Ecologizing Education: Nature-Centered Teaching for Cultural Change

by Sean Blenkinsop, Estella C. Kuchta

Overview

Ecologizing Education explores how we can reenvision education to meet the demands of an unjust and rapidly changing world. Going beyond "green" schooling programs that aim only to shape behavior, Sean Blenkinsop and Estella Kuchta advance a pedagogical approach that seeks to instills eco-conscious and socially just change at the cultural level. Ecologizing education, as this approach is called, involves identifying and working to overcome anti-ecological features of contemporary education. This approach, called ecologizing education, aims to develop a classroom culture in sync with the more-than-human world where diversity and interdependency are intrinsic.

Blenkinsop and Kuchta illustrate this educational paradigm shift through the real-world stories of two public elementary schools located in British Columbia. They show that this approach to learning starts with recognizing the environmental and social injustices that pervade our industrialized societies. By documenting how ecologizing education helps children create new relationships with the natural world and move toward mutual healing, Blenkinsop and Kuchta offer a roadmap for what may be the most potent chance we have at meaningful change in the face of myriad climate crises.

Timely, practical, and ultimately inspirational, Ecologizing Education is vital reading for any parent, caregiver, environmentalist, or educator looking for wholistic education that places nature and the environment front and center.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501774737
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	04/15/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	18 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Sean Blenkinsop is a Professor in the Faculty of Education and Codirector of the Imaginative Education Research Group at Simon Fraser University. He is coauthor or coeditor of author of several books, including Wild Pedagogies and Education as the Practice of Eco-Social-Cultural Change.

Estella Kuchta is a research writing and ecocriticism instructor at Langara College with a background as a biopsychosocial research assistant. She is the author of the novel Finding the Daydreamer and numerous academic articles on ecocriticism, education, and love.

Table of Contents

Introducing: Identifying the Problems of Standard Schooling
1. Beginning: Envisioning and Creating Eco-Schools
2. Relating: Overcoming Isolation and Alienation
3. Healing: Facing Pain and Working toward Reconciliation
4. Theorizing: Exploring the Five "Ologies" of Cultural Change
5. Practicing: Ecologizing Curriculum and Pedagogy
6. Changing Culture: Cultivating Possibilities for a Better World

What People are Saying About This

Bob Jickling

Ecologizing Education is a profoundly hopeful book and antidote to the discomforting danger and apathy of these precarious times. Through beautifully crafted prose, the authors stand with collaborators—Huckleberry and Hermit Crab, Bull Kelp, and Bald Eagle—and challenge educators, learners, parents, and administrators to think big, root-level cultural change. Imagine a publicly funded school with no building—just forests, meadows, and ravines. And then ask, How far are you willing to go?

Linda Wilhelmsson

Through thoughtful eco-conversation, the authors bring the reader through a comprehensive journey in a practical, philosophical, and theoretical landscape. This important contribution to the field offers a variety of tools to radically rethink what education might be and to act for a fairer interspecies culture.

Darcia Narvaez

My heart sang when I read Ecologizing Education! The writing feels like the warm embrace of a loving family member. Poetically, it introduces us to the kind of education that cultivates relationally- and ecologically-connected persons, planetary citizens who develop know-how for transforming culture toward ecological and social justice. Attuned to the particular location, circumstances, ecosystem and individuals, it is a localized form of ecological education. The book calls us all to action, to joyful authentic learning with our more-than-human kin. Every reader will benefit from the book and will be inspired to ecologize their lives, whatever their path.

Stan Rushworth

Ecologizing Education is an extraordinary book and multi-layered invitation into what bringing the natural world into schooling offers our children—our future. A complex and vital exploration, it is a practical guide, a philosophical gem, and an essential read.

Editorial Reviews

I found Ecologizing Education to be a book in which to take shelter, be inspired and think of ways of centering nature in one's own practice.

Environmental Education Research

Delivering a road map for fundamentally shifting approaches to schooling, this timely book offers renewed perspectives on what historically has been thought of as environmental education. Highly recommended for reform-minded educators at all levels.

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