Reconfiguring environmental sustainability education by exploring past/present/future pedagogical openings with preservice teachers

Abstract

This research adopts post-qualitative inquiry to trace the teachings and learnings with an environmental sustainability subject for preservice teachers at an Australian university. Humanist discourses of ‘education for sustainability’ and ‘default environmental practices’ often act to heavily stratify educational spaces, becoming obstacles for alternative perspectives. How might novice teachers connect with the personal (what they learn), the professional (what they teach) ecological literacy and what is ethical (ecological justice), whilst confronting the political and social causations of environmental concerns? In response to these questions, the authors illustrate how they disrupted dominant conceptualisations of teaching environmental sustainability in higher education with pedagogical openings that animate us to think differently. Ecological, relational and critical posthuman philosophies help to orientate co-learnings with students. By blending the familiar, whilst also experimenting with speculative practices and playful learning, we have sought to expand the potential for (re)focusing past/present/future entanglements of human and more-than-human lifeworlds.