About
Place in Education: Connections, Responsibilities, and Futures
Toitū te whenua, toitū te tangata
If the land is well, the people are well
Education is intricately embedded and situated in place. In Aotearoa, te ao Māori offers meanings of place as carrying significance beyond the immediate and material. The place of education is both general and specific, shaped by history, time, and lived experience. It reaches across the everyday into past logics of organising education.
Our relation to the places of education shapes how we connect with each other, our worlds, and the sites, spaces and objects we engage with daily. It also highlights our ethical and moral responsibilities as researchers to consider the sustainability of our world and the urgent environmental challenges that impact education’s future.
Thinking about place in education is relevant to global and local contexts but demands attention to our own communities. Indigenous and postcolonial scholars encourage us to pay more attention to place. As such, we warmly invite all educational researchers to reflect on the meanings of place in education in relation to their own contexts and from a diverse range of epistemological and methodological perspectives.
As always, papers on other themes of educational interest are welcome. The 2025 NZARE Conference seeks to stimulate debate, extend conversations, and explore ways to strengthen the place of education—its connections, responsibilities, and futures.
