Session Information
99 ERC SES 07 B, Didactics - Learning and Teaching
Paper Session
Contribution
While contemporary research affirms we will soon arrive at the point of irreconcilable ecological breakdown, new technologies are advancing rapidly, imbricating themselves into every facet of our lives. Yet today’s mainstream Environmental Education (EE) research lacks thorough exploration of the onto-epistemological origins surrounding how education could/should exist within current entanglements of technology with/in nature. In fact, EE, as positioned in its neoliberal context, driven by a Eurocentric research community, has defaulted to anthropocentric perspectives which force a nature/culture binary (Aikens et al., 2016). What’s more, potentially promising alternative (or ‘transformative’) approaches remain fragmented across EE and are oftentimes inaccessible to teachers.
This paper is thus positioned within the critical current of posthumanism, which brings together critiques of exclusionary, hierarchical, and anthropocentric humanisms from, for example, feminist, decolonial, queer, ecofeminist, STS, and environmental studies (Braidotti, Jones, & Klumbytė, 2022). Critical posthumanism includes decolonial perspectives, which challenge narratives that promote unbridled technological progress by unravelling human/tech, human/nature, and nature/tech binaries and can centre EE within the ever-plural, entangled nature that includes all environments (biological, social, technological), viewing these environments as ontologically and epistemologically entangled (Bozalek & Zembylas, 2017). Critical posthuman onto-epistemologies are particularly relevant to this aim of reconceptualising EE in an ecologically and technologically uncertain world as they stress the hybrid, intersectional, and relational aspects of existence where humans are irreducibly entangled with technology and the environment, co-evolving alongside one another. (Barad, 2007; Braidotti, Jones, & Klumbytė, 2022)
As a result, in my ongoing research as a doctoral scholar, I argue that EE should engage more critically and deeply with envisioning and enacting new ways of being in the world. I propose a reconceptualisation of education that disrupts the constraints of an anthropocentric education system in the Global North, and engages with transformative approaches that do not perpetuate epistemic, social, ecological or technological violence, so we might collectively and effectively help our students navigate the realities of their future and our changing world. I ask: what does living, thriving and dying well on a damaged planet ask from Environmental Education? I draw from the ‘real utopia’ movement within social sciences and humanities research, which formulate concrete proposals to address systemic injustices designed to challenge and transform existing paradigms (Wright, 2010). To do so, this research takes a decolonial approach to Levitas’ (2013) three-staged methodological-philosophical framework ‘Utopia-as-Method’ (UAM) to not only critically analyse the current discourse in EE but also to imagine and construct alternative habits of knowing and being which take into account the technological realities of today’s world.
In this project, UAM’s first stage, Archaeology, involves a critical exploration of current trends, underlying assumptions and metanarratives in EE through a critical hermeneutic literature review, serving as a basis for envisioning transformative alternatives. Stage 2, Ontology, is grounded on an exploration of alternative ways of being and possibilities for the future through decolonial diffractive readings, while Stage 3, Architecture, is where I seek to build alternative EE futures drawing on a research-creation method. This paper will briefly discuss the trends emerging from Stage 1, including, for example, the aforementioned anthropocentric, Western-centric research community, resulting in various instances of colonial modernity and techno-optimism.
The methodological approach of Stage 2 (decolonial diffractive readings) will then be discussed in detail. Having critically considered and unearthed many underlying assumptions and conditions in EE, Stage 2, the Ontology stage of UAM, is grounded on an exploration of alternative ways of being and possibilities for the future, challenging existing ideas and boundaries. Finally, this paper will discuss the implications of these findings on the final UAM Stage within the broader research project.
Method
The methodological approach for this study will engage with central ideas from the area of Decolonial Research, which is an ontological and socio-political position from which to approach and enact research methodologies (Tuck et al., 2014). Decoloniality in research methods highlights the context in which research problems are conceptualised and their implications and relationship to power, creating different orientations to research (Smith, 2012). The ontological task here is one grounded on decolonial perspectives, informed by critical posthuman (post-qualitative) inquiry, through diffractive reading. This decolonial diffractive approach allows for new insights and unexpected connections that differ from the aforementioned Eurocentric trends I seek to reconceptualize in EE. Diffractive reading is a departure from normative representational readings toward a reading that embraces a more fluid, relational, and contextually situated approach to inquiry, where multiple perspectives and voices are considered and engaged with (Mazzei, 2014). This approach involves reading one discipline/text/approach with detailed, attentive care through another, allowing them to intersect and influence each other (Fox & Alldred, 2023). In doing so, the material and the discursive become entangled through the diffractive apparatus, producing unpredictable patterns of thought and knowledge (Mazzei, 2014). This approach to reading explores openings for transformative action in EE and observes how they shape each other and/or produce new ideas surrounding what ‘education’ in uncertain times entails. Thus, I will detail my process of thinking with theory, and of deploying concepts to see how they entangle and change/generate thinking. The findings summarised in Stage 1 will be the luminaries to Stage 2, highlighting what needs further exploration, including discourses not currently (or prominently) featured in EE literature. My diffractive apparatus is built around the notion of defamiliarisation to destabilise colonial norms of knowing and thinking in research and education. I explore seemingly different material-discursive phenomena in relationship with one another and pay attention to the patterns of difference generated. While this research is still ongoing, I anticipate the diffractive readings will engage with pedagogy, Indigenous cosmologies, ecofeminism and deep ecology, AI/technology philosophy, and personal narratives. The aim is to bring these ostensibly different texts in dialogue together to see what emerges. This process includes close readings of the texts followed by diffractive readings and researcher reflexivity using a journal. These journal entries include reflections and memories as a teacher to serve as a bridge from the diffractive process back into education.
Expected Outcomes
Exploring seemingly different material-discursive phenomena in relationship with one another can generate unpredictable patterns of behaviour. For example, in one diffractive reading within this Stage 2, Ubuntu–a southern African ethic/philosophy (Murove, 2012) was read through Le Guin’s (2019) feminist view of storytelling and technology, The Carrier Bag Theory. In doing so, both Ubuntu and Carrier Bag were made unfamiliar and seen anew in light of the patterns they create, offering insights for understanding technology as a receptacle for togetherness–community, sharing, and communication. This diffractive methodology then brings forth the impetus to question the dominating Eurocentric epistemologies of the Global North, while also examining how technology and human-machine interfaces influence how we perceive and experience. When linked with other diffractive readings on pedagogy and ecology, I expect unique ways of educating in contemporary times to emerge, which this paper will discuss. As mentioned, EE has been overwhelmingly informed by an anthropocentric philosophical underpinning that promotes an ontological separateness of human/nature/technology with roots in coloniality. As such, this paper aims to interrogate onto-epistemologies often overlooked in mainstream EE, and their potential contributions to teachers’ work around EE in formal contexts of education. Despite the rapid technological advancements and ecological emergencies that define the zeitgeist of contemporary life (Daub, 2020), ontological questions surrounding technology are an area of relative neglect within EE literature. Nevertheless, this type of thinking is necessary for transforming EE. What’s more, many EE scholars call for a new way of being with regard to education and nature (Morrell & Connor, 2002), but do not seem to be able to articulate what a human-nature-technology shift entails. Where traditional EE falls short in its neoliberal, anthropocentric habits, this paper proposes critical posthuman and decolonial methodological approaches can move us into new habits of being and educating in uncertain times.
References
Aikens, K., McKenzie, M., & Vaughter, P. (2016). Environmental and Sustainability Education Policy Research: A systematic review of methodological and thematic trends. Environmental Education Research, 22(3), 333–359. Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press. Bozalek & Zembylas, M. (2017). Diffraction or reflection? Sketching the contours of two methodologies in educational research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 30(2), 111–127. Braidotti, Jones, E., & Klumbytė, G. (2022). More Posthuman Glossary / Rosi Braidotti, Emily Jones, Goda Klumbyte. Daub. (2020). What tech calls thinking : an inquiry into the intellectual bedrock of Silicon Valley / Adrian Daub. (First edition.). Fox, & Alldred, P. (2023). Applied Research, Diffractive Methodology, and the Research-Assemblage: Challenges and Opportunities. Sociological Research Online, 28(1), 93–109. https://doi.org/10.1177/13607804211029978 Le Guin, 2019. The carrier bag theory of fiction (introduced by Donna Haraway). London: Ignota Levitas, R. (2013). Utopia as Method: The Imaginary Reconstitution of Society. Palgrave Macmillan. Mazzei. (2014). Beyond an Easy Sense. Qualitative Inquiry, 20(6), 742–746. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800414530257 Morrell & O’Connor. (2002). Introduction. In: Expanding the boundaries of transformative learning: Essays on theory and praxis. Edited by E. O’Sullivan, A. Murove, M. (2012). Ubuntu. Diogenes (English Ed.), 59(3-4), 36–47. https://doi.org/10.1177/0392192113493737 Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. (2012). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and Indigenous peoples (Second ed.) London: Zed books Tuck, E., McKenzie, M., & McCoy, K. (2014). Land Education: Indigenous, post-colonial, and decolonizing perspectives on Place and Environmental Education Research. Environmental Education Research, 20(1), 1–23. Wright, E. O. (2010). Envisioning Real Utopias. Verso. New York, NY.
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