Pedagogy In The Anthropocene

This book explores new pedagogical challenges and potentials of the Anthropocene era. The authors argue that this new epoch, with an unstable climate, new kinds of globally spreading viruses, and new knowledges, calls for a new way of educating and an alertness to new philosophies of education and pedagogical imaginations, thoughts, and practices. Addressing the linkages between the Anthropocene and Pedagogy across a broad pedagogical spectrum that is both formal and informal, the editors and their contributors emphasize a re-imagining of education that serves to deepen our understanding of the capacities and values of life.

Dark pedagogy explores how different perspectives can be incorporated into a darker understanding of environmental and sustainability education. Drawing on the work of the classic horror author H.P. Lovecraft and new materialist insights of speculative realism, the authors link Lovecraft’s ‘tales of the horrible’ to the current spectres of environmental degradation, climate change, and pollution. In doing so, they draw parallels between how humans have always related to the ‘horrible’ things that are scaled beyond our understanding and how education can respond to an era of climate catastrophe in the age of the Anthropocene. A new and darker understanding of environmental and sustainability education is thus developed: using the tripartite reaction pattern of denial, insanity and death to frame the narrative, the book subsequently examines the specific challenges of potentials of developing education and pedagogy for an age of mass extinction. This unflinching book will appeal to students and scholars of dark pedagogies as well as those interested in environment and sustainability education.

This book draws on posthumanist critique and post qualitative approaches to research to examine the pedagogies offered by imaginaries of the future. Starting with the question of how education can be a process for imagining and desiring better futures that can shorten the Anthropocene, it speaks to concerns that are relevant to the fields of education, youth and futures studies. This book explores lessons from the imaginaries of apocalypse, revolution and utopia, drawing on research from youth(ful) perspectives in a context when the narrative of ‘youth despair’ about the future is becoming persistent. It investigates how the imaginary of 'Apocalypse' acts as a frame of intelligibility, a way of making sense of the monstrosities of the present and also instigates desires to act in different ways. Studying the School Climate Strikes of 2019 as 'Revolution' moves us away from the teleologies of capitalist consumption and endless growth to newer aesthetics. The strikes function as a public pedagogy that creates new publics that include life beyond the human. Finally, the book explores how the Utopias of Afrofuturist fiction provides us with a kind of 'investable' utopia because the starting point is in racial, economic and ecological injustice. If the Apocalypse teaches us to recognize what needs to go, and Revolution accepts that living with ‘less than’ is necessary, then this kind of Utopia shows us how becoming ‘more than’ human may be the future.

This book functions as a practical guide to support teachers and higher education institutions in the construction of their courses and programmes in light of the Anthropocene. It is divided into two complementary parts. The first part lays the theoretical foundations of what is a transition pedagogy and provides a pedagogical framework. It offers practical tools and didactic levers to be used by teachers and institutions to build a truly transformative pedagogy for students, with reference to universities already experimenting such alternative methods. The second part presents an analysis of the pedagogical tools and levers experienced in worldwide institutions, by teachers, as well as philosophers and experts of pedagogy. The authors of this book advocate for an embodied pedagogy which not only gives students access to content but also to ways of thinking and acting in all conscience. A pedagogy of the Anthropocene epoch therefore encourages the mobilization of reason, emotions and senses as well as systemic reflection in the questioning of our lifestyles and the development of transversal skills. Based on internationally recognized research and practical experiences of institutions and teachers all over the western world, this book gathers the knowledge and experience of professors and researchers, coming from a wide variety of disciplines and cultural context. Their reflections have led them to develop a “head-heart-body approach” and a “6 Gates questioning method” to remodel pedagogy. This book is of interest to those working in the education sector.

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.

This book brings together a collection of multi-disciplinary voices to discuss, debate, and devise a series of ahuman pedagogical proposals that aim to address the challenging ecological, political, social, economic, and aesthetic milieu within which education is situated today. Attending to contemporary calls to decenter all-too-human educational research and practice, while also coming to terms with the limits and inheritances through which such calls are made possible in the first place, this book aims to interrogate, but also invent, what we are calling an ahuman pedagogy. Organized in three main sections — Conjuring an Ahuman Pedagogy, Machinic Re/distributions, and Non-pedagogies for Unthought Futures — this multi-disciplinary experiment in ahuman pedagogies for the age of the Anthropocene offers an experimental – albeit always speculative and incomplete – series of pedagogical proposals that work to unthink and counter-actualize educational futures-as-usual.

This volume weaves together a variety of perspectives aimed at confronting a spectrum of ethico-political global challenges arising in the Anthropocene which affect the future of life on planet earth. In this book, the authors offer a multi-faceted approach to address the consequences of its imaginary and projective directions. The chapters span the disciplines of political economy, cybernetics, environmentalism, bio-science, psychoanalysis, bioacoustics, documentary film, installation art, geoperformativity, and glitch aesthetics. The first section attempts to flesh out new aspects of current debates. Questions over the Capitaloscene are explored via conflations of class and climate, revisiting the eco-Marxist analysis of capitalism, and the financial system that thrives on debt. The second section explores the imaginary narratives that raise questions regarding non-human involvement. The third section addresses ’geoartisty,’ the counter artistic responses to the speculariztion of climate disasters, questioning eco-documentaries, and what a post-anthropocentric art might look like. The last section addresses the pedagogical response to the Anthropocene.

This new critical volume presents various perspectives on teaching and teacher education in the face of the global climate crisis, environmental degradation, and social injustice. Teaching in the Anthropocene calls for a reorientation of the aims of teaching so that we might imagine multiple futures in which children, youths, and families can thrive amid a myriad of challenges related to the earth’s decreasing habitability. Referring to the uncertainty of the time in which we live and teach, the term Anthropocene is used to acknowledge anthropogenic contributions to the climate crisis and to consider and reflect on the emotional responses to adverse climate events. The text begins with the editors’ discussion of this contested term and then moves on to make the case that we must decentre anthropocentric models in teacher education praxis. The four thematic parts include chapters on the challenges to teacher education practice and praxis, affective dimensions of teaching in the face of the global crisis, relational pedagogies in the Anthropocene, and ways to ignite the empathic imaginations of tomorrow’s teachers. Together the authors discuss new theoretical eco-orientations and describe innovative pedagogies that create opportunities for students and teachers to live in greater harmony with the more-than-human world. This incredibly timely volume will be essential to pre- and in-service teachers and teacher educators. FEATURES: - Offers critical reflections on anthropocentrism from multiple perspectives in education, including continuing education, educational organization, K–12, post-secondary, and more - Includes accounts that not only deconstruct the disavowal of the climate crisis in schools but also articulate an ecosophical approach to education - Features discussion prompts in each chapter to enhance student engagement with the material