3. Nurturing complementary nature-culture relations through routine field-based learning with people, places, and more-than-humans

• In Event: Nature-connectedness and the More-than-human in Environmental Education - Environmental Education SIG Structured Poster Session

Abstract

We are living through a period of significant social and ecological shift that requires more sustainable ways of learning with and relating to the rest of the natural world (Berkes, 2017; Bang & Marin, 2015; Whyte, 2018; Vossoughi et al., 2024). Taking up science as a key site in which nature-culture relations are mediated (Bang, 2015), critical scholars continue to interrogate how education is saturated in hierarchical orderings and dominant logics that reflect anthropocentrism, adult-centrism, and other colonial features (e.g., Grosfoguel 2011; Mignolo, 2009, Smith, 2012; McDaid Barry, et al., 2023). Working to de-settle such hierarchies (Bang et al., 2013) towards heterogeneous futures (Rosebery et al 2010; Warren et al., 2020) this paper presents an analysis of field-based activity where participants enact dimensions of a transformative orientation towards sensemaking we call ethical wondering with people-places, and more-than-humans (Sherry-Wagner, 2023).

Authors

• Jordan D. Sherry-Wagner, University of Washington - Bothell

• Megan Bang, Northwestern University

• Anna Lees, University of Washington

• Carrie T. Tzou, University of Washington - Bothell

• Shirin Vossoughi, Northwestern University

• Charlene Montano Nolan, Western Washington University