From dialogics to ecologics: when the how is the what

Abstract

Mental health has traditionally been explained via medical knowledge, positioning biological pathology and pharmacological treatments as key in addressing psychiatric and psychological ailments. This article introduces the prospect of ecologics as a guide for communities committed to responding to mental health concerns in respectful and ethical ways. Significant features concerning ecologics are explained across three sections. The first proposes a revised take on ecological systems premised on constructivism arguing that student-centred approaches contribute to the continuation of predominantly individually focussed efforts within contemporary education settings. The second section draws from critical disability studies, critical psychology, and indigenous knowledges to engage with difference differently challenging the presence of ableism in contemporary society. The final section recaps five prospective conditions necessary for the application of ecologics: i) explicating orientation, ii) accepting not-knowing, iii) working transparadigmatically, iv) affirming relationality and v) respecting unfinalisability. Ecologics offer schools unorthodox means for going on together.

Keywords:

• Ecologics
• critical psychology
• orientation
• relationality
• psychosocial justice

Introduction

The orientation offered in this article stems from thirty years involved in the field of psychology (Corcoran, 2016). Once a practicing psychologist, and now an academic/researching psychologist homed in a School of Education, over time I have repeatedly been challenged by how psychology comes to life. It is important to note my interest here lies with how psychology is enacted and not primarily what psychology is said to be. More on that in a moment. Turning to the theme of this special issue, few would today dispute the value of attending to matters of mental health in education. Most of my time spent as a practicing psychologist was as a state government employed school psychologist. As I visited schools, in the main, school staff welcomed this support. There were however always a few teachers who believed schools were places for academic learning, and if a young person required remedial assistance regarding health-related concerns, they should do so from dedicated government or private health services. But as this special issue seeks to explore, mental health in education is an intersectional and interdisciplinary matter, to be explicitly recognised as such through overlapping and complimentary areas of research, policy, and practice.

As an undergraduate studying psychology in the early to mid 1990s and then when working in the field over the subsequent decade, I struggled with how psychological theory, the discipline’s preferred methods, and prescribed interventions, presented. This all seemed too … clinical. A life founded in scientific probability, generalisability and causality were seemingly accepted within discipline as the way of the world. But that kind of laboratory-inspired orientation clashed with a community wherein people I lived with lived within and across different cultures, with different abilities, and by different ways of knowing/being. The pressing issue for my work as a school psychologist was not what psychology said it was, the greater concern was “how to go on” (Wittgenstein, 1953, no. 154).

The discussion outlined here is primarily informed by two theorists from different disciplinary backgrounds. The first is British social psychologist John Shotter. His legacy, committed to assisting an understanding of the psychosocial nature of daily life, is one which remains significantly underutilised (Cromby & Corcoran, 2017). I concur with fellow scholars suggesting Shotter’s work can valuably support contemporary varieties of new materialism (Cunliffe, 2016; Lock, 2016; Strong, 2016). For example, Shotter (1993) reconsidered a key psychological construct this way. “Perception”, he said,

…takes on a non-cognitive, ontological aspect; and studies of perception become concerned with (a) what there is available to be perceived in one’s surroundings; (b) the strategies or procedures required to ‘pick up’ the information available; and (c) the nature of the social conditions required for their development – much of this work is now being pursued by those taking an ‘ecological’ approach to perception. (p. 33)

The discussion outlined below is, in many ways, an ecological approach to perceptions involving mental health. While Shotter placed theoretical importance on dialogics, or conditions within which discursive activities help to construct our worlds, his work genuinely recognised the inseparability of all things – material and non-material - in the world. I contend, and will expand on this below, that in moving from dialogics to ecologics, a more ethical and relationally sustainable psychology becomes apparent.

More recently, on my daily morning neighbourhood walks during our extended Covid-determined lockdowns, I started listening to different podcasts and it was during this period I was introduced to Timothy Morton (2016, 2018). Morton, I have since learnt, has a history in English literature but more recently dedicates their work to object-oriented ontology and ecological theory. Rather emphatically, on the podcasts I listened to, Morton would repeat: “The how is the what”. Along with Shotter, it is Morton’s 2018 book Being ecological that helped inspire key themes addressed in this paper – an elaboration I am calling ecologics – derived here for application to matters involving mental health in education. The forthcoming discussion is set out in three parts.

For those of us, and I reckon that is most, whose lives are largely and often implicitly informed by dominant psychological theory, an orientation to individualism or to what several theorists have called psychologism pervades. Psychologism is a way of knowing which centres the individual and their presumed internal mental structures and processes, often causally linked to their neurophysiology, in explanations of worldly action (Sugarman, 2017). In the first section I examine the continued adoption of ecological systems theory like Bronfenbrenner’s often depicted pebble-in-the-pond model. My concern with models such as these, and many other taken-for-granted ways of conceiving life within school communities, are their continued reliance on constructivist psychological theory. Student-, teacher- or other human-centred orientations provide the most recognisable interpretation here. As will be explained, the prevailing concern highlights recurrently ignored moral and political matters encouraging reductionist behaviour-directed reactions from school authorities. All too often this habitual response targets the most vulnerable young people placing them in line for educational and social exclusion.

The second section steps through several innovative theoretical resources available to those seeking to push back against the dominance of psychologism, ableism, and normativity in education theory ∼ practice. Borrowing from critical disability studies, critical psychology and indigenous knowledges, the argument laid out in this section calls for recognising the presence of heterogeneity and diversity in all school communities and initiating, as a recurrent means of relational engagement, ecologics. Some in the academy have prematurely heralded the death of psychology or at least the delivery of last rights to the discipline in this “new” entangled world. Perhaps an affinity with my intellectual home is misguided, or as Wetherell (2012, p. 126) wryly observed, “an acquired taste”. Nevertheless, a case is made that psychology, like school communities, can and should be able to live with theoretical and methodological diversity. As readers of this journal well know, being able to respectfully debate ways of being (i.e. ontology) and ways of knowing (i.e. epistemology), offers opportunity and possibility as alternatives to hierarchy and closure.

The final section of the paper provides a summary of the discussion explicitly returning to several key prospects informing the use of ecologics. I refer to matters to do with ecologics as prospects, in preference to calling them principles, because doing so intentionally directs our attention to openings that enable conditions for preferred action. For instance, responding to mental health in education via whole-school approaches makes perfect sense. What does not serve such purpose is to predominantly orient the work to after-the-fact explanations aligning mental health to fixed and deficit-based ways of knowing/being. The moderate position argued here is not suggesting we do away with clinical knowledge – far from it. Rather, ecologics are presented as an accompanying voice offering prospectively oriented and process-driven before-the-fact means to meeting the universe halfway (Barad, 2007).

Ecological systems and constructivism

…an adequate ecology of human development cannot be only behaviouristic, rely solely on objective observation. We need also to undertake a phenomenology of human ecology, that is, an effort to understand what the particular ecological context – be it micro or macro – means to the person in it (Bronfenbrenner, 1975, p. 20).

The first prospect of ecologics is orientation. Immediately here I want to examine actions taking place within educational settings like schools and call attention to the commonly applied understanding of such settings as ecological systems. Bronfenbrenner’s work is often connected to social scientific explanations of human life (see e.g. Anderson et al., 2014). Most professionals trained in the social sciences will have come across the model as it is regularly depicted, i.e. the child or individual person situated at its centre, and concentric circles emanating outward like gentle ripples produced when a pebble is dropped in water. In Bronfenbrenner’s account, the circle outside the individual is the microsystem which involves their direct relationships with family or at school. The next circle is the mesosystem where elements of the microsystem interact. The remaining circles, the exosystem, the macrosystem and the chronosystem, each refer to different aspects of influence potentially impacting the life of the individual (e.g. macrosystem and culture). The orientation predominantly applied to models like Bronfenbrenner’s, at least psychologically speaking, is constructivism and this, I argue, is because of what modern societies tend to think psychology is. To explore this further, I will first detail several concerns I have with constructivism and then move to show how these matters play out for relationships in schools today.

First and foremost, constructivism is a proponent of psychologism. Recall from the definition offered earlier, psychologism centres attention on the individual and their presumed internal mental structures and processes; in doing so, it effectively separates the person from their world. Constructivism is not alone as far as standard psychological theories go for the way it creates space between all that goes on in the world. For example, take the quote borrowed from Bronfenbrenner appearing at the start of this section. We are immediately made aware that his anthropocentric orientation and theoretical interest speaks to human development. At the very least, we should acknowledge the attempt made to distance his ecological understanding from behaviourism and a reliance on objectivism. That move however should not be misread to equivalently invoke resistance to scientism as he was explicitly committed to advancing developmental science (Bronfenbrenner & Evans, 2000). Constructivism has importantly shifted attention from stimulus-response behaviourism and versions of high cognitivism where one’s relationship with context or environment is usurped by explanations of mental structures and processes (Neisser, 1967). Understanding the individual as a meaning-making participant in the world is a key contribution made by constructivist theory (Kelly, 1955; Piaget, 1954).

To shift our focus to the topic of this special issue, we need not search far to source current examples of education policy dedicated to supporting mental health in schools. In doing so, the main draw for this discussion is scrutiny over psychological orientation implicitly embedded in policy. Whilst I have not undertaken, nor to date read, a comprehensive analysis examining dominant psychological theory used internationally in school-based mental health policy, experience tells me the majority of such policy would align to constructivist theory and its anthropocentric and scientific modes of representation. Let us consider two examples, one international and one from my local context here in Australia.

The European Commission’s Directorate-General for Education and Culture recently solicited a report on whole school approaches to mental health and well-being in schools (Cefai et al., 2021). The report made thirteen recommendations:

1. Mental health promotion as a mandatory key learning goal in 21^st-century education.

2. Mainstreaming mental health and well-being into the formal curriculum and pedagogy.

3. Adapting the metrics of school success to prioritise mental health and well-being.

4. Adopting a systemic, whole-school approach.

5. Relatedness and connectedness at the heart of mental health promotion.

6. A bottom-up, participatory approach, including a representative student voice.

7. Developing a mental health and well-being curriculum for school children across Europe.

8. School-based intersectoral supports for students with mental health needs.

9. A strategic focus on the mental health needs of vulnerable and marginalised students.

10. Involving the whole school community in tailoring interventions to prevent bullying.

11. Prioritising the education of teachers in mental health and well-being.

12. Addressing the mental health and well-being of adults working with children.

13. Strengthening evidence and evidence-based practice.

Unquestionably, under the remit of a whole-school approach, ecological context is a focal point for the recommendations – school and community, working in collaboration, supported by intersectoral input. As in constructivist theory, participatory relationships are recognised as important. So too are anthropocentric categories, e.g. children, students, teachers, and adults, to which individuals belong. To fulfil the account, scientism, in the guise of evidence-based practice, rounds out the picture. Seemingly, many of the key aspects contributing to an ecology of human development are present.

Here in the state of Victoria, Australia’s second largest regarding population, the government continues to put considerable resources behind the Mental Health in Schools initiative (https://www2.education.vic.gov.au/pal/mental-health-schools/policy). As can be gleaned from its introduction, the policy aims to support “…the role of schools in promoting the mental health and wellbeing of students” (Department of Education and Training [DET] Victoria, n.d.). Similar to the previous example, a whole-school approach is considered best practice, informed by scientific evidence, and centred around student mental health and wellbeing. Among whole-school best practice options provided in the DET guidance, School Wide Positive Behaviour Support (SWPBS) is recommended. To delve a little further here, what might SWPBS afford schools in orienting to the everyday?

Briefly, SWPBS is a strategic framework education settings can employ to integrate actions promoting and responding to matters of wellbeing and discipline. The framework relies on evidence-based data to inform relational actions in classrooms and playgrounds and determines what behavioural interventions are required. SWPBS adopts a three-tier system referred to as multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS; https://www2.education.vic.gov.au/pal/behaviour-students/guidance/5-school-wide-positive-behaviour-support-swpbs-framework). SWPBS has been implemented in many countries around the world generating volumes of research dedicated to examining its bona fides (Noltemeyer et al., 2019). However, as previously argued, such examination generally fails to extend to how SWPBS orients schools to enacting certain ways of knowing/being (Corcoran & Thomas, 2021). Let us consider one example.

MTSS borrows from public health a model designating population into three distinct groupings. Under the largest grouping, primary interventions target whole-school operations and should be sufficient to address mental health and wellbeing for 70-80% of students. Secondary interventions may target 15-20% of students, often delivered in small groups, addressing what could be termed “at-risk” behaviours e.g. self-management skills. The remaining 3–12% of students are those considered “high risk” receiving specialised individually tailored interventions such as counselling. SWPBS orients to psychosocial actions taking place in schools as quantifiably predictable relying on positivist epistemology to render evidence-based explanation. It is no coincidence either that MTSS represents general population in much the same way as clinically informed orientations do with anywhere up to 20% of the population potentially deviating from normative standards regarding mental health (World Health Organisation, n.d.). A major concern with one-size-fits-all ways of knowing/being is these regularly ignore moral and political matters encouraging reductionist behaviour-directed reactions from school authorities. Such response has been shown to compound the likelihood of educational and social exclusion involving the most vulnerable students in schools (Vincent & Tobin, 2011).

In this opening section, my goal was to highlight several concerns which continue to disrupt the kinds of relationship psychology could inhabit in our world. In particular, attention was drawn to how psychology is applied to mental health and wellbeing matters in education settings. I argued that whole-school approaches, and attempts at ecological understandings of these, remain hampered by the dominant psychology underwriting such models. Their orientation adheres to anthropocentrism, scientism, and clinically informed ableism, which in concert must assume the bulk of responsibility for how we understand students in schools today. I will speak further to these three matters in the next section. Pausing here, we must ask ourselves this question: Are these orientations to knowing/being preferable? I say they are not. In fact, I am certain these ways of knowing/being do more to marginalise and disempower young people in our communities than they do to respect and embrace diversity and difference. Back when I was studying as an undergraduate psychologist, I bumped into Ken Gergen’s work (nb. it was not part of the curriculum). Gergen was a close colleague of Shotter’s and they, along with others, contributed to an area of psychological theory known as social constructionism. The importance of Gergen’s (1992) challenge has never left me and is no less important today than when it was posed many years ago. As we proceed to consider options other than those just discussed, Gergen queries: “Rather than ‘telling it like it is’ the challenge for the postmodern psychologist is to ‘tell it as it may become’” (p. 27).

This “new” entangled world

I want to be sure the argument presented here is not misunderstood as some might venture I am setting up binary options, e.g. anthropocentric versus non-anthropocentric, scientific versus other-than-scientific, normative versus non-normative, and so on. This is not the case. In the Introduction I claimed my position to be one of moderation and I believe it is because my desire is to work in spaces where intersectionality and interdisciplinarity exist transparadigmatically, i.e. where more-than one paradigm or way of knowing/being contributes to prospective orientation. For instance, it is not that we cannot think of schools or other educational settings ecologically, it is simply that it is important to acknowledge how ecologics matter when we do. So, to continue the discussion, I now turn to consider three prospects which support the task at hand: critical disability theory, critical psychology, and indigenous knowledges.

According to Goodley (2017), ableism addresses

the intersectional merging of society’s ideals that are too often associated with being white, able-bodied, heteronormative, high income, property owning, WENA (Western, European and North American) and WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant). Ableism, then, might be conceptualised as the intersectional Same against which many (devalued) Others are judged. (pp. 56–57)

Understanding ableism as an affective force deleteriously impacting contemporary society is important to ecologics. Traditionally, mental health has been explained via medical knowledge, positioning biological pathology and pharmacological treatments as key in clinically addressing psychiatric and psychological ailments. In light of the present discussion, it is crucial that what is known as mental health be scrutinised for ways in which such knowledge inform how we can and should go on together.

Critical disability theory continues to challenge thinking in relation to how specific materialities, for example, bodies active in environments like schools and classrooms, can enable preferred outcomes. Feely (2016) offers an erudite discussion concerning conceptual movements in disability studies. Among other important points, he adopts a Deleuzian approach to contest ways in which the social sciences, particularly those informed by poststructuralism, have shunned scientism. Scientifically derived knowledge, like that which informs apps designed to support student mental health, may be beneficial for sections of the population. To think productively about disability, Feely says, we do not necessarily need to refuse use of scientific knowledge. Rather, it is crucial we purposively move on from essentialism, i.e. the generalised fixing of identities to bodies, and instead creatively attend to context-dependent capacities of bodies and other material entities. What specifically could this mean for students affected by mental health concerns in education settings? Recently, I have been working with colleagues to address just this point.

Our work examines the concept of inherent requirements (IRs; Corcoran et al., 2022a; Corcoran et al., 2022b). IRs are guidelines used in higher education to determine what inherent or essential attributes and abilities are necessary for an individual to possess to undertake and graduate from training programs (e.g. teaching or nursing) and qualify as a practitioner in those professions. Such attributes are commonly described in reference to categories of impairment, e.g. intellectual disability, visual impairment, or mental illness. In concert with Feely, we have argued IRs do not, in the main, focus on what students can do, but rather essentialise the identity of the individual via various diagnoses. For example, within the scope and application of mental health knowledge, it is important to understand and recognise how experience is temporalised. A debilitative experience of mental health can be recognised to affect an individual episodically or chronically. Given educational institutions and most employers are bound by anti-discrimination legislation to ensure reasonable adjustments are made for individuals presenting with disability, what kind of conversations and information are universities and employers offering prospective students or future employees affected by mental health concerns? Our research to date shows it is more likely for students not to disclose disability given a) the paucity of available information in higher education regarding IRs and b) the risk of being excluded should they do so.

This is where ecologics can work with traditional approaches to mental health to enable more respectful and ethical ways of engaging people living with disability and other health conditions. It is fundamentally about working with difference differently. Feminist contributions to critical psychology, particularly in relation to affect studies and new materialisms, are important to acknowledge here (see, for e.g. Blackman, 2021; Rutherford, 2018; Wetherell, 2012). Such work offers significant prospects for understanding how bodies configure and perform in daily activities. Often, when interest turns to examining bodily capability, let’s say a student being able to remain on task and concentrate in a classroom, particular parts of the individual attract greater attention. At its most rudimentary, when thinking about mental health and psychological performance in this way, the brain is the identified epicentre. This way of orienting to life perceives existence after the fact or as already composed. Instead, as Blackman (2021, p. 122) suggests, we can orient to bodies-in-process. She explains:

The focus on process is on composing rather than composed, pre-formed entities. The focus on composing looks at how bodies become assembled in particular ways through their coupling or conjoining with particular objects, practices, techniques and artifacts such that they are always in-making or in-formation rather than being ready-made.

Importantly, in opening our understanding to the prospects of process, a non-dualist orientation is enabled which offers options beyond accounts founded in psychologism. Too often, in trying to comprehend embodied psychological matters, reductionist explanations invoke bodies as contained, ready-made systems, as is the case when faulty neurobiology is consequently blamed for unruly behaviour.

As well as drawing attention to movement or process, feminist contributions to critical psychology also invite us to be open to and recognise multiple prospects when attempting to fathom living. To assist ways of knowing/being in this sense, an orientation to multimodality may be necessary (Wetherell, 2012). In acknowledging the ongoing reciprocity existing in conjoining bodies and practices, awareness is directed toward invitations which present as lives are lived. Such invitations, at any moment, may direct our interest to political, cultural, social, affective, material and/or biological matters. The crucial move being to maintain awareness of co-constituted and emergent “lively, agential capacities of matter at all scales and levels” (Blackman, 2021, p. 89). In classrooms, rather than essentialising the identity of the individual via certain diagnoses, if our focus was instead on what students can be enabled to do, adults involved in education might be more attuned to the taken-for-grantedness of traditions like educational assessment practices (e.g. exams) which deleteriously affect some students (Tai et al., 2021). Reasonable adjustments present as options educators, in consultation with students, may employ to performing assessment in ways that are more just for all involved. Assessment then becomes a relational activity and not solely a contrived measurement of individual ability.

Regarding scales, what if the classic representation of justice – an unsighted woman, sword in one hand, holding the scales of justice in the other – was not human but a wombat or some other animal? Might that affect the way we relate to more-than human and non-material entities? And with regards non-material entities, what if, instead of possessive disease or abnormality, we treated mental health concerns like depression or anxiety as agentic affective forces sustained by all kinds of worldly relationships? Narrative therapies, via externalising conversations, have been doing this for years (White & Epston, 1990). This point returns us to Morton’s mantra (see Introduction). “Being mentally healthy”, they say, “might mean knowing that what you are thinking and how you are thinking are intertwined. It’s not exactly what you believe but how you believe that could be causing trouble” (2018, p. 76). Perhaps if we peered more closely at the scales of justice, we might just perceive one labelled “How”, and the other “What”.

Morton’s comment provides a useful segue to an idea I have been developing for a few years now – psychosocial justice (Corcoran et al., 2019; Corcoran & Vassallo, 2021). Political theorist Jane Bennett (2010) sets the scene:

… picture an ontological field without any unequivocal demarcations between human, animal, vegetable, or mineral. All forces and flows (materialities) are or can become lively, affective, and signaling. And so an affective, speaking human body is not radically different from the affective, signaling nonhumans with which it coexists, hosts, enjoys, serves, consumes, produces, and competes. (pp. 116–117)

Critical psychologists have for some time resisted unequivocal demarcations (Fox et al., 2009). Discussed in the opening section of this paper, constructivism’s separation between individual, their mental structures and processes and the world provide one such example. Further demarcation arises when those interested in doing so delve into the person’s so-called interior world to investigate individual subjectivity (Rutherford, 2018). Medical pathology is also, too often, found therein. Psychosocial justice supports ecologics via explicit recognition that all forces or flows exist enmeshed in spacetime. As someone dedicated to the contribution of psychological knowledge to the world, this means refiguring mental health understanding to engage affective forces like depression and anxiety as agents capable of and partially responsible for initiating relationships with both individuals and community. As we well know, such encounters usually entail unwelcome consequences.

In addition to justice-related concerns, several other themes have been highlighted in work aligned with critical education psychology (CEP; Corcoran, 2022). CEP allies with critical disability studies in contesting the presence of ableism in understanding mental health. Too regularly mental health is positioned as a normative condition and those “suffering” from mental ill health are pathologised (i.e. afflicted by disease) and/or adjudged to be less-than normal (i.e. disempowered by their biopsychosocial deficits). Alongside examinations involving normativity sits ongoing scrutiny associated with moral (see Foucault’s [2000] work on moral technologies) and political (see Rose’s [2019] work on biopolitics) sensibilities. For example, CEP rallies with teachers, other education professionals and parents to question the ethics involved when in-class educational support is reliant upon the provision of formal psychiatric or psychological diagnoses. A qualitative study examining the use of educational supports recently undertaken in Denmark produced interesting results (Tegtmeyer et al., 2021). The study questioned whether and how support might be affected were the use of diagnostic categories disincentivised. Under such conditions, rather unsurprisingly, organisational structures and pedagogical practice reportedly received greater attention.

The prevalence and uncritical use of scientific modes of knowledge making is also questioned by CEP. The impulse to generalise results without regard for cultural sensitivity is regularly noted as a major concern. So too the assertion that positivist-crafted evidence is simply waiting in the world to be found. On both counts, sociocultural and political specificities are largely ignored. Shotter and Morton concur on the necessity of knowing from within a circumstance or situation. As Shotter (1993) suggests, sense-making

… is an event that is developing and developed within the course of the conversation producing it; furthermore, those producing it know, know in practice, that is, from within this development, both the ‘how’ and the ‘what’ of its production; indeed, in being (responsively) aware of each other’s (responsive) understanding in the process, they know how to play their own part in its further development. (pp. 141–142)

Again, the moderate argument promoted here is not that scientific endeavour, as a response to concerns presenting in everyday life, is imprudent. The how is the what. Ecologics implore those involved in supporting mental health in education to understand it is okay, if safe to do so, to not need to possess definitive answers prior to relational engagement. And quite possibly, it might be that being able to accept the unfinalisability of certain life circumstance enables better options regarding how to go on.

This not-knowing approach seems far from modern day compulsions, those striving to establish after-the-fact procedures informed by the highest statistical probability possible. However, as options are sought for addressing serious matters like the debilitative effects of poor mental health in our communities, how we should judge ways to go on must be considered from more-than one set of rules. “We’ve been thinking that we are on top of things, outside of things or beyond things, able to look down and decide exactly what to do”, Morton says, “in all sorts of ways for about 12 000 years. Maybe ecological facts require that we don’t immediately ‘know’ exactly what to do” (2018, pp. 16-17). Here then, separation, prediction and control give way to other more ethical ways of relating to knowledge and people. From counselling theory, it has long been proposed that when engaging a person cruelly affected by life circumstance, a not-knowing approach shows genuine respect for their experience (Anderson & Goolishian, 1992). Instead of meeting the relationship with predetermined sensibilities, acknowledgement is given to moving together as the preferred way to go on.

To conclude this section, I want to touch back to its title and account for my placement of new in inverted commas. In doing so, the discussion takes the opportunity to affirm the importance of engaging indigenous knowledge as we think about mental health transparadigmatically. Under dominant, linearly focussed knowledge systems, it could be enticing to believe that what is new or recently proven is of greater value than knowledge said to belong to the past. The temporal framing of knowledge is commonly referenced as certain sets of ideas are categorised, e.g. new materialism or posthumanism. In contrast, Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said about his own work: “I don’t believe I’ve ever invented a line of thinking, I have always taken one over from someone else” (1980, p. 19e). Let us think about that sentiment as a privileged responsibility and not a possessed entitlement. In so far as indigenous knowledge goes, an orientation to what Māori philosopher Carl Mika (2017) calls a worlded philosophy is key to prospects involving ecologics. Mika says of worlding, “…one thing is never alone, and all things actively construct and compose it” (p. 4). He goes further providing a bridging note to the final section of this paper where a progressive summary of ecologics is offered. As we move to this, our attention must be given to “…the very basic comportment of the self to other things in the world, or of how the self turns to those objects, as it were, before knowledge evolves” (p. 19).

Anticipating mental health before knowledge evolves

… how we might orient ourselves bodily towards events occurring around us, how we can relate ourselves to them, and to get ourselves ready for seeing, hearing, experiencing, and valuing what we encounter as we move forward with our lives – for these are the ways that will organise our lookings and listenings, our sense-makings and judgements of value, and thus, ultimately, determine the lines of action we resolve on carrying further (Shotter, 2013, p. 142).

Let us, assisted by Shotter’s encouragement, take a moment to gather ourselves. The discussion to this point has been dedicated to examining lines of action often taken in education settings responding to mental health matters. Common amongst these ways of engaging are habits we seem to have difficulty breaking away from – habitual orientations it could be said. The examples provided here focussed on psychology’s contribution to ways of knowing/being promoting separation, individualism, reductionism, and essentialism. My argument has been that these ways of knowing/being are not, in fact cannot, be inherently wrong. To suggest that would not embrace the spectre of ecologics. It may, therefore, be prudent to review the five prospects of ecologics as portrayed here and in doing so, resolve another way of going on with the presence of mental health in our lives.

If you have ever had much to do with understanding real estate or property investment, you might have heard the regularly touted catchcry “Location. Location. Location”. In so far as ecologics are concerned, if there is to be a similar refrain, it would be “Orientation. Orientation. Orientation”. The how is the what. How we orient to life matters like mental health help initiate what mental health is understood to be. This special issue has invited its authors and readers to (re)consider how we organise our lookings and listenings regarding mental health to include intersectional and interdisciplinary understandings. This invitation could benefit from checking our process. “Slowing down”, Stengers says (2018), “means becoming capable of learning again, becoming acquainted with things again, reweaving the bounds of interdependency. It means thinking and imagining, and in the process creating relationships with others that are not those of capture” (pp. 81-82). Separation? Individualism? Reductionism? Essentialism? Do these ideas capture our preferred ways of knowing/being? Perhaps a better question: Can preferred ways of knowing/being be captured?

The preceding discussion, I believe, made its preferences explicit. You might recall value imbued in opportunity and possibility over hierarchy and closure. Another prospect of ecologics is not-knowing and this, it should be emphasised, is not to say we cannot make sense of the world. Further to Stengers’ direction, it is how we make sense that potentially matters most. As classroom teachers or school principals create relationships with students and families, these engagements are always developing, always becoming something more-than before. Surely educators should model how it is they are capable of learning again, and again, and again. That requires using more-than one scale to look and listen. Consequently, a further prospect of ecologics has us engaging transparadigmatically, as well as intersectionally and across disciplines.

Two more matters were raised above in relation to ecologics. A fourth prospect of ecologics seeks to collapse the separation created between person and the world or more specifically, between what is considered psychological and social. If, as Mika argues regarding worlded philosophy, all things are never alone, it is erroneous to maintain such relational distance. Mental health, when aligned with psychosocial justice, resists ableist compulsions treating biophysiological differences as pathologies and positions forces like depression and anxiety as matter affecting human (i.e. individuals) and more-than human (i.e. communities) existence. Educators would do well to investigate the Power Threat Meaning Framework developed in the UK (Johnstone & Boyle, 2018). As suggested by its subtitle, the Framework is intended to assist understanding “emotional distress, unusual experiences and troubled or troubling behaviour, as an alternative to psychiatric diagnosis” (p. 5). Tied neither to specific levels of explanation (i.e. social, psychological, or biological), nor particular theoretical orientations (e.g. cognitive-behavioural, psychoanalytic, etc.), the Framework “acknowledges the centrality of the relational/social/political context in decisions about what counts as a ‘mental health’ need or crisis in any given situation” (p. 8).

The fifth and final prospect raised in relation to ecologics was a recognition that our existence always occurs within emergent events. To suggest it is possible to separate ourselves from these unfinalisable circumstances and capture life in a sentence, paragraph, or article like this, is to deny the vitality of worlded matters. We are making sense of the world with each and every engagement but importantly, as Wittgenstein (1953, no. 241) contends: “So you are saying that human agreement decides what is true and what is false? […] That is not agreement in opinions but in form of life”. At the conclusion of the previous section, it might have seemed strange being implored to purposively sense how we ready ourselves to go on before knowledge evolves. But this is precisely what Shotter (1993) called knowing from within, i.e. within forms of life. The further our situatedness from events taking place, the less likely we are to understand their unique conditions of possibility and be able to then act responsively and responsibly. In concert with Wittgenstein, a non-cognitive, ecologic orientation to perception recognises that “knowledge ceases to be solely an epistemological matter: it becomes an ontological one also” (Shotter, 1993, p. 33). How we understand and engage with mental health matters, and of course with those involved, speaks volumes about who we are, who we can be and our preferred means to going on together.

Conclusion

Research and media are today forthright in communicating the dire nature of actual and prospective conditions affecting young people and mental health. Perhaps they are bluntly telling it like it is. Simultaneously, democratic societies struggle to find common ground amongst their citizenry. When disenfranchisement and fragmentation appear as prevailing affective atmospheric conditions, not for the first time, we turn to education to do something. Of course, it is myopic to limit our search for assistance to a single discipline or way of knowing/being as that would negate the transparadigmatic orientation touted earlier. Hence, the discussion provided here is not intended to definitively answer questions regarding mental health in education. Those concerned enough to look beyond what is now are encouraged to engage a burgeoning literature furthering ideas to do with ecological thought. For example, work from areas such as critical environmental studies (Ivinson & Renold, 2022), queer studies (Küpers, 2020), radial Black studies (Pulido & De Lara, 2018), critical animal/multispecies studies (Fix et al., 2019) and the forementioned indigenous studies (Kimmerer, 2013; Steffensen, 2020; Stewart, 2021), offer diverse possibilities to living and enacting preferred ways of knowing/being.

The theoretical discussion tendered here offered several means to altering our understandings and approaches to youth mental health in education. Importantly, although some may say it is, my position is not intent on capturing the village and razing it to the ground. I have already made my opinion clear regarding the prospects of capture. Also, once inside the walls of the village, we still are in need of somewhere to live. Consequently, varieties of knowledge are welcome to co-exist within ecologics. How we go about telling it like it can become, or agreeing on forms of life, should be our primary cause for concern. Those involved in educating probably would not be here were hope not anticipated and possibility believed. And so, as we listen for alternatives to the way it is, we can perpetually remind ourselves “…the possibilities for what the world may become call out in the pause that precedes each breath before a moment comes into being and the world is remade again” (Barad, 2007, p. 185). The how is the what and the when is now.

Acknowledgement

I live and work on unceded Wurundjeri Country. I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which this writing was conducted: the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nations, paying respect to their Elders before and after now.

I also thank the reviewers for their constructive response to this work.

Disclosure statement

The author reports there are no competing interests to declare.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tim Corcoran

Tim Corcoran is currently Associate Professor (Inclusive Education), School of Education, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia. His work has involved teaching, research and professional practice in Australia, the UK and Singapore. His research develops innovative theory∼practice options to challenge ableism in local, national, and international education policy and practice.