Sustainability Learning as an Ontological Turn A Case Study of the Saemangeum Citizen Field Research Group

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Wednesday 1:45 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Assessment and Learning Frameworks in Education for Sustainable Development

Abstract

This study explores sustainability learning as an ontological process through a case study of the Saemangeum Citizen Field Research Group in South Korea. Over two decades, this group has engaged in embodied, affective, and ethical learning through interrelations with tidal flats and nonhuman life. Drawing on sustainability learning theories which adopt posthumanist and new materialist approaches, the study conceptualizes transformative sustainability learning as an emergent, persistent yet ever-changing assemblage of human and more-than-human agencies. It challenges anthropocentric, rationalist, and linear models of learning that dominate mainstream sustainability education. The findings suggest that sustainability learning can be understood as a process of iterative becoming, a continuous entanglement with unknown others.

Author

• HyeJung Shin, Seoul National University