Education for sustainability: A hopeful soiling
Open Access
- Author:
- Bell, Jonathan Thomas
- Graduate Program:
- Curriculum and Instruction
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- September 03, 2021
- Committee Members:
- Mari Haneda, Major Field Member
Christopher Uhl, Outside Unit & Field Member
Kimberly Powell, Major Field Member
Mark Kissling, Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Kimberly Powell, Professor in Charge/Director of Graduate Studies - Keywords:
- education
education for sustainability
sustainability
soil methodology
bad news
ecojustice education
root metaphor
environmental education
equity
justice
non-representational ethnography
ethnographic methods
school ethnography - Abstract:
- Soil is a heterogenous mixture, an accumulation of material from a particular place generated over time. Its components, be they grains, molecules, or microorganisms, are collaborators, working together to support the emergence of something new. It is with the idea of soil in mind, of complex and productive mixtures, that material about a small charter school in New Jersey, the School for the Renewal of Soil (SRS) was collected and is presented here. The school’s mission, ‘education for a hopeful, sustainable future’ is infused in much of what they do, and was the primary reason it was chosen as the focal site for this study. The heart of this inquiry, the idea explored throughout the words that follow, is the belief that schooling has an important role to play as people look for ways to foster sustainable communities, that is, places that are socially just and ecologically sound. Accompanying this belief, and inseparable from it, is a concern: that schooling, as it is now, is part of the mechanism that transmits and reproduces a set of beliefs, or root metaphors, that underlie both the mistreatment of people and of the e/Earth. This work begins by naming these root metaphors, exploring some of their sources and manifestations, and discussing the role of education in their dissemination and, potentially, their disruption. Soil, a metaphor for complex, messy, placed collaborations is introduced, and is used to frame both how material about SRS was collected and how it is offered here. A collection of stories about the school is then presented – a complex mixture of distinct, but collaborative pieces of writing. These stories are generative: they produce questions and ideas and offer opportunities to explore important connections between sustainability and schooling. Specifically, the school’s curricula, explicit, implicit, and null, are imbued with e/Earth and various aspects, from class content to school practices and administrative structure, challenge a hierarchical, value-laden view of the world. In addition to these findings, questions are raised and ideas are explored related to a school practice that influenced curricular decisions and left students without essential social and historical context during a class fieldtrip. In conclusion, the author explores his own teaching over the past year and wonders why, despite a strong commitment to bringing these ideas into his classroom, it was so difficult to do. In the midst of this wondering, the school’s mission, ‘education for a hopeful, sustainable future,’ emerges again – this school-wide commitment provides a structure that allows teachers to create and deliver earthen curriculum that challenges root metaphors and hierarchies, and connects the students with the land.