Blooming in the doom and gloom: Bringing regenerative pedagogy to the rebellion (original) (raw)
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Sustainability, 2021
The crises societies face today contribute to a rather challenging life setting that demands in-depth reflection, daring new thinking, and change urgently. Transformative education for a sustainable future is needed today more than ever before; the aim of this paper is an exploration of its goal and pedagogy. By drawing on diverse bodies of knowledge, including the structure-agency debate and the theory of critical pedagogy, this paper critically discusses Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and its goal of sustainable development. It identifies areas where ESD needs enhancement given the present socio-economic and cultural context and ultimately proposes the transformation of ESD to Education for Eco-communities—which highlights the need for community-centered approaches, knowledge, and observation of natural laws, sociological imagination, and political acumen—to render it better suited for the challenges of the 21st century.
Critical Pedagogy, Ecoliteracy, and Planetary Crisis: The Ecopedagogy Movement
"We live in a time of unprecedented planetary ecocrisis, one that poses the serious and ongoing threat of mass extinction. What role can critical pedagogy play in the face of such burgeoning catastrophe? Drawing upon a range of theoretical influences including Paulo Freire, Ivan Illich, Herbert Marcuse, traditional ecological knowledge, and the cognitive praxis produced by today's grassroots activists in the alter-globalization, animal and earth liberation, and other radical social movements this book offers the foundations of a philosophy of ecopedagogy for the global north. In so doing, it poses challenges to today's dominant ecoliteracy paradigms and programs, such as education for sustainable development, while theorizing the needed reconstruction of critical pedagogy itself in light of our presently disastrous ecological conditions. Students and teachers of critical pedagogy at all levels, as well as those involved in environmental studies and various forms of sustainability education, will find this book a powerful provocation to adjust their thinking and practice to better align with those who seek to abolish forms of culture predicated upon planetary extermination and the domination of nature. BOOK NEWS REVIEW: http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Critical+pedagogy,+ecoliteracy,+and+planetary+crisis%3B+the+ecopedagogy...-a0225460110"
Towards an Unprecedented Ecocritical Pedagogy
Teaching Literature, ed. Ben Knights, 2017
The article contrasts cornucopian and declensionist environmentalist historiographies, represented by Matt Ridley's The Rational Optimist and David Orr's Earth in Mind, in relation to key concerns of environmental education. For the environmental humanities, Orr's Romantic pessimism is analysed as reductive and pegagogically regressive. By contrast, ecocritical pedagogy is framed, following Jonathan Skinner, as a 'practice of emergency' that stresses both urgency and openness.
The Heart of the Matter: Infusing Sustainability Values in Education
Earth Charter International is pleased to release this publication to mark the end of the United Nations Decade for Education for Sustainable Development (UNDESD), and celebrate the launch of the Global Action Programme on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). In 2003, UNESCO recognized the importance of the Earth Charter for ESD in Resolution Reference 32C/17, which states: “...recognizing the Earth Charter as an important ethical framework for sustainable development”, affirms member states’ intention to “utilize the Earth Charter as an educational instrument, particularly in the framework of the United Nations Decade for Education for Sustainable Development”. Over the course of the Decade, Earth Charter International has contributed to the efforts of the UNDESD by organizing workshops, courses, teacher trainings, and events. ECI has produced several publications about the Earth Charter in ESD initiatives and this publication highlights only a few of the more recent stories. The collection showcased in this publication celebrates the ongoing global effort to bring ethics and values into education at all levels. The Earth Charter proposes that we “Integrate into...education and life-long learning the knowledge, values, and skills needed for a sustainable way of life.” The 19 stories in this publication detail initiatives to further that goal. These examples show the amazing diversity and creativity of educators around the world who are finding ways to bring sustainability values into teaching and learning, and by doing so are helping to accelerate sustainable development. One example is the experience of Nelly Kostoulas-Makrakis from the University of Crete, Greece, who said: “I was searching for ways to overcome current tendencies toward compartmentalization of knowledge and neglect of ethics and values education that are inherent in the concept of sustainable development (SD). Through my search, I identified the Earth Charter as a potential framework that could fulfil my critical pedagogy needs.” The stories in this publication have several themes in common. It is clear that the authors of these chapters have identified many of the same socio-ecological challenges to our collective wellbeing. They have also understood that at the heart of these challenges is the issue of our value system, and the need to change conventional ways of teaching. The experience of the University of Granada exemplifies this: “A common goal between the Earth Charter and the University of Granada is to carry out the development of other intelligences... (we have) attempted to produce an experiential learning experience of connection to nature with an impact on emotional and spiritual dimensions.” Alfonso Fernández Herrería And, finally, they all share the common vision that using the Earth Charter as a guide towards reorienting that global value system is a powerful method for achieving a sustainable perspective for present and future generations. These examples illustrate the transformative power of the Earth Charter to open our eyes to the beauty, interconnectedness, and integral nature of the world we live in. They also tell stories of how the Earth Charter is shaping the kind of citizens and societies that understand their responsibilities and that will joyfully celebrate all life on Earth. “This Earth Charter experience has taught us to respect the environment and to give value to everything nature gives us; it has brought the class together”. Alice, student from Italy Earth Charter International is honored to offer this publication at the end of the UNDESD as a contribution of the UNESCO Chair on ESD with the Earth Charter. We hope that the examples of good practice in this publication will cast a bright light of hope on the future and ECI would be happy to learn that these stories inspire new educational initiatives that will also strive to take on the challenge of our societies towards values of care, compassion, respect, and universal responsibility.
Sustainability for Whom? The Politics of Imagining Environmental Change in Education
Global initiatives regarding environmental change have increasingly become part of political agendas and of our collective imagination. In order to form sustainable societies, education is considered crucial by organizations such as the United Nations and the European Union. But how is the notion of sustainability imagined and formed in educational practices? What does sustainability make possible, and whom does it involve? These critical questions are not often asked in educational research on sustainability. This study suggests that the absence of critical questions in sustainability education is part of a contemporary post-political framing of environmental issues. In order to re-politicize sustainability in education, this study critically explores how education—as an institution and a practice that is supposed to foster humans—responds to environmental change. The aim is to explore how sustainability is formed in education, and to discuss how these formations relate to ideas of what education is, and whom it is for. This interdisciplinary study uses theories and concepts from cultural studies, feminist theory, political theory, and philosophy of education to study imaginaries of the unknown, nonhuman world in the context of education. The focus of the empirical investigation is on teacher education in Sweden, and more precisely on those responsible for teaching the future generations of teachers – the teacher instructors. With help from empirical findings from focus groups, the study asks questions about the ontological, political, and ethical potential and risk of bringing the unknown Other into education.
Transformative Sustainability Education: From Sustainababble to a Civilization Leap
Palgrave International Handbook on Adult and Lifelong Education and Learning, 2017
With the realities of climate change pressing in on us, sustainability discourse has gained currency, although some consider it to have been coopted and emptied of meaning— " sustainababble ". This chapter reviews the state of sustainability education, including a brief update on the state of sustainability vis-à-vis climate challenges, the contested meanings of sustainability, and the historical development of sustainability education particularly in relation to environmental education and the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. The chapter ends with a glimpse into the polyarchy of learning edges in transformative sustainability education and the shift toward a relational ontoempistemology, creating conditions for a civilizational leap.
Green Pedagogy: Using Confrontation and Provocation to Promote Sustainability Skills
Teacher Education in the 21st Century Emerging Skills for a Changing World, 2021
The chapter describes the features of Green Pedagogy, originally developed in Austria in German where it is still being actively researched. Green Pedagogy offers a structured approach to lesson planning to achieve embedded sustainability competencies within a specific vocational or academic field. The Green Pedagogy approach achieves sustainability competency through a controlled appeal to the emotions and the explicit uncovering of learner values to take on new ideas and new perspectives in a more sustainable direction. The approach is compatible with many recommended Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) pedagogies such as project-based teaching and the case study approach. The approach also implements several more general evidence-based pedagogical strategies such as concept change. The key feature of Green Pedagogy is that the process ends with locally based action whose wider implications are explored. We relate some of the challenges involved in translating a pedagogical approach from one language to another as the ProfESus Erasmus project aimed to disseminate Green Pedagogy to a global cohort of teachers of home economics in English. Reactions of participating teachers in the piloting of the training are explored and some practical solutions offered.
Towards a Linking Activist Pedagogy: Teacher Activism for Social-Ecological Justice
The world is currently in the midst of a social-ecological crisis. We cannot ignore that the primary cause of this change in our planet's ecological balance and the increase in social injustices is our heavy dependence on non-renewable fossil fuels and a capitalist economic system, which encourages exploitation of both human and more than human resources with no regard for the consequences. In such a reality, it is alarming that education treats knowledge as disconnected fragments and that environmental and social issues are often addressed separately in education. In order to live in environmentally healthy and socially just communities, we need ways of thinking and teaching that integrate rather than fragment issues. There is a need to recognize that the ecological crisis is a “cultural crisis”. With the need for such an approach in mind, Morgan Gardner (2005) formulated the term “linking activism” to describe one's “blended social-ecological justice practice” when “being positioned in a single construct” (p.3). I extend this into a consideration of environmental and social-justice educators as agents of change whose daily activism works to change the current cultural paradigm and bring social-ecological order and harmony. This paper will argue for the importance of engaging in linking activism in education by critically examining the mainstream environmental educational field in order to critique its paradigm that is imprinted by the current dominant culture, which in turn perpetuates social-ecological oppression.