Dr Peter Willis

My educational philosophy is drawn from engagement in community development and adult education in a range of arenas beginning with youth work in Melbourne, then a long time with Aboriginal people in remote Outback parts of Australia and finally to my present time of more than 20 years of engagement in Higher Education at the University of South Australia. I am interested in promoting transformative learning through which students gain expanded critical capacity, sensitivity and wisdom.

Recent work in NSW

CREEW

• TEACHING RESPONSIBILITIES During the past 20 years, I have taken responsibility for teaching courses at undergraduate, Masters and Doctoral levels.
• I have been an active member of the Adult, Vocational and Workplace Learning (AVWL) program team and have designed and presented 5 undergraduate courses within this award, Namely: •
• Issues and Methods of Research
• Adult Education as Vocation
• Critical Perspectives on Curriculum
• Theorists and theories of Adult learning and Development
• Wisdom, spirituality and the aesthetic
• Policy and Contexts,

Adult Learning Australia

Indo-Pacific Journal of phenomenology

1998 PhD Education (University of Technology of Sydney)

1980 MA Anthropology by research (Australian National University).

• Adult Education and Lifelong Learning in the community, the workplace and formal institutions
• Qualitative Research practice and theory in educational and learning practice Phenomenological and narrative approaches to research
• Arts based approaches to research
• A. Lifelong learning & human personal & social development B. Spirituality and human transformation,
• A. Philosophical approaches to Adult learning B. The aesthetic dimensions of living and learning
• Pedagogies of research supervision

Peter Willis, (with Tim leonard) (eds)(2008) Pedagogies of the imagination: mythopoetic curriculum in educational practice, Dortrecht, The Netherlands: Springer This collection of essays explores pedagogic ways in which educators encouraging personal change in their learners, seek to evoke in them a special direction of their imagination known as mythopoetic. In mythopoetic pedagogy, the imagination is evoked not as a vehicle of fantasy but as a direct way to the learners’ unspoken feelings and their unconscious mind. They are encouraged to imagine themselves having taken on the learning being promoted with its embedded changes to their personal ideas and practices and then to dwell on and attend to their reactive desires, fears and aspirations. Gut reactions to such implied change evoked in reaction to this mythopoetic contemplation, can precipitate a personal crisis, in which the learner can hardly avoid confronting fully the implied changes, and either rejects or embraces them wholeheartedly. Pedagogies of the imagination are complementary to pedagogies of information and skilling more commonly encountered in educational practice. The chapters in this practical book explore theoretical and applied approaches to the mythopoetic agenda, which it is suggested require radically different approaches and skills, in a range of educational settings from schools and tertiary colleges to arenas of adult, vocational and workplace learning 2. Outstanding Features: The distinctive feature of this collection is that it has gathered a significant number of the best and brightest English speaking academic practitioners in Canada, UK, USA and Australia to talk about something that has been neglected and dormant for more than a quarter of a century. The need for an alternative and complementary approach in educational practice across the board, has become achingly clear in the drying out of instructional and testing based forms of education and the lack of depth or holism in the educational agenda. There is, as far as is generally known, nothing in current educational writing that shares this approach.

Peter Willis (with Stephen McKenzie and Roger Harris)eds (2009) Rethinking work and learning: Adult and vocational education for social sustainability This collection brings together an international group of writer/educators to explore ways in which social sustainability can be integrated into Adult and Vocational Education (AVE) practices. While it is clear that given the rapid change of work, job-specific training for adults is clearly vital the world over, writers in this book argue that job-specific training needs re-orientation to include life specific learning as well. This can come about when the learning opportunities to which citizens have access prepare them to participate in work which is economically productive and at the same time engages them in related civic activities which promote environmental and social sustainability. Our contributors, who are from Australia, Europe, South Africa, the Asia-South Pacific region and Canada, call for this re-orientation of current AVE systems in two ways. The first is to broaden the educational agenda to include elements of environmental science, politics and the arts. The second is to include more dialogic and collaborative teaching and learning styles which would be appropriate to some of the proposed additions and which would complement current technical and instructional approaches often used in AVE programs.

INVITING LEARNING. Inviting learning: An exhibition of risk and enrichment in Adult Education practice published in London in 2002 has been the foundation for much of my research methodology and pedagogy. It is drawn from my PhD thesis and explores the use of so-called Expressive approaches to qualitative research in Adult Education practice where the aim is to create an in depth portrayal of various teaching events as they are experienced by practitioners and learners. Besides breaking new ground in its methodology, the book was also innovative in being presented in the form of an exhibition with a ‘foyer’, a ‘main gallery’ and a ‘gallery of method’. Its innovative character was particularly singled our in a scholarly review published in the influential British journal, Studies in the Education of Adults.

PEDAGOGY IN RESEARCH SUPERVISION. 2004 Mentorship, transformative learning and nurture: Adult education challenges in resarch supervision. Quality in post-graduate research conference Adelaide April 22, 23 2003 Practice learning in post-graduate supervision Paper presented at the Practice based research conference in Melbourne: RMIT June 1, 2

PATRONS AND RIDERS. This book published in 2003, is the culmination of more than 20 years connection with the Miriwoong Aboriginal people in Kununurra, North West Australia. It is based on my MA thesis in Anthropology from ANU and is an analysis of the educational relations between missionaries (and similar community development people) and Aboriginal people in a colonial and post colonial historical context where each of the parties has conflicting roles and hidden objectives. The missionaries (and often the community development workers) consciously or unconsciously, try to create and exploit ‘indebtedness’ – the structural role of the patron – and the Aboriginal would-be clients, the metaphoric ‘riders’ in the book, attempt to create and maintain useful relationships without losing their autonomy.

RESEARCH RELATED TO EDUCATIONAL APPROACHES TO FOSTERING INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY Willis, P. & Carden, P. (eds) (2004) Lifelong learning and the Democratic Imagination: Re-visioning justice, freedom and community Flaxton (Queensland, Australia): Post Pressed This collection of essays from Australia, UK, South Africa, USA and Canada concerned ways of imagining democracy and bringing such visions to action.

PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO QUALITATIVE EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH

Willis, P. (2004) 'From the things themselves to a feeling of understanding' Indo-Pacific journal of phenomenology Vol.4 June

Willis, P. (2002) Poetry and poetics in Phenomenological research Indo-Pacific journal of phenomenology Vol.3 April pp. 1-19

Willis, P. (2001) The things themselves in Phenomenology Indo-Pacific journal of phenomenology Vol.1 April pp. 1-21

RESEARCH INTO APPRENTICESHIP TRAINING 2001 I worked with Roger Harris and Michele Simons in a national research program funded by the Australian National Training Authority (ANTA) This study involved interviewing a representative sample of apprentices, their employers and TAFE teachers in South Australia and extending this inquiry nationally through questionnaires and focus groups. The results of this project were published in a book entitled Learning the job: Juggling the messages of on- and off-job learning.

RESEARCH ON NOTIONS OF LEARNING AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA 1995/1996 This project was carried out with Professor Basil Moore, Ms. Marie Crotty and myself in 1995/6, The result of this research was published as a book with the title "Getting it right: Getting it together"

REFLECTIVE PRACTICE AND PHENOMENOLOGY Willis, P. (1998) Looking for what it’s really like: Phenomenology in reflective practice Studies in Continuing Education Vol 21. No. 1

SINGING AS EDUCATIONAL PRACTICE Willis, P. (2003) A singing lesson from the Outback: Ted Egan’s welcome, sketches and dreams. Australian Journal of Adult Learning Vol 43, N.3 Nov 2003

EDUCATION IN AND THROUGH FICTION Willis. P. (2003) A novel way of teaching Australian Journal of Adult Learning May

IMAGINATION IN EDUCATION Willis, P. (2004) Transformation and the imaginal heart: From re-enchantment to re-visioning in Adult Education. In Heywood, P., McCann, P., Neville, B. & Willis, P. (eds) Re-enchanting education Flaxton: Post Pressed

ARTS BASED RESEARCH IN ADULT EDUCATION Willis, P. (2000) Expressive and arts-based research: Presenting lived experience in qualitative research. In Willis, P., Smith, R. & Collins, E. (eds) Being, Seeking, Telling: Expressive approaches to qualitative adult education research. Flaxton (Queensland, Australia): Post Pressed

LEARNING DEMOCRACY Willis, P. (2004) Compassionate listening and reporting. In Willis, P. & Carden, P. (eds) Lifelong learning and the Democratic Imagination: Re-visioning justice, freedom and community Flaxton (Queensland, Australia): Post Pressed

Willis, P. (with Leonard, T., Hodge, S and Morrison, A.) Spirituality and learning. Malany (Queensland) Post Pressed (In press)