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Designing Education for Eco-Social-Cultural Change

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Education as the Practice of Eco-Social-Cultural Change

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Educational Futures ((PSEF))

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Abstract

Transforming education in response to the ecological crisis can be approached through the process of systemic design. This chapter outlines three organizing concepts and six design prompts intended to challenge and undermine key premises of the Capitalocene, the socio-economic-political landscape sustaining the current educational regime. The organizing concepts (the wild, the sacred, and the just) were chosen and elaborated as a way to evoke the self-renewing, self-willed interrelatedness of all organic life on Earth, in opposition to the separation of humans and nature, and to develop an image of education in resonance with that wholeness. The six design prompts were inspired in part by images of flourishing ecosystems, such as an old-growth forest; they are intended to focus attention and imagination in ways that are congruent with the wild. They include All Our Relations, Abundant Time, Mystery/Unknowability, Embeddedness/Integration, Ancient Futures, and (Re)creative Dissonance. A discussion of each prompt explores its meaning and educational relevance.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Such means include many kinds of artistic practice, implying that education oriented to the wild and the sacred must include art as fundamental; exploring this in depth would require another project, however.

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  1. Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada

    Mark Fettes & Sean Blenkinsop

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Fettes, M., Blenkinsop, S. (2023). Designing Education for Eco-Social-Cultural Change. In: Education as the Practice of Eco-Social-Cultural Change. Palgrave Studies in Educational Futures. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45834-7_2

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