1st Edition

Engaging with Environmental Education through the Language Arts Interdisciplinary and Creative Approaches to Fostering Ecoliteracy

Edited By Nicholas McGuinn, Amanda Naylor Copyright 2025
268 Pages 18 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

268 Pages 18 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

268 Pages 18 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This creative volume demonstrates the urgent importance of engaging students cognitively and affectively with the climate crisis and environmental education, underpinning the vital role the language arts play in expanding this engagement for a better future. Moving beyond the basic modalities of English, chapters written by an internationally diverse group of contributors advocate for the... Read more

Introduction Nicholas McGuinn and Amanda Naylor

 

Part 1: Opening up the Debate

 

Chapter 1 Environmental texts in the classroom: The centrality of ecocritical reading Sasha Matthewman

Chapter 2 Fostering environmental justice, climate justice and collective action through children’s and young adult literature Clare Echterling

Chapter 3 Humanising science through the arts Martin Braund

Chapter 4 Imagining the environment in a different, more hopeful language: (Foreign) language teaching with environmental issues and sustainability Uwe Küchler

 

Part 2: Thinking about voice

 

Chapter 5 Voicing more-than-human vulnerability: A lyric approach to fostering biodiversity loss literacy Tanya Gautam

Chapter 6 Philosophical dialogue in ecoliteracy education: Words for change Jelle de Schrijver and Lynda Dunlop

 

Part 3: Creating and responding to texts

 

Chapter 7 “Reading-with” to build meaningful connections with animate place-based literacies Erin Spring and Jennifer MacDonald

Chapter 8 Environmental education in international contexts: Exploring issues through literature Hege Emma Rimmereide and Ghazal Shaikh

Chapter 9 Pre-service English teachers engage with the natural world through poetry: A cubed template to document the plains of the unknown world Amanda Naylor and Nicholas McGuinn

Chapter 10 What can storytelling and drama offer to students' ecological understanding and citizenship? Being trees Molly Mullen, Mark Harvey, Marie McEntee, Christina Houghton, Ariane Craig-Smith, Hannah Neville and Debbie Larkins

Chapter 11 Socio-environmental (in)justice in forest stewardship: A multi-perspective materials assemblage for English as a foreign language teacher education in Chile Katharina Glas and Miguel Farías

 

Part 4: Engaging with visual and social media

 

Chapter 12 The visual image and imagination of alternative futures: Nuance, ambiguity and hope Peter Sutoris

Chapter 13 Engaging young people with ecocritical analysis of language in the media Billy McClune, Karen Kerr and Jennifer Roberts

 

Conclusion Ian Davies

Biography

Nicholas McGuinn is an Honorary Fellow in the Department of Education, University of York, UK.

Amanda Naylor is Senior Lecturer in English and Education, University of York, UK.