Regenerative Education: From Practice to Policy Using a Social Justice Lens

• In Event: Responding to the Climate Crisis: Decolonial Imaginaries and Regenerative Education

Proposal

We now live within the climate emergency, an intersectional issue impacting our most marginalized communities at a faster pace and greater scale. Our education systems play a pivotal role in preparing students to live in a fundamentally altered ecological reality—while mitigating racial and social inequities. This work studies regenerative education as the practice of restoring and renewing our environment, which we have degraded, and ourselves, now disconnected from requirements for life on earth. The work includes three main approaches: 1) increasing practical knowledge and capacity in regenerative agriculture through permaculture design certification; 2) collecting and curating best practices in regenerative education through a global environmental scan; and 3) creating appropriate and salient regenerative education policy frameworks based on the scan and current policy work. We must shift towards decision-making for seven generations and this project explains empirical, defined steps forward towards embedding a vision of regeneration within our education system. Because we have not changed course as a society through conventional means, this area of research fits the CIES theme of “The Power of Protest” in proposing new social, economic, and political configurations and, when needed, protest strategies designed to realize the seven generation approach to life.

This project uses an emergent term, “regenerative education,” as its point of departure (Rukspollmuang, 2021). The underlying rationale stems from an indigenous idea of considering seven future generations when making decisions. Oren Lyons (2014), member of the Onondaga Nation, describes the seven generations concept within their nation’s worldview: "[W]hen you sit in council for the welfare of the people, you must not think of yourself or of your family, not even of your generation … make your decisions on behalf of the seven generations coming, so that they may enjoy what you have today."
Actualizing this worldview requires finding and implementing decision-making frames and processes that not only ensure sustainability, but actively produce regeneration over time.

Research Questions and Conceptual Framework
Figure 1 shows the conceptual framework illustrating the connections between each research objective or activity and the key research questions motivating their inclusion. The three boxes include the main issues described further below: regenerative agriculture, regenerative education practices, and education policy. Research question 1 is: “How do we understand and apply regenerative practices across levels? Research question 2 crosscuts the entire project: How do equity, anti-racism, and social justice writ large intersect with each domain? Put simply, regenerative education cannot simply become another tool for racial and economic segregation, where rural, white farmers engage in ecologically balanced practices on stolen indigenous land with wealth derived from enslaved generations, without accounting both for those histories and the current realities of inequality and marginalization. Regeneration is not piecemeal; it does not create a way forward for seven generations for any specific demographic while abdicating descendants of another demographic. Actual regenerative practices are inclusive and reparative.

Figure 1. Sabbatical Topics and Key Questions

Examining the role of regenerative agriculture stems from two motivations. Due to industrial agriculture over the past few generations (fewer than seven!), we have collectively lost a conscious awareness of what it takes to feed ourselves and, subsequently, our interdependence with the planet. For example, the percent of people living in cities globally tipped over 50 percent in 2007 and sits at 56% as of 2020 (Buchholz, 2020). On the individual level, in his writings on education, Paulo Friere (1970) describes the need for praxis, or an individual engagement with the world past theory and research that includes action. Modern agricultural practices have converged around industrial models instead of regenerative approaches. Fortunately, the permaculture method reflects regenerative principles. Coined by Bill Mollison, “permaculture” combines “permanent agriculture and permanent culture” for the:
design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of landscape and people — providing their food, energy, shelter, and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way. (Permaculture Research Center, n.d.)
The project describes the intricacies of permaculture and regenerative design based on the “inextricable juncture of social justice and ecology” and proposing solutions based on “resilient community design” (OAEC, n.d.).

The second project objective is an environmental scan that collects best practices in regenerative education. The project includes a typology and global list of organizations within the context of a global collaboration between education researchers and civil society organizations. Compiling this set of organizations, revealed that the environment and its connection to education systems current occurs with frequency across regions and scales (schools to systems). However, the actual workings and products of these organizations vary greatly by context, so the project generates a quasi-database that contributes to our collective understanding of the who, how, and what of regenerative education using the following categories: Organization, Mission Statement (if any), Primary messaging topics, Mediums/ Channels Used, Website, Membership Primary Base/ Audience, Key words, Audience Scale (Global, National, Local), Product/ Content Types and Links, and Specialties/ Important Resources. Instead of continuing to reinvent the wheel locally, the larger goal is building programs and policies more quickly and effectively with our extant collective resources.

The third and final project product consists of a regenerative education policy framework. This global policy framework captures the work worldwide on regenerative education and includes examples of more localized, contextual regenerative education policies. The significance of these activities is the attempt to address our current situation and to develop actionable education alternatives that can shift the approaches and outcomes of our current environmental situation.

Author

• Frank Adamson, California State University, Sacramento