This presentation takes up the symposium focus on the perennial questions of what knowledge should be taught in schools and how, and examines possible contributions of environmental scholarship to deepening pedagogical approaches in education. It suggests that because a focus on the socio-ecological encourages attention to the sociomaterial (to land and place, human relations, other species, and the non-human); socio-ecological educational scholarship not only has a focus on materiality in its curricular focus, but also has contributions to make to furthering consideration of materiality in pedagogical methods in education more generally. A recent emphasis on materiality in social theory has contributed to a growing body of scholarship on the implications of the ‘sociomaterial,’ ‘posthuman,’ and so on, for educational theorizing and research. However, to date much of this work has focused on implications for research methodology (e.g., Fenwick, Edwards, & Sawchuck, 2012; Snaza & Weaver, 2014; Tuck & McKenzie, 2015), while to a lesser extent, researchers have examined the settings and implicit curricula of schooling, including through related work on school spaces, racialized neighborhoods, or student bodies (e.g., Lawn & Grosvenor, 2005; Lipman, 2011; Youdell & Armstrong, 2011). Promising new lines of inquiry have explored the productive aspects of materiality as explicit curricula or pedagogical method, for example, trajectories of work on situated practice-based learning (e.g., Nicolini, 2013), or psychogeographical engagements with place to afford a more situated curriculum (Kitchens, 2009). However, these engagements have tended to be acritical, employing social and material practice to teach to the status quo (e.g., in the standardized curriculum, apprenticeship models of education). Socio-ecological education scholarship, on the other hand, has a history of engaging with the sociomaterial as intentional pedagogy towards critical ends of social change. Key examples include emphases on the social/participatory, relational, and place and land based practices in socio-ecological learning and action (e.g., Calderon, 2014; Gruenewald & Smith, 2008; McKenzie et al., 2009; Reid et al., 2008). Bridging and building on this work, in this symposium three empirical studies with youth and teacher candidates in Canada will be drawn upon to suggest the generativities of sociomaterial practices of narration, place, and the social in learning, and to suggest implications for pedagogy, policy, and future research (McKenzie & Bieler, 2016). In sum, with greater recognition that what we know is embodied, emplaced, and interactional, this paper examines the possibilities for more explicit engagement with sociomaterial practice in how we teach.

Calderon, D. (2014). Speaking back to Manifest Destinies: A land-based approach to critical curriculum inquiry. Environmental Education Research, 20(1): 24-36. Fenwick, T., Edwards, R. & Sawchuk, P. (2012). Emerging approaches to educational research: Tracing the sociomaterial. Routledge. Gruenewald, D., & Smith, G. (2008). Place-based education in a global age: Local diversity. Routledge. Kitchens, J. (2009). Situated pedagogy and the Situationist International: Countering pedagogy of placelessness. Educational Studies, 45(3): 240-261. Lawn, M., & Grosvenor, I. (2005). Materialities of schooling: Design, technology, objects, routines. Symposium. Lipman, P. (2011). The new political economy of urban education: Neoliberalism, race, and the right to the city. Routledge. McKenzie, M., & Bieler, A. (2016). Critical education and sociomaterial practice: Narration, place, and the social. Peter Lang. McKenzie, M., Hart, P., Bai, H., & Jickling, B. (2009). Fields of green: Restorying culture, environment, and education. Hampton. Reid, A., et al. (Eds.). (2008). Participation and learning: Perspectives on education and the environment, health and sustainability. Springer. Snaza, N., & Weaver, J. (Eds.). (2014). Posthumanism and educational research. Routledge. Youdell, D. & Armstrong, F. (2011) A politics beyond subjects: The affective choreographies and smooth spaces of schooling. Emotion, Space, Society, 4(1): 144-150.