟re networking through their tutoring. I‟m also a

consultant – a childcare consultant and help childcare services open even family day

care services. I also am the delegate of the OSTAG team because of my children.

Also the mosque is another place because my belief is Islam and so the mosque is

part of our family and life. The gym as well - being healthy and eating healthy. Now

started a 6 week challenge with boot camp and it‟s doing its bit. I‟m going out more.

I think the more we‟re going into - learning about sustainable practices and having

to enjoy outdoors more. And that‟s why I‟ve got the sky up there – and getting some

vitamin D through the sun – has been one of those key focuses that I‟ve changed in

my life. Because of a lot of it is technology and my children are on their iPods and

iPads and any other i-things.


I do have 3 childcare services - one at Busby, one at Guildford and one in Granville

area. Now, they‟re 3 locations and in saying that, in those 3 different places there

are children from different cultures. The main – in Busby, main cultures and

languages spoken is English and Anglo-Australian. However, all the programs are

very much similar. The main language in Guildford would be Arabic and Indian. And

in Granville, it‟s Vietnamese, Arabic, Turkish and African. We involve the children in

excursions and going out. … we actually get everyone to value and respect other

people‟s cultures and a very strong Aboriginal awareness. And we have – as she was

talking about – SDN who are an inclusion support. So we have a lot of children with

disabilities as well in our services. And we actually get them out and perform in

festivals. And they‟ll be performing on 1st of November which is the language and

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54

literacy. They‟ve also already been at the multicultural [festival] – they did a

multicultural dance, 4 different languages. And so we just – that‟s basically what we

do. And then we‟ve got people that come into our service, like the local community,

like the ambulance, fire brigade, police, nurse, the local doctors. I mean they all

influence what goes on in life. I mean children, I believe, learn through not just the

interactions they have with people but also the environment. So all of that has been

put in.

We did do a course, a Living Green course, together and a project on sustainable

practices. And we all had to do our own project and set up our own policy on what

our thoughts and our values and philosophies. And what inspired me about it – I

don‟t know much about climate change. I really didn‟t know much about climate

change. But yeah, when I did it, it opened my eyes to a lot of other new things. So

now I‟ve got a new philosophy altogether now. We‟ve introduced, as she was saying,

the recycling bins, a worm farm. This is our compost bin. We also did a fruit and

veggie garden that children can taste – they grow it themselves and they eat from it

as well. And they‟re going home and taking those practices back and saying, „Mum,

we should be doing recycling. We should be doing composting‟. And they‟re

enjoying the worms. Yeah, we went to Auburn Botanical Garden and we showed

them how the ducks and the rubbish in the duck‟s river – those kind of things they

we‟re basically doing. We‟re also one of the – we were in the New South Wales

Children – the finalist in the New South Wales Children‟s Week for best cultural

program, best director and best weekly program. And I think I‟ve covered all that I

do.

I-7-3: Early childhood education worker (same story as I-7-1 and I-7-2)

I-1-8: Environmental education, Bankstown Council

I work at Bankstown Council with I-1-9, in a different department. I work in the

environment and education team as part of the sustainable development unit. Going

back, everyone was talking about their history and where they‟re from and their

past, I guess. I grew up the Blue Mountains and I‟ve always had a passion for

nature and protecting nature, the bush. And I believe that that should be there

forever and for everyone to enjoy. So that‟s my passion for the environment. And

then my last position, I worked at Ashfield Council on a project called the GreenWay

Sustainability Project which was a partnership between 4 councils. So there was

Leichhardt, Canterbury, Marrickville and Ashfield Council. And we had a number

of sustainability projects to do over 3 years, funded by the state government. And

one of the projects I worked on was a schools project with local primary schools.

And back to what you were saying about education, working with kids and education

centres – I now believe, hence why I‟m in this role, that is really, really vital to work

with children, to get environmental messages across early on. Because when you‟re

older and working with adults, it‟s a lot harder to convince people-


Actually in my last position, I, with a working group of people from other councils,

state government, community and a number of different people – we worked together

to develop a resource called GreenWay Sustainability Program. Anyway, it‟s been

adapted by the Department of Education and Training to be used as a professional

teacher‟s developing tool. They‟ve changed the name now. I think it‟s – if you look

up …, it‟s called - … credited. I think it‟s called Using Your Local Environment as

an Outdoor Classroom, Connecting Children to Their Local Environment.

Basically getting teachers and students out of the classroom and learning in the

outdoors. And not getting on a bus and going a few hours away but exploring what‟s

Appendices

55

in your schoolyard or what‟s down the road, what‟s in your backyard. Bankstown

people say to me, “Bankstown is so urban‟ and you‟ve got the Georges River and

some of the beautiful outdoor areas – I‟m amazed. And this morning I actually did a

presentation for a school group from the Georges River Grammar School and I

really tried to push to them some of the beautiful natural spaces in Bankstown to go

out and explore. Because often I think people go to the Royal National Park or

Kuringi or the Blue Mountains and sometimes you‟re just looking at what‟s in your

backyard. And with that, I think then they make more of a connection with their

environment because they see it‟s in their backyard and they think, „It‟s mine and I‟m

part of this‟.

It‟s kind of that stewardship and they feel they want to look after it and it‟s kind of

that holistic – I guess that holistic cycle or process. That‟s why I think getting

children connected with their local environment at a young age – getting them – and

the other thing is you‟re getting them out and about. Not just talking in the

classroom or looking at a whiteboard. But getting out and exploring and touching

and feeling and that real authentic learning is really, really important. And knowing

where food comes from and where birds live and when you throw your rubbish on

the ground, where does it end up. And looking at the whole cycle and the whole

system rather than reading about it, is one thing. And even working within Council

and you‟re talking about the area that you work in. But a lot of people have probably

never been out to some of these – the Georges River National Park and … Creek and

some of these other fantastic places. And I don‟t think you get the true feel for the

area until you get out there and do that

.

56

Appendix 4: Indepth Analysis of Individual Story Maps

OUTER WEST PARTICIPANTS

Name Central image Icons & connections Analysis

O-2-2

Earthcare centre with

people around

building encircled by

greenery and bush.

UWS is also written

as central. A field in

the centre

River on the south west

Western Sydney in the north west in black

Globe in the North east

small houses in the south at Richmond

Red web things chaos

Black arrow connections double headed so going in both

directions

Acronyms; ATA/ PDR?A; RCE; HH; HRN; UWS; RGB team

The urban environment is not connected to the

Earthcare centre and is pictured in black. Possibly

seen as a destructive force on the environment

O-4-2 Not done as running

late

O-1-2

Central circle in

yellow with no

writing in this. Solid

on the ring. Three

concentric circles

embracing other

smaller circles in

various colours

Doesn‟t have icons but lists these groups- from centre to periphery

1.Local councils; 2. Special Interest Groups Migrants and art

groups; 3. Visitors; 4. National Parks and Wildlife; 5. State

Officers Educational Institutions, schools UWS etc.; 6.

Environmental groups; 7. Bushcare; 8. Aboriginal Organisation

There is a definite centre but connections are made through

overlapping circles. The overlapping circles are not solid as if

these were temporary constructions in a universe that is infinite. In

these circles are the names of the organisations that have

something stake holding in country

Interesting that concentric circles are bigger and

closer to the centre for those groups that have more

power. This image shows relationships between

aboriginal groups bushcare and NPWS but

environmental groups are located opposite to this

and educational institutions are the furthest away

from everything

O-3-1

People in the centre

with two chickens

and grass and trees

Icons are a cross, the way passes through this land and a green

path or river. A truck? Or outdoor classroom on wheels, a globe

and the people and chickens. Connections are made by arrows in

green. Seems to be more of a process going around in a circle than

linear. People linked to permaculture to a singular person with a

question mark to a blackboard on wheels linked to a globe linked

to Dry plains linked to the river linked to the Blue Mountains and

permaculture again

The small clump of people being central to this

image are integrated with the chickens and the grass

so separation is not desired. There seems to be a

question of the lone person…what will you do?

What is your role. There is a linking to global

environmental concerns. Things are linked but still

very separate. The challenge here seems to be to

link disparate aspects of our world so the work can

be more effective and integrated

O-4-1 Hawkesbury River is

central

Icons are Mount Tomah and Mount Wilson and The Macdonald

Valley and Wisemans Ferry. These are pictured north of the river.

Lots of action in the areas. Bush regen. is

concentrated mostly between the Grose River and

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South of the river is Hawkesbury bushcare and Hawkesbury

community nursery and HIMAG (Hawkesbury, Indian Myna

Action Group). Black crosses are scattered across the map to

indicate where there are groups operating and looking after the

environment. There are also smiley faces in red

Connections are made by the rivers running off the central river.

These are Colo River, Webbs Creek, Redbank Creek, Currency

creek, Grose River and Macdonald River

the Colo River and South side of the Nepean.

Seems to be very much on the ground and practice

oriented. No sense of connections between the areas

and people but the people seem to be happy doing

this kind of work.

O-2-1 Hawkesbury Harvest

with a central tree

pictured

Words surround the HH tree central image these are

Empower; Educate; Activate; Advise; Research; Advocate;

Then further out from the centre are: Schools, schools harvest;

Agriculture Reference Group; HEN; OHN (Office of Hawkesbury

Nepean).

The urban environment is coloured grey and is far away from the

Hawkesbury harvest.

The Peri urban (LGA‟s, Residents) sites between the HH and the

Urban (govt, consumers, Industry, developers)

Farmers, community and the local is written beside the HH tree at

the centre of the story map

Connections are made by a green road or river? And a double

headed arrow connection Hawkesbury Harvest with the Urban

environment. A pink chain links UWS with Hawkesbury Harvest.

A Mountain range is in the background

Hawkesbury Harvest‟s relationship with the Sydney

basin is what is understood as the „local‟.

Landscape is defined by the river system (green

road) that created the basin (mountain range in

background), sustains it and is now where Sydney

exists. The double-headed arrow indicates it is

about dialogue with the city initiated by the country

in Sydney‟s backyard. The dialogue is about Farm

Gate Trail and markets as the most visible

experiential texts Harvest has created.

O-2-3

Central line is a one

way arrow in red and

grey. Like a cliff face

The icons are circles in green 4, orange 5, purple 6, yellow 1.

Inside these are written words such as Redbank, Rivo Kija, Bmts,

uni vetsci, CSIRO, School, Illawarra, Key Role Models, Child

rearing, TAFE CLM, Plant Soc., ACF/ AABR and People,

Ecosystems and HRN

Striking is the word Retirement in large blue letters at the base of

the story map

Connection is by the red central arrow which seems to connect the

past with many circles and groups with the present retirement

phase of O-2-3‟s life which has less circles and some which are

This is a personal story time line that shows many

activities in life but that is distinct from the current

retirement period. In this portioned off section there

are empty circles indicating a difficulty in getting

people involved in potential projects. Considering

HRN was her central concern it is interesting to

note that these are very small and located off to one

side also with empty circles.

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empty.

O-1-1

The Hawkesbury

River, the word

TAFE, Schools,

Stories

3 waratahs are prominently displayed in red and have planting, art

and school next to these.

Lithgow is on the top left and has smoke pollution spilling from

chimneys

Mount Tomah is in the top right corner directly opposite Lithgow

with happy people with the words „it‟s a frog‟ and a leader saying

„this way‟

Walks and Tbars is written under this

Beneath this is The Hawkesbury area with school and workshops

written. A road connects Mount Tomah and the Hawkesbury.

Aboriginal Groups as listed under the Hawkesbury area.

The River is connecting the two sides of the mountains and

connecting the Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury area. A circular

road links the upper mountains plateau with the two sides of the

Blue Mountains and the Hawkesbury. Schools are a linking theme.

Lithgow and the Blue Mountains are connected by the road

Schools are prominent in O-1-1‟s image. Strong

connections with roads linking however Mount

Tomah is way up on top of the hill away from any

action of daily routine like schools. The roads are

places which bring people to him but these school

are not really depicted as connected to each other.

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MID WEST PARTICIPANTS


M-1-4

Box with five

people in this, two

on one side and

three on the other.

This is Penrith City

Council. A line is

under the box all of

this is in brown

1.PCC central box. Under this is council facilities, solar &

water, lighting upgrades, water, Childcare centre; Internal,

brown paper bag, clothing drive, mobile muster Oxfam,

educators working group, official corp.ED., diversity

reference group

2.two people representing state and federal government.

LFHW written under the two people.

3.Schools network, sustainable times, emails

4.Sustainability issues in words: Climate change, food

security, urban growth, population up, biodiversity,

consumption, disadvantage

5.Uws, RCE, student placements, LFHW

6.WSEEN, other councils, DET

7.Tall buildings representing business, EUA, other

sustainability, brown paper bag

8.3 sets of pairs of people representing community groups

Community events

Community workshops; LFHW, greenbins, broad ED, blog,

website, Werrington Creek, energy info sessions,

Photo comp,

Carpool, new resident info night

Community Groups; susty street, permaculture SYD West,

sustainable gardening festival

Lines coming out from the central brown box and in the

bottom corner arrows connecting community groups, events

and workshops

Once again the council is at the centre of the frame

indicating an institutional approach. State and Federal

Government is highly visible in the colour pink while the

community section even though it is quite large is located in

the bottom left corner and is barely visible in grey. The

community sector is linked to its three sections but is not

linked to other aspects of the council work like schools,

childcare centres, government, and business. The state and

federal government dominate the top of the page in bright

pink over the council who must fit into this framework.

There is no link back to Council from community. The work

frame seems crammed with activities and it feels as if these

lists of things to do or influences mean not many are able to

be covered in depth.

M-1-3

The words in pink

Blacktown LGA

Words radiating out from the centre. Those that are larger

are Education, CALD, Sustainability and Behaviour

Change. Education and behaviour changed are linked with

brown arrows in both directions. Education is linked to

preschools. Surrounding Blacktown LGA which is the

centre icon are the words schools, residents, staff, CALD,

Sustainability and education surround the Blacktown area

indicating that these are two concepts that are scaffolds to

the way this educator does her work. However the focus

seems to be centralised in the council, so the institution is

the place to come and experience education and sustainable

practice, rather than the community environment being the

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preschools, urban, high growth area, high areas of

disadvantage, new developments, urban, rural, other

councils and external groups/ agencies. Education

underpins all of this central grouping of words. Up the top

of the frame is sustainability with links to food, social and

environmental. There is a list in the right corner of what

programs I do and these are:

School grants program; Sustainable living workshops;

Enviro expo; Preschool programs; Staff enviro programs;

Community group workshops; RCFD – field days;

Community gardens; CALD education program;

Sustainable living calendar; Sustainable events; Train the

trainer.

Lines radiating out from the central word and then

other lines connecting to show relationships to other words

place. In other words a you come to us approach rather than

a we will come to you approach. There seems to be a top

down approach evident in the term behaviour change, which

indicates external forces to change social behaviour rather

than seek change drawn from ideas circulating within the

community itself. A focus on delivery rather than facilitation

and involvement. A strong relationship between education

and behaviour change located at bottom of the page and

underpinning the philosophy of the council

M-1-7

Garbage truck on a

road

Garbage bins are prominent with the three different

coloured lids yellow, green and red. In the top of the frame

there is a sky scrapper with the word MUDS next to this

and next to this SUDS with two urban houses. In the lower

left hand corner there are several grey roads and circles, the

main one with the HILLS written in this referring to The

Hills District in Baulkham Hills. On the right hand side

there are three smaller hubs of communities with bins. The

lower right hand corner image only has one bin with a green

lid.

The main road is central and is connected to smaller

urban roads and cul de sacs where people live in

communities

The garbage truck goes to the peoples and businesses places

which is contrasted sharply to some of the other story maps

in Outer district LGA. There are many connections via the

roads and these have been grouped into particular

communities. It feels like the work of picking up refuse is

never complete, symbolised in the road that twists off into

the distance. Interestingly there are no trees or bush

landscapes, gardens or yards in the image so there is a

disconnect between where the refuse goes after it is

collected. There is no recycle station pictured.

M-1-6

Money is an image

alongside a heart.

The river is the

central image and

runs from the top of

the page to the

bottom in the centre

Trees are prominent with three taking up 2/3 of the page.

There is a dam beneath the trees and a smaller creek

running through the trees. People, work/farming, family and

money were represented. The word CHANGE is in capitals

and in bright pink is above the table. There is a fence

partitioning off the cows with cow paddys and rain falling.

A fence runs from the cows in the paddocks in the top left

This image is showing the multiple uses of the river

including play and recreation for families, food and farmers

needs all colliding. The problem with cow poo being

leeched into the ground is symbolised as being problematic.

The path linking all of these aspects runs through the natural

bushland, the farmers paddock and back to the table shows

that humans all impact on these aspects and have a stake in

Appendices

61

of the frame hand corner all the way around past the kitchen table and

back to the cows. The river is also seen as the principal

connector

looking after these but that these are not always seen as

being related as these elements are kept distinct from each

other.

M-6-2

Central image are

houses community

and one large house.

Open books are at

the top of the frame

Icons are rows of neat green plants, a green field with a cow

and three people with the cow, a basket filled with fresh

produce, a round no dig garden, a potted plant, a group of

eight people listening to a larger person with a face and a

speech bubble which is empty, two cars driving on the road,

four open books

The road is the connector linking community to

shopping and the green fields with cows and plants growing

There is a definite attempt to link human consumption at the

shops with an alternative approach to growing your own

food. The farm is linked by road to the shop where there is a

black cross on top of this. There seems to be the farmer style

growing, the backyard alternate growing of vegetables, the

road and the shops and the community away from the shops.

Although the road is the connector it is also the problem in

this image as it separates the farm from the shop and the

community from the place of buying their produce. It seems

ridiculous that the food is produced near the people and yet

they need to go to the shop far away to purchase this. There

seems to be a desire to teach alternative ways by the

educator but the empty bubble symbolises not knowing

what to say or do to be effective in this.

M-1-5

The Warragamba

dam and the road

leading to this

The cloud is dominating perhaps as it is the source of water,

which is a strong presence in this image. There is a red

building which has three people walking away from this

and below is a model of the water cycle. People seem to be

learning about this. There is another red building which

looks like a demountable structure perhaps for construction

of the damn site as there are also two trucks going

backwards and forth to the damn. The houses of residents

seem to be away from the dam itself. There is a very small

clock in the top right hand corner. Near this is a cow and

run off from the animal into the water supply

The road is the connecting feature in this image.

Lightning bolts are also connected to the cloud and possible

electricity generators

Although the clock is small and seemingly insignificant, the

message seems to be that if the run off continues that it is

only a matter of time before this has a disastrous effect on

the dam. People are a primary concern for this participant

and teaching or educating seems to be very important. Once

again however the urban or semi urban environment is

separate from the central concern of the educator

M-3-2

Cow in a paddock

with a red fence

around this

A series of boxes in different colours. Three green boxes in

the top left hand corner one with secondary schools,

Cumberland region, the other network, an orange box in the

top right hand corner with the words Glenmore Park

The relationships stem from the ag plot with the cow in the

centre. Interestingly the environment committee and trees

are the only words that are not boxed. This map is

dominated by the social response to sustainability and the

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62

primary school and a pink box in the bottom right hand

corner saying rotary exchange west, sponsors, art4ag

competition, Cfeeds. There is a blue river underneath these

boxes and on the other side is the words in red environment

committee and trees in pink

Connected by pink arrows in both directions. The river

is underneath the whole structure

environment is over the other side of the river. Secondary

schools dominate the frame as this is the biggest and where

most of the networks arise from. No connections to food or

plate or other uses of beef cattle. Links to community

members that are not part of schools are not evident.

M-6-1

The words teaching

in red, learning in

black and

Experiencing in

green

Visual icons of compost, a stack of three books with a black

arrow to the word outside, mangrove wetlands, the

Cumberland plain, a blue tongue lizard with the words

aboriginal knowledge

Connected by shading of pastels over the pictures, no

arrows but all images surround the central concept clearly

Separate areas of existence and work that are all related but

not well connected….rather connected loosely. Every single

icon relates to the outside world and experiencing the

natural environment in a physical sense. For example

learning is most effective when done outside, two people are

pictured walking on a bush track in the Cumberland plain,

two others sitting by the mangroves. The challenges are no

cohesive structure to get these things done or connected

even though there is knowledge about each individual area.

INNER WEST PARTICIPANTS


I-6-4 My home in a

small ellipse in

blue texta

Not many colours used mainly dark blue and green with a little brown

Main icons are a school vege garden, a high school, the local shops, a

community garden, a herb garden park

From my home words directly under this are: 1)office business with

links to High schools, penno, workshops, TTA partnership, PD+;

2)education for sustainability links to A2 E2 committee; 3)envirodoc

Links from the My home central image are:

1. local shops, carpark, Community garden; 2) Uniting church Epping

Community Hub, ethnic groups 3)Spiritual community, keep cups, retreats;

4) Family, granddaughters, elderly mother; 5) Aries; 6) Primary ethics,

school vege garden, ME and TEpping

On its own in the right corner is Transition Epping with links to; Local

fairs; Social activities; bushwalks; Workshops; Kilm nights; Solar panels;

Links to uniting church

The image radiates outwards similar to I-7-2 in

the group. There are connections amongst some

of the activities but the central organising

principal is the home and the business. There are

not many links between the activities except for

the transition Epping section. This is where more

community involvement is indicated with people

making Kilns and attending workshops and

attending a community garden.

There seems to be a disconnect between the

My home and the Transition Epping where they

appear at first to be linked but on closer

inspection they are not. The challenge will be to

link the business side of the image with the

Transition Epping aspect.

I-7-2

Love heart

containing the

Boxes with words placed inside these and of various colours

Auburn council; Local community bus, dentist, doctor; Brighter futures;

Embedded in local community concerns and

giving much to the community. The focus in

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63

Love and Care

Director and

authorised

supervisor 1996

Husband

CCMS & Centrelink; SDN children‟s services; Cancer council; DEC‟s;

Kids early education preschool; Contin support; Eye screening; MEEF;

Network directors meeting; Auburn mosque; Paint Auburn Read;

Sustainability group project; ABN aprentership; Early ED.; Transition to

school meeting and group; Networking, Palm Childcare, Busbee, Rawson

road pre-School; Local public and private schools; Hubworks; Auburn

hospital.

All connections are made with arrows to words in boxes or ellipses

going in an outward direction. Some build on to each other

about giving out from the heart and perhaps

spreading in many directions. Many links and a

plethora of knowledge and networks. No links

happening between these networks seems to

indicate that the educator works very diligently

but is exhausted from keeping these links going.

Challenge is to connect some of these network

up together.

I-7-1

No one central

image but the

central

organising

principal is the

rainbow and

colour and

childcare

Rich filled with icons. Three preschools under rainbows, Busby

childcare, Rawson road Long Day care and Palm Childcare

Busby Childcare is linked to local doctors

DECS; Local council; Energy saving solo power; Local dentist, digital story

sustainable practices, living green course project, main language Anglo

aust English, Arabic, Chinese.

Rawson Road Childcare is linked to:

Ambulance; SDN inclusion support; Auburn botanical gardens and

Aboriginal awareness; Local schools; Worm farms multicultural Granville

centre, fruit and vege garden, main languages Arabic and Indian, other early

childhood services.

Palm Childcare is linked to:

Fire brigade, Police, fund raising charity, Paint Auburn read language and

literacy program, best cultural program, best director, best weekly program,

finalist for children‟s week 2012, parent/family, MEFF multicultural dance,

compost bins, local council, centre support, main language Arabic, Turkish,

African, Vietnamese.

My home Love heart with a family house in it is linked to : Garage

sale, member of acor travel and dining, fem gym bootcamp, mosque,

tutoring, consultant, oz tag delegate, my parents beliefs, customs

experiences, selective Malek Fahed Islamic school.

The sun in the top right hand corner linked to cancer council

Blue clouds with rain falling on all the images and words

Trees at the bottom left hand corner of the frame

Compost bin at the base of the frame with reduce, reuse, recycle icons

The community is the environment in which this

educator finds herself I and she is deeply

embedded in the actions and experiences of her

environment spiritually, practically, socially,

emotionally. This frame is an environment in

itself. Icons cannot really be separated as they all

have a relationship with place indicated by the

rainbows, the rainwater and the trees. There is a

strong desire by the educator to be involved and

learn as much as she can with her embeddedness

and community as a driving force to motivate

her to do this. There is green beneath each

childcare centre indicating this is the place

where growth and experiences will occur for her.

There is a wealth of knowledge about culture

and language symbolised here. Although this is

an integrated social and environmental story map

one challenge may be that there is so many

things going on and perhaps not enough support.

However one area is problematic and that is

there are few links to centralised bodies that may

be able to support the growing work here. Not

sure if this is needed but comes through in the

imagery

Appendices

64

My name in Arabic

Connections are made through placement of icons near each other, the

use of coloured rainbows and bright colours also links concepts For

example the red for the heart symbolising passion and salience of what is

important. The whole frame is constructed like a living community

ecosystem with the sun and rain up the top, the trees and the ground down

the bottom and humans living in communities between heaven and earth.

Connections are also sometimes made with lines emanating from an icon

I-1-8

The central

image in the

Bankstown

City Council

building. This

dominates the

whole frame

The icons in the image are arranged in six sections. These are:

1. Recycle right in large yellow writing and then because it is the right

thing to do, 6 awards, government, community, industry

2. Waste Hierarchy with a pyramid with the words from top to bottom

avoid, reuse, recycle, dispose

3. Events, ewaste, chemical, NRW, CUAD, compost/mulch/ CAW.

mattresses, litter, sharps, food, clothing, hazards waste, program

development, contract management, communication specialist,

facilitation and education

4. LG ACT (NSW), WARR strategy (EPA OEH), resource recovery

strategy (BCC)

5. Advisory work, NSW WMAA, LGSA, SSROC, WSROC, SITA

cleanaway, visy, soilco, kelso and school, community groups + NESB

comms = facilitation

6. Planning Infrastructure, education, resources, consultation, SUD, MUD

3 main groups Arabic, Vietnamese, Chinese, 127 languages

Instead of connections there are sectors with very distinct boundaries of

different sizes. There are six sections

At the centre is the bureaucracy of the

Bankstown city council. There are many services

offered however communities seem to be a

number or distant from the work that is done.

The blocks that are used to separate the various

tasks indicate aspects of work to be achieved

rather than integrated. It may also indicate the

structural environment of the cityscape that this

educator in operating in. if the shape of the

building that she is working in is considered the

shape of her image mirrors this to a large degree.

This building is also right in the heart of

Bankstown but its walls seem to build barriers

rather than facilitate community engagement.

This image appears to advocate a top down

approach as it suggests to recycle right as it is

the right thing to do. No links between services

and groups seen as statistics.

I-6-3

In the centre

are the words

“custodian of

the land we

share”

Hearts of differing colour and words. Larger hearts and smaller hearts. A

total of 18 hearts on the page

Words coming out of the hearts or linked to these are in order of most

links:

1. Community, meat free stall, be the change, party, lamyong, food, farmers,

TP, The Hills centre for mental health Fri, Earthcare centre, cultivate, and

hearts coming from this large heart were: land and animals, local

residents, PCC, Pcan

2. Healing - Educator facilitator with links to mother, wife, daughter,

Everything is connected to the heart. The

educator comes from a very whole systems

approach that is grounded by her connection to

land as the central principal. The map is a

personal story line that details her work in the

community. It also includes her religious beliefs.

Although the connections are multifaceted there

are many repeated concepts and ideas and these

are scattered. Challenges would be to centralise

Appendices

65

grandma, sister, friend, custodian of the land. With links to smaller hearts

of T & M, the Hills Clinic, volunteer, community heart

3. Nature, water, space, land, tree. With links to cultivate, garden (home),

bush walk, permaculture west, permabliss with link to education heart

4. Family Friend with links to pet, 5 elements, animals, NT, trainings,

Buddhism with links to heart whole system health

5. Whole system health BIZ with links to massage, cooking, Thai Chi with

links to space for self

6. Education teach Buddhism, moral + values to kids and adults wed +

thurs, workshops

7. A voice for animals, vege gardening, meat free living

These were in the corners of the frame opposed to each other:

1st said Biz lampe berger, massage, gardening for health horticulture

therapy, thai chi whole system health, cooking vegetarian for inner peace,

2nd

one said: calander

Oct 13-14 rose garden, one million women, love food hate waste, vege

cooking and health care

Connections are everywhere and multifaceted. Hearts and lines are

used as ways to connect similar ideas or indicate relationship

the concepts and articulate these in a more

succinct way so that they could reach a larger

audience. However concepts of land as central to

her mission and purpose indicate a very different

outlook to more westernised conceptions of

place and being environment

I-1-10

Interlocking

colourful

arrows that

span across the

page in a

diagonal from

top left to

bottom right.

Also a black

line splitting

the page from

bottom left to

top right into

two

Main icons in the four corners of the page are;

Water splash into

Me

Council buildings

Guides and Scouts

Other icons are words that are linked by large arrows such as

School communities. ABC 123, unofficially, teenagers, primary schools

Preschools toddlers and parents

NGOs Refugees, community groups CALD and a long orange dotted

arrow with words saying slowly building from the council building

Internal relationships from the council building and the guides and scouts.

There is many blue large arrows coming from the guides and scouts to

all other aspects of the image.

Various arrows linking icons in each corner of the frame

The Me icon is at the bottom left hand corner

and is cut off by a black squiggly line around the

image. There are also black lines to the rest of

the page and one from Me to the Guides and

Scouts which cuts the page in half.

There seems to be a desire here to form and

build connections even if they are not solid. The

lines are wavy and water like. The black links

seem to be more solid and the guides although is

sidelines to the top right of the page is where

much of the movement of the blue wavy lines

radiate from. This is perhaps where the educator

started her interest in sustainability and

connectedness with the environment. So many

arrows while directed offers a sense of confusion

of direction and the broken arrow suggests

Appendices

66

relationships with NGOS CALD and community

are difficult to sustain.

I-1-8

In big green

letters is

environment +

education and

using your

local

environment as

an outdoor

classroom

connecting

children to their

environment

Mostly words but one blue star and one tree with grass underneath opposite

each other in the corners of the frame. Also dollar signs and people at

opposite diagonal corners of the frame

Ideas are arranged around the central image with the words being:

1. Corporate sustainability, workshops, presentations, water, energy,

transport, ws carpool

2. CALD community Arabic, vientnamese

3. Schools, childcare, tertiary education, tours, workshops, resources,

capacilty building

4. Business

5. Community and council events homegrown photo and gardens

competition, what people love most about living in Bankstown, food,

sustainability, national tree day, clean up days, Duck river

6. Env and sustainability networks

7. Community

8. Community groups, villawood community garden, chester hill edible

garden

9. Volunteer groups, need to connect with

Also just in a blob under the central image is greenway, observatory

hill, DET accredited professional teachers program and also sustainability

and environmental protection

The blue star is accompanied by Passion for education, connect with

people and the environment

Arrows emanating outwards in various colours connecting words to the

central image

Education is seen as a key in underpinning

aspects of change in this image. There seems to

be some really interesting directions that this

educator in exploring and these are coming out

of education and environment instead of a

council institution according to the image. This

seems to be a delivery model that seeks to

venture out into the community. However still

the links are only going one way and not

connected to each other. For example the

community and council events are not linked in

with community which begs the question if this

is genuinely working like this or whether this is

what he educator perceives to be the case. In

other words how engaged are the community in

reality.

I-1-11

Solar panels

and a sun with

a black open

book

The icons are in the top left quadrant a family of six or perhaps

community members with shovels ready to garden. I-1-11 is pictured here

in black. Then in the lower left quadrant is a large building in orange with a

large storm cloud over the roof. Then in the lower right quadrant is a large

purple energy electricity plant spewing out clouds of pollution. Three

houses receive electricity from the plant. In the top right quadrant there is a

bush landscape with a river dividing the two sides and a large black hole

with brown. This might indicate pollution form the river

Black seems to be an important colour. The book

is in black that my symbolise mystery or not

knowing what to do or how to go about teaching

or learning. I-1-11 has pictured himself in black

as well which may be linked to the knowledge

he wishes to impart, the wisdom. It could also

represent what he does not yet know or the

difficulties experienced in engaging community.

Appendices

67

The images are not connected by arrows or lines but seem to be

arranged in four quadrants

The black in the river I think may symbolise the

start of pollution. What is interesting here is that

he seems to identify the problems of the solar

being the sole provider of electricity. The sun as

the provider of electricity seems to be a desired

solution but could also represent his desire to

shed illumination on environmental issues and

bring light to his own knowledge base. The

disconnect between the four quadrants indicates

that connections are not being made to the

significant issues that he sees.

I-7-3 Oval with the

words Love

and Care Kids

early education,

Network and

LDC preschool

Four houses drawn around the central image. Otherwise words

Inside the house words are:

1. Local school

2. Preschool linked to involve with the community, moved to child care as

I really enjoyed working with children

3. Love and Care Long Day care, Welfare sector, voluntary, enjoy helping

the needy people

Words around the central image are:

Acceptance; Partnership with other LDC preschool with local;

Multicultural; Eye screening visit; SDN; Worm farm in childcare; Auburn

council; Library; Recycle; Library; Dental visit; Our big aim is to educate

our parents and family about sustainability in Auburn area through the

children; Lead by example.

Arrows moving outwards from the central image

Similar to other daycare educators as this is

energy emanating outward to the community.

The community is the central focus but there is

little connection between the organisations that

the educator is using. The words in the houses

seem more important so schools, preschools,

love and care LDC and the welfare sector are

highlighted. There is a challenge to seek help

with the aim of educating parents and this seems

to be the driving force behind the involvement in

sustainability education.

Documents

OUR PLACE Western Sydney Stage 1: Sustainability Educators€¦ · (governance) model to a region-based (place) model for the Office of Environment and Heritage. For this purpose