Conference Agenda

Contemporary research affirms that we will soon arrive at the point of irreconcilable ecological breakdown. Yet today’s mainstream Environmental Education (EE) research focuses on economic growth with an inattention to the systemic causes of social and environmental injustices. The impact of (mis)education on environmental justice can be profoundly transformative, affecting the well-being and economic prospects of affected social groups. These impacts can be immediate and violent such as factory waste spills in low-income areas, or subtler, overlooked forms of slow violence that go unnoticed for long periods of time (Nixon, 2011). This slow violence is often overlooked because the critical lens of environmental justice is not yet widely applied in the public arena. Education for Environmental Justice is thus confronted with challenging habitual modes of epistemic and methodological approaches to research (Stein, 2019).

The EEJ Reading and Research Collective approaches scholarly thinking through justice-oriented art-making practices and identifies themes in education and environmental justice to co-create research. The collective includes artists who respond to the research, either to further develop, re-interpret, or communicate what the readings and discussions elided and erased. Collaboratively, we interpret the links between art and readings as an ongoing process of research-as-creation. An key objective of this collective is to build a supportive community of early career and established researchers, which we recognise as critical to the sustainability of our collective futures. This proposed symposium engages the interplays between environmental justice and education. We will both explain our methods as a research group and share the way our individual studies connect environmental justice and education. In doing so, the symposium will increase understanding of education's role in establishing (and suppressing) environmental justice in civil society sectors transnationally.

We begin by summarising the ongoing literature review work of the collective emerging from our arts-based practice, then move into individual presentations showcasing the diversity of our work in environmental justice and education. Haley Perkins and Sarah Sharp will open the presentations by proposing that global environmental justice begins with epistemic justice. Using new-materialist philosophies of entanglement and relationality, they make a case for engaging with participatory creative activities using arts-based methods to enact a more just onto-epistemological shift towards sustainability. Next, Shingirayi Kandi and Ceri Holman engage UK-based youth perspectives. Kandi’s presentation will explore the effects, benefits, and challenges of outdoor learning in special schools for pupils with Complex, Severe, Profound, and Multiple Learning Disabilities (CSPMLD), and his ongoing research in primary special schools. Holman’s deliberative place-based pedagogy explores the tensions in Cumbria, England, among fossil fuel interests and the voices of young people in the community. She explores students’ learning and agency through relational positionality. Finally, Rosalie Mathie, based in Norway, will discuss the role of co-creative research methods for environmental justice-oriented education. A collection of examples are brought forward that encourage proactive participant engagement and co-development within academic and educational settings. Our discussant, Maria-Angelika Caceras (recently based in France, but with a history of working in Brazil), will comment on the submissions from the point of view of Indigenous epistemologies.

The long-term ambition of EEJ is to contribute to transforming education across multiple levels to address the burgeoning and socioeconomically differentiated problems arising from the impacts of what is (problematically) termed the Anthropocene. We hope that by sharing the mission and approach of the EEJ Reading and Research Collective, we can engage with a wider audience and explore the possibilities of such a practice while communicating the urgency of the messages that emerge from the interleaving of questions of environmental justice, art, and education.

This presentation begins by emphasising that Environmental Justice (EJ) in education begins with epistemic justice. Most Environmental Education (EE) in Europe is predominantly focused on scientific knowledge transmission about climate change and conservation. It perpetuates ideas of human exceptionalism by separating human activity from ‘nature’ by teaching about the environment rather than acknowledging how we live within it (Dunlop & Rushton, 2022b), resulting in inadequate pedagogic practices to address the challenges of the current ecological crisis (Taylor et al., 2020). Thus, we highlight the need for diversity in educational and research methods, focusing on international and intersectional views of EJ centred on challenging dominant narratives, power structures, and knowledge systems that perpetuate environmental injustices across the world, and within education (Zembylas, 2018). This presentation links issues of environmental (in)justice to the dominating epistemologies of the Global North, which are extensions of ongoing colonial practices that justify the exploitation of both people and nature and exclude different knowledge systems (Silva, 2014). We approach this provocation by first summarising the preliminary findings from ongoing literature review work, informed by critical hermeneutic (Habermas, 1971) and decolonial frameworks (Collins, 2019; Maldonado-Torres, 2007). We will identify both the broad assumptions within contemporary EE practices in the Global North and nuances or gaps that are often overlooked in standard literature reviews. Next, we discuss the implications of these findings on education for environmental justice, and highlight identified openings for future transformative action in EE. We then focus on one such opening for approaching epistemic justice in education, grounded in decolonial and feminist new-materialist philosophies of entanglement and relationality. Understanding ourselves as entangled entities, deconstructing human exceptionalism, and resisting anthropocentric philosophies which implicitly justify the exploitation and destruction of multi-species ecologies, could help us reimagine education within a changing world (Haraway, 2016). We demonstrate an example of pedagogy for epistemic justice that explores participatory creative activities using arts-based methods. This example proposes that creating stories with/in our local environments can intertwine physical landscapes with remembered and imagined ones to foster an understanding of entanglement. We will outline experiences of participating in mixed-media story-making as a way to understand ourselves as ‘entangled’ within the world in its affective state of becoming - knowing that our actions and futures are constantly engaged in relation with all else. This presentation will therefore contribute a proposal for beyond-anthropocentric pedagogies to enact the urgent onto-epistemological shift towards learning to live sustainability.

Collins, P. H. (2019). Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory. Duke University Press. Durham, NC. Dunlop, & Rushton, E. A. C. (2022). Putting climate change at the heart of education: Is England's strategy a placebo for policy? British Educational Research Journal, 48(6), 1083–1101. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3816 Habermas, J. (1971). Knowledge and Human Interests (Vol. 114). Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the trouble. Duke University Press. Maldonado-Torres, N. (2007). On the Coloniality of Being. Cultural Studies, 21(2–3), 240–270. Silva, D.F.D.. (2014). Toward a Black Feminist Poethics: The Quest(ion) of Blackness Toward the End of the World. The Black Scholar, 44(2), 81–97. Taylor, A., Pacini-Ketchabaw, V., Blaise, M., & Silova, I. (2020). Learning to become with the world: Education for future survival. Common Worlds Research Collective. Paper commissioned for the UNESCO Futures of Education report. Zembylas. (2018). Decolonial possibilities in South African higher education : reconfiguring humanising pedagogies as/with decolonising pedagogies. South African Journal of Education, 38(4), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v38n4a1699

Recently, there has been significant development in inclusive mainstream research (Hong et al., 2020), with individuals with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) not only involved in the research as participants but as researchers themselves too; however, little is still known about pupils with Complex Severe Profound and Multiple Learning Disabilities (CSPMLD) who face a variety of additional learning challenges (de Haas et al., 2022 and require bespoke educational approaches, and outdoor learning is emerging as a potent methodology (Buli-Holmberg and Jeyaprathaban, 2016). The increasing importance of outdoor learning (OL) has been met with a myriad of studies extolling its benefits (Pierce and Maher, 2019; Prince and Diggory, 2023; Mann et al., 2021; Sekhri, 2019). Hence, I plan to explore the effects, benefits, and challenges, of OL in special schools for pupils with CSPMLD and the experiences of stakeholders involved. In their contribution, Sutherland and Legge (2016) state OL essentially occurs outdoors, as such, issues of environmental justice emerge with the use of the external environment to achieve OL. For example, how are the varying needs of CPSMLD students considered when designing and delivering OL? What are the injustices that emerge when we consider CPSMLD students in the outdoors? My systematic literature reviews that in the context of special schools, OL in CSPMLD is still understudied especially in England, warranting more studies to be done in this area (Guardino, 2019). I plan to conduct case studies (Yazan, 2015) on two selected special schools. In these schools, I intend to conduct semi-structured interviews with school staff and parents/guardians/carers and participatory observations on pupils with CSPMLD. Then analyse the data drawing from Braun and Clarke (2006) thematic analysis. I will put my findings into the context of wider Europe, to show how special schools in England contrast and compare with CPSMLD education strategies in other parts of Europe.

Buli-Holmberg, J., & Jeyaprathaban, S. (2016). Effective Practice in Inclusive and Special Needs Education. International Journal of Special Education, 31(1), 119–134. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1099986 de Haas, C., Grace, J., Hope, J., & Nind, M. (2022). Doing Research Inclusively: Understanding What It Means to Do Research with and Alongside People with Profound Intellectual Disabilities. Social Sciences, 11(4), 159. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci11040159 Guardino, C., Hall, K. W., Largo-Wight, E., & Hubbuch, C. (2019). Teacher and student perceptions of an outdoor classroom. Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education, 22(2), 113–126. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42322-019-00033-7 Hong, S.-Y., Eum, J., Long, Y., Wu, C., & Welch, G. (2020). Typically Developing Preschoolers’ Behavior Toward Peers With Disabilities in Inclusive Classroom Contexts. Journal of Early Intervention, 42(1), 49–68. https://doi.org/10.1177/1053815119873071 Mann, J., Gray, T., Truong, S., Sahlberg, P., Bentsen, P., Passy, R., Ho, S., Ward, K., & Cowper, R. (2021). A Systematic Review Protocol to Identify the Key Benefits and Efficacy of Nature-Based Learning in Outdoor Educational Settings. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(3), 1199. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18031199 Pierce, S., & Maher, A. J. (2020). Physical activity among children and young people with intellectual disabilities in special schools: Teacher and learning support assistant perceptions. British Journal of Learning Disabilities, 48(1), 37–44. https://doi.org/10.1111/bld.12301

Socio-political action is insufficient for the climate crisis, partly due to its complexity and hegemonic norms. Young people’s futures will be especially impacted. Youth democratic engagement is often overlooked, despite the human right to express opinions and participate in political decision-making that affects them (UNCRC, 1989). The English school curriculum’s focus on subject mastery and assessment limits opportunities to learn extensively about climate, environmental and social justice, hindering more transformative learning and empowered engagement. In his Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1969) Buckminster Fuller asked who should take responsibility for safeguarding the planet beyond countries’ individualistic ambitions. Recognising the twin impediments to cohesive governance of failing democracies (including lack of trust in governments and rising populism) and inadequate climate action, Willis (2020) suggests trying deliberative democracy. Ordinary people could help pilot Spaceship Earth. Increasingly, consensual decision-making on controversial subjects is being reached using citizens’ assemblies and juries, providing leaders with a clear mandate to act. Could deliberative pedagogy similarly support young people’s learning, skills, and agency? This study introduces a local case study to school students (11- to 14-years-old) in Cumbria, England. Here the UK’s first deep coalmine for 30 years has been approved. Provoking vigorous public debate, it reveals pluralist perspectives on fossil fuels that embody economic, political, environmental, social, and cultural interests. Despite local, national, and global attention, young people have no forum in which to debate the coalmine’s meaning for them, their community, and futures. Using place-based deliberative pedagogy, students explore their relational positionality by analysing key narratives around the mine, collaborating on a review and recommendations for decision-makers. Through a capability approach lens, the research explores young people’s learning and agency as local and global citizens – or pilots. The implications of this approach within the wider European context will be discussed.

Buckminster Fuller, R. (1969). Operating manual for spaceship earth. New York: EP Dutton. Willis, R. (2020). Too hot to handle? The democratic challenge of climate change. Bristol: Bristol University Press.

Today, where environmental and social inequalities are prevalent globally, and the call for decolonising academia leads to pertinent ethical questioning, for example, questioning the inequalities and inequities that arise in research processes (Sempere, Aliyu, & Bollaert, 2022), the role creative and co-developed methods can take to ensure multiple voices are heard is of interest. There is a long history of creative and artistic methods in academia and education, however the Arts and Sciences still for many are divided, or in some cases, science is misusing art: “[…] to promote its hard-sell, to offer images that beautify its results, soften its impact and mask its collusion with corporations whose only interest in research is that it should ‘drive innovation’ (Ingold, 2018, p225). The role art has in education is also being interrogated, such as Biesta (2020) questioning the expressivist and instrumentalist ways art education can be practised that fall short of what he describes as being the ‘real educational work’, which he describes as “[..] bringing children and young people into dialogue with the world” (Biesta, 2020, p117). Research that takes an active role in and for environmental justice can quickly lead us to question our responsibility as researchers. With this questioning comes the requirement, as Ingold (2018) critiques, for academic pursuit to ensure that the role of science as an ‘exporter of knowledge’, does not eclipse our societal duty of care and responsibility. This also demands us to understand why research is often done ‘on’ instead of ‘with’ participants, and within this understand in what context this is and is not appropriate. With methodological roots in Action Research (Townsend, 2019) and Educational Design Research (McKenny & Reeves (2019), this presentation collates creative 'participatory' methods (such as Digital Stories, Artivisim, Photovoice, Community mapping and Visual-timelines), found in both educational and research contexts, that seek to engage participants as co-developers of research: Examples from Art Education (Duncum, 2017), Photovoice projects such as Harper et al (2017), Partners in Science from Willyard, Scudellari, and Nordling (2018), and Rodríguez-Labajos (2022) Artistic Activism literature synthesis, are presented to ignite reflection on ways to enable participants to take on proactive and empowered roles within research. From this the future of research concerning EEJ is critiqued and concludes by calling for the role of co-creative and co-developed methods in academia to not be underestimated.

Biesta, G. (2020). Letting Art Teach: Art Education ‘after’Joseph Beuys Arnhem, The Netherlands. Duncum, P. (2017). Engaging public space: Art education pedagogies for social justice. Social Justice and the Arts, 61-76. Harper, K., Sands, C., Angarita Horowitz, D., Totman, M., Maitín, M., Rosado, J. S., ... & Alger, N. (2017). Food justice youth development: using Photovoice to study urban school food systems. Local Environment, 22(7), 791-808. Ingold, T. (2018). From science to art and back again: The pendulum of an anthropologist. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 43(3-4), 213-227. McKenney, S., & Reeves, T. (2018). Conducting Educational Design Research: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Sempere, M. J. C., Aliyu, T., & Bollaert, C. (2022). Towards decolonising research ethics: from one-off review boards to decentralised north–south partnerships in an International Development Programme. Education Sciences, 12(4), 236. Townsend, A. (2019). Who does action research and what responsibilities do they have to others?, Educational Action Research, 27:2, 149-151, DOI: 10.1080/09650792.2019.1582184 Rodríguez-Labajos, B. (2022). Artistic activism promotes three major forms of sustainability transformation. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 57, 101199. Willyard, C., Scudellari, M., and Nordling, L., Partners in Science. Nature 562, 24–28 (2018)