The role of family dialogue in becoming response-able: a common worlds approach

ABSTRACT

In this Viewpoints paper, I consider the role of family dialogue in shaping political agency and morality in relation to climate change and ecological destruction, drawing on insights from Common Worlds pedagogy. Common Worlds educators and researchers invite adults to attend to the questions children ask about the world as openings for unsettling dominant narratives of extractive settler colonialism. Moving this approach out of the classroom towards other intergenerational encounters, I suggest that interactions between children and parents can offer fleeting encounters for becoming response-able in multispecies worlds. Considering childing as a process of becoming, Common Worlds scholars and educators adopt a process ontology within adult–child interactions, opening up the possibility of adults, too, ‘becoming’ in the space–time of educational encounters. Drawing on conversations with my 5-year-old, I consider how encounters with the children in our lives can offer possibilities for re-casting ethical and political questions of responsibility.

KEYWORDS:

• Encounter
• becoming
• responsibility
• parent–child learning
• family
• climate change

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Economic and Social Research Council.