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320 C.A. Siry

Barbara Thayer-Bacon and Diana Moyer (2006) have written about the ways in
which history can be used as lens through which to guide future action. Historical
analyses can reveal the ways in which current situations are interrelated with
broader economic and social interests, and considering histories can illuminate the
ways in which the community has arrived at its current situation.
Carolyne Ali-Khan (2010) suggests that we conceive of contested places “in rela-
tion to the particulars of time” (n.p.), and in the case of Superior, situating the
different communities and individual histories and perspectives “on parallel time-
lines” as Ali-Khan suggests can provide a useful approach to working toward
developing understandings around differences. Positioning multiple timelines and
complex contexts highlights the similarities and the differences between commu-
nities and perspectives, and research then can engage with questions that emerge
from the lived experiences of the individuals, and the experiences of the collectives.
Polysemic approaches position research in a way that supports coming together
across difference. Further, such work acknowledges the histories and experiences of
the different individuals and groups. Creating dialogue (in a Bakhtinian sense) can
support the synthesis of place-based education with polysemic research approaches.
To embrace a dialogic stance requires recognizing the plurality of experiences as
well as the value of communicating across differences, and responds to this recog-
nition by collectively exploring and expanding encounters with the other. This
creates an emphasis on the importance of recognizing the incompleteness that is
inherent in all of us, and points to the need to keep growing and learning as a
member of a collective. A dialogic process is always changing, and it is this under-
standing and recognition of the importance of being open to others that is central.
Research has the potential (and I would argue, the charge) to be transformative for
participants and it is in expanding research and place-based education to include
differing standpoints and perspectives of participants that the interrelationship
between cultural sustainability, ecological integrity, and community survival can
be emphasized.

References

Access Fund. (2008). Whatever happened to Arizona’s Oak Flat? Vertical Times, 81, 10–11.
Ali-Khan, C. (2010). Sharing a disparate landscape. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 5,
361–371.
Bakhtin, M. (1981). The dialogic imagination. (C. Emerson & M. Holquist, Trans.) Austin:
University of Texas Press.
Basu, S. J. (2008). Empowering communities of research and practice by conducting research for
change and including participant voice in reflection on research. Cultural Studies of Science
Education, 3, 859–965.
Freire, P. (2006). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.
Glasson, G. (2010). Revitalization of the shared commons: Education for sustainability and
marginalized cultures. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 5, 373–381.
Jarman, M. (2008, November 26). Economy slowing Superior mine plan. The Arizona Republic.
Retrieved November 26, 2009, from http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/
articles/2008/11/26/20081126biz-resolution1126.html.