Ecojustice Education

EcoJustice Education offers a powerful model for cultural ecological analysis and a pedagogy of responsibility, providing teachers and teacher educators with the information and classroom practices they need to help develop citizens who are prepared to support and achieve diverse, democratic, and sustainable societies in an increasingly globalized world. Readers are asked to consider curricular strategies to bring these issues to life in their own classrooms across disciplines. Designed for introductory educational foundations and multicultural education courses, the text is written in a narrative, conversational style grounded in place and experience, but also pushes students to examine the larger ideological, social, historical, and political contexts of the crises humans and the planet we inhabit are facing. Pedagogical features in each chapter include a Conceptual Toolbox, activities accompanying the theoretical content, examples of lessons and teacher reflections, and suggested readings, films, and links. The Second Edition features a new chapter on Anthropocentrism; new material on Heterosexism; updated statistics and examples throughout; new and updated Companion Website content.

This text offers a powerful model for cultural ecological analysis and pedagogy of responsibility, providing educators with information and classroom practices they need to educate future citizens for diverse, democratic, and sustainable communities.

Emphasizing the importance of contemporary art forms in EcoJustice Education, this book examines the interconnections between social justice and ecological well-being, and the role of art to enact change in destructive systems. Artists, educators, and scholars in diverse disciplines from around the world explore the power of art to disrupt ways of thinking that are taken for granted and dominate modern discourses, including approaches to education. The EcoJustice framework presented in this book identifies three strands—cultural ecological analysis, revitalizing the commons, and enacting imagination—that help students to recognize the value in diverse ways of knowing and being, reflect on their own assumptions, and develop their critical analytic powers in relation to important problems. This distinctive collection offers educators a mix of practical resources and inspiration to expand their pedagogical practices. A Companion Website includes interactive artworks, supplemental resources, and guiding questions for students and instructors.

Teaching for EcoJustice is a unique resource for exploring the social roots of environmental problems in humanities-based educational settings and a curriculum guidebook for putting EcoJustice Education into practice. It provides model curriculum materials that apply the principles of EcoJustice Education, giving pre- and in-service teachers the ability to review examples of specific secondary and post-secondary classroom assignments, lessons, discussion prompts, and strategies that encourage students to think critically about how modern problems of sustainability and environmental destruction have developed, their root causes, and how they can be addressed. The author describes instructional methods she uses when teaching each lesson and shares insights from evaluations of the materials in her classroom and by other teachers. Interspersed between lessons is commentary about the rationale behind the materials and observations about their effect on students.

Drawing on the theories of author and conservationist Wendell Berry for the field of EcoJustice Education, this book articulates a pedagogy of responsibility as a three-pronged approach grounded in the recognition that our planet balances an essential and fragile interdependence between all living creatures. Examining the deep cultural roots of social and ecological problems perpetuated by schools and institutions, Martusewicz identifies practices, relationships, beliefs, and traditions that contribute to healthier communities. She calls for imaginative re-thinking of education as an ethical process based in a vision of healthy, just, and sustainable communities. Using a critical analytical process, Martusewicz reveals how values of exploitation, mastery, and dispossession of land and people have taken hold in our educational system and communities, and employs Berry’s philosophy and wisdom to interrogate and develop a "pedagogy of responsibility" as an antidote to such harmful ideologies, structures, and patterns. Berry’s critical work and the author’s relatable storytelling challenge taken-for-granted perspectives and open new ways of thinking about teaching for democratic and sustainable communities.

Teaching for EcoJustice is a unique resource for exploring the social roots of environmental problems in humanities-based educational settings and a curriculum guidebook for putting EcoJustice Education into practice. It provides model curriculum materials that apply the principles of EcoJustice Education, giving pre- and in-service teachers the ability to review examples of specific secondary and post-secondary classroom assignments, lessons, discussion prompts, and strategies that encourage students to think critically about how modern problems of sustainability and environmental destruction have developed, their root causes, and how they can be addressed. The author describes instructional methods she uses when teaching each lesson and shares insights from evaluations of the materials in her classroom and by other teachers. Interspersed between lessons is commentary about the rationale behind the materials and observations about their effect on students.

First Published in 2004. This is Volume 36 in the Educational Studies series: A Journal of the American Educational Studies Association which focuses on Ecojustice and Education. Alongside articles and book reviews, this features guest editors Kathryn Ross Wayne and David A. Gruenewald. This volume contains an examination of educational research, theory, policy, and practice seeking to highlight an overwhelming absence of attention toward the ecological contexts of existence. The articles in this issue aim to further stimulate and encourage a wide and rich web of inquiry into ecojustice and ecodevelopment.

We believe in social justice. We support educational reform. Yet unless we reframe our approaches to both, says C. A. Bowers, the social justice attained through educational reform will only lead to more intractable forms of consumerism and further impoverishment of our communities. In Educating for Eco-Justice and Community Bowers outlines a strategy for educational reform that confronts the rapid degradation of our ecosystems by renewing the face-to-face, intergenerational traditions that can serve as alternatives to our hyper-consumerist, technology-driven worldview. Bowers explains how current technological and progressive programs of educational reform operate on deep cultural assumptions that came out of the Enlightenment and led to the Industrial Revolution. These beliefs frame our relationship with nature in adversarial terms, view progress as inevitable, and elevate the individual over community, expertise over intergenerational knowledge, and profit over reciprocity. By making eco-justice a priority of educational reform, we can begin to: democratize developments in science and technology in ways that eliminate eco-racism; reverse the global processes that are worsening the economic and political inequities between the hemispheres; expose the cultural forces that turn aspects of daily life--from education and entertainment to work and leisure--into market-dependent relationships; uplift knowledge and traditions of intergenerationally connected communities; and develop a sense of moral responsibility for the long-term consequences of our excessive material demands. In the tradition of Wendell Berry, David Orr, and Kirkpatrick Sale, Bowers thinks about our place in the natural world and the current economies to show how we can reform education and create a less consumer-driven society.