Wild Pedagogies

Touchstones for Re-Negotiating Education and the Environment in the Anthropocene

Bob Jickling, Sean Blenkinsop, Nora Timmerman, Michael De Danann Sitka-Sage, Bob Jickling, Sean Blenkinsop, Nora Timmerman, Michael De Danann Sitka-Sage

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9783319901763
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice

This book explores why the concept of wild pedagogy is an essential aspect of education in these times; a re-negotiated education that acknowledges the necessity of listening to voices in a more than human world, and (re)learning how to dwell in a place. As the geological epoch inexorably shifts to the Anthropocene, the authors argue that learning to live in and engage with the world is increasingly crucial in such times of uncertainty. The editors and contributors examine what wild pedagogy can truly become, and how it can be relevant across disciplinary boundaries: offering six touchstones as working tools to help educators forge an onward path. This collaborative work will be of interest to students and scholars of wild pedagogies, alternative education and the Anthropocene, and for all those engaged in re-wilding education.

© The Author(s) 2018

Bob Jickling, Sean Blenkinsop, Nora Timmerman and Michael De Danann Sitka-Sage (eds.)Wild PedagogiesPalgrave Studies in Educational Futureshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90176-3_1

Begin Abstract

1. Why Wild Pedagogies?

The Crex Crex Collective and Bob Jickling¹

(1)

Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, ON, Canada

Bob Jickling

Email: [email protected]

Abstract

Given the sense of ecological urgency that increasingly defines our times, this chapter seeks to look beyond current norms and worldviews that are environmentally problematic. With this thinking in mind, wild pedagogies, first, aims to re-examine relationships with places, landscapes, nature, more-than-human beings, and the wild. This requires rethinking the concepts wilderness, wildness, and freedom. Second, this chapter contends that educators need to trouble the dominant versions of education that are enacted in powerful ways and that bend outcomes towards a human-centred and unecological status quo. With this in mind, wild pedagogies seeks to challenge recent trends towards increased control over pedagogy and education, and how this control is constraining and domesticating educators, teachers, and the curriculum. Finally, given that the dominant current human relationship with Earth cannot be sustained, we posit that any critique suggested must be paired with a vision—and corresponding educational tools—that allows for the possibility of enacting a new relationship.

Keywords

AnthropoceneControlEducationEnvironmentMore-than-humanPedagogyWildWilderness

The Crex Crex Collective includes: Hebrides, I., Independent Scholar; Ramsey Affifi, University of Edinburgh; Sean Blenkinsop, Simon Fraser University; Hans Gelter, Guide Natura & Luleå, University of Technology; Douglas Gilbert, Trees for Life; Joyce Gilbert, Trees for Life; Ruth Irwin, Independent Scholar; Aage Jensen, Nord University; Bob Jickling, Lakehead University; Polly Knowlton Cockett, University of Calgary; Marcus Morse, La Trobe University; Michael De Danann Sitka-Sage, Simon Fraser University; Stephen Sterling, University of Plymouth; Nora Timmerman, Northern Arizona University; and Andrea Welz, Sault College.

Bob Jickling ([email protected]) is the corresponding author.

End Abstract

The earliest experiments with wild pedagogies were, at their core, about reimagining and enacting alternative relationships. By alternative, we mean relationships that fall outside of mainstream business, politics, and education. Given the sense of ecological urgency that increasingly defines our times, it seems important to look beyond present norms and worldviews for our responses. With this thinking in mind, our first aim was to re-examine relationships with places, landscapes, nature, more-than-human beings , and the wild. This required rethinking notions of wilderness, wildness , and freedom . The second aim was to challenge recent trends towards increased control over pedagogy and education, and how this control has been constraining and domesticating . The third aim was to offer something to educators—something that would propose a possible path forward. This book thus builds on past work with the aim of more thoroughly articulating the theoretical roots and offering practical strategies for enacting wild pedagogies.

It is tempting to say that Earth is in terminal decline. Climate change appears to have reached, or perhaps even crossed, the threshold of irreversibility. Many scientists and environmental historians are carefully arguing that Earth is about to, or is already, transitioning into a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene , or the “age of human impact.” If we are indeed at the threshold of a new epoch, we are equally at the threshold of an emerging geological conversation. A new geo-story is transpiring on the ground beneath our feet, in the atmosphere around us, and in increasingly warm oceans. It is being communicated through climate change , increasingly fierce storms, and mass species extinctions . The first to suffer, as always, are the marginalized and disenfranchised. This includes many from our human species—especially within oppressed communities—but also the staggering loss and suffering of other species. This suffering of more-than-human beings seldom registers in public discourse and is often downplayed. However, the situation appears to be worsening. Science is inherently sceptical, cautious, you could even say conservative. Yet, with each passing year we hear news reporting that the situation is even worse than previously predicted—more species annihilated, more glacial ice melted, and more topsoil lost to the sea.

As frightening as this is, Earth has seen large-scale extinction events before. In fact, there appears to have been five of them. If another drastic change is imminent—in geological time—Earth will survive. It has before. Many existing species will not; others will be diminished—and this includes humans. Yet, it is not humans as a whole that are the source of this problem. So what is the trouble? We argue, what is really at issue is a troubling kind of relationship with Earth. This relationship is reflected in the ways that many of the most affluent and “developed” nations have lost the knowledge of and, subverted the social structures for, living well with place—to live within their means, to live with care and compassion for other being s, and to live with wonder in Earth itself. Unfortunately, this relationship appears to be spreading across the globe.

We wonder what the world could look like if humans, afflicted with such relationships within their place on Earth, enacted different ways of being in the world. What is not clear is how, exactly, it would mean to “be differently” within the world. It seems that the most common suggestions, which range across various new attitudes, prescriptions, warnings, restrictions, summons, sermons, and threats, seem to be out of sync with the magnitude of changes required. Changing relationships within our place on Earth or being in the world differently entails far more than using a different kind of light bulb. Something more fundamental must be disrupted¹ and something significantly different must be offered. Such a disruption will not be achieved through appeals to rationality, duties, or facts alone, nor will it be achieved by humans on their own. It is more likely that changing relationships with Earth and its other beings will require learning through active engagement with the natural world. The return could be rich—for example, in increased sense of well-being, decreased sense of alienation, and an expanded range of what it means to be human. Thus, this conversation about change is about doing, not just thinking. And, doing things differently will mean being different in our orientations towards nature, our language about nature, and our responsibilities with nature. This suggests that we must practice a kind of environmental etiquette. Here etiquette is not reserved for elites, but it is rather a kind of everyday manners amongst beings and places. This move to being differently in world also suggests that we are tasked to engage in face-to-face “re-negotiating ” of what it means to be human and to be a citizen in a more-than-human world. All of this is, at least in part, an educational project. Big changes are needed and with big changes bold educational approaches are required. In this book we propose some bold—and wild—ideas.

Before launching into wild pedagogies, we need to acknowledge the way in which education has typically been conceived is in trouble. Kris Gutiérrez,² former President of the American Educational Research Association, provided a good summary of this problem when she described her most persistent concern:

Our inability to intervene productively, at least in any sustained and transformative way, in the academic lives of so many youth today—to imagine new trajectories and future forms of agency…. we simply cannot rely on efficiency and market-driven models of education that are certain to bankrupt the future of our nation’s youth. We need models for educational intervention that are consequential—new systems that demand radical shifts in our views of learning….

For Gutiérrez , current models of education are part of the problem. Her vision of education demands that she enact pedagogies that challenge dominant models. In doing so, she is simultaneously being the change in the very process of enabling change to occur.

Gutiérrez’s own pedagogy reflects a view that learning and developing agency requires doing, engaging, being the change—and, indeed, being in the world differently. Her own educational experiments point to wonderful pedagogical possibilities when university students and school children work together. In her words, “They were brought together through an intervention that privileged joint activity, playful imagination , and a vision of teaching in which an imagined or projected future could influence...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Why Wild Pedagogies?
• 2. On Wilderness
• 3. On the Anthropocene
• 4. On Education
• 5. Six Touchstones for Wild Pedagogies in Practice
• 6. Afterwords
• Back Matter