ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we engage in a dialogue about the generative resonances and challenging tensions between theory and practice that have emerged in our collaborative work engaging climate change pedagogies in a kindergarten classroom. We focus in particular on an ongoing inquiry that aims to develop water pedagogies that are situated within children’s asymmetric inheritances of environmentally damaged lifeworlds in Central Texas. We organize our conversation around key ethical, ontological, and epistemological orientations in which our research-practice collaboration is premised. In this chapter, we focus on two of these orientations: namely radical relationality with the more-than-human world and refiguring Indigenous presences. We also discuss our inter-disciplinary approach, which has brought together perspectives from Indigenous relational orientations and from Western science and arts-based pedagogical approaches. We situate these discussions within the necessity of a shift away from human-centered priorities in climate change education.
