Young people’s ongoing, necessary confrontation with painful and distressing realities exacerbate... more Young people’s ongoing, necessary confrontation with painful and distressing realities exacerbated by ecological precarity in diverse contexts has profound implications for formal education systems. Additionally, educational policy in many contexts has been slow to respond to the urgency of addressing climate change, nor has most policy robustly conceptualized a vision for climate justice education. Centering the voices of three young climate justice activists (ages 16-20) in Canada through a qualitative study, this paper explores possible educational responses that recognize the embodied consequences of climate injustice and inaction on youth mental health and well-being. Through their encounters with activism in collective, justice-centered movements, these young people articulate how their commitments to creating more life-affirming and equitable realities by challenging current economic and political structures and discourses are integral dimensions of their efforts to be and feel well (hopeful and purposeful) in a context of pronounced uncertainty and distress. Despite these possibilities, youth participants describe the overwhelming and complex emotions they are grappling with as they face dispiriting projections for the future. These growing challenges are an opportunity to reconsider common “apolitical” and individualized approaches to citizenship, climate and environmental education. Findings suggest that supporting youth to act thoughtfully and impactfully in transforming cultural, economic and political structures and systems that reproduce harm can be a way to nurture meaning, purpose and hope. Additionally, youth participants advocate for integrating robust resources and support within formal education institutions to assist in collectively processing the emotional and psychological impacts of climate injustice. At the same time, findings suggest that the participating youth did not yet integrate conceptions of ecological interrelationship or interconnection in their approaches, offering possible avenues for further pedagogical development.
An opinion editorial in MGIEP's Blue Dot magazine on critical and holistic ecological approaches ... more An opinion editorial in MGIEP's Blue Dot magazine on critical and holistic ecological approaches to the climate crisis.
This article shares the experience of implementing a critical inquiry approach to environmental i... more This article shares the experience of implementing a critical inquiry approach to environmental issues in a grade 7 classroom.
Taking action for change: Educating for youth civic engagement and activism, 2019
This resource, edited by Ian Davies, Mark Evans, Márta Fülöp, Dina Kiwan, Andrew Peterson, Jasmin... more This resource, edited by Ian Davies, Mark Evans, Márta Fülöp, Dina Kiwan, Andrew Peterson, Jasmine B. Y. Sim, explores key ideas and issues about the ways in which young people participate in society and what implications that has for education. Additional details can be found at: https://www.york.ac.uk/education/ research/cresj/researchthemes/ citizenship-education/ leverhulmeyouthactivism/
Serhiy Kovalchuk and myself completed the list of supporting resources.
Teaching in the Anthropocene: Education in the Face of Environmental Crisis, 2022
Discussions of climate change and the historical forces that have rendered climate change a multi... more Discussions of climate change and the historical forces that have rendered climate change a multiplier of existing harms are situated within the critical curriculum conversations around the histories and current realities of settler/colonialism, race, and heteropatriarchy. It is these paradigms and ontologies that have contributed to the crisis and therefore, it is important to consider the curricular spaces that allow opportunities to “…move beyond the present Western mode of consciousness and way of being” (Desai, 2012, p. 162). The lack of attention to the whole person when engaging in climate change education creates a dangerous and ill-afforded “double-bind” for educators: teach about the realities of climate change without attention to embodied agency and many leaners are likely experiencing a rise in anxiety (Ojala, 2016); retreat from teaching about climate change and face further deleterious effects created by a lack of understanding or false narratives that lead to inaction or wrong action. This paper explores and highlights meaningful connections and possibilities for educating though an uncolonized, transformational global citizenship stance in service to nurturing active and critical hope in young learners (ages 12-18) in diverse contexts on Turtle Island by centering embodied agency inclusive of emotional affect, political agency and spiritual epistemologies.
IGNITE: A Justice-Forward Approach to Decolonizing Higher Education Through Place, Space and Culture, 2023
The central question engaged in this chapter is: How can the TALLS framework help to call in spir... more The central question engaged in this chapter is: How can the TALLS framework help to call in spirituality and explorations of spirituality and dialogue into educational spaces? Our starting point is the Learning Spirit (Battiste, 2013) as set out by the TALLS framework that we continue to expand and explore through the work of decolonial thinkers including Simpson (2014), Kimmerer (2015) and Anzaldúa (2015). How do we begin to activate the Learning Spirit (Battiste, 2013) so that it can first be acknowledged, find a place of belonging in the classroom and begin talking back to colonial, patriarchal and hegemonic structures and practices? We use the metaphors of puncturing, weaving and braiding as ways to rupture and meaningfully craft and integrate spiritual and decolonial practices into existing structures and systems, leading to their transformation. In thinking about the unlearning section of the circle within the TALLS framework, we consider how we challenge hegemonic ways of knowing while simultaneously honouring other ways of knowing in higher education classrooms within this phase of the cycle. We share our attempts to puncture the fabric of colonial structures while inviting in the spiritual lives of our students, weaving and braiding together new forms of learning, knowing and being. This chapter explores these issues through theory, analysis and a deep reflection on our own praxis and visioning of what is to come in the context of the climate crisis.
Decolonial and Indigenizing Visions of Educational Leadership: Global Perspectives in Charting the Course, 2022
De/uncolonizing educational visions in the context of insistent and persistent ecological violenc... more De/uncolonizing educational visions in the context of insistent and persistent ecological violence is an urgent task, one requiring profound shifts in thinking, being and knowing. Meraki is a Greek word denoting something done or undertaken with all of one’s soul. Metanoia is also a Greek word signifying a deep shift in one’s way of life resulting from a profound change of heart and worldview. Metis is a figure in Greek mythology known for wisdom and deep thought, but the word has also been used to mean a deeper spiritual awareness or consciousness. This paper, written by a Greek educator on Turtle Island explores the imaginaries of ancient Greek ways of knowing with her responsibilities to support decolonizing processes in the place in which she now lives. The author identifies the process of regeneration, of replacing or restoring damaged or missing dimensions of life as a call to which our educational systems must respond. Regeneration is synonymous with rebuilding, restoration, rehabilitation, revival, rebirth, redemption, renewal, recovery, and reconstruction. Her recognition that metanoia (a profound transformative shift) resulting in regeneration done with meraki (soul) and grounded in metis (wisdom and spiritual knowing) forms the basis of her revisioning of schooling and community. In reclaiming hidden structures of Greek wisdom, the author dives below the often incomplete frames of ‘Western’ ways of knowing and discourses to redeem deeper ontological frequencies hidden beneath the surface, joining these in constellation with other de/uncolonizing discourses and movements to redeem a ‘wholeness of being’ that must be regenerated for planetary survival. This chapter traces a vision for leadership that reclaims the depth of Spirit and soul that are the basis upon which we can heal the traumas of the legacies of fragmentation, division and violence and remake/regenerate our educational systems.
The recent troubling trend across the Canadian educational landscape has been a decline in the pr... more The recent troubling trend across the Canadian educational landscape has been a decline in the primacy of geographic understanding in elementary and secondary educational contexts (Moorman & Garbut, 2018) at the same time that climate change has emerged as a pressing, complex reality that must be addressed. While effective climate change education intersects across disciplines, the ability to understand the associated issues with depth and insight necessitates knowledge and competencies that can best be nurtured through the discipline whose Greek etymology literally translates into “earth writing”. The dramatic ecological changes currently experienced in regionally diverse local contexts are evidence of a new story being “written” that requires the ‘lenses’ of geographic disciplinary thinking— interrelationships, spatial significance, patterns and trends, geographic perspective, and ethical considerations— to help understand the story and, more importantly, to transform it from its more dire possible outcomes into a regenerative present and future.
Environment, Justice and the Politics of Emotion, 2023
The growing mental health crisis, amidst persistent ecological, social and political violence dem... more The growing mental health crisis, amidst persistent ecological, social and political violence demands intensive engagement from both educational and clinical communities. Mounting evidence reveals the profoundly harmful and inequitable impacts of climate distress in diverse communities (Ojala, Cunsolo, Ogunbode & Middleton, 2021). Many are increasingly concerned about the extent to which younger people are affected both by the violence and societal failure to protect younger generations (Hickman et al., 2021; Sanson & Bellemo, 2021). Currently, institutions emphasize scientific/technocratic solutions at the expense of deeper engagements with both structural root causes and affective, embodied experiences of harm, complicity and transformation. (Verlie, 2022). In confronting the climate crisis, we recognize that feelings arise out of material, social, political and emotional contexts that are cultural expressions as much as individual experiences. We also recognize that actions in response to the climate crisis are also culturally and politically situated. Similarly, climate anxiety, while increasingly widespread, is profoundly contextual as is the ability to act in the face of a changing climate (Ogunbode, Doran et al, 2022). Through facilitated conversation, we will explore the responsibilities and tensions of nurturing transformative agency as clinicians and/or educators. We will also ask: What kinds of new social norms and imaginaries do our actions invoke? What do they foreclose? What actions are necessary in these times? Given the threat of eco-fascism, what are our professional and personal responsibilities to articulate, cultivate, organize and enact responses based in love, connection, relationship and an informed, collective solidarity? Presented in collaboration with Rebecca Weston, Co-President of the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America.
This paper examines critical inquiry as a pedagogy for teaching curricular topics seen by some as... more This paper examines critical inquiry as a pedagogy for teaching curricular topics seen by some as controversial, necessary within a post-truth era, and explores climate change as a specific case study where critical inquiry can be used. Select findings from a mixed-methods survey on climate change education completed by 1200 teachers are presented and juxtaposed with literature that suggests teachers’ reluctance to engage in teaching climate change, since many view it as controversial, is based on limited interdisciplinary knowledge, inadequate skills in facilitating sensitive issues, and fears of negative relational outcomes with colleagues, parents and students. We argue for critical inquiry as a pedagogical approach to teaching climate change specifically, and to addressing controversy more broadly.
Informed, engaging and intentional teaching and learning experiences centered on climate change a... more Informed, engaging and intentional teaching and learning experiences centered on climate change are critically urgent. Yet climate change education has largely been relegated to a topic in science or geography classrooms, or an extra-curricular program. This interactive talk provides insights into the context for where things stand in climate change education locally, national and globally and advocates for transformative ways of harnessing educational spaces to address the climate crisis.
Young people’s ongoing, necessary confrontation with painful and distressing realities exacerbate... more Young people’s ongoing, necessary confrontation with painful and distressing realities exacerbated by ecological precarity in diverse contexts has profound implications for formal education systems. Additionally, educational policy in many contexts has been slow to respond to the urgency of addressing climate change, nor has most policy robustly conceptualized a vision for climate justice education. Centering the voices of three young climate justice activists (ages 16-20) in Canada through a qualitative study, this paper explores possible educational responses that recognize the embodied consequences of climate injustice and inaction on youth mental health and well-being. Through their encounters with activism in collective, justice-centered movements, these young people articulate how their commitments to creating more life-affirming and equitable realities by challenging current economic and political structures and discourses are integral dimensions of their efforts to be and feel well (hopeful and purposeful) in a context of pronounced uncertainty and distress. Despite these possibilities, youth participants describe the overwhelming and complex emotions they are grappling with as they face dispiriting projections for the future. These growing challenges are an opportunity to reconsider common “apolitical” and individualized approaches to citizenship, climate and environmental education. Findings suggest that supporting youth to act thoughtfully and impactfully in transforming cultural, economic and political structures and systems that reproduce harm can be a way to nurture meaning, purpose and hope. Additionally, youth participants advocate for integrating robust resources and support within formal education institutions to assist in collectively processing the emotional and psychological impacts of climate injustice. At the same time, findings suggest that the participating youth did not yet integrate conceptions of ecological interrelationship or interconnection in their approaches, offering possible avenues for further pedagogical development.
An opinion editorial in MGIEP's Blue Dot magazine on critical and holistic ecological approaches ... more An opinion editorial in MGIEP's Blue Dot magazine on critical and holistic ecological approaches to the climate crisis.
This article shares the experience of implementing a critical inquiry approach to environmental i... more This article shares the experience of implementing a critical inquiry approach to environmental issues in a grade 7 classroom.
Taking action for change: Educating for youth civic engagement and activism, 2019
This resource, edited by Ian Davies, Mark Evans, Márta Fülöp, Dina Kiwan, Andrew Peterson, Jasmin... more This resource, edited by Ian Davies, Mark Evans, Márta Fülöp, Dina Kiwan, Andrew Peterson, Jasmine B. Y. Sim, explores key ideas and issues about the ways in which young people participate in society and what implications that has for education. Additional details can be found at: https://www.york.ac.uk/education/ research/cresj/researchthemes/ citizenship-education/ leverhulmeyouthactivism/
Serhiy Kovalchuk and myself completed the list of supporting resources.
Teaching in the Anthropocene: Education in the Face of Environmental Crisis, 2022
Discussions of climate change and the historical forces that have rendered climate change a multi... more Discussions of climate change and the historical forces that have rendered climate change a multiplier of existing harms are situated within the critical curriculum conversations around the histories and current realities of settler/colonialism, race, and heteropatriarchy. It is these paradigms and ontologies that have contributed to the crisis and therefore, it is important to consider the curricular spaces that allow opportunities to “…move beyond the present Western mode of consciousness and way of being” (Desai, 2012, p. 162). The lack of attention to the whole person when engaging in climate change education creates a dangerous and ill-afforded “double-bind” for educators: teach about the realities of climate change without attention to embodied agency and many leaners are likely experiencing a rise in anxiety (Ojala, 2016); retreat from teaching about climate change and face further deleterious effects created by a lack of understanding or false narratives that lead to inaction or wrong action. This paper explores and highlights meaningful connections and possibilities for educating though an uncolonized, transformational global citizenship stance in service to nurturing active and critical hope in young learners (ages 12-18) in diverse contexts on Turtle Island by centering embodied agency inclusive of emotional affect, political agency and spiritual epistemologies.
IGNITE: A Justice-Forward Approach to Decolonizing Higher Education Through Place, Space and Culture, 2023
The central question engaged in this chapter is: How can the TALLS framework help to call in spir... more The central question engaged in this chapter is: How can the TALLS framework help to call in spirituality and explorations of spirituality and dialogue into educational spaces? Our starting point is the Learning Spirit (Battiste, 2013) as set out by the TALLS framework that we continue to expand and explore through the work of decolonial thinkers including Simpson (2014), Kimmerer (2015) and Anzaldúa (2015). How do we begin to activate the Learning Spirit (Battiste, 2013) so that it can first be acknowledged, find a place of belonging in the classroom and begin talking back to colonial, patriarchal and hegemonic structures and practices? We use the metaphors of puncturing, weaving and braiding as ways to rupture and meaningfully craft and integrate spiritual and decolonial practices into existing structures and systems, leading to their transformation. In thinking about the unlearning section of the circle within the TALLS framework, we consider how we challenge hegemonic ways of knowing while simultaneously honouring other ways of knowing in higher education classrooms within this phase of the cycle. We share our attempts to puncture the fabric of colonial structures while inviting in the spiritual lives of our students, weaving and braiding together new forms of learning, knowing and being. This chapter explores these issues through theory, analysis and a deep reflection on our own praxis and visioning of what is to come in the context of the climate crisis.
Decolonial and Indigenizing Visions of Educational Leadership: Global Perspectives in Charting the Course, 2022
De/uncolonizing educational visions in the context of insistent and persistent ecological violenc... more De/uncolonizing educational visions in the context of insistent and persistent ecological violence is an urgent task, one requiring profound shifts in thinking, being and knowing. Meraki is a Greek word denoting something done or undertaken with all of one’s soul. Metanoia is also a Greek word signifying a deep shift in one’s way of life resulting from a profound change of heart and worldview. Metis is a figure in Greek mythology known for wisdom and deep thought, but the word has also been used to mean a deeper spiritual awareness or consciousness. This paper, written by a Greek educator on Turtle Island explores the imaginaries of ancient Greek ways of knowing with her responsibilities to support decolonizing processes in the place in which she now lives. The author identifies the process of regeneration, of replacing or restoring damaged or missing dimensions of life as a call to which our educational systems must respond. Regeneration is synonymous with rebuilding, restoration, rehabilitation, revival, rebirth, redemption, renewal, recovery, and reconstruction. Her recognition that metanoia (a profound transformative shift) resulting in regeneration done with meraki (soul) and grounded in metis (wisdom and spiritual knowing) forms the basis of her revisioning of schooling and community. In reclaiming hidden structures of Greek wisdom, the author dives below the often incomplete frames of ‘Western’ ways of knowing and discourses to redeem deeper ontological frequencies hidden beneath the surface, joining these in constellation with other de/uncolonizing discourses and movements to redeem a ‘wholeness of being’ that must be regenerated for planetary survival. This chapter traces a vision for leadership that reclaims the depth of Spirit and soul that are the basis upon which we can heal the traumas of the legacies of fragmentation, division and violence and remake/regenerate our educational systems.
The recent troubling trend across the Canadian educational landscape has been a decline in the pr... more The recent troubling trend across the Canadian educational landscape has been a decline in the primacy of geographic understanding in elementary and secondary educational contexts (Moorman & Garbut, 2018) at the same time that climate change has emerged as a pressing, complex reality that must be addressed. While effective climate change education intersects across disciplines, the ability to understand the associated issues with depth and insight necessitates knowledge and competencies that can best be nurtured through the discipline whose Greek etymology literally translates into “earth writing”. The dramatic ecological changes currently experienced in regionally diverse local contexts are evidence of a new story being “written” that requires the ‘lenses’ of geographic disciplinary thinking— interrelationships, spatial significance, patterns and trends, geographic perspective, and ethical considerations— to help understand the story and, more importantly, to transform it from its more dire possible outcomes into a regenerative present and future.
Environment, Justice and the Politics of Emotion, 2023
The growing mental health crisis, amidst persistent ecological, social and political violence dem... more The growing mental health crisis, amidst persistent ecological, social and political violence demands intensive engagement from both educational and clinical communities. Mounting evidence reveals the profoundly harmful and inequitable impacts of climate distress in diverse communities (Ojala, Cunsolo, Ogunbode & Middleton, 2021). Many are increasingly concerned about the extent to which younger people are affected both by the violence and societal failure to protect younger generations (Hickman et al., 2021; Sanson & Bellemo, 2021). Currently, institutions emphasize scientific/technocratic solutions at the expense of deeper engagements with both structural root causes and affective, embodied experiences of harm, complicity and transformation. (Verlie, 2022). In confronting the climate crisis, we recognize that feelings arise out of material, social, political and emotional contexts that are cultural expressions as much as individual experiences. We also recognize that actions in response to the climate crisis are also culturally and politically situated. Similarly, climate anxiety, while increasingly widespread, is profoundly contextual as is the ability to act in the face of a changing climate (Ogunbode, Doran et al, 2022). Through facilitated conversation, we will explore the responsibilities and tensions of nurturing transformative agency as clinicians and/or educators. We will also ask: What kinds of new social norms and imaginaries do our actions invoke? What do they foreclose? What actions are necessary in these times? Given the threat of eco-fascism, what are our professional and personal responsibilities to articulate, cultivate, organize and enact responses based in love, connection, relationship and an informed, collective solidarity? Presented in collaboration with Rebecca Weston, Co-President of the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America.
This paper examines critical inquiry as a pedagogy for teaching curricular topics seen by some as... more This paper examines critical inquiry as a pedagogy for teaching curricular topics seen by some as controversial, necessary within a post-truth era, and explores climate change as a specific case study where critical inquiry can be used. Select findings from a mixed-methods survey on climate change education completed by 1200 teachers are presented and juxtaposed with literature that suggests teachers’ reluctance to engage in teaching climate change, since many view it as controversial, is based on limited interdisciplinary knowledge, inadequate skills in facilitating sensitive issues, and fears of negative relational outcomes with colleagues, parents and students. We argue for critical inquiry as a pedagogical approach to teaching climate change specifically, and to addressing controversy more broadly.
Informed, engaging and intentional teaching and learning experiences centered on climate change a... more Informed, engaging and intentional teaching and learning experiences centered on climate change are critically urgent. Yet climate change education has largely been relegated to a topic in science or geography classrooms, or an extra-curricular program. This interactive talk provides insights into the context for where things stand in climate change education locally, national and globally and advocates for transformative ways of harnessing educational spaces to address the climate crisis.
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Serhiy Kovalchuk and myself completed the list of supporting resources.
Serhiy Kovalchuk and myself completed the list of supporting resources.