Education in the Anthropocene: Transforming Online Learning Through Place-Based Education

• In Event: Relational Approaches to Prefiguring Learning Futures

Proposal

Place-based education is key to understanding climate contextually (Khadka et al., 2021), in order to enable “embodied, material, local, interpersonal and political dimensions of the changing climate” (Verlie & Blom, 2021, p. 10-11). Through its uniquely networked pedagogies, place-based education online can be “oriented to the reflexive studies of local iterations of global dynamics” (Yemini et al., 2023, p. 16) in order to foster planetary forms of citizenship.

The question remains, however: despite the displaced nature of online learning, how might currently networked and historically-oriented place-based online pedagogy support epistemic disobedience and ethical mutual obligation in education for sustainability?

This presentation responds to the above question through analysis of the coursework from three iterations of a graduate level class on Education in the Anthropocene designed within a graduate Global Education Program. The course introduces students to education dilemmas in a time of climate crisis, examines genealogies of the concept of “Anthropocene” - a geological area where human-generated carbon emissions are driving climate change - and explores what kind of shifts in perspectives are necessary to reframe understandings of education research, policy, and practice in this context.

This presentation focuses on findings from a cross-sectional analysis of students’ arts-based reflections on their own participation in climate change. Inspired by artist Xavier Cortada’s Longitudinal Installation, students from diverse geographical locations wrote quotes about how they have experienced climate change in their local places and reflected in video posts about the exercise. They were invited to share their quotes on the public online installation (https://cortada.com/art2007/longitudinal/) to carry the conversation beyond the boundaries of the online course. Using inductive thematic coding, we reviewed all student quotes across three iterations of the course, as well as all video reflections and responses among coursemates. Additionally, students’ written reflections on the activity added depth and context to the assignment.

Central to our analysis of the student responses was an understanding of the “power of storied landscapes [to] provide pedagogical provocation to think beyond disciplined climate facts…. [where] radical forms of relationality erode overrepresented forms of humanness towards ethical mutual obligation (even) within damaged landscape and unbalanced relation” (Scherrer, 2022, p. 200). As students engaged with the content and specially with the art installation in this assignment, they were encouraged to story their own landscapes and respond to the stories of others through the virtual classroom. Through this pedagogical approach, the Anthropocene class utilized the online format to create relationality across localities as a way to initiate a sense of “ethical mutual obligation.” Further, locating these stories “within the fluid and longitudinal construction of knowledge provides opportunities to rethink and remember the past, that which has been and continues to be erased, and reenacts future interdependency” (Scherrer, 2022, p. 199). In these ways, we understood the transformative potential of online place-based learning through the longitudinal installation to support political and ethical learning - and we examined student coursework to understand to what extent this pedagogy was effective and what might be done differently.

Authors

• Janna Goebel, Arizona State University

• Carrie Karsgaard, Cape Breton University

• Esther Pretti, Arizona State University

• Iveta Silova, Arizona State University