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Pedagogies and the Art(s) of Protest: Mobilizing for Ecological Justice

Wed, March 6, 12:45 to 2:15pm, Zoom Rooms, Zoom Room 104

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

While global efforts are increasingly geared toward promoting education for sustainability at all levels (from elementary to graduate, from formal to non-formal), most curricula and pedagogies continue to rely on the premises of human exceptionalism, neoliberal individualism, and infinite economic growth that further accelerate – rather than alleviate – the ecological crisis. In this respect, the ecological crisis reflects the crisis of our imagination, which has been systematically “beaten out of us by the same extractive systems that are making our planet and people sick” (Misra, 2023). Today, it is virtually impossible to imagine an alternative to the dominant model of modern schooling that has been built over centuries to reinforce the status quo, enforce conformity, and institutionalize hierarchical divides between different groups of people, as well as between humans and nature.
Given the urgency of the ecological crisis, how can we begin cultivating creativity and imagination necessary to challenge the status quo of mainstream schooling and reconfigure the sphere of education otherwise? Given that mainstream critique has thus far struggled to radically reimagine the status quo in education, this panel explores a variety of pedagogical and artistic efforts (perhaps even experiments) aimed at reclaiming imagination and re-awakening ‘our capacity to feel that there are other ways for a world to exist’ (Stengers, 2018, p. 9). In this context, we approach creative pedagogies and arts as a powerful way to mobilize forces across multiple divides – science/art, human/nature, child/adult – in order to both protest the status quo and tap into alternative onto-epistemologies through a process whereby “the political and the creative are mutually constitutive dimensions” (Bowman & Germaine, 2022, p. 81).

We are especially interested to explore how creativity and arts can work together with sciences and social sciences against extractive forms of education, creating alternative ethico-onto-epistemologies that are otherwise to (neo)liberal, individualist, and growth-oriented logics (Nxumalo et al., 2022, p. 104). While we attend, therefore, to the often delegitimized youth agency articulated through imaginative and creative climate-oriented work (Alexander et al., 2022; Bowman & Germaine, 2022; Menzie-Ballantyne & Ham, 2022; Verlie & Flynn, 2022; White et al., 2022), we are less concerned with art’s instrumental capacities than for the ways young people express alternative ways of knowing and envision alternative futures – and what these expressions mean for education. The arts provide ways of examining education through lived experiences that reflect both education and climate awareness (Knowles, 2008) without the limitations of a particular language (Freeman & Mathison, 2009) and of verbal descriptions and accounts.

In our work, we approach art not as a ‘tool’, which can illustrate scientific findings or present scientific facts in more creative ways. Rather, we approach art as a creative process that has the capacity to speak to diverse aesthetics and community spaces, raising awareness, imagining alternatives, and mobilizing communities into action – no matter how small these actions may seem to be. In this panel, we explore different artistic interventions that challenge the mainstream modern education narrative, in which humans are both privileged over other species and separate from nature. The first presentation focuses on a pedagogical experiment of using climate fiction (cli-fi) as part of the curriculum in a globally-oriented graduate level class ‘Education in the Anthropocene.’ Focusing on students’ experiences and reflections, this presentation examines the potential of cli-fi in purposefully disrupting the typical sustainability education curriculum and bringing other ways of knowing in education research, policy, and practice.

Our second paper showcases an arts based research engagement with 45 children where we co-designed and pilot-tested activities that reframes learning in nature, moving away from a utilitarian, detached (post)positivist relations with the nature-as-machine (or as a resource to benefit humans only) to a relational engagement with more-than-human inhabitants in nature that mutually benefits all. In particular, pedagogies of care were used to encourage encounters and relationships that recognize more-than-human agency and value nonhuman ways of knowing, fostering practices of becoming-with nature in an urban setting. Together with children, we explored how museums may be treated not as tools that reinforce human exceptionalism, but as spaces that foster the remembering of our own human condition and place in the larger scheme of life on Earth.

Attending carefully to the creative imaginings of diverse young people from around the planet, the third paper utilizes arts-based methods to closely analyze 1000 pieces of artwork about climate change from 60 countries, connecting youth visions to education policy. Seeking to dismantle schooling as the “house of modernity,” this presentation explores how the arts might help us collectively rethink education’s role in creating a different global imaginary while resisting modernity’s constitutive violences, such as its emphasis on capitalist growth, competitiveness, individualism, and human exceptionalism.


References

Alexander, N., Petray, T., & McDowall, A. (2022). More learning, less activism: Narratives of childhood in Australian media representations of the School Strike for Climate. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 38(1), 96–111. https://doi.org/10.1017/aee.2021.28

Bowman, B., & Germaine, C. (2022). Sustaining the old world, or imagining a new one? The transformative literacies of the climate strikes. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 38(1), 70–84. https://doi.org/10.1017/aee.2022.3

Freeman M and Mathison S (2009) Researching Children’s Experiences. New York and London: The Guilford Press.

Knowles, J. G., & Cole, A. L. (2008). Handbook of the arts in qualitative research: Perspectives, methodologies, examples, and issues. Sage.

Menzie-Ballantyne, K., & Ham, M. (2022). School Strike 4 Climate: The intersection of education for sustainable development, education for global citizenship and the Australian Curriculum. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 38(1), 85–95. https://doi.org/10.1017/aee.2021.14

Misra, N. (2023). The climate movement must eeimagine its relationship with art. The Revelator. https://therevelator.org/climate-movement-art/

Nxumalo, F., Nayak, P., & Tuck, E. (2022). Education and ecological precarity: Pedagogical, curricular, and conceptual provocations. Curriculum Inquiry, 52(2), 97–107. https://doi.org/10.1080/03626784.2022.2052634

Verlie, B., & Flynn, A. (2022). School strike for climate: A reckoning for education. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 38(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1017/aee.2022.5

White, P. J., Ferguson, J. P., Smith, N. O., & Carre, H. O. (2022). School strikers enacting politics for climate justice: Daring to think differently about education. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 38(1), 26–39. https://doi.org/10.1017/aee.2021.24

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