ABSTRACT

Ecopedagogies showcases a range of creative approaches that educators across multiple disciplines use to empower students to access and engage with nature, an increasingly important consideration in a post-COVID world in environmental crisis.

The volume includes chapters written by scholars from the environmental arts and humanities, literature, writing studies, rhetoric, music, religious studies, environmental studies and sustainability, sociology and anthropology, physical education, and outdoor education. Each author walks the reader through the details of how their ecopedagogy works, identifies potential challenges while also detailing how to address them, and explains the rewards to students, instructors, and more-than-human nature that they have witnessed through the use of these approaches. The contributions represent diverse types of academic institutions, offering broad applicability to instructors, including community colleges, private liberal arts colleges, and large state, regional, public, and private universities. The book explores a series of key questions about how educators can facilitate meaningful learning experiences with the natural world, inside and outside the classroom, and it looks at how to foster inclusivity, navigate problems with access, and explore intersections with environmental justice.

As a practical guide, the book delivers a well-provisioned toolbox containing exercises, activity guides, and assignments for those teaching environmentally focused college courses.

chapter 1|16 pages

Out of the Classroom and into the Wild

Ecopedagogies in Action

chapter 2|15 pages

Composing with Infrastructures

Parapersonal Pedagogies for Environmental Humanities Classrooms

chapter 3|12 pages

Field Journaling in the Wild

Defamiliarizing Everyday Environments in Environmental Humanities Courses

chapter 4|14 pages

Go Boldly!

Empowering Students to Find their Stories in the Wild

chapter 5|12 pages

The World in a Pond

Multispecies Encounters and A Map for Confluent Classrooms

chapter 6|13 pages

Saunter like Muir

Eco-Challenges and Experience Projects in Introductory Environmental Ethics

chapter 7|10 pages

Decolonizing Outdoor Education

Reading Muir in Alaska and Fly Fishing on Lingít Aaní

chapter 8|13 pages

Nature Revisited

Ecopedagogy in an English–Physical Education Learning Community

chapter 9|12 pages

From Dinosaur to Bears Ears

Engaging Utah's Public Lands via Interdisciplinary Inquiry and Experiential Learning

chapter 12|17 pages

Embodiment and More-than-Human Topographies

A Praxis Tool for Reconfiguring Sense of Place in the Anthropocene in Online and Limited-Residency Higher Education

chapter 13|10 pages

Inhabiting Sounds

Soundscape Ecology in a First-Year Seminar

chapter 14|11 pages

Teaching Animal Texts

American Environmental Literature's Ability to Connect Students to Animals and Wildlife through Observation

chapter 15|13 pages

To the Zoo!

chapter 16|12 pages

Paradox of Hope

Cultivating a Restorative Educational Ethic in a World on Fire