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Ecopedagogy

 

 

What is Ecopedagogy?

 

Ecopedagogy draws extensively from and claims philosophical roots in Critical Pedagogy.  Proponents of ecopedagogy assert, however, that the transformation of the political and social spheres of human endeavor, central to critical pedagogy, can only occur within a simultaneous transformation the ecological sphere.  Ecological transformation would require a radical change in the relationship between humankind and all of the forces of nature and life on the planet.  Ecopedagogy uses the critical pedagogy discourses of oppression and power as applied to ecology based in the belief that the all ecosystems and the planet itself need to be liberated from human oppression.  Among the forces of planetary oppression identified by ecopedagogues are the hegemonic ideologies of neoliberalism and anthropocentrism.  Ecopedagogy postulates that true political, social and environmental transformation are inseparable and must happen within a whole Earth ecology.  

 

The focus of critical ecopedagogy and ecoliteracy is to develop an ecologically grounded epistemology that makes explicit articulations of the ways that societies construct ideological, political,  and cultural systems based on social structures that serve to promote ecological sustainability and biodiversity.   Kahn (Critical Pedagogy, 2010) states the paramount importance of the emancipatory insights and cultural knowledge of indigenous populations for the ecopedagogy movement (xv).  From an ecopedagogical understanding, the survivial of the planet should underscore all political, economic and pedagocal decisions and be constituted as the missing link in the curriculum of public schools and political movements.  

 

Ecopedagogy What is Ecopedagogy? Ecopedagogy, Ecocrisis and Neoliberalism Brief Historical Background Fundamental Principles, Major Concepts and Discourses Anthropocentrism Ecoliteracy Nature Deficit Sustainability Systems Theory Principal Proponents and Texts Fritof Capra Richard Kahn David Orr Ecopedagogy in the Curriculum and Classroom Ecopedagogy and Environmental Education Selected Bibliography

 

Ecopedagogy, Ecocrisis and Neoliberalism

 

Ecopedagogy is a response to planetary environmental crisis.  Much of that planetary crisis must be seen as the collective responsibility of humanity; we all have devastating effects on our environments.  Particular responsibility in the last 50 years, however, rests with the forces of corporate globalization and consumption and the resulting hegemony of western ideologies associated with neoliberalism.  In the past 30 years neoliberal ideologies have become dominant on a planetary scale.  The principle tenets of neoliberalism, deregulation, privatization, commodification, marketization and subjugation of social policy to market forces, have resulted in the unrelenting expansion of capitalism and its unparalleled domination over all aspects of human life (Kahn, xii).  In Critical Pedagogy, Ecoliteracy and Planetary Crisis:  the Ecopedagogy Movement (2010), Richard Kahn begins by outlining the scale and scope of ecological devastation on Earth in the previous half century.  During the last 50 years humanity has altered and mostly degraded all of the Earth's ecosystems.  Between 1960 and 2000 the world's population doubled and the global economy increased six-fold due to unprecedented consumption and consequent demand on the resources of the biosphere.  More land has been converted to agriculture in the last 50 than in the previous 150 years, agricultural large scale industrial farming practices which devastate soil quality and cause further desertification.  Species are becoming extinct at more than 1000 times the historical rate of normal extinctions.  Water use doubled in this time with, half of all wetlands were developed and 50 percent of Earth's forests disappeared.  According to Kahn and his exhaustive list of sources, these trends are not only escalating, they are accelerating (pp. 2-3).  "Over the past 50 years a particularly noxious economic paradigm has unfolded like a shock wave across the face of the earth, one that has led to an exponential increase of global capital and startling achievements in science and technology but which has also had devastating effects on ecosystems both individually and taken as a whole" (Kahn, p.3).  According to the United Nations Environment Program GEO -3 report, a vision of continued economic growth of this kind is consistent only with planetary extinction.  By 2032, without significant changes in global lifestyle irrevocable social and ecological devastation will grip the world (Kahn, p.3-4).  

 

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Brief Historical Background

 

See Critical Pedagogy

 

Ecopedagogy traces its roots to both the environmental movement and the critical pedagogy movement of Paulo Freire in Brazil.  

 

The environmental movement is a relatively new phenomena which has grown and developed within the last 50 years.  The first Earth Day took place April 22, 1970.  The first United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development which was held in 1992 and became known as the Earth Summit or Rio Summit.  Early discussions conducted during the 1992 Earth Summit led to the development of the Earth Charter initiative, culminating in the publication of the Earth Charter (2000).  Ecopedagogy developed as an educational response to discussions arising around the Earth Summits and in discussions leading to the formulation of the Earth Charter.  

 

Ecopedagogical initiatives are often associated with the growing number of Paulo Freire Institues.  The development of ecopedagogy began in the Latin American educational context and inevitably with close kinship to Freirean pedagogy.  The work of Paulo Freire has continually been associated with the themes of oppression and liberation; Friere's critical pedagogy being an educational impuse towards social transformation. Freire was at work on ecopedagogical ideas at the time of his death in 1997 and his work on ecopedagogical ideas was published posthumously in the Pedagogy of Indignation (2004), 24 years after Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1972).  In this posthumously published work Friere makes reference to the environmental crisis facing the planet.

                    

It is urgent that we assume the duty of fighting for the fundamental ethical principles, like respect for the life of human beings, the life of other animals, the life of birds, the life of rivers and forests. I do not believe in love between men and women, between human beings, if we are not able to love the world.   "Ecology takes on fundamental importance at the end of the century.  It has to  be present in  any radical, critical or liberationist educational practice.   For this reason, it seems to  me a lamentable contradiction to engage in progressive, revolutionary discourse and have a practice which negates life. A practice which pollutes the sea, the water, the fields, devastates the forests, destroys the trees, threatens the birds and animals, does violence to  the mountains, the cities, to  our cultural and historical memories. – Paulo Freire,  Pedagogy of Indignation, 2004

 

A few important publications on the subject of ecopedagogy are Francisco Gutierrez and Cruz Prado’s Ecopedagogy and Planetary Citizenship (1999),  Moacir Gadotti's Pedagogy of the Earth and the Culture of Sustainability (2000) and Richard Kahn's Critical Pedagogy, Ecoliteracy, and Planetary Crisis: The Ecopedagogy Movement (2010).

 

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Fundamental Principles, Major Concepts and Discourses

 

Ecopedagogy is based in the major foundational concepts of Critical Pedagogy.  In addition, as an offshoot of critical pedagogy, ecopedagogy is based in an understanding of the principles, discourses and concepts briefly outlined below.

 

Anthropocentrism

• Anthropocentrism refers to the tendency for human beings to understand themselves to be the central element in the universe and to interpret reality exclusively in terms of human values and experience.  In environmental philosophy and theory, anthropocentrism is regarded as the central ideology which has led to human domination of and devastation of all ecosystems on the planet.  Anthropocentrism, many would argue, is so advanced as to have become the major force which has led to the current planetary ecological crisis.  Significantly, the current age in geological chronology has been named the Anthropocene Age, a term which serves to mark the evidence and extent of the unprecedented effects of humankind on all planetary ecosystems.  Ecopedagogy is "concerned to illuminate ways in which the global ecological figure of the 'human' stands as arguably the great sociopolitical (and hence educational) challenge of the 21st century" (Kahn, Love, 2010).

• In the classroom:  A critical ecopedagogy would involve students in building awareness of anthropocentric discourses.  Students would use a critical ecopedagogy to identify ways of knowing and understanding that are generated through and focused exclusively on human experience and well-being.

 

Ecoliteracy

• Ecoliteracy is a way of understanding that emphasizes the principles of organization in ecological communities and an application of those principles to creating sustainable human communities.  David Orr and Fritof Capra coined the term in the 1990s.   Ecoliteracy advocates an integrated approach to solving the seemingly insurmountable problems of environmental stewardship and human development.  Systems theory is important for the formation of new paradigms in ecoliteracy as human communities seek to remodel themselves after sustainable communities found natural ecosystems.  

• In the classroom:  Students engage in examination of the internal stability/instability of natural ecosystems.  Students would gain understanding how they themselves are a part of the web of life as part of an ecosystem.  They would come to understand their role in the ecosystem.  For young children the web of life, the cycles of nature, and flows of energy, are the three basic phenomena in which children would situate their experience and understandings.  

 

Nature Deficit

• Nature deficit disorder is a term coined by Richard Louv in his book Last Child in the Wilderness (2005).  Louv identifies various parenting and societal trends which dissociate children from nature: parental fear, increased consumption of electronic media, proliferation of safe constructed play environments, paranoia about the importance of constant supervision, and the lack of opportunities for children to make direct environmental experiences in neighbouroods and communities.  Ecopedagogues would argue that the emphasis on abstract cognitive processes in current curricula with a concommittant imbalance of grounding in direct experience of nature ultimately leads to students with a fundamental estrangement from nature (Kahn, xv).  Dissociation from nature alienates and isolates students from the world around them and ultimately reinforces an anthropocentric understanding of the world.  According to Gadotti (2000) "relations between the human being and the environment specifically take place ... at the level of an individual's sensibility much more that at the level of [consciousness]... as such an eco-formation is required to make them conscious and that eco-formation requires an eco-pedagogy." 

• In the classroom:  The development of "forest kindergartens," school gardens, and direct experiences of the natural world are attempts to redress the nature deficit which Louv identifies.  Parenting and teaching which encourages students to spend time outdoors in natural environments and helps to build childrens' experiences of the natural world also contribute to reduction in childrens' alienation from nature.   Rather than analytical and dissociating educational experiences, instructional practices which illuminate and enrich lived direct experience of the natural world would counteract the nature deficit as would an educational praxis which is strongly associated with localized experience. 

 

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Sustainability

• Sustainability is the capacity to endure.  On a planetary scale sustainability requires the long-term maintenance of and human responsibility for the biosphere based on the concept of stewardship and the responsible management of Earth's resources.  Sustainable management and development would ensure that all biological systems on Earth are able to maintain diversity as a necesssary precondition for human well-being.  Ecopedagogy would take issue with the neoliberal terminology "management," "resources" and sustainable "development" as belonging to a discourse which is based in an understanding of the Earth as a repository of resources to be managed by human beings.  Ecopedagogy would assert that use of these discourses  is a continuation of an anthropocentric focus on human well-being.   The United Nations decade of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)Sustainable development, 2005-2014, has led to an international focus on laying the groudwork for education based in sustainability. 

• In the classroom:   Students involved in ESD would develop skills with a focus on critical literacies, interdisciplinary studies, systems thinking and problem-solving for pattern. Solving for pattern is a concept coined by Wendel Berry (1981) which involves the process of finding solutions that solve multiple problems while minimizing the creation of new problems.

 

Systems Theory

• Systems theory is an interdisciplinary approach which studies the interconnectedness and relationships between elements of a system rather than analysing constituent parts of a system in isolation.  Systems thinking recognizes that basic principles of organization are more important than the analysis of system components in isolation.  Systems theory and thinking is usually applied to understanding self-regulating systems which respond to and are regulated through feedback.  Systems thinking involves embedded networks of association between constituent elements and is necessary to understand the complex interdependencies of ecological systems, social and political systems, and all different kinds of macro and micro systems.  Ecological literacy in systems thinking would involved a recognition of the ways in which all phenomena are part of embedded feedback networks that define and regulate the way each element functions. 

• In the classroom:   In interdisciplinary studies in all subject areas students would be involved in in recognizing the ways in which all phenomena are part of embedded feedback networks that define and regulate the way each element functions.  Students would, for example, focus on understanding the interdependencies and compensatory processes involved in regulating natural systems rather than analyzing individual aspects.  Examples of systems in environmental studies: a study of food webs, examination of symbiotic relationships between species (clown fish and coral, viral mitochondria in humans), natural genetics (adaptations to environments and environmental change), host manipulation, and parasitic codependencies.  

 

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Principal Proponents and Texts

 

See also Critical Pedagogy

Some of the principle proponents below are associated with Ecoliteracy and others with Ecopedagogy.  

 

Fritof Capra

 

Fritof Capra is an American particle physicist and systems theorist.  He is the founding director of the Centre for Ecoliteracy in Berkley California and is on the faculty of Schumacher College.  Capra is associated with the development of ecoliteracy as a fundamental educational goal.  The Centre for Ecoliteracy has done extensive work in the United States in the green schooling movement with the development of school gardens and the integration of ecological principles and sustainability into the curriculum.  The Centre for Ecoliteracy provides professional development and teaching guides to support educators in the green schooling movement.  The most recent monograph by the Centre for Ecoliteracy is Smart by Nature:  Schooling for Sustainability (2009).

 

 “In the coming decades, the survival of humanity will depend on our ecological literacy – our ability to understand the basic principles of ecology and to live accordingly. This means that ecoliteracy must become a critical skill for politicians, business leaders, and professionals in all spheres, and should be the most important part of education at all levels – from primary and secondary schools to colleges, universities, and the continuing education and training of professionals.” (Capra, New Facts of Life, 2008).

 

           

                                                                      1997                                                  2002

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The following selection, Environmental Leadership of Fritof Capra, is a recorded interview from September 23, 2011 at the Centre for Ecoliteracy in California.  In this interview, Capra outlines his development as a systems theorist, his ensuing interest in ecoliteracy in primary and secondary education, the concept of sustainability, and ecological focus in higher education and business.  

 

 

 

Richard Kahn

 

Richard Kahn is on the Education Faculty at Antioch University Los Angeles.  He is activist  of what he calls "total liberation politics" which advocates for non-human animals, the biosphere as a sacred entity and social justice through systemic transformation.  Kahn's politics constitute, he argues, an ecopedagogy movement.  

 

              

                                                                           2010                                        2010 (chapter)                              2010

 

A brief synopsis of Jennifer Sandlin and Peter McLaren's (Eds.) Critical Pedagogies of Consumption 2010 is included here to give a sense of the scope of Kahn's ecopedagogical work as it is situated in other critical pedagogies.  Consumption is an ecological as well as a socio-political and economic problem.  This book is an attempt to bring critical pedagogical ideas about consumption into the field of education.  This book is the first attempt to bring together scholars from across a wide range of disciplines within the broader field of education to explore consumption and its relation to learning, identity development, and education to focus on resistance to consumerism and to envision a critical pedagogy of consumption.

 

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David Orr

 

David Orr is Distinguished Professor of environmental studies and politics at Oberlin College, Ohio and James Marsh Professor at the University of Vermont.  He is a well known ecologist and environmental adovcate.  Among other environmental interests such as ecological building, design and commuity planning, Orr has a long term interest in ecoliteracy and environmental education.  

 

David Orr states that goal of ecological literacy is “built on the recognition that the disorder of ecosystems reflects a prior disorder of mind, making it a central concern to those institutions that purport to improve minds. In other words, the ecological crisis is in every way a crisis of education.... All education is environmental education… by what is included or excluded we teach the young that they are part of or apart from the natural world.” (Orr, 2005)  

 

                 

                                                        2005                                               1994, 10th anniversary edition 2004                              2005

 

Ecopedagogy in the Curriculum and Classroom

 

Ecopedagogy and Environmental Education

 

Ecopedagogues would argue that environmental education, as currently practised in most jurisdictions, is woefully inadequate.   Environmental education focuses on outdoor education experiences based in outdated, essentialized and dichotomous views of nature and the wilderness (Kahn, 7).   Kahn (2010) remarks that "environmental education has tended to become isolated and marginalized as an academic discipline relative to the curricular whole" (Kahn, 6).  Ecopedagogues would require a transformative ecologically grounded epistemology to infuse all disciplines and create new paradigms for the understanding of human culture as a responsive and responsible part of the biosphere.

 

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Selected Bibliography

 

Berry, W.  (1981).  Solving for Pattern.  In The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural and Agricultural.  San Francisco: North Point.

 

Bowers, C. A.  (2006).  Transforming Environmental Education:  Making the Renewal of the Cultural and Environmental Commons the Focus of

          Educational Reform.  Ecojustice Press.   Retrieved from https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/handle/1794/3070.

 

Capra, F.  (2005).  How Nature Sustains the Web of Life.   In Stone, M. K., & Barlow, Z. (Eds).  Ecological Literacy: Educating our Children for a Sustainable World (pp. xiii-xv). San Francisco:  Sierra Club Books. 

 

Capra, F.  (2008)  New Facts of Life.

          Retreived from http://www.ecoliteracy.org/essays/new-facts-life

 

Gadotti, M.  (2000).  Pedagogy of the Earth.  Costa Rica Commission:  A New Millennium of Peace,  Nov. 6-10 2000.  

          Retrieved from http://ebookbrowse.com/pedagogy-of-the-earth-and-culture-of-sustainability-doc-d32669968

 

Gutierrez, F., & Prado, C. (1999).  Ecopedagogy and Planetary Citizenship.  

 

Jickling, B., & Wals, A. E. (2007).  Globalization and Environmental Education: Looking Beyond Sustainable Development.  Journal of Curriculum Studies, 40(1), 1-21.  

 

Jucker, R.  (2002).  Our Common Illiteracy:  Education As If the Earth and People Mattered.  New York:  Peter Lang.   

          Retrieved from http://books.google.de/books?id=whJ_AAAAMAAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s

 

Kahn, R. (2010).  Critical Pedagogy, Ecoliteracy and Planetary Crisis:  the Ecopedagogy Movement.  New York: Peter Lang.

 

---------- (2010).  Love Hurts:  Between Avatars and Elegies.  Teachers Education Quarterly, 37(4), 55-70.

 

Gadotti, M.  (2000).  Pedagogy of the Earth and the Culture of Sustainability.  Costa Rica Commission: A New Millennium of Peace.

          Retrieved from http://ebookbrowse.com/pedagogy-of-the-earth-and-culture-of-sustainability-doc-d32669968

 

Gruenewald, D. A.  (2004).  A Foucauldian Analysis of Environmental Education: Toward the Socioecological Challenge of the Earth Charter.  

          Curriculum Inquiry, 34(1), 71-107.

 

Guenewald, D. A.  (2003).  The Best of Both Worlds: A Critical Pedagogy of Place.  Educational Researcher, 32(4), 3-12.

 

Orr, D.  (1996)  What is Education For?  Six Myths About the Foundations of Modern Education and Six New Principles to Replace Them.  

          In Context: A Quarterly of Human and Sustainable Culture.  Retrieved from http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC27/Orr.htm

 

Orr, D.  (2005).  Place and Pedagogy.  In Stone, M. K., & Barlow, Z. (Eds) Ecological Literacy: Educating Our Children for a Sustainable World (pp. 85-95).  

          San Francisco: Sierra Club Books. 

 

Taylor, P. (2010).  Egalitarian Biocentrism.  In Keller, D. R. (Ed) Environmental Ethics: The Big Questions.  United Kingdom: John Wiley & Sons.

 

 

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