Conference Agenda

Considering the current state of our planet, the need for a vibrant environmental and sustainability education (ESE) is arguably more pressing than ever. However, education at large has also become increasingly characterized by accountability, measurements, and high-stakes testing. Consequently, ESE presently finds itself caught in a tension between two competing educational logics, namely an existential one and an instrumental one.

There is undoubtedly a deeply existential dimension to ESE as the content of its educational practices have profound implications for continued human (and non-human) existence (Affifi & Christie, 2019; Vandenplas et al., 2023; Verlie, 2019). ESE involves issues about severe threats to our planet and the extinction of numerous species as well as vast global economic and social inequalities. As such, sustainability issues touch upon the very nerve of what it means to grow up in a society where dreadful visions of the future seem to be closing in. Such visions can spark strong moral emotions in students as well as ignite intense political discussions about the development of society (Sund & Öhman, 2014; Van Poeck et al., 2019). In short, the educational content of ESE carries profound existential implications for both teachers and students that need to be carefully handled in the classroom (Vandenplas et al., 2023).

At the same time, sustainable development is being taught within a broader system of schooling characterized by instrumentalism rather than devotion to existential concerns. Many European educational systems have moved in a direction of increased teacher accountability and a stronger focus on test results and measurable outcomes (Grek, 2020). Taken together, the changing institutional condition of schooling means that teachers and students today face a harsh educational reality where didactical autonomy is being reduced and knowledge requirements are to be met. This means that there is a risk that schoolwork is being presented to students in instrumental terms that encourages them to pursue good grades for the sake of personal benefit rather than a sincere commitment to the survival of life on earth. Put succinctly, teachers and students engaged in ESE are today caught in a tension between two fundamentally different logics – an existential and an instrumental – that pose a serious pedagogical challenge.

The aim of this paper is to theoretically specify the relation between the existential and the instrumental logic in ESE.

Climate change is one of the most critical challenges of our time, requiring significant responses from all aspects of society, including education. The prevailing responses to climate change tend towards treating the crisis as a predominantly scientific and managerial issue that requires technological solutions or behaviour changes. Correspondingly, climate change education (CCE) tends towards teaching climate science and (predominantly individual) behaviour change. Recently, socio-political competencies and climate justice have been advanced, which, while crucial, still do not adequately address the question of how we got here in the first place. What is needed, we argue, is greater attention to how climate change is one of multiple, intersecting sustainability crises (e.g. biodiversity loss, chemical and plastic pollution) rooted in a widespread anthropocentric, extractionist, and instrumental mentality.

Both Sterling (2016) and Bonnett (2021) advocate for a twofold strategy to environmental and sustainability education (ESE): on the one hand, a short-term pragmatic agenda of ‘damage limitation’ that cautiously uses science and technology to lessen environmental damage and social injustice as much as possible; and on the other hand, a long-term agenda to shift the human–more-than-human relationship to one that reflects our interconnectedness with the natural world, which must occur simultaneously, and increasingly inform the short-term strategy.

We suggest posthumanism, with its focus on both decentring the human and simultaneously actively exploring from multiple and supra-disciplinary perspectives, a human self-understanding based on relationality, continuity with the natural world, and the animality and materiality of human beings, could provide the roots and shoots for the long-term shift.

In this paper, we engage with posthuman research, which has had a recent resurgence of interest, including within ESE (Clarke & Mcphie, 2020). We align ourselves with the view of ‘posthumanism’ as a simultaneously critical and creative endeavour that involves interrogating the ‘self-representations and conventional understandings of being human, which “we” have inherited from the past’ (Braidotti, 2019, p. 41) while engaging in the on-going task of learning to think differently about ourselves.

We make the case for why a posthumanist, rather than a critical humanist (Lindgren & Öhman, 2019) approach is needed, by revisiting and challenging some of humanism’s central claims. It should be one of the fundamental concerns of education to challenge human-centredness but not abandon our distinctive human subjectivity entirely. We find Kretz’s (2009) concept of ‘open continuity’ helpful: human identity or self-concept remains very much intact but humans are also considered as ‘situated in ecologically relevant wholes of which [they] are a part’ (2009, p. 131), there is ‘a merging between (what is normally construed as a) self and other’ (2009, p. 123). Such a shift in human self-understanding has far-reaching consequences for the education of current and future generations (Herbrechter, 2018).

We then address the question of how posthumanism might influence ESE/CCE. In particular we examine and contribute to the knowledge on how posthumanism might alter existing frameworks such as UNESCO’s (2017) key competencies for sustainability.

Abstract

This paper explores Australian primary school years teachers’ perceptions of nature and how this informs pedagogy through a posthuman theoretical framework that is informed by and an entanglement of three posthuman concepts: material-discursive practices (Barad, 2007), affective atmospheres (Ash & Anderson, 2015) and childhoodnature (Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles et al., 2020). This theoretical entanglement purposefully disrupts dichotomies and rejects abuse to marginalised others such as First Nations Peoples, children and nonhuman nature. Such disruptions challenge conventional ways of knowing and being and offer opportunities and possibilities for the reconceptualisation of future learning in environmental education and education more broadly. Moreover, this study adopted a creative methodological approach; a diffractive-ethnographic approach to transqualitative inquiry, that is generative and not reductive, to extend thinking and knowledge in innovative and transformative ways.

Research question

What are Australian primary school classroom teachers’ perceptions of nature and how do they inform pedagogy?

Objectives or purposes

• To investigate teachers’ perceptions of nature and how this informs their pedagogical practice from a posthuman perspective.
• To implement creative and innovative approaches to methodological practices.
• To explore the possibilities for environmental education inclusion in the primary classroom

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework

Doing theory requires being open to the world’s aliveness, allowing oneself to be lured by curiosity, surprise, and wonder. Theories are not mere metaphysical pronouncements on the world from some presumed position of exteriority. Theories are living and breathing reconfigurings of the world. The world theorizes as well as experiments with itself. Figuring, reconfiguring. (Barad, 2012, p.2)

The posthuman theoretical perspective underpinning this research is inspired by the work of quantum physicist and feminist theorist, Karen Barad (2007). As Barad (2012) states in the opening vignette, theories are alive, dynamic and invite people and the world to be involved. Barad puts this to practice in their rich and complex theories; one of which – material-discursive practices (Barad, 2007) – is adopted in the theoretical framework of this study. The other two concepts that inform the overarching posthuman theoretical framework are affective atmospheres (Ash & Anderson, 2015) and childhoodnature (Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles et al., 2020). Together, these three concepts enable future thinking of human/nonhuman relationality, which moves beyond conventional separatist notions and dualistic paradigms of nature/culture, teacher/student, adult/child, black/white.

In line with Sustainable Development Goals (number 4: quality education), this paper is founded on thinking that accepts inclusivity as a natural state despite the tendency of social and cultural systems to perpetuate binary thinking and practice. This framing encourages educators and educational researchers to detach from developmental theories in understanding the child and embrace perspectives that may best inform, challenge and position children and young people for their future lives (Murris, 2016; Taylor et al., 2013). The future scape has never been more uncertain and providing children and young people with authentic opportunities to voice their concerns in messy and non-judgemental ways has never been more critical, or urgent.

Each one of the concepts are theoretically robust each in their own right in disrupting traditional binary-making practices, questioning human exceptionalism, and bringing attention to the mattering of every-thing particularly the agency of human/nonhuman nature, equally so. Together, their conceptual alignment in these matters, provides a fierce theoretical frame to materialise the presentation of the findings as a series of data entanglements.