Ecopedagogy

Eco-Complexity Discourses is a sub-category of Coherence Discourses. It is an umbrella term that reaches across perspectives on learning that refuse separations of human from nature, material from transcendent, and part from whole. Across Eco-Complexity Discourses, learning is understood as synonymous with evolution.

Embeddedness Discourses comprise perspectives on learning that refuse separations of self from other and individual from collective. Perceived boundaries among persons and peoples are understood as heuristic conveniences, as collective phenomena are recognized to unfold from and to be enfolded in individual phenomena. Phrased differently, collective forms are understood as learning bodies.

Activist Discourses are focused on interrogating the entrenched narratives and structures that infuse, lend support to, and help to perpetuate social norms and cultural institutions. Oriented by the conviction that there are no “neutral” acts or ideas, and critically attentive to the collective roots of personal convictions, Activist Discourses aim for deep understandings in order to inform and orient justice-oriented thinking and acting.

Within Cognitive Biology, learning and thought are regarded as biological functions. Concisely, a living system’s cognition comprises every act of sensing environmental cues and responding accordingly. In other words, bacteria, plants, animals, and all other living organisms are continuously cognizing. Thus, learning and cognition are not higher-order mental phenomena; rather, they exist on a continuum of physical-chemical-electrical processes.

Proponents of Critical Pedagogy see formal education as inherently political – meaning that teaching and learning cannot be dissociated from issues of social justice. The overarching aim of Critical Pedagogy is the development of a “critical consciousness” – that is, awareness of the often-invisible connections between oppressions and the social, political, and cultural conditions that surround those oppressions.