Highlighted Session: The Radical Assumptions of Eco-Literacy: Foundational Learning During the Anthropocene Extinction

Group Submission Type: Highlighted Paper Session

Proposal

Within the overall conference theme of ‘The Power of Protest,’ this panel presents 4 of the 28 contributions to NORRAG Special Issue 09 (NSI#09), “Foundational Learning: Debates and Praxes,” which explores the emphasis that has emerged on foundational learning at this midway point to SDG2030.
Even though ideas about “what is foundational in education” reside in contested terrain, the papers selected for presentation at this panel from NSI#09 reflect education protests in profound and profoundly different ways. Each of the papers speak to protest, whether in the literal “placard” sense, around legal struggles for land rights, or in their determined assertions of alternative pedagogies. Debates around what foundational learning involves are perhaps sharper in this critical historical moment than ever before, with profound consequences not only for human societies but for biodiversity and the earth.
On the surface, the current debates polarize either around the prioritization of basic literacy and numeracy or around the insistence on more holistic approaches to education. These debates reveal deeper, longstanding fault lines around power in human societies and the purposes of education. The lay of these fault lines is complex and crucial: reflecting policy and planning priorities within education systems, the financing decisions that follow and determine, and the nature of the social compacts we build to ensure quality and deliver equity, but they are fundamentally about pedagogy and how pedagogy is understood and enacted in the world we live in.
These fault lines cause eruptions in ordinary communities, sometimes as mild lava flows and other times as Ultra-Plinian explosions. In the U.S., we witness energetic struggles around the control of school boards, the selection and censorship of books, or what is taught and how it is taught in classrooms. In the U.K., there are persistent struggles around proposals to limit free school lunches and the disproportionate exclusion of Black boys from class. The national government has announced new guidelines that will force schools to out trans pupils to their parents and ban them from socially transitioning at school without parental consent. Every country has its version of these “culture wars.” While none of these fights are explicitly about foundational learning, these more local, more personal struggles reflect deeply held policy convictions that inevitably underpin how foundational learning is understood and implemented.
This panel discussion also takes place in the context of a growing unified response by education sector stakeholders to the shared challenges presented by climate change and associated environmental issues relating to water-energy- food-ecosystems – also known as the WEFE Nexus issues. After the warmest summer on record in 2023, there is growing recognition of the threats these crises pose for peace, well-being, and human security and that the innovation and sustainable transitions these sectors must achieve will not be possible without educations systems that can reproduce the skills and knowledge needed for greener and degrowth economies. This panel discussion takes place in the context of calls from UNESCO and civil society organizations for greening education, commitment to implementing compulsory climate education by 2025, and the Paris Agreement’s commitment to limit global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Therefore, it is no coincidence that the four contributions to NSI-#09 that speak to protest in education also deal with climate change and environmental issues. Each explores perspectives and pedagogies for renewed approaches to eco-literacy. The presentations include Renata Montechiare and Rita Potyguara’s account of indigenous education and the struggle for traditional indigenous land in Ceára, Brazil. Adam Roberti, who works with Xavier Cortada, who will be the “artist in residence” for CIES 2024, presents his paper on socially-engaged art and educational activism around in Miami, Florida, and what this suggests about developing the creative domain as part of the foundational learning package. Christina Kwauk's paper provides prescient reflections on foundational learning in the climate crisis, which draws deeply from the student protest movement. Radhika Iyengar’s personal story of awakening consciousness from her childhood in Bhopal at the time of the Union Carbide Gass in the city, her work at Columbia University’s Climate School to the wrath of Hurricane Ida in New Jersey in 2021 – all underscoring for her that foundational learning does not involve detached technical skills but must imbed profound realizations about responsibility for one another and the earth, and that this involves study and when necessary, radical action.
Debra Bailey Mitchell’s philosophical analysis of David Orr, who three of the papers reference, shows how Orr profoundly understands that the real education crisis reflects a more profound ecological crisis. Orr’s concept of ecological literacy is a way for us to understand Earth's ecology better and foster sustainable ways of living. While Mitchell’s 2009 papers consider that the crisis narrative would fail to inspire youth to action, she would no doubt be happy to be repeatedly proved wrong over the decade that followed. The papers in this panel, however, evidence the movement beyond Orr’s crisis perspective that Mitchell seeks, amply demonstrating notions of biophilia and ecojustice, the embrace of experiential learning, the potential for education school subjects to incorporate ethics and sympoiesis as essential to the transformations that are required for education in a sustainable world.
NORRAG – an offshoot of the Research, Review, and Advisory Group (RRAG) established in 1977 – is a decade-old and growing education network of practitioners and academics. It aims to critically review and disseminate education research on the developing world. NORRAG membership consists of over 5000 members in Global South from 178 countries. The panel will address how we think about the significance of eco-literacies and foundational learning in ways that make sense for 2023 and the world and why transforming education to respond relevantly to the world we must live in requires as much protest action as policy talk.

Sub Unit

• Environmental and Sustainability Education SIG

Chair

• Hugh McLean, NORRAG

Individual Presentations

• Foundational learning and socially engaged art in an era of overlapping environmental crises. - Adam Roberti, Xavier Cortada Foundation

• Learning to be a conscious person: Bridging the gap between foundational learning, climate change and SDG 4.7 - Radhika Iyengar, Columbia University - Earth Institute

Discussant

• Moira V Faul, NORRAG, Geneva Graduate Institute