Pedagogy of Love: Transforming Urban Environmental Education Through Co-Created Engagements

• In Event: Caring for Social-Ecological Systems through Science, Engineering, and Environmental Education: Models, Tensions, Affordances
  In Structured Poster Session: Caring for Social-Ecological Systems Through Science, Engineering, and Environmental Education: Models, Tensions, Affordances

Abstract

Objective: This presentation describes the socio-ecological care in terms of the collective care for each other as embedded in environment that happens in a collaborative learning space: an urban, garden-based eco-justice program, part of a university-sponsored college readiness initiative serving high school students. This course takes food systems as a departure point to investigate community, land/place, water, consumer culture, and social activism. Simultaneously the concepts of educator, learner, researcher and citizen are interrogated, challenged and reimagined in praxis. Along these lines, this poster will cover theoretical, research, personal and practical ground, examining possibilities for youth-, teacher- and curriculum-development, scholarship, activism and social transformation within a critical-transdisciplinary (Authors, 2016) environmental education framework.

Perspective: In a Freirean framework, “pedagogy of love” is synonymous with pedagogy of liberation: a rigorous yet open-ended dialog between teacher/learners, building mutual trust, solidarity, and critical understanding of their relations to reality and capacities to transform the world (Freire, 2018; hooks, 1994). Multiple constraints at work in urban public education systems limit student access to such experiences. The prevalence of predetermined, universalized learning outcomes, rigid rules of engagement and narrow outcomes assessments leave teachers and students little autonomy to engage in relevant and transformative learning experiences. Indeed, these constraints appear designed to manage and funnel their creative and intellectual energies into uncritical acceptance of the neoliberal educational agenda. Yet outside and at the margins of institutions exist informal learning spaces in which teachers and students co-create educational experiences that challenge the hierarchies, structural inequities, and decontextualized inquiry typical of formal learning environments; consciously struggle with the fears and tensions that emerge under these conditions of radical possibility; and potentially build the critical awareness and agency of all involved.

Methods and Data: We draw on years of data that include reflexive dialogs from participants based on their multiple and changing roles, and from the perspectives of student/mentor/co-teacher/community gardener, it illustrates the assumptions, fears and passions brought to this context and the dramatic transformations they underwent throughout five years of intensive, evolving collaboration. In addition to these dialogues, interviews, and course artifacts such as photos, journal reflections, and various collaborative work also informed the research.

Results: Themes include the prevalence of intergenerational transmission, exchange of tensions around food traditions; the excitement of sharing information with various audiences, including friend and family; the recognition of intersectional connections between seemingly separate topics, such as food, race, gender, media and politics; and interest in the ways that youth voices can better inform civic conversation, address systemic inequities and influence of public policy. Furthermore, indicate pursuance of social and eco-justice related majors and careers indicating future imaginaries in continued activism and commitment to the greater good.

Scholarly significance: Engaging students and educators in a liberatory pedagogy of love in environmental education contributes to building a justice-oriented collective with the potential of long-term influences on the greater good of collective well-being.

Authors

• Pieranna Pieroni, CUNY - Brooklyn College

• Atasi Das, The Graduate Center, CUNY

• Jennifer Dawn Adams, University of Calgary

• Theila Smith, University of Groningen