EarthShapes: Potential for Place-based Teacher Learning between the Virtual and the Actual

Abstract

This contribution investigates a recent research project involving in-service teacher learning as experienced through an online/offline art studio in which common experiences of relationships to particular local landforms generate imaginative and collaborative processes and practices of teaching and learning. EarthShapes Studio is both a pedagogical strategy and a methodological tool for teacher learning that acknowledges an emerging view that the tangible, material effects of relating to places and others are central to learning and can generate anticipation of alternative futures. This paper analyzes EarthShapes through Mellet-d'Huart's (2006) model of (en)action which is based on the work of Francisco Varela and includes three co-existing and overlapping spheres of potentialization, virtualization, and actualization.