Animals in Education and Schooling: From Theory to Practice

• In Event: Ways of Transforming Human-Animal Relations Through Education and Schooling: Translating Existing Theories Into Practice

Abstract

A growing interest in animals in educational contexts and children’s relations with animals has led to an array of research addressing shortcomings in the in which Western schools fail to address animal issues. Research has shown how Western schools reproduce Anthropocentric values and normalise the instrumental use of animals (Pedersen, 2010; Dinker & Pedersen, 2016; Lupinacci & Happel-Parkins 2015), how school food practices normalise harmful food practices and cultivate ignorance related to the origin and effects of animal products (Rice, 2013, 2018; Rowe and Rocha, 2015), and how environmental education fails to address critical animal issues (Spannring, 2017). Common Worlds Childhoods Research Collective offers another perspective builds on Donna Haraway’s hybridic concept of naturecultures to explore reconceptualizations of “humans in the world” rather than “separate from the world” and how this might take shape in early childhood pedagogies (Pacini-Ketchabaw and Nxumalo, 2015; Pacini-Ketchabaw and Taylor 2015, 2018).

By enlisting critical animal pedagogies, we are challenged to rethink and transform the value systems that guide educational practices, and to create spaces for interspecies learning in schools (Dinker & Pedersen, 2016). However, transforming educational spaces and our relationships with other animals requires us not only to rethink pedagogy, but also to grapple with larger structural questions, particularly how education is entangled with the animal industrial complex (Noske, 1989). Despite the promising developments in theory, in order to transform educational systems and human-animal relations, the implementation and development of these theories with practitioners are crucial.

This paper will outline the main developments from the “animal turn” in educational research and raise questions of how animals can and why they ought to be considered stakeholders in educational research and practice.

Authors

• Maria Helena Saari, University of Oulu

• John William Drew, The University of Western Ontario