Shifting relations with the more-than-human: six threshold concepts for transformative sustainability learning

Abstract

Using the iterative process of action research, we identify six portals of understanding, called threshold concepts, which can be used as curricular guideposts to disrupt the socially constituted separation, and hierarchy, between humans and the more-than-human. The threshold concepts identified in this study provide focal points for a curriculum in transformative sustainability learning which (1) acknowledges non-human agency; and (2) recognizes that the capacity to work with multiple ways of knowing is required to effectively engage in the process of sustainability knowledge creation. These concepts are: there are different ways of knowing; we can communicate with non-human nature and non-human nature can communicate with us; knowing is relational; transrational intuition and embodied knowing are valuable and valid ways of knowing; worldview is the lens through which we view reality; and the power of dominant beliefs (represented in discourse) supports and/or undermines particular ways of knowing and being as in/valid.

Keywords:

• sustainability education
• transformative learning
• threshold concepts
• more-than-human
• epistemological stretching
• threshold concepts

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada which provided the funding for this research. We also acknowledge all the students in ENVS 811: Multiple Ways of Knowing in Environmental Decision-Making, as well as the many plants, animals, Elders and ancestors who contributed to our collective knowledge-making. Thanks also to three anonymous reviewers, Sean Blenkinsop and Colleen Dell for feedback on an earlier version of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

M.J. Barrett is an assistant professor in the School of Environment and Sustainability, University of Saskatchewan. Research interests include epistemology, human-animal and human-nature communication, and environmental education.

Notes

1. Although both these qualities were pervasive, a thorough discussion of the reconstitutive and liminal nature of these concepts is beyond the scope of this paper and will be the topic of a future manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.