An Interwoven Learning Exchange: Transforming Research-Teaching Relationships in the Top End, Northern Australia

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doi: 10.1111/j.1745-5871.2007.00444.x

Blackwell Publishing Asia

Original Acticle

S. Wright, S. Suchet-Pearson and K. Lloyd: An Interwoven Learning Exchange

An Interwoven Learning Exchange: Transforming Research-Teaching Relationships in the Top End, Northern Australia

SARAH WRIGHT

1

*, SANDIE SUCHET-PEARSON

2

and KATE LLOYD

2

1

School of Environmental and Life Sciences, The University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, 2308, Australia.

2

Department of Human Geography, Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia.*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

Received 12 September 2006; Revised 12 January 2007; Accepted 31 January 2007

Abstract

In this paper, we explore processes of learning through a focus on relationships.Situated within the context of our research on educational tourism with Indigen-ous tour operators in the Northern Territory, we examine the relationships builtbetween three groups: ourselves, Indigenous tour operators and undergraduateuniversity students. We develop a conceptualisation of teaching and research asan interwoven learning exchange characterised by multi-directional learningexperiences within which all collaborators teach, research and learn. By viewingall contributors, including ourselves, as active and multiple situated co-learners,we begin a process of recognising and reconfiguring power relationships. Wereflect on how an interwoven learning exchange may bring new subjectivitiesinto being through transformed research-teaching relationships.

KEY WORDS

pedagogy; methodology; relationships; interwoven learningexchange; Northern Territory; family/work balance; Indigenous tourism

ACRONYMSTNT: Tourism – Northern Territory

Introduction

In this paper we explore the potential to trans-form teaching and research relationships throughthe concept of an interwoven learning exchange.We argue that an interwoven learning exchangecan strengthen teaching and research by encour-aging a range of multi-directional learningexperiences. An interwoven learning exchangepromotes processes by which research, teachingand learning are intimately interlinked andwithin which all collaborators are recognised asteachers, researchers and learners. Our concep-tualisation centres on relationships of mutuallearning and recognises the subjectivities of all

participants as multiple and fluid, as well aspotentially fraught.

All contributors within the exchange are rec-ognised as playing complex and multiple roles,such as teacher, learner, researcher and familymember, and as taking part in unexpectedengagements associated with learning, teachingand research. The scope of the learning exchangeis thus broadened to include contributors such aschildren, partners and research participants,often excluded or made invisible in teaching andresearch practice. Through practicing teaching,learning and research as elements of an interwovenlearning exchange, we hope to contribute to a more

S. Wright, S. Suchet-Pearson and K. Lloyd:

An Interwoven Learning Exchange

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© 2007 The AuthorsJournal compilation © 2007 Institute of Australian Geographers

nuanced picture of learning, one that recognisespower relations and multiplicity, and one thatencourages all participants to re-envision newways of being, through transformed researchand teaching relationships.

In this paper, we discuss the concept of aninterwoven learning exchange with reference toour work with Indigenous tour operators in theNorthern Territory and the relationships whichhave been built between three groups oftenseparated in the research and teaching dynamic:academics, Indigenous tour operators (our researchpartners, traditionally seen as research participants)and undergraduate university students. We com-prise three early career academics with teachingand research interests in development, post-colonial and Indigenous studies. We work withtwo Indigenous tour operators from the NorthernTerritory. The Wagiman Women Rangers area small group of traditional owners at the initialstages of planning a tourism venture on theircountry at Tjuwaliyn Hot Springs, located 200 kmsouth of Darwin. Biliru is a recently establishedtour company run by the Lee family who areLarrakia, the traditional owners of the areacontaining Darwin. Biliru currently runs tours inDarwin. Ten students drawn from human geo-graphy undergraduate courses at MacquarieUniversity and the University of Newcastle alsoparticipated in this project.

The paper begins by situating our conceptof an interwoven learning exchange within themethodological and pedagogical literature. Wethen outline the processes through which ourresearch and teaching in the Northern Territorydeveloped, and begin to unravel some of thethreads associated with the specific learningexchanges experienced by ourselves, the WagimanWomen Rangers, Biliru and our students, duringa pilot study tour undertaken in April 2006.The final section of the paper reflects on howan interwoven learning exchange may createopportunities to transform relationships in bothresearch and teaching.

Teaching, learning and research

The connections, issues and dynamics aroundteaching and research have been the subject of avast amount of important debate. For example,there are literatures that focus on relationshipsbetween teaching and learning, between researchand research participants, between teaching andresearch, and between academics and family.Each of these complex relationships, however,has largely been explored in isolation from the

others. In this section we touch on the majorthemes associated with four central bodies ofliterature on teaching and research. Specifically,we look for connections between the variousliteratures with the aim of teasing out the complexinterplay of teaching, research and learning.

Teaching and learning

The relationship between teaching and learning,or between student and teacher, is the focus of adiverse body of pedagogical research that stressesthe importance of understanding students asactive knowledge producers rather than passiverecipients of information. This work tends toconceptualise the relationship between teachersand students as a process of ‘co-learning’(Howitt, 2000; Gibbs

et al.

, 2004; Le Heron

et al.

, 2006). Within education there is a long his-tory of pedagogical approaches that go beyondan information delivery model to view the student-teacher relationships in terms of a dialogue. Animportant example is Paolo Freire’s work includ-ing his

Pedagogy of the Oppressed

(1972) whichcentres on the life experiences of the learner.Freire strives to overcome the idea that theteacher possesses knowledge that she or he thenimparts to a student. Instead, through praxis, the‘teacher’ facilitates learning by helping learnersto problematise the world in which they live.From such a position, learners are able to analysetheir own realities in a way that sees them as activesubjects in a position to fight for emancipation.

The idea of teaching as praxis points to theneed to understand teaching as ‘collaborationwith others, rather than for others’ (Gibbs

et al.

,2004: 183). Learning is conducted as a jointproject through which both parties increaseunderstanding and explore knowledge. Uni-directional relationships often assumed withincapacity building work are challenged in orderto reframe relationships and practices (Suchet-Pearson and Howitt, 2006). Such a step involvesa revisioning of both power and knowledge,moving beyond a teacher-controlled model toone based on joint learning, collaboration andmutuality.

Resonances of this approach (although oftenin a significantly de-radicalised/depoliticisedform) are found within the ideas of active learn-ing and problem-based learning that are increas-ingly prevalent within teaching models at theuniversity level (Bradbeer

et al.

, 2004; Buchy,2004). These approaches are based on the ideathat the role of a teacher is to foster and supportstudents in their own process of learning (Marton

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et al.

, 1993; Mahar and Thompson Tetreault,1994). Problem-based learning helps students toapply their learning to real-world situations andto see themselves as active participants (AbrandtDahlgren and Öberg, 2001).

Geography, as a discipline concerned withplace, diversity and difference, has a history ofpromoting such student-centred teaching styles.In particular, an experiential learning approach,which focuses on teaching mechanisms thatincorporate active student involvement, has along tradition in undergraduate geographyteaching (Healey and Jenkins, 2000; Hirschand Lloyd, 2005). Monk (2000) reflects on anumber of approaches in geography teachingthat link theory and practice and take studentsbeyond the passive gaze of traditional fieldworkby engaging them directly with the (local)‘other’. It is this engagement, and the relation-ships that stem from it, that provides the focusfor our research.

Research relationships

The importance of understanding and recon-figuring relationships associated with the researchprocess, and indeed of questioning the veryassumptions underpinning research itself, is thefocus of another vital area of literature. Onceagain this field is vast, complex and ever expand-ing. Based on an analysis of the oppressive andcolonising practices associated with much main-stream research, the relationship between theresearcher and research participant has been thesubject of a great deal of discussion, particularlyin the area of Indigenous, post-colonial, cross-cultural and feminist methodologies (see forexample Smith, 1999; Gibson-Graham, 1994; deIshtar, 2005; Howitt and Stevens, 2005; Hodgeand Lester, 2006). Much of the work in this areadeals both with the fraught nature of researchrelationships and with the possibilities associatedwith collaborative and action-based approaches(Bishop and Glynn, 2003; Reed and Peters,2004). In particular, there are important callsfrom both Indigenous and feminist theorists tounderstand power relations as embedded in theprocess of research – including in fieldwork(Wolf, 1996; Smith, 1999), and for researchersto reflect on their own positionality in theresearch process (see Rose, 1997). Researcherscall for a dialogic model of engagement thatemphasises ‘speaking with’ rather than ‘speakingfor’, and stresses the places of ‘in-betweenness’as sites of potential relationship building (Gold,2002; Suchet-Pearson

et al.

, 2005).

Collaborative approaches, including participa-tory action research, take this further (althoughthe power relations and positionalities are alwayscomplex) by calling for meaningful processes ofengagement in which research collaborators(rather than research ‘subjects’) shape the research,and become, in effect co-researchers (Kindon,2005). Recognising the depth of the issues atstake, such approaches call for epistemologicalchanges such that the very idea of knowledgeand knowledge acquisition are reconfigured(Cameron and Gibson, 2005; Wright, 2005). InIndigenous and postcolonial work, this meansrecognising and respecting Indigenous know-ledges and ways of knowing and rebuildingideas of research based on respect and collabo-ration rather than on extraction and exploitation(Hodge and Lester, 2006). This requires flexibilityand openness to framing research in diverseways, for the co-generation of research topics, andchoice of methods, outcomes and timing (Kindonand Latham, 2002). These ideas, however,often conflict with current university priorities(Gustafson, 2000). The process of collaborationis an ongoing exercise in trust building, mutualrespect and empowerment (Miller, 2004).

Teaching and research

The link between teaching and research (in theacademy) is also something that has gainedattention in the literature. The issue is often framedas a response to the increasing demands on lecturer’stime and the calls for increased attention to bothteaching and research in a changing institutionalcontext (Brew, 1999). In fact, a fair proportionof literature frames the relationships betweenthese areas in an adversarial way in which theincreasing pressures on academics for researchoutputs drains time, attention and resourcesfrom the pursuit of good teaching practice andvice versa (McLean and Barker, 2004).

Others, for example Rowley (1996, see alsoMcLean and Barker, 2004), argue that researchand teaching can inform each other in a syner-gistic relationship. Calling for the university tobe (re)conceptualised as primarily a site forlearning, and for learning to be understood asthe primary activity of all academic work, LeHeron

et al.

(2006) make a compelling argu-ment for linking research and teaching in geo-graphy in a fundamentally transformative way.

Academics and family

A new but burgeoning area of literature refers tothe challenges associated with being an academic



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and a family member, and the ways in whichthese subjectivities influence research practice.Such work is often framed in terms of the ine-qualities and challenges associated with thoseworking under more flexible work conditions (seefor example Birnie

et al.

, 2005) with particularreference to gender inequalities created by astructure still built around the model of a lone-wolf (male, untied by external obligation etc)researcher/academic (Armenti, 2003; Benschopand Brouns, 2003). Children, partners and fam-ilies are afforded a more active role in work thatexplicitly takes on the multiple subjectivities,and the power relations, associated with accom-panied fieldwork (Cupples and Kindon, 2003)and pedagogy (Browne, 2005).

Even this short review of these literaturespoints to the complex relationships at work inany teaching or research activity. It is our aimnow to try and draw these diverse insights backtogether through the lens of a teaching/ learning/research experience that we undertook withIndigenous tour operators and students in theNorthern Territory.

Establishing relationships

The interwoven learning exchange that formsthe basis for this paper began as a research focuson the role that educational tourism can play forIndigenous tour operators. Through discussionswith the Northern Territory government agencyTourism – Northern Territory (TNT), the WagimanWomen Rangers and the Northern Land Council,we developed a research agenda focusing oneducational tourism. This agenda included arequest by TNT and the Wagiman women for theconduct of a series of pilot study tours enablingthem to trial and develop their tourism experienceusing students as the tourism participants. TheWagiman women are seeking to assess educa-tional tourism as an option for exerting morecontrol over the use and management of theircountry. They hope that it may promote an inter-generational sharing of their culture and act as acatalyst for empowerment in land managementdecision-making processes.

In late 2005, our relationship was furtherestablished through a trip to Tjuwaliyn with theWagiman women and their extended families.Since two of us were pregnant at the time, thisvisit to an important women’s sacred area stimul-ated us to think creatively about how familyand work could be positively integrated. In early2006, an intensive workshop was held with theWagiman during which a research agenda, broad

research agreement and ethical protocols werenegotiated. A critical aspect of the workshopwas the identification of research projects thatour undergraduate students could undertake withthe women to assist in the establishment of theirbusiness and in their work towards VocationalEducation Training certificates in tourism,conservation and land management at CharlesDarwin University. These projects ranged frominterpretive walks to the development of promo-tional material and website design.

Our first study tour ran in April 2006 andinvolved 10 students who had applied to go onthe tour through a human geography develop-ment studies unit at the University of Newcastleand a human geography research methodologyunit at Macquarie University. In the lead up tothis tour, the onset of major floods meant thatthe study site became inaccessible. At the lastminute, due to ‘sorry business’ (ceremonial activitiesassociated with a death in the family), the Wagi-man Women Rangers were not able to spend anytime with us at all. Faced with these constraints,a new plan emerged on the run.

With the assistance of TNT staff, including astaff member who was also part of the Bilirutour company, we refocussed the initial part ofthe tour on discussions with Biliru in Darwin.Following participation in Biliru’s

Welcome toCountry

tour, the matriarch of the family askedthe students to describe the projects they hadprepared to do with the Wagiman. After listen-ing to the students, the Lee family expressedenthusiastic interest in these projects and in howthey could relate to Biliru’s tourism operations.The Lee family, the students and the authors allrealised that a new opportunity had serendipit-ously emerged. Although everyone was stilldisappointed that the work with the Wagimanwomen had to be postponed,

1

the interwovenlearning exchanges continued both throughoutand following the study tour. These resultedfrom a diverse range of experiences, includingintense discussions and exchanges with Biliruand other Indigenous tour operators in KakaduNational Park and Leilyn (Edith Falls), as wellas student participation as tourists at Kakadu.

Learning in practice

In this section we look in more detail at some ofthese learning exchanges and the diverse rolesof the contributors. Following the threads ofthree of the groups involved in our interwovenlearning exchange – the Indigenous tour operators,the university students and ourselves – we illustrate

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the complex and dynamic ways that learningoccurs within and between groups.

Indigenous tour operators

Fundamental to our research with Indigenoustour operators in the Northern Territory is arecognition of the multiple roles that the operatorsplay as family members, owners of country,business operators and staff members of supportorganisations. In all these roles the operators canbe teacher, researcher and learner. In particular,we are focusing on the ongoing relationships inwhich the students’ projects form part of longi-tudinal research in which the operators teach usabout themselves and their enterprises whilethey simultaneously learn from our students’and our own perspectives, experiences andresearch products. Our research agenda with theWagiman, as well as our developing relationshipwith Biliru, sees the Indigenous tour operator asa teacher, facilitating student learning aboutIndigenous tourism and community developmentissues. The students participate as tourists andovertly evaluate experiences and give feedbackto the tour operator on product development.Finally, the students also conducted research withthe tour operators. In the case of research iden-tified with the Wagiman this involves studentprojects which facilitate the learning that theWagiman are doing as part of their tertiary edu-cation. In the case of Biliru, the student projectsincluded the design of a web site and touristinformation sheets. Biliru had identified these asimportant items for marketing and outreach.

At any one time the multiple roles of Indige-nous tour operators overlap, contradict andreinforce each other, creating a complex interplayof opportunities and constraints for Indigenouspeople keen to be involved in tourism enter-prises. All of the tour operators with whom weinteracted highlighted multiple layers and thepriorities that they need to balance. A powerfulexample was the importance of ‘sorry business’to the Wagiman women. This was a salutarylesson for everyone involved in the study tour.As organisers, we had failed to seriously considerthis all too real no-show contingency in ourplanning. The students coped superbly in appre-ciating the reality of these different prioritiesand their impact on their learning (a fact helpedby the constant reiteration by other Indigenoustour operators and Indigenous support peoplesabout the importance of ‘sorry business’ andother Indigenous cultural responsibilities). Thewomen immediately had to confront the potential

conflict set up by a market-driven tourism busi-ness with family and cultural values and expec-tations and they will need to take this on boardas they think about the reality of running a tour-ism enterprise. For the Indigenous tour opera-tors with whom we work, family life is centralto their tourism work, with family participationoften integral to the operation, assisting in offeringemployment opportunities as well as offeringopportunities for cultural transmission processes.There are no clear boundaries between work andhome; they cannot simply ‘go home’ at the endof the day (or fieldwork period) and leave thesometimes fraught and exciting issues behind asresearchers often can. This fundamental interplayof work and life reinforces a critical lesson for usas academics and has shaped our research col-laboration and teaching styles as discussed below.

Undergraduate university students

The students found themselves in the nexus ofthe learning exchange because their focus wason participating in and learning about Indigen-ous tourism whilst producing material whichIndigenous tour operators could use. We encour-aged students to reflect on themselves in theirmultiple roles. For example, we challenged themto move beyond an easy separation of roleswhich would enable them to see themselves asdifferent or exempt from problems associatedwith tourism in the top-end and from the hordesof (generally) well-meaning, white, develop-ment experts who come and go from Indigenouscommunities. They also reflected on the ethicalissues associated with producing research projectsfor and with Biliru and drew from readings anddiscussion on research methodologies under-taken in class and in preparation for the trip.Their reflective journals were assessed by lec-turers as part of their course work, and materialproduced for Biliru, based on participant obser-vation and field discussions, was strengthenedby secondary research and careful review byBiliru. One outcome of the reflective processwas that their desire to ‘give something back’was tempered by a realisation that, whilst Biliruappreciated their work, Biliru would still pursueand achieve their own agenda regardless ofstudent input.

Academics

Our multiple learning roles included those ofacademic, teacher, researcher, collaborator andfamily member. We directly facilitated our stu-dents’ experiential learning whilst concurrently



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researching the interlinked nature of teachingand researching. We established a researchrelationship with Indigenous tour operators andsupport organisations based on mutual learningwith an intenion to move towards a reconfigura-tion of power relations in research and teaching.In such a situation it was easy to be ‘non-experts’in our relationships. The Indigenous tour operatorsgenerously shared knowledge and experienceand we learnt, as did the students, much aboutcontemporary land management practices, andabout the complex histories, issues and aspira-tions of the Larrakia nation. Similarly, it was asfacilitators rather than as teachers that we helpedstudents to focus their projects and practiceactive listening with Biliru.

For us, an important aspect of this interwovenlearning exchange is the opportunity to learnnew ways of approaching work and family. Inparticular, we are learning important lessonsfrom the ways in which Indigenous tour opera-tors have to face the fraught integration offamily life and work in the tourism industry.As three youngish, early career researchers, weare all too aware of the pressures to establish astrong and productive research focus. However,we also want to nurture our family relationships.Having children, taking parental leave andnegotiating part-time work arrangements can allinterrupt research and create considerable barri-ers to on-going research relationships, let aloneto publishing papers, gaining strong reputationsand attaining grants. Rather than approachingresearch as an individual, isolated task, ourcollaboration has enabled us to commit to long-term research relationships. Although parentalleave and part-time work are realities, we havemanaged our workload so that one of us is alwaysleading the research and, with varying degreesof support from the other two, we have ensuredon-going research development and productionof outputs.

An interwoven learning exchange

Our conceptualisation of an interwoven learningexchange recognises ourselves, and those withwhom we work, as complex beings playing diverseroles. We are situated in a web of power relations,such that research and teaching relations areunderstood as sites of multifaceted co-learning.Rather than conceptualising the collaborators(including ourselves) in this process as unitaryactors (or homogenous groups) undertaking two-way exchanges around either teaching, researchor family, our aim is to acknowledge the multiple

relationships at work. In other words, our sub-jectivities are active and continually in a processof (re)definition (Bloom, 1998). Far from beingan inconvenience or sideline to the central workof academia, these complex relationships arecentral to the learning process. An interwovenleaning exchange centres the agency of all whocontribute to the relationship as co-learners, co-teachers and co-researchers.

Looking at these relationships through the lensof an interwoven learning exchange highlightsimportant synergies between the literaturesreviewed earlier. While literature on teachingand learning reminds us that no party to therelationship is an empty vessel to be filled, itis through attention to the literature on researchrelationships and its emphasis on reflexivity thatwe see students, as well as lecturers, as actorsneeding to reflect on their own postionality inthe exchange. All participants teach and learn,give and take.

Here, our work builds on that of others whorecognise the compound nature of teaching andresearch relationships and have started to con-template the integration of teaching and research,work and family (see for example Howitt, 2000;Le Heron

et al.

, 2006). Specifically, by recog-nising those often made invisible in academicwork, such as family, and by viewing all con-tributors, including ourselves, as co-learners, westart to blur the boundaries between teachingand research, between work and family andbetween research and action (Pain and Kindon,forthcoming). In doing so, we begin a process ofrecognising and reconfiguring power relationshipsas we, together with our co-learners, reconsideracademic processes and outputs.

This is illustrated by the research relationshipbetween the Wagiman women and ourselves.In following an agenda set by the Wagimanwomen, and adapting our own needs aroundresearch and teaching to support their agenda,we are engaged in a process of exploring possi-bilities together. Another example is the develop-ment of a section on Larrakia history andculture for the Biliru website co-authored by a Leefamily member and a student. These relationshipsencourage reciprocal visions and outcomes.

Similarly, we explicitly recognise ourselves asfamily members and social beings, and embedour families firmly within our relationships withour research partners and students. Not only didincluding our children and partners in ourresearch help in the process of developingresearch relationships and achieving work goals,

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but they critically revealed us as being emplacedwithin our own cultural contexts (see Cupplesand Kindon, 2003). Acknowledging family andlife as fundamental to our academic work andnot as some invisible sphere irrelevant to ourresearch and teaching, allows for a reconfigura-tion of academic work relationships and of ourunderstandings of work itself.

Of course, just recognising the interwovenlearning exchange does not necessarily meanthat the relationships are unproblematic. As ourexperience with the Wagiman show, there willalways be challenges associated with these relation-ships. The women’s original vision for usingthe trip to develop vocational skills in tourisminterpretation has yet to eventuate. There willalways be practical limits too. Although familyresponsibilities could be catered for, and theresearchers and Indigenous tour operatorswere acknowledged as family members in theexchange, this acknowledgment was notextended to the students who had to managetheir own family and other obligations in theirown way. Although, at the moment, this has notbeen addressed, a female student’s feedbackspecifically mentioned that she found it interest-ing and inspiring to see a lecturer juggling vari-ous roles (mum, lecturer, tourist).

Thus, while we are committed to workingtowards reconfiguring teaching and researchrelationships, we recognise that our goal oftransforming relationships through multifacetedinterconnection is daunting, to say the least.Working within a university framework, hopesof altered power relations and strong, long termrelationships are, if not beyond reach, certainlyonly attainable as part of a long-term movementfor change. Paradoxically, though, we also realisethat our modest steps towards reconfiguring ourown teaching and research relationships are notenough. It will take more than efforts at chang-ing relationships to rid research and teaching ofcolonising processes and power imbalances. Yet,it is our belief that change is both possible andnecessary. It is in the spirit of cultivating suchchange and of trying to move down a path towardsdecolonisation that we offer our experiences.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTSWe thank the Wagiman Women Rangers and Biliru for theirtime, generosity and permission to write about our exchange.Nicholas Hall and Trent Wilkinson from TNT, and MickHillman and the students played an invaluable role. Thereviewers’ and editors’ constructive and supportive commentsare greatly appreciated. Our research was funded by grantsfrom the University of Newcastle and Macquarie University.

NOTE1. As a result of the ‘sorry business’, and other Wagiman

family business, our research agenda with the Wagimanwomen has been postponed. Our vision of co-authoringpapers with them, and of follow up debriefing andinterviews, is also on hold.

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Documents

An Interwoven Learning Exchange: Transforming Research-Teaching Relationships in the Top End, Northern Australia