Disrupting White Geology by Centering the Eco-Relational Mattering of Consequential Lands in Formal Science Learning (Poster 8)

• In Event: Speculative Science Education Toward Socioecological Care

Abstract

Objectives: As is, and for far too long, formal geology education has functioned within rigid enclosures of white geology (Yusoff, 2018), forcing students along epistemic pathways of settler colonialism and erasing culturally and racially lived, and living, storied realities with, on, and because of Land. Dominant science instruction and curricula make absent the inter-cooperative connections between Land, Air, Water, Stars, and Earthly beings, severing students’ sense of belonging with Land and foreclosing the flourishing of their socio-ecological identities. This research seeks to address the following question: How can transformative science education disrupt settler colonial geo-imaginaries to cultivate and nurture students' socio-ecological caring identities as Land Guardians?

Theoretical framework: Disrupting the inculcation of a settler “culture of uncare” (Gillsepie, 2019, p. 89), done through standardized, regimented, and reductive education, calls for an anticolonial, emergent curriculum as site of resistance, “advocat[ing] that children’s ideas and processes of meaning-making are critical for the unfolding of curricular processes in which children and educators are collaborators in the co-construction of knowledge” (Nxumalo et al., 2018, p. 433). In doing so, an emergent curriculum, grounded in tenets of liberatory education (Domínguez, 2017) opens expansive opportunities for teachers to employ critical speculative design pedagogy (Author et al., 2023) to engage children’s epistemic curiosity (Freire, 2021) for visioning and championing a new Otherwise, critically aware of socio-ecological complexities and vulnerabilities in an era of climate colonialism.

Modes of inquiry: In effort to refuse the espousing of settler colonial geo-imaginaries among students a team of elementary school teacher research partners co-adapted their geology unit by positioning students to speculate on the question, how should we determine the use of Land? Teachers prioritized interdisciplinary critical counter pedagogies that centered Indigenous expertise and the eco-relational mattering of consequential Lands. This transformation of geology learning opened learning experiences that nurtured learners’ sense of response-abilty (Haraway, 2016) and relationality, for and towards Landscapes of secured futurities.

Data sources: As a part of a design-based research project, the research shared is based on the analysis of teacher co-developed science curriculum, teacher interviews, and a range of student artifacts. An ethnographic account of findings was developed through inductive coding analysis of student artifacts and curricular materials.

Findings: Geography as a discipline is entangled in settler colonial regimes that continue to shape geographic practice and the boundaries of geographical knowledge (Rivera, 2023, p. 298). Analysis of these transformative efforts reveals how students presence and leverage their socio-ecological identities as Land Guardians to promote the radical care of Landforms, to address relational matters of concern and showcase their complex geological learning. Furthermore, the findings propose the implementation of consequential geographies and critical stakeholder lessons as pedagogical commitments and approaches for anti-colonial science education.

Scholarly Significance: Transforming normative science curriculum and pedagogies into an anti-racist and anti-colonial knowledge project purposed to nurture students’ sensibilities and “ethics of ecological belonging” (Gillespie, 2019, p.119) is past due, and urgently needed for the radical care (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017) of generations of Earthly Kin.

Author

• Anastasia S. Sanchez, Puget Sound Education Service District