Childing: An ecopedagogy of refusal

Abstract

This paper dwells upon what was agitated in a research methods workshop that invited postgraduate researchers to take seriously materiality, movement, bodies and affect – as a starting place to explore how ecopedagogies might become both more capacious and creative. We explored ways to contemplate how generating knowledge – about education and worldly relationalities to environments – might be pursued in less familiar ways. The workshop began with a brief introduction to the praxis of ‘childing’ that encouraged a willingness to embrace uncertainty, speculation and curiosity. This mode of pedagogy actively displaces more recognisable conventions that are typically in search of representation, knowability, linearity and solutions. The workshop introduced participants to a range of feminist theories and philosophies but Haraway’s invitation to: ‘serious play’, go visiting, and to engage in a praxis that might reorient both thought and practice became central. This paper dwells upon and among what was agitated through the workshop and how embracing this mode of enquiry resonates across disciplinary boundaries and has lasting affects – that can shift what we might understand by ‘environment’, ‘sustainability’, ‘child’ and ‘pedagogy’.