More Than Just Climate Change: The Search for Ecosocially Just Change Education in Canada (original) (raw)

2022, Encyclopedia of Educational Innovation

Outdoor, environmental, even ecological, education has been part of what is now called Canada since humans first graced the landscape. And likely much longer depending upon how strictly anthropocentric your definitions of learning and teaching are. In some ways climate change is a specific cultural failure to educate in a just, equitable, eco-relational way. In parallel, the focus on climate change education to the exclusion at times of human/more-than-human relationality and/or undoing anthropocentrism/species elitism recapitulates these same culturally embedded failings. Some educations in Canada have tried, and continue to try, to respond, sometimes directly and explicitly, often intuitively and implicitly, to these challenges of injustice, alienation, human elitism, and various and sundry equally troubling problematics (e.g., colonialism, the mind-body split, instrumentalism). So in the short space allotted, this entry will simply list four larger forms of outdoor, environmental, ecological education that exist, at varying intensities, in Canada. They are listed historically, each with a brief description and some potential further resources. None is positioned as a panacea although some are clearly more substantive in theory and practice and likely better positioned to educate for the deep justice challenges, both ecological and social that desperately need attention. None is a complete description or does justice to the range and nuance within and between any category, these are merely thumbnail descriptions of some educational possibilities. The enactment of an education that will impact the current direction of climate change depends on how the reader makes sense of this challenge, the landscapes (both political and ecological) in which they exist, the learners they encounter, and the will and art they possess and are willing to develop and share. For these are uncertain times, and the world needs educators who are interested in supporting a view toward a more equitable future.