Re-assembling environmental and sustainability education: orientations from New Materialism

Abstract

A growing number of scholars call for the use of New Materialist frameworks for research across social and natural sciences. In general, however, there is little rigorous, in-depth or detailed advice on how postqualitative research is to be empirically conducted. Also, what the implications might be for environmental and sustainability education remain unclear. In response, drawing on data from a place-responsive heritage education project, employing theory from Deleuze and Guattari, I provide orientations for Assemblage Pedagogy and Assemblage Research. Assemblage Pedagogy involves educating for more sustainable ways of life through: (1) Interrupting existing education assemblages and experimenting with new approaches, (2) Practicing, relating, and entangling 'from the middle', involving the human and more-than-human to actualize the capacities and relations needed, and, (3) Evoking and performing new practices and expressions designed to create more sustainable ways of life. Wider implications for researching environmental and sustainability education are considered.

Compostagem E Horta Orgânica Na Faculdade Farias Brito Como Instrumento De Educação Ambiental

“…A EA pode ser considerada uma ferramenta para difusão com relação aos resíduos sólidos, segundo Mannion (2019), foi percebido que na escola tanto professores quanto educandos aprimoraram os conceitos de reduzir, reutilizar e reciclar, além de permitir aumentar a sensibilidade no que tange à consciência ambiental.…”

“…A educação ambiental é considerada essencial para formar cidadãos conscientes, capazes de tomar decisões incidentes sobre a realidade socioambiental, de forma comprometida com a vida do planeta (MANNION, 2019).…”

Mattering pedagogy in precarious times of (un)learning

“…Conventionally, the human (cultivating, liberating, emancipating the human) is placed in centre of attention in pedagogy and pedagogical thinking. In this respect, much pedagogy and pedagogical thinking has played and still plays a role in the staging of the human as privileged and 'exceptional' beings in the world (Snaza 2015, Sonu & Snaza 2015, Taylor 2016, as pointed out by feminist new materialist inspired research in sustainability and climate change education (see for example Taylor, 2017;Verlie, 2018;Mannion, 2019;Johns-Putra;). Furthermore, many pedagogical theories set at their heart the development of the (white) child into a (flexible) citizen as their im-or explicit concern (see for example Hultqvist & Dahlberg 2001, Fendler 2000 for such observations and critique).…”

New materialisms and environmental education: editorial

“…For example, via 'relationally attuned [ … ] climate pedagogies' (Verlie and CCR15, 2018), 'remaking pedagogies' (Hofverberg, 2019), 'pedagogical strategies' (Jukes and Reeves, 2019), 'water and art as philosophical muse' and 'relational pedagogies' (Crinall and Somerville, 2019), thinking and 'hesitating' 'with microbes' as 'more-than-human agencements' in 'moldschools' (Tammi, 2019) we witness scholars from around the world re-working pedagogical possibilities by emphasising the relational qualities of the matter that co-create distributed agencies in environmental education. Similarly, articles on 'thinking with the elements' (Piotrowski, 2019) 'Assemblage Pedagogy' (Mannion, 2019), 'research assemblage' (Ruck and Mannion, 2019), and 'immanent environmental ethics' (Rousell, 2018) all endeavour to muddy arbitrary humanistic boundaries and binaries, and instead include the idea that we are always already 'of' the world, not simply in it or on it.…”