Towards an ecological pluriversity

School: Moray House School of Education and Sport

Team: Dr Courtney Rose Stafford-Walter, Dr Shari Sabeti, Dr Ramsey Affifi 

Abstract

This project explores the educational potential of dialogue with Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) holders, to both decolonise higher education curricula, and address the accelerating ecological crisis. TEK offers beliefs, knowledges and practices associated with understanding and restoring threatened ecologies (Robinson et al 2021). As TEK is increasingly threatened, the intersection of social injustice and the destruction of the planetary life support system becomes evident (de Sousa Santos 2015). Education would seem a part of the solution, but instead currently exacerbates the problem. As formal education spreads across the world, abstract information and ‘lifelong learning’ skills deemed transferable in the global workplace replace the deep, multigenerational and accumulated knowledge practices attuned and responsive to local places (Orr 2000). 

Formal education is not going away, so it must be transformed. We will work with an Indigenous community that has produced a formal curriculum integrating TEK, now taught across Southern Guyana. Their Environmental Education Curriculum (EEC) was developed by an Indigenous conservationist, who co-created the provision in conversation with community. 

Developing EEC as a case study and inspiration, we will co-create the curriculum of MHSES’ new course, Education for the Environment and Sustainability (EfES) with MSc students and Indigenous peoples. We will document this process and develop resources for future use in this course, and for others seeking to explore the tensions of dialogue between TEK and formal education. By embedding sustainability and foregrounding Indigenous voices in the co-constructed curriculum, the project is in line with Curriculum Transformation and UofE strategy 2030.