Whooho. The book proposal was submitted yesterday on 2 September 2020.
It’s about teacher education in a world that seems to be getting dark. It seeks hope in uncertain times inspired by Oodgeroo Noonuccal’s wonderful poem, ‘The past’ that talks about ‘this little now’, this ‘fleeting present’.
It begins like this:
On 1 January 2020, Australia’s eastern seaboard was shrouded in smoke. It choked Sydney and turned the daytime sky black up the eastern states. Scientists called these bushfires that joined up a ‘megafire’; but the phrase that gave 2020 meaning was, ‘it’s getting dark’.
This book treats the year 2020 as a significant moment of global uncertainty and, possibly, some kind of turning point in human affairs. Irrespective of the outcomes, this historic moment offers an opportunity to better understand how continuity and change unfold in contemporary societies––societies that are no longer strictly national, but fuzzily global. They persist as nation-states but are deeply interconnected, being selectively hard-wired through transnational networks that secure particular flows of ideas, images, people and goods.
In this ‘little now’, the 2020 context where space, time and relationships seem dizzy and unfamiliar, we ask: how do people’s sayings, doings and relatings create everyday life, and with what consequences for teacher education focused on future generations and a sustainable earth?
It has been fun working on this project with a great group of colleagues: Alex Kostogriz, Joanna Barbousas, Claire Manton, Stefan Schutt, Mary Nash, Sue Plowright, Ben Arnold, Glenn Auld, Michelle Ludecke, Jo Ryan and Helen Widdop-Quinton.
Thanks also to the Australian Research Council for funding this project: DP170103203 Teaching workforce development through integrated partnerships
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