Place-responsive Pedagogies in the Anthropocene: attuning with the more-than-human

Abstract

Drawing on New Materialist frameworks for environmental and sustainability education, we extend and deepen our understanding of contemporary place-responsive pedagogies in the light of our human-impacted geological epoch, the Anthropocene, and its allied environmental concerns. Empirically, in a new and original way, we explore the role of the more-than-human in educators’ planning and enactment of place-responsive pedagogies. We show that place-responsive pedagogies are derived from ongoing attunements reciprocally made by all participants to each other – educators, learners, and the more-than-human – and between the place of learning and these participants. Findings show that these attunements emerge from socio-environmental processes and features of a place, but this article also shows the critical importance of (i) what educators and learners are able to notice and respond to, (ii) how educators choose to build upon this noticing and response-making, and (iii) how they actively incorporate the agencies of the more-than-human into teaching and learning. Wider implications for researching environmental and sustainability education are considered.

Keywords:

• New materialism
• more-than-human
• place-responsive
• outdoor learning
• posthumanism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 It is important to acknowledge the squeezing of sphagnum moss as an educational activity is potentially destructive to fragile bog ecosystems.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jonathan Lynch

Jonathan Lynch is a Postgraduate Director with The Mind Lab in New Zealand. The Mind Lab is a future-focussed education company committed to the growth and implementation of contemporary practice in the teaching profession across New Zealand. His work contributes to the fields of place-responsive pedagogy, environmental education, and technology enhanced education.

Greg Mannion

Dr. Greg Mannion works as a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Social Sciences (Education) at University of Stirling, Scotland, UK. His empirical and theoretical research advances the fields of young people’s environmental participation, rights-based education, outdoor and intergenerational learning, and wider person-place sustainability. His current research interests in place-responsive formal and non-formal learning draw on critical, poststructural and New Materialist perspectives. Recent projects employ visual and participatory methods in environmental and sustainability education research in Malawi and the UK. Web: https://www.stir.ac.uk/people/11039. . . . . . . . .