Decolonizing Environmental Education in a Post-Katrina World: Tapping the Pedagogical Potential of Disasters

• In Event: 16.049 - Decolonizing Environmental Education: Equity, Indigeneity, Justice

Abstract

Given that the deeply intertwined histories of European colonialism and the academic sciences (Harding, 2006; Smith 2012) have resulted in Eurocentric scientific knowledge practices that are imbued with coloniality (Maldonado-Torres, 2007, this paper reimagines the teaching of environmental education in a post-Katrina world by tapping the pedagogical potential of disasters. Thus, this paper theorizes a non-Eurocentric scientific situated knowledge appropriating the pedagogical potential of disasters to work toward the inclusion of marginalized viewpoints in environmental education – and more critically, to invigorate our teaching agendas and practices by including nondominant perspectives.

Author

• Dara N. Nix-Stevenson, Southwest Guilford High School