Post-anthropocentric pedagogies: purposes, practices, and insights for higher education

ABSTRACT

What does it mean to teach in higher education (HE) from vantage points that do not privilege human self-interest, but include nonhuman animals as significant subjects of educational practice? This paper addresses human-animal relations as a nascent area of HE pedagogy. It explores premises of, and approaches to post-anthropocentric HE pedagogies through an examination of a wide range of teacher experiences as expressed in research literature in the area. Emerging from this contested and sometimes controversial terrain in the HE landscape are three key pedagogical aspects that post-anthropocentric educators across disciplines seem to share; aspects that can offer important insights for pedagogical development in HE: A passion and commitment to critical inquiry; innovative ways of connecting theoretical subject matter to life outside university; and embracing risk-taking in the teaching and learning process as a necessary part of HE teachers’ reflective practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Post-anthropocentric pedagogies
• animals
• posthumanism
• critical pedagogy
• social change

Introduction

Human-animal relations is an emerging area of education research and practice, although in higher education (HE), nonhuman animals as significant subjects of teaching are not yet given widespread recognition. In the fields of early childhood education and compulsory schooling, these issues have a history in the humane education movement¹ (Unti and DeRosa 2003), and more recently, the urgency of climate change and global environmental crises has sparked renewed debates on the position of humans vis-à-vis other species, which also affect what we do in education. Some critical education researchers argue that the formal education system (at all levels) contributes not only to a reproduction of social injustices and inequalities (see Giroux 1981; McLaren 1998; Morrow and Torres 1995), but also to a reproduction of speciesist values and animal industries (Brügger 2021; Pedersen 2019; Repka 2019; Rowe 2011; Saari 2021; see also Cole and Stewart 2014; Rice 2013) that, in turn, have severe effects on a range of environmental issues, global warming, and the life situation of both humans and animals (Probyn-Rapsey et al. 2016). Moreover, given the multiple ways in which animals are used and abused in (formal) education – for instance, animal dissection exercises in school and university laboratories, animal-derived foods served in school and university canteens, representations of animals in textbooks that reproduce a distinct human-animal divide, to give just a few examples – education is not solely a human concern: it also, materially and discursively, involves animals (e.g. Alger and Alger 2003; Arluke and Hafferty 1996; Dolby 2012; Gunnarsson Dinker and Pedersen 2016; Poirier 2021; Rowe 2013; Solot and Arluke 1997).

Still, practice-based research on teaching in this area is rarely recognised in higher education (HE) scholarship – possibly since it tends to be published in edited volumes and niche journals. This paper seeks to make visible this emerging body of HE pedagogy research that may otherwise be overlooked. It brings forth university and college teachers’ experiences and reflections on their own practice of teaching human-animal relations. The paper also analyses potential insights in HE pedagogy that can be drawn from these experiences.

The research area of human-animal relations education is not, as Maria Helena Saari (2021) notes, a homogeneous field. In their editorial in Environmental Education Research, Constance Russell and Reingard Spannring (2019) identify two main approaches in the ‘animal-focused environmental education’ research literature: one critical bent seeking to disrupt anthropocentrism (human-centeredness) and speciesism (systematic subordination of animals due to their species affiliation); and another (re)constructive ambition encouraging attention to more ethical and sustainable ways of co-existing with animals. This paper will draw on, and develop, Russell and Spannring’s (2019) overview, thereby contributing to knowledge development in the nascent research area of human-animal relations in HE pedagogy.

To this end, I will introduce the category post-anthropocentric education, to accommodate various instantiations of teaching human-animal relations in HE. I will argue that an exploration of the post-anthropocentric HE research literature reveals a more complicated picture than indicated by Russell and Spannring (2019), with multiple strands within and beyond the critical versus the reconstructive approach. While these strands do not form distinctive and neat categories, I will argue that across these strands, there are three key pedagogical aspects that post-anthropocentric educators seem to share, and that these three aspects can offer important insights for pedagogical development in HE.

The concept of post-anthropocentric pedagogy appears in previous research (Novak 2012; Sitka-Sage et al. 2017; Weldemariam 2020) but is, like the related notion of posthumanist pedagogy, often linked to new-materialist research traditions where the position of the human subject is viewed – and de-centered – in relation to the wider ecological, socio-material, or techno-scientific environments (cf. Bayne 2015; Chappell, Natanel, and Wren 2021; Gravett, Taylor, and Fairchild 2021). Preceding these traditions is Indigenous scholarship emphasising the particularity of relations with non-human agents and the interplay of these with knowledge, thought, place, and being, as well as the ethics of reciprocity embedded in these relations (Rosiek, Snyder, and Pratt 2020). Both these aspects, as we shall see, have implications for the focus on human-animal relations education in this paper.

The overarching research objective is to explore what it means to teach in HE from vantage points that do not assume that human self-interest should be privileged at all times. To pursue this inquiry, pedagogical premises and approaches in post-anthropocentric HE pedagogies will be identified through an examination of research literature in the area, guided by the following questions:

• What are the purposes of post-anthropocentric pedagogies, as articulated in the literature?

• How is the situatedness of the teacher configured, and how do approaches to pedagogical practice emerge in post-anthropocentric pedagogy literature?

• What insights can be drawn for HE pedagogy from the experiences of post-anthropocentric educators?²

In my inquiry I have pursued close, comparative readings of recent research literature across the disciplines that focus on teaching human-animal relations in, primarily, HE. In the literature selection process I have excluded research on the compulsory and upper secondary education systems, as well as non-formal educational settings. I have however included research regarding lower educational levels if they contribute significant perspectives on the research questions that could potentially apply also to HE. (An example is research in education for sustainable development, which, in the research literature, is not necessarily grade-specific). I have also made efforts to include research from a variety of disciplines and subject areas (e.g. curriculum theory, veterinary education, environmental education, business education, philosophy, geography, sociology) to capture a wide range of assumptions of, and approaches to post-anthropocentric HE pedagogy, which I have put in conversation with each other as well as with relevant ideas from theory and philosophy of HE (i.e. Biesta 2016; Ellsworth 1989; Entwistle 2009; Gardner et al. 2021) and Indigenous and Decolonial Studies (Bang et al. 2022; Belcourt 2020; Jackson 2013; Rosiek, Snyder, and Pratt 2020; TallBear 2011; Watts 2020). I have delimited the sample to research published within the last two decades, a period when posthumanist thought gained recognition in education research. In total, the sample includes 20 studies (journal articles and book chapters). These works should not in any way be seen as representative for a particular community of HE teachers, but rather as a sample guided by this author’s subjective research interest. As a university teacher and researcher affiliated with the areas of both education studies and critical animal studies, I have approached the works through a perspective grounded in education theory as well as a critical outlook on the situation of animals in human society. I have done so with an assumption that the experiences the educators give voice to may have something important to contribute to HE pedagogy.

Purposes of post-anthropocentric pedagogies

To get a clear understanding of the claimed purposes of post-anthropocentric pedagogies, an appropriate methodological approach would be to analyse the learning objectives as they are formulated in course syllabi in relevant HE subject areas. What is of interest in this paper, however, is not the concisely formulated formal goals that are normally a product of an administrative process organised to meet certain policy criteria. Here, focus lies on the didactical and philosophical assumptions engaged by teachers themselves in conceptualising their own (and others’) pedagogical work.

In their overview of the ‘animal-focused environmental education’ research literature, Russell and Spannring (2019), as mentioned above, identify two approaches to education, with different purposes: one critical bent seeking to disrupt anthropocentrism and speciesism; and another (re)constructive ambition encouraging attention to more ethical and sustainable ways of co-existing with animals. However, the wider repertoire of research literature I have explored suggests a more complicated picture where these two approaches are conflated and other strands emerge. One such strand relates to how post-anthropocentric pedagogies act on the learner, for instance, by encouraging students to reflect, critique, and work against animal exploitation and violence, in its multiple forms across societal sectors, and, hence, become more caring, critically reflective, and change-oriented human beings. One example is Reingard Spannring and Tomaž Grušovnik’s (2019) educational sciences course on ‘Lifelong Learning’ in which they draw on Mezirow’s transformative learning theory, a dialogue-based process aiming to challenge beliefs and behaviours, here with the purpose to problematise meat consumption in education. Another example is Linda Tallberg et al.’s business school course working on ethical issues in animal production systems to ‘harness the energy of activism within a supportive, organised business pedagogy framework’ (2022, 60).

Another strand emerging from the literature exposes the premises of education itself to critical scrutiny, proposing that the production of ‘the human’ throughout the Western education system – the idea of education as a humanising process – poses a problem in relation to other species and indeed, the world as such. As Nathan Snaza puts it, ‘We must learn to think of ourselves as something other than “human”, and we have to imagine and experiment with pedagogies that do not presuppose this “human” as their telos’ (2013, 50). By calling our presuppositions into question, ‘the human’ becomes a point of departure, not a predetermined end in itself (Snaza 2013). Likewise, Jason Wallin (2014) puts forth an anti-speciesist pedagogy overturning educational anthropocentrism and the assumption that animals are for us. Developing these thoughts further, Patricia MacCormack, drawing on Serres, sees teaching and learning about animals in abolitionist terms as ‘learning how to unthink our parasitic selves and teaching the grace of leaving be / … /’ (2013, 16–17); a pedagogy ultimately aiming toward the absolute cessation of human interference with animal lives.

Although these two strands diverge and may even contradict each other – for instance, they lead to two radically different views on the notions of ‘humanization/dehumanization’ in relation to education – they are not mutually exclusive, but entangled. For instance, Nicole Ross (2021) describes her posthumanist teaching as driven by a deeply personal ‘beyond-urgent’ need to address mass ecocide and planetary collapse, and her teaching standpoint is to engage others with posthumanist philosophy since, in her experience, discussions on posthumanist theories are either met with recoil, or almost always recenters the human. To Ross (2021), the challenge is to bring about a supposed fundamental subjectivity shift in the learner who is exposed to posthumanist concepts and ideas. Drawing on Dewey, Bradley Rowe (2009) makes a similar case for the potential of ‘the animal question’ in education (here denoting the extension of ethical thought to the moral status of nonhuman animals; cf. Wolfe 2003) to challenge and disrupt entrenched habits of our daily lives; a transformative venture that, for Rowe, accommodates an opportunity for human growth that will ‘enrich human experience, invigorate philosophical and educational dialogue, cultivate imaginative and sympathetic faculties, and promote conscious thinking and deliberate action in our everyday lives.’ (2009, 162) Although Rowe addresses education on animal rights rather than posthumanism,³ his objectives seem to echo Ross’ (2021) experience that discussions on human-animal relations in educational contexts tend to, eventually, re-center the human. The problem with this re-installing of anthropocentrism is, in the end, the violence that the human/animal split engenders toward nonhumans (TallBear 2011).

Another strand in the literature articulates different expectations on education – what post-anthropocentric education is actually able to achieve. Here, ‘reflection’ appears as a key word, denoting not only a teaching and learning approach, but a purpose in itself, with a belief in the power of deep thinking to bring about new mindsets and, ultimately, behavioural change. For instance, Adam Ortiz (2011) writes that

… learning about animal exploitation will consistently challenge both students and teachers to reflect on their assumptions, biases, and beliefs. The end result does not necessarily have to mean that all people would embrace an animal rights perspective, but would hopefully give people a deeper understanding of ourselves as human beings, how the choices we make effect others, and why exploring all forms of oppression is vital to liberation. (Ortiz 2011, 75).

Ortiz (2011) addresses critical pedagogy, humane education and other social justice-related areas of study, arguing for the importance of making space for animal rights within these critical education frameworks (in the context of environmental and sustainability education, cf. Kopnina and Cherniak 2015). In comparison, Nadine Dolby (2017) speaks from a different position of teaching mainly students of agriculture, science, and pharmacy, where animals are physically or discursively present, but often objectified. She describes the stated (formal) purpose of her interdisciplinary seminar ‘Animals, Society, and Education’ in rather modest terms:

to examine the relationship among animals, society, and education. We will examine how humans are socialized to understand their relationship to different species and types of animals through formal and non-formal education, and the different roles and purposes of animals in society. (Dolby 2017, 73–74).

In a similar vein as Ortiz (2011), ‘reflection’ is a key guiding concept in Dolby’s classes; denoting reflection on students’ own relationships with animals in order to reshape their individual choices and see themselves as people who are willing to grow and ‘create new possibilities in the world’ (Dolby 2017, 86). Grounded in Freire’s theory of praxis, Dolby emphasises the connection of individual change to larger societal structures and inequities, establishing a connection of personal choice with social change. Such aims are indebted to Freire’s concept of conscientization ([1970] 2001); cf. George 2019). These rather ambitious expectations on education are grounded in processes of reflection and dialogue. John Lupinacci (2019), a teacher educator in sociology of education and cultural studies in education, connects reflection- and dialogue-based approaches to objectives of rethinking and unlearning anthropocentrism and human supremacy. The expectation on education to achieve societal transformation is more explicitly articulated in another Freirean critical pedagogy-grounded education approach, formulated by Richard Kahn and Brandy Humes (2009; cf. De Melo 2019), who argue for a curriculum that ‘establish[es] norms of greater equality between species and [challenges] human identities through an attempt to foster biocentric or ecocentric literacies of planetarity’ (2009, 181). This should be achieved through a ‘total liberation pedagogy’ drawing on ecofeminist and multicultural education theory. Species equality, in Kahn and Humes’ approach to total liberation pedagogy, means more specifically to ‘overthrow speciesist relations across society’ (2009, 182). Kahn and Humes elaborate on the purpose of total liberation pedagogy:

… by increasing the number of epistemic standpoints from which to teach and learn we free a potential multitude of educational subjects from the culture of silence generated by the dominant mainstream pedagogical and political platforms. (Kahn and Humes 2009, 182)

This comes across as a more radical, disruptive approach to education, in comparison to the reflection-oriented positions delineated above. Also a radical collective transformation such as indicated by total liberation pedagogy however, aims in the first step to affect qualitative change in individual students’ identities (Kahn and Humes 2009, 190; cf. Schatz 2019). Sceptics may argue against this ambition, for instance from a Foucauldian position that there is no such thing as ‘total liberation,’ and if there were, the education system is probably the last place where such liberation could be achieved. Or, the argument may come from a philosophy of education position claiming that education – particularly critical pedagogy – is an impossible endeavour (cf. Britzman 2003) due to its inherent indeterminacy, as the outcome of education cannot be predicted or controlled: we can never know in advance how our teaching will affect our students, or what they will make of it, in the short or the long run (Biesta 1998). A closer look at the critical animal pedagogy literature, however, indicates that the notion of total liberation pedagogy is not to be understood in absolute terms but rather as a specific approach to education addressing how different forms of oppression are interlinked: that is, connections between animal and human rights should be tied to struggles against white supremacy, colonialism and patriarchy, as well as ecological destruction (Parson 2019). Still, an important critique has also been raised against ‘total liberation’ as a form of whitewashing of decolonisation since it does not sufficiently engage, nor makes itself accountable to, Indigenous politics (Belcourt 2020).

This provisional exploration of the multiple purposes and rationales of post-anthropocentric pedagogies reveals a complex picture. What it means to teach beyond anthropocentric vantage points cannot however be captured merely by an account of educational aims. Pedagogical practice must also be considered, and this is an issue to which we now turn.

The situatedness of the teacher and approaches to post-anthropocentric pedagogical practice

Much has been said about the role of the teacher in critical pedagogy. The teacher as (co)-learner, engaged in a process of reflection and exploration together with her students, appears as an important dimension also in post-anthropocentric pedagogies (Corman and Vandrovcová 2014; Ortiz 2011; Ross 2021). Meneka Repka (2019), drawing on anarchist pedagogy, emphasises communities of learning and knowledge sharing rather than hierarchical structures of education. In post-anthropocentric pedagogical approaches, such communities of learning may extend to ‘coalitions of praxis’ including not only teachers and students but also the public (notably activists) (Corman and Vandrovcová 2014; De Melo 2019; cf. Kahn and Humes 2009), and, in addition, animals themselves (Dolby 2017; Ross 2021). These educational practices echo the two recurring themes in Indigenous studies literature mentioned in the Introduction of this paper: the particularity of relations with non-human agents, and the ethics of reciprocity with them (Rosiek, Snyder, and Pratt 2020). An example of an educator working with ‘animal visitors’ in her Animals and Ethics course is Alyce Miller who invites an ex-fighting dog, ‘Fred,’ and his rescuer to her class. Miller explains how Fred’s presence at first evokes caution among the students, but caution shifts to curiosity as the rescuer tells them about Fred’s abusive history:

As dis-ease shifted to curiosity, Fred slowed down and paused before each of the proffered hands, sometimes offering a lick, sometimes a sniff. Many students moved closer to him, encouraging interaction. The rescuer assured them they were helping Fred to learn that human hands were not always hurtful. Several students expressed interest in adopting Fred, whereupon the practical and unsentimental rescuer explained the responsibilities in adopting a rehabilitated fighting dog. The readings and the talk helped contextualize the sympathy students felt, while Fred provided the missing component – the animal body on whom suffering was so directly written, and about whom so much was being historicized, theorized, and pondered. (Miller 2015, 114)

By enabling a pedagogical situation where relational entanglements with an individual animal (Fred) can develop, Miller emphasises the particularities of these relations; not only seeking generalisable understanding of them (Rosiek, Snyder, and Pratt 2020). Nadine Dolby (2017), who works with ‘experiential education’ (Roberts 2012) a bit differently, asks her students to spend four hours alone with an animal who is not their own pet and try to understand what it is like to live life as that animal, grounding the experience in cognitive ethology. To Dolby, the teacher’s responsibility is to support students in pushing beyond the objectives of achieving high grades, and instead encourage them to ‘take risks’ (2017, 86): when students are asked to examine their own experiences with animals as well as the life situation of animals in human society, this learning process may have life-changing implications for students. It may also stir up a wide range of affective responses in the seminar room, prompting some of the literature to approach a therapeutic teacher role by stating the importance of helping students work with their negative emotions that can be evoked by the urgency of animal cruelty. Corman and Vandrovcová (2014), for instance, suggest helping students learn stress management techniques. Involving animals in teaching and learning situations, physically or discursively, is not however without complications in post-anthropocentric pedagogies and could reinforce the idea that animals are widely accessible for any human interest, education included (MacCormack 2013; Wallin 2014). While permission from the animal to participate in exchanges with humans is both essential (Watts 2020) and impossible (MacCormack 2012), an ethics of reciprocity appears paramount: what are we actually giving back to the individual animals whom we involve in our teaching practices? (Rosiek, Snyder, and Pratt 2020).

The idea of the critical educator as an enlightened professional in the position of ‘empowering’ others has since long been troubled by poststructuralist and feminist researchers (Bell and Russell 2000; Ellsworth 1989). In her essay, ‘Why Doesn’t This Feel Empowering? Working Through the Repressive Myths of Critical Pedagogy,’ Elizabeth Ellsworth sees her classroom as a complex site of ‘dispersed, shifting, and contradictory contexts of knowing’ (1989, 322) where teaching for liberation and social justice is never innocent or straightforward. Along similar lines, Critical Animal Geographies teacher Richard White notes that no one session is ever the same:

you try and work with whatever constellations of perceptions, experiences, and values are present in that pedagogical space. Embracing the unknown, being open to teaching (and being taught!) in the moment is absolutely crucial to be able to engage with the spectrum of attitudes and expectations that student[s] have toward other animals. (White 2019, 134)

The necessity for the teacher to embrace the unknown and the unexpected, since what happens in the pedagogical space cannot be fully predicted or controlled, again echoes Biesta’s (1998) remark about the impossibility of education. The desire to find the ‘right’ way of teaching, to identify the ‘secret formula’ of education to make sure that learning will ultimately take place, appears, in this perspective, as both ignorant and futile.

There are, however, radically different views on the relation between teaching and learning in post-anthropocentric pedagogies. Above, Dolby (2017) sees the responsibility of the teacher to support students in pushing beyond the objectives of achieving high grades. In contrast, J.L. Schatz (2019) uses the grading as a tool to connect theoretical discussions in the seminar room to daily life beyond the university, and challenges traditional ideas of what kind of knowledge and skills is considered gradable in university teaching. In Schatz’ undergraduate course units on speciesism and non/human liberation, he concludes by offering his students anywhere between one to six extra credit points on their final paper if they want to commit themselves to going vegetarian or vegan for the remaining part of the semester. To support his students in their transition,

I would also send out a class email with links instructing students on how to make the shift in a healthy way, and how to find the necessary resources to research consumer brands. Beyond that I would encourage students to conduct additional research into their specific dietary needs and made myself available whenever needed. At the end of the semester students who chose to participate were asked to submit a short statement of 300–500 words describing their experience. They were asked to explain how many extra-credit points they felt they deserved based upon their honest effort to abstain from institutionalized speciesism in their everyday lives. (Schatz 2019, 157)

Hence, the exercise was voluntary, and according to Schatz, ‘the extra-credit amounted to at most a third of a letter-grade on [the students’] final paper, which was only a small percentage of their overall grade’ (2019, 158). Is this, as Schatz’ critics claim, an unacceptable abuse of teacher authority; a subjective imposition of the teacher’s own ethics onto students? Schatz argues that ‘[i]t is only through the willingness to explore the gaps where traditional modes of grading ends [sic] that students and instructors can discover new educational mechanisms of learning that goes beyond the classroom.’ (161) He reports that two-thirds of his students decided to take on the challenge of grading themselves on their own realisation of the course material, and remarks that regardless of what the students chose to do, they all engaged in learning what the course material meant in relation to their daily lives (cf. Bang et al. 2022, on the disconnect between academic course content, ethics, and real-life practice). Student experiences of Schatz’ exercise varied: some concluded that they are not prepared to become completely vegetarian at this point in their life. Others affirmed their positive experience, saying that they want to continue the effort of buying animal-friendly products, and even helping their friends and families to do the same. Yet others chose to abstain from the extra-credit since ‘they didn’t want a reward for doing what they thought they should have done all along.’ (163)

Schatz’ teaching may be highly controversial; however, activist approaches to education get elaborated support in recent HE research (Gardner et al. 2021). An interesting question for post-anthropocentric (and other) pedagogies then becomes, what assumptions about the relation between teaching and learning in HE are disturbed by Schatz’ example, and what is actually at stake with such an approach? The rationale that students should be graded on their knowledge, not their values (assuming that these two can be separated) is one tentative point of conflict; another is that eating habits are often regarded as belonging to the private sphere. A reflection of a different kind is offered by Alyce Miller (2015), who reminds us that the teacher’s degree of freedom in the post-anthropocentric classroom is highly contingent on one’s own position regarding race, gender, and place in the university hierarchy, factors that may make the challenging of conventional thought and praxis in education a bigger risk for some teachers than others. Miller’s postscript is worth quoting at length:

Following the aforementioned mini-symposium, a woman faculty member in philosophy and I went to dinner with our guest, who is male, and white, and smart and engaging. He readily announces to his classes that he’s vegan, and tells them throughout the course why it is morally wrong to harm animals. Based on my own students’ enthusiastic reactions, he must be an extremely popular teacher. The other woman and I pressed him for details about his strategies. Yes, of course he shows slides of slaughterhouses; he seemed surprised that neither of us would. He confronts his students much more directly and has no problems including the ‘other f-word,’ feminist theories. Same approach. Recognizing our dilemma, he conceded easily, he probably gets away with a lot more than we can.

My own journey teaching the class continues. In its most recent incarnation, I told the students I am vegan, but found myself quickly apologizing that I didn’t expect any of them to become vegan. And then I stopped myself. Why this caution and hesitation? / … / (Miller 2015, 115–16)

Conclusion: what can be learnt from post-anthropocentric educators? Insights for higher education pedagogy

What in this paper is called post-anthropocentric education – an umbrella term for teaching and learning about human-animal relationships with a critical agenda – emerges as a messy and contested terrain in university pedagogy as well as in the scholarly literature generally, fraught with tensions, conflicts, and complexities around intersections of species, race, coloniality, gender, and more. This paper does not claim to do justice to these debates, which are more eloquently pursued elsewhere (e.g. Belcourt 2020; Jackson 2013). Likewise, I acknowledge the problems involved in claiming to go ‘beyond’ anthropocentrism, in education as well as in research, since this claim in itself may obscure all kinds of power arrangements. While some of the pedagogical accounts explored in this paper do stress the necessity to engage in this kind of educational work, others reflect on its complications. Thus, my exploration of a range of literature in the HE area suggests that purposes and practices of post-anthropocentric education accommodate more complexity than can be captured by Russell and Spannring’s (2019) division between the ‘critical’ bent (seeking to disrupt anthropocentrism and speciesism) versus the ‘reconstructive’ ambition (encouraging attention to more ethical and sustainable ways of co-existing with animals). Disruption of conventional speciesist norms and structures as an educational goal, as well as encouraging more ethical human-animal relations indeed appear also in this paper, thus aligning with Russell and Spannring’s categorisation. Additional strands identified in this paper include reflection (both as a teaching approach and as a learning objective in itself); a focus on education as process versus the end goal of this process; and education viewed as a way of encouraging learners to develop their human potential, versus making this humanising process itself subject to critical scrutiny.

Within these various strands, multiple purposes of post-anthropocentric pedagogies emerge. These purposes range from rather modest aims, to more radical and far-reaching objectives. Some teachers emphasise the challenging of beliefs and behaviours in students in order to encourage critical analysis, ethical reflection, and change-oriented ways of relating to the situation and position of animals in society. This aim includes both a critical inquiry into how we are socialised into certain norms and assumptions about animal use through education, as well as how a different society can be imagined where animals are not subject to exploitation and violence by humans, and what individuals can do to make a change in the lives of animals. Hence, a connection of individual choice with social change is sought by rethinking and unlearning previously received knowledge about the role of animals in human society. Linking speciesism to other forms of oppression and marginalisation, such as racism and sexism, is frequently emphasised by post-anthropocentric teachers, arguing that a critical inquiry into the workings of animal abuse is necessary to understand the roots of oppression in society at large. The importance of changing our relationships to animals in order to address urgent environmental problems of ecocide and ecosystem collapse is also a central concern for post-anthropocentric educators. Kahn and Humes articulate this aim as a fostering of ‘biocentric or ecocentric literacies of planetarity’ (2009, 181) in students. For some, this means to overthrow speciesist relations across society and the assumption that animals are widely accessible for human interests and purposes, even aiming at an absolute cessation of human interference with animal lives (MacCormack 2013; Wallin 2014).

The articulated role of the teacher and assumptions about the relation between teaching and learning also varies, from traditional critical pedagogical ideas of the teacher taking a position of ‘empowering’ students – the teacher as a guide for consciousness-raising and action (Ellsworth 1989) – to the teacher as co-learner engaged in knowledge-sharing and collective processes of exploration. However when teaching gets close to therapy by assisting students in working with their own affective responses, there is an obvious risk that educators take on another professional role that they are not adequately trained for. A teacher role of challenging conventional and obsolete academic structures also stands out as central to post-anthropocentric educators. Regarding the expectations of post-anthropocentric pedagogies, some educators seem driven by rather grandiose assumptions of what education can actually achieve (often in terms of societal transformation), whereas others express a more humble approach acknowledging delimitations with attention to student diversity, academic and societal conventions, how they as teachers are situated in these systems, or the inherent nature of the education process itself. These premises are aptly captured by Richard White (2019) above, who argues for embracing the unknown in the seminar room by working in an out of what is at hand.

What insights, then, can be gained for university pedagogy from the ways that these educators navigate the fraught boundaries between theory and practice, between education and activism, and between professionalism and citizenship in their daily lives as teachers? First I must emphasise that I share the ethical and professional commitment of all educators cited in this paper: The situation of animals in human society is, in and of itself, an urgently important issue to address in HE. Still, the teaching of this topic also involves certain aspects relevant for HE more generally. Although this provisional exploration can only begin to point out some directions for further development of pedagogical practice, there are, arguably, many things worthy of consideration. Among these, I will now put forth three insights/aspects that I suggest have a significant potential for HE pedagogical development:

The first aspect is that the educators appearing in this paper seem to share a deep passion and commitment to their issues, to critical inquiry, and to ethics; a passion they bring to the seminar space. In the university pedagogy research literature, the enthusiasm that the teacher conveys regarding the subject matter taught is an aspect that appears significant for learning, as it makes students want to understand the topic for themselves (Entwistle 2009). This is an enthusiasm that seems to be embodied by many post-anthropocentric teachers.

The second insight to be drawn from post-anthropocentric educators is the various innovative ways they connect theoretical discussions and materials to students’ everyday lives outside the seminar room. By encouraging students to make a change in ways that positively affect the lives of animals, these teachers refuse to see academia and activism as separate spheres. Although contested, this connection between theory and activism has been emphasised as an urgent issue for universities facing global ecological and environmental crises (Gardner et al. 2021; cf. Bang et al. 2022).

The third issue I suggest can be learnt from the diverse experiences of post-anthropocentric teachers (and their students) is the necessity and potential of taking risks in education. In this context, risk-taking should not be conflated with harmful interventions into the education sector by the market economy or other political regimes, nor does it imply a scale against which different acts of risk-taking in education can be identified and judged as more or less desirable. Rather, risk is here conceptualised ontologically: When Biesta (2016) speaks about the beautiful risk of education, he refers to risk not as something that teachers can choose to engage (or not) as a direct consequence of the kind of subject matter they teach. Rather, risk is an inherent part of what education is and indeed, there can be no education without it. Learning from post-anthropocentric educators means learning from teachers who are continuously mindful of, acknowledge, reflect on, and immerse themselves in risk. What they teach us, is how to embrace risk and enjoy the unfamiliar territories that the process of teaching and learning engenders.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Humane education is a childhood didactic building on John Locke that aims to foster a kindness-to-animals ethic, dating back to the 1700s.

2 It is important to note that the teachers cited in this paper do not necessarily self-identify as ‘post-anthropocentric’ educators. Bringing them together and discussing what I see as their divergences and overlaps under this theme has implications for research ethics. I have made efforts to do justice to their work, although I can never eliminate the risk of e.g. misreading and generating, from their view, problematic connections and assumptions.

3 Animal rights and posthumanist philosophy are based on different ontologies and different views on the subject and power. See Wolfe (2003); Weisberg (2014).