The way we understand the world dramatically changes our engagement with it, as is evident from the variety of approaches to engagement around the world. Such differences could be caused by the range of onto-epistemological understandings of the world and human relationality with the world. Epistemologies dominant in Western countries like Europe, North America, and Australia, which have been shaped by historical influences such as Christianity, the Enlightenment, and the European Scientific Revolutions (Huntington 1991), can limit our understanding of environmental issues, neglecting the rich diversity of global knowledge systems that are integral for imagining future sustainability. The dominant scientific-driven onto-epistemology in the West is one of ‘separateness’, which perpetuates an understanding of the world as consisting of ontologically separated ‘things’ which can be used or consumed (Perkins, 2024). It constructs a humanist approach - a way of understanding the world that suggests that humans can somehow be extracted or are already “hyper-separated” from the unfolding becoming of the ‘natural’ world (Plumwood, 2002, p.27). Such an onto-epistemology promotes prolific economic growth by prioritising free markets, trade, privatisation, globalisation, deregulation, and individualism; this ideology is generally coupled with economic, political, and social policies dominant in the West (Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles et al., 2019). Constructing an understanding of the world and human relationship with it in this way has led to a long series of decisions that have caused the current climate crisis (Lloro-Bidart, 2014). Such humanist mindsets implicitly justify the exploitation and unsustainable consumption of resources as “non human other” (Greer et al., 2023). Thus, our onto-epistemological framing of human relationship with the world has significant implications for sustainability education. 

Compartmentalised knowledge acquisition-based learning in siloed subjects reinforces separated approaches to thinking, perpetuating humanist onto-epistemological assumptions of ‘objective’ approaches and ‘truths’ to be learned. This type of learning poorly equips us to face the complex poly-crisis of the current environmental change (Taylor et al., 2020). It perpetuates ideas that we can somehow ‘extract’ humans or human activity from ‘nature’ in order to ‘save’ it through neoliberal agendas of ‘better’ consumption and growth despite the finite resources available on Earth. An understanding of emergent human relationality within the world in this context is conspicuous through absence. This absence is significant if we consider the way we construct our understanding of human relationality within the world as having implications for the decisions we make about the way we engage with the world, and in doing so, shape it. 

So, my research wonders, what could different approaches to education look like? How can we begin to interrogate the epistemological assumptions embedded in our learning in order to imagine ways we can learn that are otherwise? This work crucially does not involve creating new subjects, new curriculums, new resources, in short an increased volume of content of ‘things to learn’ without complicating the “epistemological goggles of the present” (Bayley, 2024, np). It is a close interrogation of the ways we learn, and what we consider to be learning. It encourages holding space for multiplicity in ways of knowing and an acknowledgement that the construction of knowledge is agentic in the way we shape the world (de Sousa Santos 2008). To do so is vital work in deconstructing human exceptionalism and learning for beyond-anthropocentric epistemologies. It requires a reconfiguration of widespread Western epistemologies which implicitly justify the exploitation and destruction of multi-species ecologies. Changing our curriculums without this deep interrogation of the embedded epistemological assumptions won’t be sufficient in working towards a more just education, without which, environmental justice remains unattainable. 

In this paper, I interrogate ways of knowing as pedagogy to consider how the process of learning itself can be re-considered to reveal multiplicity and challenge universalism. I experiment with ways of approaching this research that are epistemologically consistent with an acknowledgement of multiplicity and move beyond the constraints and expectations embedded within dominant Western research methods. My approach aligns with my understanding of relational entanglement, that all matter exists only through and because of relationship with all other matter, making existence a state of becoming-with every-thing else through mutual relationality (Barad 2007). The research emerges through and because of the collaborations of the participants (Wilson 2008). I play with the possibilities of creating spaces of generative exploration, from which multiplicity can emerge and provide opportunities for thinking beyond our usual ways of knowing and being. I wanted to find ways to engage with the participants that create opportunities for generative creativity in directions I couldn’t predict. This is simultaneously a challenging way to approach research within schools which are beholden to pre-determined structures, expected outcomes, and measurable difference - and also of vital importance precisely because of that context. We are in a time of radical environmental change, so perhaps radical approaches to how we do research should be imagined. To approach this challenge, I collaborated with a group of three Year 12 students (ages 16-17 years) and one of their teachers at an English secondary state school in generative arts-based activities as a relational exploration of learning for multiplicity. They had chosen to participate in these sessions as their nominated enrichment activity for the term, a required bi-weekly activity inside usual school hours where they could select from a range of extra-curricular activities. In our sessions I encouraged them to consider their understanding of learning, and therefore their construction of it, through a range of creative activities. The research that emerged was our approach to imagining ways to consider different epistemological approaches to education. I think with Katve-Kaisa Kontturi’s (2018) proposal of ‘Ways of Following’, Shawn Wilson’s (2008) understanding of ‘relational knowledges’, and Anna-Lena Østern and Kristan Nodtvedt Knudsen’s (2019) articulation of ‘performativity’ to outline my approach to research as ‘performative following’. What emerges is a performative inquiry of relational multiplicity. It is not a curriculum of activities to teach about epistemic justice, but a pedagogical exploration of epistemological relational multiplicity through experiencing relational multiplicity.

To reimagine education at a time of climate crisis, we can explore pedagogies that equip students to recognise diverse onto-epistemologies and stay with the trouble of multiplicity. This requires an epistemological interrogation of the assumptions and exclusions embedded within our education systems. My research is not a proposed curriculum, but an exploration of relational pedagogy through situated and embodied experiences of the participating students. Our workshops drew attention to relationality, flow, and entanglement of their exploration of knowledge through material play, their moving bodies, and an attentive exploration of the spaces surrounding them. It stretched the possibilities of learning beyond the representational, allowing exciting possibilities for unknown multiplicities to emerge. My hope for this exploration is to inform ‘pedagogies for multiplicity’ that allow us to create imaginings for an educational approach rooted in epistemic and environmental justice. The way we understand the world matters - through constructions of our understanding, we shape the world in its constant state of relational becoming. These constructions necessarily differ as a result of different onto-epistemologies, creating a pluriversal world of many worlds (Escobar, 2020; Blaser & Cadena, 2018). However, current Western approaches to education frequently invalidate or erase this multiplicity through universalisms of singular dominant onto-epistemology rooted in human exceptionalism (Kumalo, 2017; Perkins, 2024). When such a construction of the world is embedded in education systems, it precludes movement towards epistemic justice, without which, environmental justice remains unattainable (Balarin & Milligan, 2024; Wilder et al., 2024). Thus, epistemic justice holds significant implications for curriculum and pedagogy, especially in the context of environmental education. Epistemic justice, therefore, is a required component to ongoing discourse surrounding an educational approach that prepares young people to face the diverse and complex challenges posed by environmental change and their role in imaging sustainable futures.

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