"Meeting Our Students Halfway": Reconceptualizing Classroom Response-ability and Agency Through the Theories of Karen Barad

• In Event: Novel Philosophical Approaches in Environmental Education

Abstract

Classical Humanist theorists such as Maslow posit that human needs are met via hierarchical successions that leads to self-actualisation. In this paper, we argue for a different kind of ‘meeting’ when it comes to students’ needs. As university lecturers in an Environmental Education class in a teacher training program, we situate the university classroom learning environment in the context of posthumanism and thus consider, how are we meeting our students’ halfway? Using a collaborative auto-ethnographic methodology, we cultivate and generate our thinking using Karen Barad’s theory of agential realism. We question and synthesise how this theory can reposition us as educators who are not in ‘control’ of or responsible for our students in the traditional sense, but are response-able with.

Authors

• Lisa Siegel, Southern Cross University

• Simone Miranda Blom, Southern Cross University