Spinoza,Deep Ecology and Education Informed by a (Post)human Sensibility

Abstract

This article explores the influence of Spinozism on the deep ecology movement (DEM) and on new materialism. It questions the stance of supporters of the DEM because their ecosophies unwittingly anthropomorphise the more-than-human-world. It suggests that instead of humanising the ‘natural’ world, morality should be naturalised, that is, that the object of human expression of ethics should be the more-than-human world. Moreover, the article discusses Deleuze’s Spinozism that informs new materialism and argues that stripping the human of its ontological privilege does not deprive the human animal from its ethico-normative distinctiveness. Implications of the discussion for an education aimed at cultivating (post)human sensibilities are explored.     

Experiences of fatherhood among men who were sexually abused in childhood

BackgroundFatherhood is a complex psychological process, which is shaped at a profound level by reflections on past childhood memories and parenting experienced in childhood. Fathers who were sexually abused in childhood may experience particular challenges for their fathering identity and parenting role.ObjectiveThis qualitative study explored the experiences of fatherhood for men who were sexually abused in childhood and how they perceived themselves in the fathering role.Participants and SettingEleven participants were recruited to the study from three therapy services for adult survivors of abuse in the Republic of Ireland.MethodsData collection comprised face to face semi-structured interviews, which were audio recorded and subsequently transcribed verbatim. Data analysis drew on Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis and two superordinate themes with associated subthemes were identified.ResultsParticipants’ experience of childhood sexual abuse provided a lens through which they experienced fatherhood and themselves in a fathering role. Fatherhood influenced participants to confront unintegrated aspects of the trauma they experienced in childhood, which manifested in hypervigilance with regard to their children’s safety and doubt that they were good enough fathers. However, fatherhood also offered an opportunity to heal. This occurred through striving to provide a better father-child relationship and through connection in restorative relationships, including the therapeutic relationship.ConclusionFatherhood was seen as a potential resource for positive change and can influence long held internal working models of the self and others.     

Toward a Wonderland of comparative education

ABSTRACT

The publication of Noah & Eckstein's Toward a Science of Comparative Education (1969, Macmillan, NY) marked the beginning of an increasingly narrow research trajectory in comparative education, claiming a universality for Western knowledge and privileging scientific rationality in research. Juxtaposing the ‘science’ to Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’, such comparative education relegated more-than-human worlds and spiritual domains of learning – and being – to our collective pasts, personal childhood memories, or imaginations. How can we reorient and attune ourselves toward a Wonder(land), rather than a Science of comparative education exclusively, opening spaces for multiple ways of making sense of the world, and multiple ways of being? How can we reanimate our capacity toengage with a more-than-human world? Based on the analysis of children’s literature and textbooks published during various historical periods in Latvia, this article follows the white rabbit to reexamine taken-for-granted dichotomies – nature and culture, time and space, self and other – by bringing the ‘pagan’ worldviews or nature-centred spiritualities more clearly into focus, while reimagining education and childhood beyond the Western horizon.     

Fabricated childhoods: uncanny encounters with the more-than-human

ABSTRACT

This article is based on uncanny encounters with Julia deVille's exhibit, Phantasmagoria. Inspired by Deleuzian-informed research practices, the author experiments with provoking practices to defy dominant developmental notions of childhood. This article reworks a humanist ontology by bringing together the discursive, the material, the human, and the more-than-human through the interweaving of provocations and encounters. Enacting an experimental and performative methodology, the reader's movement through the article mimics the journey through an exhibition and the storm of thought and feeling that art can provoke. These provocations set into motion meanings about childhood that sit outside of developmentalism and are rarely entertained in the field of early childhood education.     

Selfies,relfies and phallic tagging: posthuman part-icipations in teen digital sexuality assemblages

Abstract

Inspired by posthuman feminist theory, this paper explores young people’s entanglement with the bio-technological landscape of image creation and exchange in young networked peer cultures. We suggest that we are seeing new formations of sexual objectification when the more-than-human is foregrounded and the blurry ontological divide between human (flesh) and machine (digital) are enlivened through queer and feminist Materialist analyses. Drawing upon multimodal qualitative data generated with teen boys and girls living in urban inner London and semi-rural Wales (UK) we map how the digital affordances of Facebook ‘tagging’ can operate as a form of coercive ‘phallic touch’ in ways that shore up and transgress normative territories of dis/embodied gender, sexuality and age. We conclude by arguing that we need creative approaches that can open up spaces for a posthuman accounting of the material intra-actions through which phallic power relations part-icipate in predictable and unpredictable ways.     

Rebuilding the Family–Professional Partnership Through Facilitated Individualized Education Program Meetings: A Conflict Prevention and Resolution Practice

ABSTRACT

Decades of research identify the need to improve the individualized education program (IEP) meeting process. The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of parents, advocates, educators, and facilitators who have utilized an emerging alternative IEP procedure known as a facilitated IEP (FIEP) meeting. This new process is used as an alternative dispute resolution practice in special education. FIEP meetings use a collaborative approach to encourage family and professionals to develop a meaningful educational program designed to best address student needs. Using qualitative interview methodology, 32 participants described their experiences with IEP and FIEP meetings. Data analysis identified the FIEP as a promising collaborative practice that can be used to restructure IEP meetings with the intent to prevent and resolve conflict through encouraging active parent participation through consensus building and maintaining focus on the student. Implications for practice and future research are presented and discussed.     

Learning from wildlife-inspired awe

Abstract

This study sought to explore the implications for individuals who experienced awe while in the presence of wildlife. A conceptual framework was adapted that integrated the theory of emotional learning with experiential learning theory. In-depth interviews brought into focus the resultant learning stemming from experiences of wildlife-inspired awe. Learning manifested through pro-environmental and prosocial behaviors in which participants’ career choices were affected as well as their advocacy for pro-environmental behaviors within their community of friends and family. In the process of chronicling participants’ stories, we developed a better understanding of the ways in which people make sense of and ultimately learn from experiences of wildlife-inspired awe.     

Employment for Disability: Human Resources Management in Higher Education for Quality

ABSTRACT

The aim of the research study aims to evaluate human resource management policies and strategies in higher education practices. As this research relies on qualitative nature, self report was conducted in order to gain experiences of research participants about human resources management process. In addition to this, maximum variation was conducted as a sampling method and 15 participants due to their managerial roles were involved to the research. Thematic analysis was conducted in analsying data. The results revealed that disability is an important factor im employment. Human resources management is key solution for the quality in higher education.     

Bearing worlds: learning to live-with climate change

Abstract

This paper explores the emotional experiences of some undergraduate sustainability students in a semester long course on climate change. Specifically, it attends to experiences of anxiety, frustration, overwhelm, guilt, grief and hope. I suggest these experiences are characteristic of a process I term learning to live-with climate change. Learning to live-with climate change involves attuning to the relational composition of the world and thus the self; mourning desirable relationships that are lost as the planet warms; and responding to these conditions in ways that may foster more liveable worlds. Collectively, these processes enrol people in practices of bearing worlds: enduring the pain of the end of the world they have known, and labouring to generate promising alternatives. As such, these processes reconfigure the self and its relations, and attunement to how climate change composes, recomposes and decomposes particular subjectivities is important. The paper argues that affective adaptation is therefore a crucial element of climate change education.     

‘Going researcher’ in the Occupy Poble Sec Cinema Forum: listening to the screenings and tracing a fluid assemblage of learning and care

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses the main aspects of an ethnographic approach to the Occupy Poble Sec Cinema Forum in Barcelona, Spain, and the difficulties of using participant observation, in which vision is still dominant, in this setting. The methodological challenge stemmed from the ‘native’ position of the researcher – a member of the Forum’s organising group – and the sensory nature of the case study, which displaced the pre-eminence of visual inquiry. Listening attentively, rather than watching, became the main method of studying the Forum’s film screenings. The paper then contextualises these screenings as a pedagogical site emerging through a mobile technological apparatus and a relational context shaped by a logic of care. Lastly, the collective learning which this activity gave rise to is analysed as an event whose newness was based on a more-than-human assemblage of elements and also on the experiences and perspectives of those involved.     

Restoring realism: themes and variations

Abstract

In the critical tradition, environmental education discourse interrogates how knowledge constructs experience. But environmental education also emphasises perceiving, understanding and responding to “more-than-human” beings and processes. These two motivations are in tension. One problem is that the epistemological orientation driving the critique of knowledge seems to render access to something more-than-human a priori impossible. But environmental education squanders its promise and its dream if only ever permitted to talk about the natural world with scarequotes. Our field urgently needs to develop a realism robust against epistemologies that construct impassable barriers between humans and the rest of creation. I propose that this starts with radically reconceiving the nature and relationship between similarity and difference, interpreted in this article as the dynamic between theme and variations. Reworking Windelband’s distinction between idiographic and nomothetic research, I suggest that the relationship between theme and variation manifests a fundamental ontological pattern that pervades all things. “Theme and variation” proposes a unifying metaphysical duality in which the more-than-human reveals itself in how things suggest, conform to, modulate, and violate generalisation. Acknowledging and investigating this is part of restoring to other beings and processes their metaphysical, aesthetic, and ethical status, from the skies to the psyche.     

‘I think it’s very much placed on us’: Black queer men laboring to forge community at a predominantly White and (hetero)cisnormative research institution

Abstract

The sociopolitical conditions in which Black queer college men exist in often marginalize them from fully participating in and engaging with the entire campus community. Some researchers suggest that Black queer men (BQM) create counterspaces on-campus to contend with their marginalization as racial, gender, and sexual minorities. This study explores the collegiate experiences of BQM who forged community and strong interpersonal relationships through a peer-support group. Using intersectionality and queer theoretical frameworks, this study interrogates heteronormativity, cisnormativity, and racism that BQM experiences within postsecondary settings.     

Intimate partner violence prevention: using interactive drama for intimate relationship education with young people in Samoa

ABSTRACT

Globally, young people experience physical, sexual and emotion abuse within their intimate relationships. There is a need to explore creative, participatory sexual and relationship education that provides spaces for critical reflection regarding gender norms and approaches within intimate relationships. This study explores an interactive theatre intervention aimed at uncovering and analysing social and cultural influences affecting experiences and approaches within intimate relationships among young people in Samoa. Focus groups were conducted with the audience before and after a public, interactive theatre production. Focus groups aimed to capture shifts in understandings and perceptions as well as overall experiences related to participating in the production. Post production, participants showed a deepened of understandings related to social and cultural factors influencing approaches and actions within intimate relationships. Participants engaged in dialogue around new possible approaches to initiating and maintaining intimate relationships free from violence. Embodied learning opportunities appeared to contribute to feelings of empowerment to try out new responses in everyday life. Study findings highlight a role for drama in intimate relationship education and advocate for the inclusion of intersectionality informed approaches that uncover diversity within a group and acknowledge interactions between individuals’ social position(s) within complex social and cultural contexts.     

Higher Education in a World of Radical Unknowability: An extension of the challenge of Ronald Barnett

The purpose of this paper is to explore the pedagogical implications of Ronald Barnett's claim that teaching in higher education must confront, celebrate and augment a world of radical unknowability. In examining Barnett's body of work, significant reference is made to the insights of Martin Buber and Paulo Freire in relation to Barnett's conceptualisation of potentiality and dialogue. It is argued that a consideration of these ideas in the former philosophers' work extends and clarifies the challenges inherent for tertiary teachers who are dedicated to transform students' understanding of and capacity to change their relationships within the world. The fusion of these theorists elicits a powerful and motivating challenge for those working in higher learning to engage with diverse forms of thought, action and reflection in a rigorous and dialogical process, a process necessarily underpinned by the qualities of risk, strength and courage.     

Pedagogy at the brink of the post-anthropocene

Abstract

The significance of educational research is today predicated on its ability to engage with the ecological, economic, and political challenges of the anthropocene, for where we might take seriously education’s commitment to the future necessitates a sustained encounter with the implications and questions raised in the wake of ‘our’ mutated planetary ecology. To repeat in the image of those educational practices, models and patterns of thinking that have contributed to the contemporary ecological crisis of the planet falls gravely short of apprehending what it might entail to live (and die) in the contemporary moment. Yet further, where education is intimate to teleology, it is today clear that the image of the future posited educationally has fallen out of synch with the ‘outside thought’ of ecocatastrophe, or rather, our being ‘thought’ from the inhuman perspective of a planet destined to go on without us. Educationally, this threat poses a quite remarkable opportunity, for where human thought might be doomed to extinction, the question of how and where we might think assumes urgency. In this vein, this essay explores the wisdom that ‘we’ are and will be thought from perspectives alien to human desire becomes a catalyst for how educational research might be rethought otherwise in a more-than-human world.     

African American student sociocultural adjustment to Thai international higher education

ABSTRACT

This article aims to detail an exploratory study involving African American student experiences in a Thai international programme. This study employed a qualitative case study to explore the adjustment process of African American international students in Thailand. The participants included 15 African American students who were selected through a snowball sampling technique in 2014–2016. The data were collected through semi-structured one on one interviews and analysed through content analysis. The participants reported adjustment difficulties related to their sense of isolation in Thailand, the excessive attention received from their hosts, the appropriate response to said attention, Thai culture and adjustment to academic differences. An analysis of the source of stress, anxiety and conflict among the participants is intended to provide insight into international recruitment practices and facilitating more progressive pre-departure orientation sessions among impending international students.     

Qualitative research and making meaning from adventure: A case study of boys' experiences of outdoor education at school

Abstract

This article details the process and analysis of a case study, conducted over a six week period, involving an outdoor education class in an all-boys Catholic, New Zealand secondary school. The questions explored by the case study were the subjective meanings of adventure experiences in outdoor education and the benefits of qualitative research for assessing the value of outdoor education. The methodological techniques used were observation, involving some researcher participation, and in-depth interviewing. Subsequent data analysis was based upon theories of experiential education and adventure education, and concepts of leisure and human agency. The results of the study suggest that the meanings participants make of their experiences, and the value they derive from them, exceed those that may conventionally be sought and measured as an improvement in self-concept. These findings suggest that learning through adventure is potentially valuable as a holistic and life-long form of activity that enhances the capacity to enjoy and engage in living. This is an important extension beyond its often limited and compartmentalised applications, which are rationalised by specific outcome based objectives. A qualitative methodology was indispensable to an inquiry of this kind and warrants further attention in the process of understanding the meanings of adventure and learning.     

‘Connecting’ the Distance: relational issues for participants in a distance learning programme

Abstract

This article explores the relational expectations of distance learning students and tutors. The authors’ experiences teaching a degree course to mature students (mainly practitioners working for the National Health Service) highlight that the reality of the relationship is often incongruent with the expectations. This incongruence appears to have a negative effect on the learning process. In order to develop a more effective distance learning programme the authors explored the experiences and needs of the students, via a series of focus groups and conversations. What emerged as being significant was the need for students to experience ‘connectedness’ with the tutor. How the students defined this concept and what practical measures the tutors took to ‘connect’ the distance between participants in the learning process are discussed.     

Zoology Students' Experiences of Collaborative Enquiry in Problem-based Learning

This paper presents an action-research case study that focuses on experiences of collaboration in a problem-based learning (PBL) course in Zoology. Our PBL model was developed as a research activity in partnership with a commercial organisation. Consequently, learning was grounded in genuine situations of practice in which a high degree of collaboration was essential for a successful outcome. A particular social context was established in which tutors and students endeavoured to interact as learners to negotiate and construct new understandings and develop life-long learning skills. Students valued the quality of working relationships, the democratic way in which group work was facilitated, and the opportunities for freedom of action and thought. During the course, participants achieved new insights into themselves as learners and this meta-cognitive skill was seen as important for developing the necessary competence in diagnostic self-assessment for PBL. Students had not previously encountered PBL and the transitional nature of their experiences is discussed.