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1995
As an alternative to recent misreadings of boundary politics, a more responsible, outsider pedagogy needs to be cultivated
2017
This thesis explores the political and ethical entanglements of Early Years Teachers with human and non-human worlds. Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) policy, research and professional practice frame expected ways of working with children. This highly-feminised workforce has historically been presented as deficient. I argue this notion sees them as dehumanised subjects (Snaza, 2015), in need of constant upskilling. Posthumanist theorising was employed to reveal Early Years Teachers in relations with other humans (children, teachers) and non-humans (classroom, outdoor environments, objects, policy) forming more-than-human subjectivities. A post-qualitative methodology was developed to attend to more-than-human entanglements, with material-ethno-carto-graphy proposed as a methodological undertaking pertinent to this inquiry. The reconfigured methods-as-affinity-groups built on ethnography to explore connections within/between four Early Years Teacher case studies. The resulta...
Science Activities: Classroom Projects and Curriculum Ideas, 2007
This article provides basic information on how a common species of earthworm, Eisenia fetida, can be used in the biology classroom as well as a discussion of how to establish and care for a vermicompost bin. We discuss ideas for inquiry activities with the organism and provide a sample-guided inquiry that demonstrates how a long-term, theme-based unit involving earthworms can address a wide variety of content from the National Science Education standards.
Some anthropologists have argued that Euro-American culture is naturalist, anchored to the belief in a coherent, unitary universe in which natural laws operate. From a close ethnographic inspection, however, the allegedly naturalist sciences emerge as heterogeneous practices, engaging with complex and not quite coherent objects. Following one such object -an earthworm -allows me to show that the earthworm science that studies it has no univocal object, but rather one that is multiple. At the same time, scientists successfully engage in practices that seek to hold together the incoherent earthworm/s and the world/s in which it is/they are being practised. It is in this way that coherence may still be achieved. Exploring the gaps between multiple ontologies and coordinating practices allows for the emergence of a sharper, practice-attentive understanding of science and its naturalist achievements. If it is true that a single, unitary Nature is nowhere to be found, the analysis presented here shows how a transient, contingent, multiple, and -yet -still bound-together nature may result from careful coordination practices.
Educational Theory, 2018
Philosophers of education often focus their critique on issues such as neoliberalism, consumerism , pluralism, and so on, and they typically turn for solutions to what we might call the political: democracy, the public, cosmopolitanism, dissent. These critiques and solutions remain firmly connected to what Heidegger calls "the world," and this worldly analysis seemingly hovers above earthly issues of the environment and ecology. In this article, Clarence Joldersma employs Martin Heidegger's distinction between earth and world, drawing on Kelly Oliver's interpretation of it, to "ecologize" philosophy of education by arguing that that earth "juts" into the world. Philosophy of education needs a Derridean supplement, something that makes up for a lack, but that, in filling the lack, simultaneously supplants it. Joldersma invites philosophy of education to supplement its worldly principles (dissent, democracy, and the like) with an "earth ethics" that is characterized by three features. First, this ethics lets the earth and earthlings be, recognizing their continuing mystery as beings. Second, it acknowledges gratefulness toward the earth, an indebtedness to the earth for the reliable support it provides to our worldly projects and concerns. Third, it recognizes earth's fundamental fragility, that its seeming worldly dependability conceals an earthly vulnerability. Joldersma concludes that these three features, in tandem, give rise to an earthly ethics of responsibility. Philosophy of education needs an earth ethics to supplement, if not supplant, its worldly principles.
We argue that students should take on roles as epistemic agents— those who shape knowledge production and practices of a community. In this study, the research team—a science educator and two scientists—worked with a sixth-grade teacher to provide 90 students with opportunities to take up epistemic agency over a 22-day unit about moth ecology. We used cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) to analyze the co-configuration of activity. During planning, tensions arose among the research team around how and why to position students as epistemic agents, while still attending to meaningful science questions. During instruction, students prompted the constant negotiation of epistemic roles and practices as they acted on shifting agentic participation structures.
Educational Studies, 2014
Drawing upon socio-ecological and critical educational theory, this article examines neoliberal educational reforms through a theoretical framework of commons and enclosure. Neoliberal reforms should be regarded as enclosures because they seek to privatize education for profit accumulation, foreclosing the possibility of education operating as a commons, or a collective process of sustainable, democratic, and ethical social production. However, educational enclosures have subjective dimensions as well. Specifically, the author argues, there is a raced, classed, and gendered process of educational subjection operating through these enclosures. While mainstream educational research calls for ‘educational innovations’ in policy and practice, this essay contends that the proliferation of ecological devastation and economization of curriculum and pedagogy requires that educational studies rethink educational collectivity and the possibilities of constituting common subjects who resist, refuse, or seek to dismantle neoliberal subjection and enclosure and instead produce social life ‘in common’ with each other and with non-humans and ecosystems.
Pedobiologia, 2003
In 1838 Darwin published his first paper on earthworms, showing their importance for bioturbation and the burial of surface-lying objects, and placing him as a pioneer of soil science. In October 1881, nearly 44 years after writing his first paper, and about 6 months before his death, Darwin published his last book, "The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms with Observations on their Habits." The book was a best seller at the time and can be considered a historical turning point in the perception of the importance of earthworms by humans, especially farmers, gardeners and scientists. Despite its great popularity, however, there were (and still are) criticisms regarding Darwin's broad statements and conclusions, and the book did not reach, throughout the 20 th century, the popularity of his other masterworks. Nonetheless, 'Worms' dealt masterfully with topics such as earthworm intelligence (responsible in a great part for the book's popularity) and importance in the biogeospheric cycles. Darwin's book attributed intelligence and benevolence to earthworms, changing the notion that earthworms were only dumb, undesirable pests and a general nuisance. Although later research showed that Darwin's statements regarding intelligence were exaggerated and his experiments inaccurately attributed intelligence where instincts predominated, today, more than 120 years later, Darwin's conclusions continue to challenge scientists following in his footsteps, seeking to prove or disprove his ideas. a Modified and expanded from , and based on the concluding presentation made at ISEE7 entitled: "Darwin's (1881) worms and vegetable mould: Lessons in pedology, soil ecology, agronomy, geology, archaeology and ethology. How well are we following in his footsteps?" b Approved for publication by the Editorial Board of Embrapa Soybean as manuscript 09/2003. 925 With Darwin, earthworms turn intelligent Pedobiologia (2003) 47, 924-933
2016
The learning-from-nature movement ‘biomimicry’ promises to guide us in living sustainably on and with planet Earth. Whereas traditional technological approaches tend to see nature as a ‘resource’ available for unrestricted use, the founders of biomimicry present organisms and natural systems as our ‘mentors’ or ‘teachers’. In this chapter, I will critically reflect on the promises hidden in this ‘tutorial narrative’. How did the biomimicry movement come into being and what inspired its founders to develop the tutorial narrative? What does this narrative exactly imply? Do the research activities of biomimicry practitioners match its rhetoric? To what extent do these activities reflect a new, more respectful relationship with nature in general, and animals in particular? I will conclude by arguing that the realization of a more humble relationship between humans and our fellow species entails more than the introduction of a new narrative; after all, not only the Earth’s resources, but...
Education Sciences , 2019
The so-called "animal turn", having been on the agenda for around 15 years in the humanities and social sciences, is gaining force also in the educational sciences, typically with an orientation toward posthumanist ontologies. One particular space where educational "more-than-human" relations are debated is the field of education for sustainable development (ESD). This paper responds to two recent contributions to this debate, both positioned within ESD frameworks. The purpose of this response is twofold: First, to give a critical account of the knowledge claims of the two articles, their overlaps and divergences, as well as their implications for pedagogical practice and their potential consequences for the position of animals in education and in society at large. The meaning and usefulness of analytic tools such as "critical pluralism" and "immanent critique" in relation to animals in education is discussed, as well as whose realities are represented in ESD, revealing contested spaces of teaching and learning manifested through an "enlightened distance" to anthropocentrism in-between compliance and change. The second purpose is to sketch a foundation of reflective practice for critical animal pedagogies, offering a critical theory-based form of resistance against recent posthumanist configurations of the "animal question" in education and beyond.
It is urgent that we assume the duty of fighting for the fundamental ethical principles, like respect for the life of human beings, the life of other animals, the life of birds, the life of rivers and forests. I do not believe in love between men and women, between human beings, if we are not able to love the world. Ecology takes on fundamental importance at the end of the century. It has to be present in any radical, critical or liberationist educational practice. For this reason, it seems to me a lamentable contradiction to engage in progressive, revolutionary discourse and have a practice which negates life. A practice which pollutes the sea, the water, the fields, devastates the forests, destroys the trees, threatens the birds and animals, does violence to the mountains, the cities, to our cultural and historical memories. -Paulo Freire 1
The thesis explores what living together can offer in rethinking political theory and in creating a space in which "politics" is not just a matter between people, but also with nature. These lessons about living together emerge from fieldwork around practices in which worms are central. Thus, the work focuses on ecologists who, in turn, examine worms; and worms amateurs who learn to collect and identify them in the field. Composting, and the waste-eating of earthworms are also experimented with. The "living together " that worms unearth is about eating and being eaten - a set of relations and practices that has so far been neglected by political theory with its emphasis on agreement.
Science as Culture, 2013
Earthworms and soil combine in an ecotoxicological experiment in the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. To determine the effects of a toxic compound produced by genetically modified broccoli, ecotoxicologists use the earthworm in a standardized test to understand the conditions of the soil. In the experiment a variety of elements are brought together and associated in a stable network, but the worm and the soil do not only associate; rather, the worm emerges entangled in different kinds of relations with the soil, both as bioindicator and as bioturbator. Eating provides a good tool to analyze these relations: keeping close to the tangible materialities of the lab practices, eating highlights the complex, asymmetrical relationality of worm and soil. This pushes the understanding of association that circulates in social theory, bringing back its original critical stance towards given notions of liberal, autonomous agents with renewed empirical strength. Thus eating not only frames worms that emerge from the practices of ecotoxicologists as bioindicators and as bioturbators, but it also offers a different language for what has been called the ‘politics of nature’, or how to bring nature into politics without accepting it as a given. In responding to the question on how to live with our planet, eating reminds us that we would do well to start from practices instead of agency in framing our ‘politics of nature’.
Environmental Discourses in Science Education, 2017
In this chapter, we explore the unquestioned use and killing of animals in biological education, through a mixed-methods study involving narrative inquiry, poetic inquiry, and essay composition. Based on our results, we call for a shift to a more ethicalecological holistic framework for science pedagogy. We argue that, for this shift to occur, we need to critically reexamine the foundational philosophical basis of, as well as accompanying psychological work that goes into, the de-animated and desacralized empiricist worldview. We also propose to re-animate, and to reclaim a sacred perception of, the world through aesthetic and contemplative practices alongside scientific investigations.
Students are often averse to interacting with insects. Yet children benefit from having live, non-traditional animals in the classroom or at home, because such animals provide opportunities to learn respect for all living things; the students can practice skills of careful scientific observation, explore behavioral and structural adaptations, and in the case of silkworms, become a first-hand witness to the marvel of metamorphosis. This chapter discusses obtaining living organisms, setting up habitats, and learning to care for the animals. It also provides ideas for testing their environmental preferences and behavior. Also included are notes on the historical, sociological and economic background of one particular organism, the silkworm (Bombyx mori). Children learn about this fascinating organism and its habitats, but they can also study their ecological niche and history. Children can investigate their domestication and economic value over thousands of years, and research their use as a source of income for people in many countries today. Keywords: insects, metamorphosis, China, sericulture, larva, pupa, silk, cocoon
The contributions and challenges of Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics and Freire's critical pedagogy to research and practice in environmental education are considered. We present the authors' main concepts and relate them to the principles of critical environmental education that have guided our work in Bra-zil. Although a raft of current non-anthropocentric theories question the pivotal role of language in representing experience, our purpose is to outline a critical dialogical perspective suitable for particular education contexts. The respect for the otherness of nature implicit in this process can lead to the recognition and acceptance of our own selves and new forms of solidarity and respect for others, including nonhuman nature. Our interpretive-pedagogical approach informs some of the underlying principles or practices of the critical dimension of environmental education and its research. Résumé Les contributions et défis de l'herméneutique philosophique de Gadamer et de la pédagogie critique de Freire quant à la recherche et la pratique en éducation environnementale sont examinés. Nous présentons les principaux concepts de ces auteurs et les associons aux principes d'éducation environnementale critique qui ont orienté nos travaux au Brésil. Bien qu'un ensemble de théories non anthropocentriques ayant actuellement cours mettent en question le rôle essentiel de la langue dans la représentation de l'expérience, notre objectif consiste à énoncer une perspective dialogique critique destinée aux contextes d'enseignement particuliers. Le respect du caractère unique de la nature inhérent à ce processus peut mener à la reconnaissance et à l'acceptation de soi-même et à de nouvelles formes de solidarité et de respect pour autrui, y compris pour la nature non humaine. Notre approche interprétative et pédagogique est à la base de certains des principes ou pratiques sous-jacents de la dimension critique de l'éducation environnementale et de la recherche dans le domaine.
The SAGE Handbook of Nature, 2018
This paper takes the naming of the Anthropocene as a moment of pedagogical opportunity in which we might decentre the human as the sole learning subject and explore the possibilities of interspecies learning. Picking up on current Anthropocene debates within the feminist environmental humanities, it considers how educators might pedagogically engage with the issue of intergenerational environmental justice from the earliest years of learning. Drawing on two multispecies ethnographies within the authors' common world childhoods research collaboration, the paper describes some encounters among young children, worms, and ants in Australia and Canada. It uses these encounters to illustrate how paying close attention to our mortal entanglements and vulnerabilities with other species, no matter how small, can help us to learn with other species and rethink our place in the world.
Political Education in the Anthropocene, 2023
“ECO-from the Greek oikos (household or home)-TOPIA from the Greek topos (place)” – the source of the title of the literary utopia Ecotopia, published in 1975 by the Californian author E. Callenbach (1929–2012). In a manner analogous to Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), a traveller, the Times-Post reporter William Weston, discovers an isolated place which is an exemplary form of social and political organization. The three states of the American northwest (California, Oregon, and Washington), formerly American, seceded from the rest of the feder-ation some 20 years previously, following a period of political unrest. During this relative isolation, the territory of Ecotopia was able to develop a system and culture of its own centred around ecological issues. Distancing itself from the ‘modernism’ of the United States (capitalist, consumerist, based on fossil fuels and the myth of growth) Ecotopia explores the possibility of a regime rooted in the earth (Latour B, Down to Earth: Politics in the new climatic regime. Polity Press, Medford, 2018) i.e. having as its principle a harmonious inhabitation of the earth. Influenced by ‘equilibrium ecology’ a dominant paradigm in the 1970s assuming that nature is a set of stabilized ecosystems, Callenbach expresses in an analogous way the new politico-religious principle, or the dogma of equilibrium which organizes the new relationship with nature: People’s happiness no longer depends on their domination of all earthly creatures, but on a peaceful and balanced coexistence with them. This implies both an overhaul of our legal, political and economic organizations, and also a subjective metamorphosis, which makes educa-tion a central issue for surviving or coping with the Anthropocene. But what is an ecotopia? What are the characteristics of an ecotopic education, pedagogically and sociologically? And how can such education play a role in dealing with the Anthropocene?
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