Perspectives On The Ideas Of Gregory Bateson Ecological Intelligence And Educational Reforms

It is widely acknowledged that Gregory Bateson's ideas have been influential in a number of fields. Unfortunately, the importance of his ideas for understanding why public schools and universities continue to perpetuate ecologically unsustainable ways of thinking has not been adequately recognized. Given the deepening ecological and economic crises, this book is particularly timely as it clarifies how Bateson's five key ideas, when taken as a whole, provides the conceptual framework for introducing educational reforms that address both problems. That is, he explains why educators unconsciously continue to perpetuate the deep cultural assumptions that were constituted before there was an awareness of environmental limits, and how the emphasis on a possessive form of individualism and endless material progress undermines traditions of self-reliance within the world's diversity of communities. His contributions to making substantive educational reforms include: (1) Rethinking social justice issues in ways that take account of how the ecological crisis impacts the most vulnerable people; (2) How to make the transition to exercising ecological intelligence in the areas of democratic decision making and moral values; (3) Clarifying how computer-mediated learning perpetuates abstract thinking and the deep cultural assumptions that are at the cultural roots of the ecological and economic crises. The chapter on pedagogical and curricular decisions that foster ecological intelligence provides practical suggestions for how public school teachers and university professors can begin to make the transition to an ethnically diverse and ecologically sustainable future. Comments about the book: "We need an ecological consciousness which, in Gregory Bateson's words, is aware of the 'patterns that connect.' Chet Bowers leads us into that unmapped territory with a compass which helps." - Wes Jackson, President, The Land Institute; author of Consulting the Genius of Place, and Rooted in the Land: Essays on Community and Place "Chet Bowers' philosophical reflections on Bateson's thought and its implications for education are thought-provoking, challenging, and very inspiring." - Fritjof Capra, author of The Web of Life, and The Hidden Connections

In this volume C.A. (Chet) Bowers, whose pioneering work on education and environmental and sustainability issues is widely recognized and respected around the world, brings together a carefully curated selection of his seminal work on the ideological, cultural, and linguistic roots of the ecological crisis; misconceptions underlying modern consciousness; the cultural commons; a critique of technology; and educational reforms to address these pressing concerns. In the World Library of Educationalists series, international scholars themselves compile career-long collections of what they judge to be their finest pieces – extracts from books, key articles, salient research findings, major theoretical and/practical contributions – so the world can read them in a single manageable volume. Readers will be able to follow the themes and strands of their work and see their contribution to the development of a field, as well as the development of the field itself. Contributors to the series include: Michael Apple, James A. Banks, Joel Spring, William F. Pinar, Stephen J. Ball, Elliot Eisner, Howard Gardner, John Gilbert, Ivor F. Goodson, and Peter Jarvis.

Expanding Curriculum Theory, Second Edition carries through the major focus of the original volume—to reflect on the influence of Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of "lines of flight" and its application to curriculum theorizing. What is different is that the lines of flight have since shifted and produced expanded understandings of this concept for curriculum theory and for education in general. This edition reflects the impact of events that have contributed to this shift, in particular the (il)logic of school policy changes and reforms in the past decade, and the continued explosion of social media and its effect on the collective understanding of how both "knowledge" and "education" work as forms of repression. The introduction updates the text and puts it into current debates in the field and in the larger socio-economic milieu. New dis/positions are presented that explore central questions circulating within and outside curriculum studies. Exciting scholarship on a range of topics includes notions of desire and commodities, youth culture and violence, new directions in curriculum theory, Eco-Ethical consciousness, new Deleuzian views of normality, the diffusion of technology and lines of flight in transnational curriculum inquiry.

Every generation has sought to make teaching and learning more inclusive and equitable, but pesky questions always remain, such as, how can teaching and learning be conducted in ways that satisfies and respects everyone? What are the parameters of an inclusive pedagogy? Who defines its principles? How should these principles be taught and by whom? And by what authority shall they be grounded? These types of thorny questions occupy the essence of educators and the authors of this book. This book is about teachers, educators, and topics related to inclusion. Teachers and educators have a lot to know, therefore the topics are broad and relevant to the times. What should teachers know about special needs, religion and spirituality, Aboriginality, the environment, tolerance, and school choice? Although teachers have knowledge of their subject matter, knowledge alone is not sufficient. They must know and understand how people learn. A teacher must also care deeply about who they teach. And this "teacher knowledge" grows and changes over time as teachers become more experienced, informed, skilled, and wiser. At the same time no teacher preparation will be sufficient because there will always be discussions that were never had and knowledge that was never shared. Time has its costs and there is only so much a formal education can prepare someone. This book helps to satisfy a cavity in learning for teachers and educators in general.

With natural systems being exploited at an unsustainable rate, with technologies displacing the need for workers and now even professors, with print-based technologies undermining the intergenerational achievements in the areas of civil liberties and the cultural commons, it is now time for educational reformers to question the idea that students must be educated to become change agents. The industrial culture, now driven by digital technologies, is transforming cultures on a global scale. And they are being transformed in ways that serve the interests of environmentally destructive and profit-oriented corporations. The essays in this collection highlight reforms that teachers can introduce in classrooms––reforms that will enable students to become aware of the traditions within their own cultures that must be renewed in ways that ensure the prospects of future generations. Students must also be challenged to consider the traditions that need to be changed. The tensions between what needs to be conserved and what needs to be changed are the critical issues that will not be raised by the experts working to create a seamless world of digital communication and thought. For reasons explained in the book’s essays, this is the mindset that it habituated to constant change––a mindset with no sense of what is being lost that are sources of community self-sufficiency and empowerment.

This book is especially timely for reasons related to the current efforts on the part of several national organizations to promote sustainability reforms in courses in all academic disciplines. The American Association for Sustainability in Higher education is in the forefront of this reform effort. Replacing an inefficient campus infrastructures was easy when compared to the challenges of engaging faculty in discussions of how the content of their courses continue to reinforce the deep cultural assumptions that gave conceptual direction to the individualistic/consumer-dependent lifestyle that that is now widely recognized as unsustainable. The chapters address a number of especially daunting challenges, with the main one being that many faculty who were graduate students in the last decades of the 20th Century continue to think within the same conceptual frameworks they acquired from their mentors. Their mentors were unaware of environmental limits, as well as the metaphorical nature of language that reproduces the ecologically problematic cultural assumptions that, in turn, have become part of today’s students’ taken for granted world. Several chapters address such limitations of these 20th Century conceptual frameworks as the way academic freedom in now being use by many faculty in the social sciences, humanities, and professional schools to justify ignoring not only the ecological crisis, and the failure to ask whether such traditional areas of inquiry, such as the thinking of Western philosophers and other abstract theorists, will be useful to students as they face the life-changing environmental impacts of climate change. Two other key issues that must be taken into account if sustainability reforms are to be introduced in courses across the academic disciplines include the need for faculty to understand the many ways in which the emphasis on print-based theory fosters abstract thinking, thus further strengthening the long-held myth of individual intelligence. The need to understand cultures as ecologies and the difference between individual and ecological intelligence are also discussed. The book also contains a discussion of the university administrators’ essential role in holding faculty accountable for engaging in extended discussions of the language issues such as the linguistic colonization of the present by the past, the recursive cultural patterns that are being represented as the latest progressive ways of thinking that are the basis of many of today’s conceptual double binds, and how to foster the students’ awareness of the different ways that ideologies, technologies, and silences are undermining what remains of the cultural and environmental commons. The critique of current misconceptions that underlie different disciplines, as well as the resistance of many faculty to taking the ecological crisis seriously, are balanced with extended discussions of alternative ways of thinking about language, the connections between print-storage (which is amplified by computer-mediated learning and communication) and the ways in which oral traditions foster awareness of contexts and patterns of moral reciprocity (and thus ecological intelligence). In effect, the book provides the conceptual framework that needs to be the focus of faculty discussions, if these discussion are going to help faculty avoid the misconception that adding a couple of readings by environmental writers or learning about ecologically sustainable community practices will enable students to make the transition to a post-industrial way of thinking.

This edited volume extends ecological approaches to curriculum theory by recognizing and building on the contributions of the late Chet A. Bowers to curriculum and ecological studies globally. Chapters provide in-depth explanation of Bowers’ central contributions to the field, including his identification of the linguistic roots of ecological degradation; the need for school curricula to support sustainability; and the principles of cultural commons, eco-justice, and ecological intelligence. Building on these ideas and emphasizing the links between curriculum studies, social justice, and environmental education, the text illustrates how Bowers’ ideas must now inform future approaches to schooling, teacher education, research, and Indigenous communities to guard against the global ecological crises we now face. This text will benefit researchers, academics, and educators with an interest in curriculum studies, sustainability education, and environmental studies in particular. Those interested in the sociology of education, educational change, and school reform will also benefit from the book.