ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates how the study of place affords complex opportunities for collective meaning-making practices. It shows that making place the object of study can provide opportunities for children to work together to make new meanings, imagine different possibilities, and in the process, to assemble complex literate repertoires. The chapter includes a range of strategies and processes that have been used by teachers to build student's confidence and competence in the analysis and production of complex texts, particularly representations of people and places, in multiple modes and media. The pedagogy associated with the text production allows for the affordances of student diversity to be properly exploited in terms of talents, resources, interests, and histories. Strong synergies exist between critical literacy's focus on language practices and power relations, and place-conscious pedagogies recognition of the politics of people, places and spaces.
