1st Edition
Educating for Human, Community, and Ecological Flourishing Enabling Posthuman Bildung-Capabilities through Pedagogies of Inquiry
Part One: Reframing Bildung and Capability
Chapter One: Key issues and concepts: A ‘good’ higher education for our age?
Carolin Kreber
Chapter Two: Capabilities and education
Carolin Kreber
Chapter Three: Capabilities and the non-human world
Carolin Kreber
Chapter Four: A (posthuman) ‘Bildung’ that affords ‘capability of all’
Carolin Kreber
Interlude I Why we need to talk about (posthuman) Bildung: Deepening and politicizing the discourse on higher education pedagogy
Carolin Kreber
Part Two: Connecting Bildung and Capability with Inquiry
Chapter Five: Enabling ‘Bildung-Capabilities’ through transformative inquiry
Carolin Kreber
Chapter Six: Supporting human flourishing
Carolin Kreber
Chapter Seven: Encouraging community flourishing
Carolin Kreber
Chapter Eight: Contributing to ecological flourishing
Carolin Kreber
Chapter Nine: Navigating inquiry, integrity and Gen AI
Carolin Kreber
Interlude II From theory to practice: Contextualizing the case studies
Carolin Kreber
Part Three: Pedagogies of Inquiry--Enabling posthuman ‘Bildung-capabilities’
Chapter Ten: Layers of relational inquiry into ‘Nature and Outdoor Learning’
Carrie Karsgaard
Chapter Eleven: Pedagogies of inquiry in global citizenship
Terry Gibbs
Chapter Twelve: “Two-Eyed Seeing” and Learning: Indigenous Arts from Unama’ki to Aotearoa
Leim Joe, Marcia Ostashewski, Laurianne Sylvester and Brian Diettrich
Chapter Thirteen: Philosophy meets urban planning: A topic for cultivating non-technocratic discourse and hope
James Gerrie
Chapter Fourteen: Understanding social and ecological (in)justice by examining our relationship with other animals
Tracey Harris
Chapter Fifteen: Pedagogies of inquiry in Community Studies: Connecting practices of experiential learning and social justice
Jan Hancock
Chapter Sixteen: (Re)evaluating Priorities, Promoting Inquiry: Reading Gareth Edwards’ Rogue One:
A Star Wars Story (2016)
Tom Ue
Chapter Seventeen: Listening as Inquiry: Sounding Place, Shaping Purpose
Tracey MacNeil
Chapter Eighteen: The MBA in Community Economic Development: A Site of Transformative Inquiry
Kate Linden and Mary-Beth Doucette
Chapter Nineteen: Teaching Geosciences in an entangled world
Edward Matheson and Jason Loxton
Chapter Twenty: Building towards ‘Bildung’: Developing capabilities in a first-year English course
Sheila Christie
Chapter Twenty-One: Conclusion: A new trajectory towards alternative futures through education
Carolin Kreber
References
Biography
Carolin Kreber is a Professor of Education at Cape Breton University. She previously held academic appointments at the University of Alberta and the University of Edinburgh. After serving a five‑year term as Dean at CBU, she joined the Faculty of Education and now teaches primarily in the MEd Sustainability, Creativity and Innovation program. Earlier publications include Authenticity in and through Teaching, Educating for Civic Mindedness, The University and its Disciplines (all with Routledge), Advances and Innovations in University Assessment and Feedback (Edinburgh UP), several New Directions (Wiley/Jossey-Bass) volumes and numerous journal articles.
In times of climate crisis and ever-widening global wealth inequalities, Carolin Kreber asks: How might we educate for alternative futures and at the same time support higher education students in finding purpose and agency? In this fascinating and challenging book, she takes up the question by mobilizing and skillfully combining diverse theoretical approaches, notably Bildung and the capability approach, to make an argument for a political and activist-facing ecopedagogy in higher education. This is an impressively accomplished, book both theoretically and empirically, which will be widely read by everyone concerned with how higher education ought to enable the secure flourishing of all, and care for each other and for the Earth.
Melanie Walker, Distinguished Professor and South African Research Chair in Higher Education and Human Development, University of the Free State, South Africa
Given the reality of the global justice crises, social and ecological, I am convinced that part of the response will involve opening the space for humans, particularly the modern western version, to be differently. And I am sure that will require putting education at the centre of the transformation. With this book Carolin Kreber gathers Bildung – with its historical starting point of educating in order to be human differently – and lifts it elegantly into today’s world. This is a well-theorized radical book anchored with real world practices. Add in the important and accessible ‘nine vital capabilities’ and there is an inspiring sense of possibility as well. As Kreber makes clear in these rich and timely examples, we have options in and for higher education, so … how about we exercise them?
Sean Blenkinsop, Professor of Education, Simon Fraser University, Canada
