From places to paths: Learning for Sustainability, teacher education and a philosophy of becoming

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore what thinking with a philosophy of ‘becoming’ might produce in terms of conceptualising Learning for Sustainability (LfS), a recent development in Scottish educational policy. The paper posits that animism and the immanent materiality of a philosophy of becoming have important ramifications for contemporary approaches to sustainability education. ‘Becoming’ is described and its relationship to prevailing ‘systemic’ approaches to sustainability education explained. LfS is then described and conceptualised with a philosophy of becoming by examining its implications for Education for Global Citizenship and Outdoor Learning. The concepts of communication as expression; the subject undone (as haecceity); the distinction of ‘nature’ as ‘other’; and the centrality of a storied world are discussed as important elements of LfS becoming. Lastly, teaching materials and interviews with two initial teacher educators help create a rhizomatic assemblage of teacher education practice and LfS as becoming. This assemblage creates lines of flight for considering practice, including making explicit the expressivity of communication in course descriptor/teaching/learning relationships; highlighting the place/becoming assemblages of ‘indoor’ and ‘outdoor’ learning environments; and storying the world with learners through haecceity description/experimentation.

Keywords:

• Learning for sustainability
• teacher education
• immanence
• rhizoanalysis
• animism

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank all those involved in the editorial process as well as the peer-reviewers whose diligent and constructive reading greatly enhanced this paper.

Disclosure statement

None of the authors have any financial interest or benefit arising from the direct applications of this research.

Notes

1. E.g. how does the term work? What does it allow to become? What other lines of flight does it disallow or subjugate?

2. As opposed to the Deleuzo-Guattarian subjectless individuation.

3. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

4. Termed ‘rhizoanalytic’ or implementing ‘rhizoanalysis’.

5. The course leaders were assigned pseudonyms.

6. The course specification or descriptor.

7. That it holds great potential for demonstrating the animate nature of the world, but that care needs to be taken not to set up, or perpetuate, illusory boundaries such as a distinct ‘nature’.

8. In the text above, for example, Mary refers to ‘out there’ and ‘what the planet has on our doorstep’, suggesting a human/planet dualism.

9. VLE – The online portal that the course leaders use to communicate with students and deposit course readings and other learning materials.

10. Inspired by the ‘actants’ of Bruno Latour’s Actor Network Theory and Donna Haraway’s posthuman cyborg feminism.

11. Whilst stating that the distinction is not intended to diminish their work in any way (Gough 2004).

12. Deleuze and Guattari (2004) stress how tracing is a method which replicates, or represents, a transcendental plane. Tracings are arborescent conceptions of materiality and language. ‘Tracings are based on phenomenological experience that is assumed to be essential, stable, and universal. Defined thus, the findings from most research projects are tracings’ (Martin and Kamberelis 2013, 670). Tracings describe a world preconceived as structured and hierarchical. Description that implements tracing will locate itself against, and within, arborescent, tree-like models of knowledge. The roots of the rhizome, however, work against this tree logic.

13. As is the case with rhizomes.