Poster #56 - Eco-Spirituality in Science Education: Contradictions in Intent and Practice

• In Event: 21.063 - MTCC Poster Session Three
  In Poster Session: 21.063-5 - Interdisciplinary Environmental Thought in Action: Schooling and Education

Abstract

There may be a need to explore the relevance of spirituality in science education. Interviews were conducted with ten grade 10 science teachers, and texts associated with twenty-seven lessons selected by participants were evaluated. Discourse analysis indicated the presence of ‘holistic’ discourse, that allows for variable encounters with nature that may be conducive to spiritual experiences. More frequently, however, mechanistic metaphors and language were dominant in discourse, which resists holistic encounters with nature. Spiritual encounters with nature may have the potential to provoke ontological understandings that expand the scope of science, permitting the production of new forms of knowledge based on holistic relationships between humans with/in nature, instead of utilitarian forms of knowledge that may sustain human dominance over nature.

Author

• Darren Glen Hoeg, University of Alberta