Becoming a socio-ecological educator

Abstract

Acknowledging the multi-layered nature of a socio-ecological frame, this chapter highlights explicitly how to develop socio-ecological understandings and practices in educational contexts. We begin by providing a series of vignettes based on practice. These vignettes serve to disturb assumptions that researchers and practitioners bring to physical, health, environmental or outdoor education and, in doing so, open a reflective door for research on practice. The foundational concepts introduced in Chap. 2: (a) lived experience, (b) place, (c) experiential pedagogies and (d) agency and participation, are discussed in relation to these vignettes to continue to develop them more fully, particularly how they might work in concert rather than as separate entities. We have argued that a socio-ecological approach provides a mechanism through which educators and researchers can acknowledge the relationships between the personal, social and environmental layers of social ecologies and these are explored further in the following vignettes.