Curriculum Hidden: Contemplating More-than-human Ethics (original) (raw)
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Are some animals more equal than others? Animal Rights and Deep Ecology in environmental education
This article focuses on the role of ethical perspectives such as deep ecology and animal rights in relation to environmental education, arguing that such perspectives are well-placed to reposition students as responsible planetary citizens. We focus on the linkage between non-consequentialism, animal rights, and deep ecology in an educational context and discuss the broader issue of ethics in education. Finally, we discuss how the inclusion of deep ecology and animal rights perspectives would improve current environmental education programs by deepening the respect for non-humans and their inclusion in the ethical community.
The case for mandatory inclusion of ethics within the zoological sciences curriculum
Integrative Zoology, 2006
Traditionally, undergraduate science curricula include little or no "ethics," either as theory or practice. However, zoologists are currently enjoying considerable media exposure: some of it positive (as in conservation practice), but more often negative (pertaining to issues such as the use of animals for testing of drugs, and genetic engineering). More than ever before, zoologists are being asked to make value judgments, and many of these involve moral assessment; if we accept that zoologists (along with other scientists) are professionals, then we must accept that they are responsible for any decisions they make, and it then follows that they are accountable, which can have serious ramifications in cases of malpractice. Ethics involves the application of morality in a professional setting. In light of this, teaching ethics is mandatory in degree programs such as engineering and medicine. This paper contends that a key output of zoological education is the undergraduate who is cognizant of the ethical framework and constructs within which he/she must function. The paper concludes with comment on the nature and style of delivery of ethics education.
While the original objective of environmental education (EE) and education for sustainable development (ESD) acquired an awareness of the natural world and its current plight, animal welfare (AW), animal rights (AR), and deep ecology (DE) have often been absent within EE and ESD. AW and AR focus their attention on individual animals, while the DE perspective recognizes the intrinsic value of the environment. In this article, we shall discuss how the integration of these three approaches within EE/ESD can and should be improved, with particular reference to the ethical underpinnings of educational scholarship and practice. This article will argue that these three positions are well placed to enhance the democratic practices of EE/ESD through the adoption of an inclusive pluralism that embraces representation of non-human species and recognizes their interests.
Animal Ethics and Human Learning
While education theory is preoccupied with “the human project”, and environmental education often seen as a “corrective device” that does not question the hegemonial domination of the human (Pedersen, 2010), this paper draws attention to learning in the realm of cross-species intersubjectivities, agencies and entanglements as processes of “mutual becoming” (Pickering 2005). The paper reveals practices of knowing and morality, how they are constructed and negotiated in processes of “mutual domestication” (Despret, 2004), and how such a “pedagogic space” (Spannring, in review) is possible and at the same impossible (Biesta, 1998).
Re-examining the human-nonhuman animal relationship through humane education
Research Handbook on ChildhoodNature, Springer International Handbooks onf Education, 2018
In the time of the Anthropocene the human species’ destructive effect on the planet and other nonhuman species is evident. The socialisation process of children plays a significant role in the preservation of a speciesist Western society, as the exploitation, captivity and instrumental use of nonhuman animals are normalised through the reproduction of speciesist messages in the educational setting, through children’s media and our language use, which all reinforce the idea of nonhuman animals as the other. Speciesism, the underlying ideology that excludes nonhuman animals from the sphere of moral concern and legal protection, is dependent on its reproduction, just as other dominant ideologies. The exploitation of nonhuman animals and human-nonhuman animal hierarchy is further normalised through environmental education and welfare education and the notion of the humane use of nonhuman animals. Can our treatment of nonhuman animals be characterised as humane? What does it mean to be humane? This article examines how humane education can refute speciesist messages, as it offers children the tools to identify and critically assess interconnected webs of oppression and thus re-examine the human-nonhuman relationship.
Ecology and morality: Transforming the non-human into connectedness with nature
Moral Issues in the Natural Sciences and Technologies, 2019
Peer review declaration The publisher (AOSIS) endorses the South African 'National Scholarly Book Publishers Forum Best Practice for Peer Review of Scholarly Books'. The manuscript was subjected to a rigorous two-step peer review prior to publication, with the identities of the reviewers not revealed to the author(s). The reviewers were independent of the publisher and/or authors in question. The reviewers commented positively on the scholarly merits of the manuscript and recommended that the manuscript should be published. Where the reviewers recommended revision and/or improvements to the manuscript, the authors responded adequately to such recommendations. Research Justification This book reflects academically on important and relevant natural scientific disciplines, important technologies and related media to determine and communicate the moral issues and challenges within those specific fields of study, and how to deal with them morally and from a multidimensional South African context. It aims to add scientific, technological and ethical value, locally and globally, by reflecting mainly from the viewpoint of specific scholars, writing about the most pressing moral issues or challenges raised by problems within their specific field of study. It is written mainly from a qualitative methodological perspective, including autobiographical and participatory views. The co-authors present in respective chapters their research systematically and intersectionally, based on profound theoretical analysis and reasoning. Current research in the basic and implied sciences and technologies requires sound ethical practice based on a defensible moral stance. Moral norms, in our view, are deeply grounded and evolved convictions about justice and injustice, right and wrong, good and bad. It is not about rules. This scholarly book combines the insights and expertise of established South African scholars from different disciplines and backgrounds. The contributors are all deeply committed to the value and validity of science and ethical practice across the moral spectrum. Open and responsible discussions around this topic can lead to the introduction of moral guidelines and regulations to protect the rights of individuals, animals and the environment, while simultaneously facilitating the growth of scientific practice. This collected work, with its very specific and carefully selected grouping of academic fields, aims to innovatively assist in alleviating the shortage of academic publications reflecting on the moral issues in these specific fields. Its target audience includes international scholars, peers, researchers and educators with an interest in the specific fields covered in this volume. As an open access publication, this book is meant to assist in countering the high costs of Western academic publications and directly benefit scholars in Africa. We can confirm that all the chapters are based on original research and that no part of the book was plagiarised from another publication or published elsewhere.
Nonhuman animals and the future of environmental education: Empathy and new possibilities
The Journal of Environmental Education, 2019
Similar to other fields, environmental education has begun to embrace the significance of nonhuman animals. This essay examines developments in the natural sciences, particularly in the field of cognitive ethology, that focus on the concept of empathy as a paradigm for conceptualizing human/nonhuman animal relationships. Drawing on my own experience using this model of empathy in a course focused on animals, society, and education, I suggest ways that environmental education can incorporate these new understandings about nonhuman animal sentience, cognition and emotion into the field.
Contemporary Studies in Environmental and Indigenous Pedagogies A Curricula of Stories and Place by Andrejs Kulnieks (Nipissing University, Ontario, Canada), Dan Roronhiakewen Longboat (Trent University, Ontario, Canada) and Kelly Young (Trent University, Ontario, Canada) (Eds.), 2013
As agents of change, environmental educators have both the capacity and the responsibility to make an ethical choice to examine and challenge how dominant Western cultural ways of thinking have isolated us from recognizing the realities of our ecological existence. This chapter lays out an eco-ethical environmental education framed by EcoJustice Education with a focus on how people learn to both identify and examine violent habits of Western industrial culture, suggesting we confront our assumptions about existing as individuals separate from and superior to the greater ecological systems to which we belong.
Connecting Animal Cognition and Emotion with Ethical Reasoning in the Classroom
Animals in Environmental Education, 2019
We developed an interdisciplinary course connecting the science of animal cognition and emotion with ethical reasoning for the general education curriculum at Roanoke College. The course engages students in considering familiar animals, their pets, first, followed by a broader phylogenetic range of species. Students learn about cultural views of animals and scientific evidence of high-level animal cognition and emotion. We ask students to analyze ways in which these culturally based views and scientific findings should impact our ethical reasoning about animals. In our surveys of students (n = 89) in six sections of the course, taught over three years, students reported that they valued the interdisciplinary approach of the course and that their knowledge of cognitive abilities of animals increased.
Science and ethics: Some issues for education
Science education, 2001
Ethical issues concerning pain and suffering of animals are necessarily a consideration when it comes to killing "pest" or "feral" species in Australia. Within a continent where there are no large predators, many introduced animal species such as rabbits, foxes, horses, donkeys, camels, goats, and mice have been able to thrive, competing with the interests of farmers and graziers, and livestock and food production. These species, thus, gain the label of "pest." Many methods now exist to kill these species and, consequently, ethical issues arise concerning the possible pain and suffering caused as a direct result of these methods. Yet within government and scientific communities, ethical issues are reduced to a secondary consideration without serious debate or contention. Ethical issues appear to be at odds with scientific agendas. How can environmental ethics be incorporated as part of science-based decision making that appeals to objectivity and scientific evidence? Within educational institutions as well, the same dilemma exists: How can ethical issues be addressed within the science curriculum and in the classroom? A greater understanding of various perspectives on the subject of environmental ethics and the value positions advocated by proponents of these perspectives may help teachers consider ways of handling such issues in the science classroom.