1st Edition
Ecopedagogies Practical Approaches to Experiential Learning
Ecopedagogies showcases a range of creative approaches that educators across multiple disciplines use to empower students to access and engage with nature, an increasingly important consideration in a post-COVID world in environmental crisis.
The volume includes chapters written by scholars from the environmental arts and humanities, literature, writing studies, rhetoric, music, religious studies, environmental studies and sustainability, sociology and anthropology, physical education, and outdoor education. Each author walks the reader through the details of how their ecopedagogy works, identifies potential challenges while also detailing how to address them, and explains the rewards to students, instructors, and more-than-human nature that they have witnessed through the use of these approaches. The contributions represent diverse types of academic institutions, offering broad applicability to instructors, including community colleges, private liberal arts colleges, and large state, regional, public, and private universities. The book explores a series of key questions about how educators can facilitate meaningful learning experiences with the natural world, inside and outside the classroom, and it looks at how to foster inclusivity, navigate problems with access, and explore intersections with environmental justice.
As a practical guide, the book delivers a well-provisioned toolbox containing exercises, activity guides, and assignments for those teaching environmentally focused college courses.
1. Out of the Classroom and into the Wild: Ecopedagogies in Action
Ellen Bayer and Judson Byrd Finley
2. Composing with Infrastructures: Parapersonal Pedagogies for Environmental Humanities Classrooms
Andrew Niess and Davy Knittle
3. Field Journaling in the Wild: Defamiliarizing Everyday Environments in Environmental Humanities Courses
Summer Harrison
4. Go Boldly!: Empowering Students to Find their Stories in the Wild
Ellen Bayer
5. The World in a Pond: Multispecies Encounters and a Map for Confluent Classrooms
Allison Lee Blyler and Holly Connell Schaaf
6. Saunter like Muir: Eco-Challenges and Experience Projects in Introductory Environmental Ethics
Amanda Hayden
7. Decolonizing Outdoor Education: Reading Muir in Alaska and Fly Fishing on Lingít Aaní
Kevin Maier
8. Nature Revisited: Ecopedagogy in an English-Physical Education Learning Community
Ian MacKenzie and Doug Smyth
9. From Dinosaur to Bears Ears: Engaging Utah’s Public Lands Via Interdisciplinary Inquiry and Experiential Learning
Judson Byrd Finley and Keri Holt
10. Connections, Relationships, and the Land: An Anthropology Field School
Kelly M. Branam Macauley, Judson Byrd Finley, Hubert Burdick Two Leggins, Chris Finley, and Matthew J. Rowe
11. Learning to Think like a Factory
Lachell Faure, Darren Paisley, and Brad Tabas
12. Embodiment and More-Than-Human Topographies: A Praxis Tool for Reconfiguring Sense of Place in the Anthropocene in Online and Limited-Residency Higher Education
Mary A. Jackson
13. Inhabiting Sounds: Soundscape Ecology in a First-Year Seminar
Damiano Benvegnù
14. Teaching Animal Texts: American Environmental Literature’s Ability to Connect Students to Animals and Wildlife through Observation
Lauren E. Perry
15. To the Zoo!
Jeremy Chow
16. Paradox of Hope: Cultivating a Restorative Educational Ethic in a World on Fire
Levi Gardner
Biography
Ellen Bayer is an Associate Professor of Environmental Arts and Humanities at the University of Washington Tacoma, USA.
Judson Byrd Finley is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Utah State University, USA.
"The digital pivot in post-pandemic education refocuses the perennial problem of 'getting students out of the classroom and into the wild.' As the classroom morphs in ways that ignore habitat—both the inner and the outer wilds—we need models, leaders, and guides to remind us to pay attention to where we are, and to learn how to be here with others—human and more-than-human. Bayer and Finley’s clear prose and diverse roster of contributors provides helpful and inspiring guidance for both seasoned guides and for those taking their first steps into the field."
David Greenwood, Lakehead University, Canada
"Ecopedagogies provides a diverse set of humanistic and interdisciplinary approaches to place-based experiential education within colleges and universities, which highlight the humane promise of learning with and from other species, as well as the land itself. A resourceful tool for those attempting to explore the terra nullius of contemporary ecoliteracy."
Richard Kahn, Antioch University, USA
"Rich in both practical advice and wise reflection, this volume is a treasure trove of ideas and encouragement for all who seek to embed learning within the wild community of life. I came away from reading both inspired and invigorated."
David George Haskell, The University of the South, USA
"[This] is the book I wish I’d had two decades ago when I was an English teacher at a community college, and a science colleague and I began taking students on field trips. This wide-ranging collection provides philosophical grounding for getting students out of the classroom, offers a variety of curricular approaches ranging from A(laska) to Z(oos), and is packed with practical advice, such as 'define field loosely' and 'meet your students where they are.' Importantly, it addresses head-on questions of inclusion, access, and privilege, pointing out that place-based pedagogies that center student experience through reflection connect students with place and with each other, and what it means to me 'in relation.' This timely collection ends with a chapter titled 'Cultivating a Restorative Educational Ethic in a World on Fire,' reminding us that the stakes are high and the time is short. This is an indispensable field guide for teaching in the 21st century."
Holly J. Hughes, Co-editor of Contemplative Approaches to Sustainability in Higher Education: Theory & Practice (Routledge, 2017)
