‘Little School, Big Heart’: Embracing a New Partnership for Learning Generous and Ethical Judgements

Abstract

For educators and educational researchers who value democracy and planetary sustainability, our times present pedagogical challenges. The (re)emergence of populism, alt-right violences and the pressing climate crisis, among other global matters, present a dilemma. How do we simultaneously foster the will to form generous, ethical, judgements and actions in students, while meeting their immediate needs and the myriad curricula and governance demands placed on schools, from the context of local circumstances? In response, Susan, a Federation University Gippsland Education (FUGuE) researcher; Gabbi a principal/teacher; Sophie a part-time teacher; and a year’s 4–6 class, embarked on a yearlong project to see what might be possible from the context of a relatively isolated and tiny Victorian government primary school in the rural/coastal area of South Gippsland, on the southern coast of mainland Australia. Together, in a new partnership, we aimed to simultaneously expand students’ oral language experiences while cultivating an ‘encompassing ethic’, an idea from Sue’s doctoral thesis. This is the will and capability to visit standpoints of others—human, non-human, past, present and future—in order to encompass the widest possible range of perspectives before forming judgements, speaking and acting. We synthesised this ‘going visiting’ with the Speaking and Listening mode, and the Ethical Capabilities area of the Victorian Curriculum. The project emerged as a productively and inspirationally transformative one for many of us. So, this chapter reflects on and theorizes the factors that produced transformational possibilities from a small rural school, which enacted its motto of Little School, Big Heart.

Gabbi Boyd and Sophie Callcott’s school names are kept confidential.