Collective biography methodology for sustainable places

This paper is the outcome of a writing collaboration by the three authors listed. We have approached the task with each author writing a discrete part reflecting her contribution to the paper and then a conclusion arising out of collaborative discussions of the overall work. In the Introduction, the first author draws on her work on the ‘Bubbles on the Surface’ project and other projects with Indigenous Australians, together with her own experience of place, to introduce the concept of place pedagogies. She then relates this to a wider western literature on the significance of place in the Literature Review. In the Methodology section, the second author introduces collective biography and its origins in Haug’s concept of memory work (1987) and Davies & Gannon’s (2006) development of this. In the Findings and Discussion section, the third author considers how exploring place pedagogies using collective biography may enrich research in the field of adult and vocational learning