Wild Pedagogies

Our current times require responses that are imaginative, creative, courageous, and radical. Wild pedagogies is one such response, prompted by international gatherings of like-minded educators who are seeking to explore and expand this idea as a catalyst for educational change.

In the initial phase, a small group of wild educators and scholars, affectionately called the Crex Crex Collective, sought to rethink the foundations of education while canoeing together in the Yukon (2014), rafting in Tasmania (2016) and sailing in Scotland (2017). In 2018, they published a provisional gathering of ideas in the book Wild pedagogies: Touchstones for re-negotiating education and the environment in the Anthropocene. These heuristic-spirited gatherings have since continued. CIRCE educators were involved in this effort from the outset, and we invite other teachers and educational researchers to learn from and take up this work in turn.

The work of wild pedagogies has been to reclaim language and reconceptualize ideas about the “wild” and wildness; it has been driven by the frustratingly difficult task of enacting meaningful change, particularly in formal school settings. We believe that education is a fundamental partner in efforts to change the relationship of modern humans with the world. The ideas and practices of wild pedagogies are offered to all those who share our concern about how issues of control shape possibilities for change—explicit control, as well as more implicit controls embedded in contemporary language, metaphor, and cultural practices.

The wild is where the imagination is most at home.

Touchstones for wild pedagogues

Education is fundamentally about practice. In linking theory and practice, the touchstones described in this section of the website aim to provide reminders, challenges, and a place to return to for educators interested in experimenting with wild pedagogies. They offer questions that educators can ask every day to remind themselves of what they are trying to do in their daily activities. For some, the touchstones will provide recognition of what they already do. For others they might inspire a wilding of their practice—providing opportunities to attend to the wildness of places, themselves, and their students in a deeper way.

Importantly, these touchstones are not static. They are provocations, to be read, responded to, and revised as part of an evolving, vital, situated, and lived practice. What we offer here is our summary of those touchstones as we currently see them and one sample for each touchstone of the kinds of question posed for practitioners to consider. They rest on a substantial corpus of previous work, yet as this summary shows they continue to grow and change. (Search for “wild pedagogies” in the CIRCE database to find some offerings from this growing literature.)

Touchstone #1: Nature as Co-Teacher

Education is richer for all involved if the more-than-human-world is actively engaged with, listened to, and taken seriously. At one level this touchstone seems easy to understand and to put into practice.

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Touchstone #2: Complexity, the Unknown, and Spontaneity

Education is richer for all involved if there is room for surprise. If no single teacher or learner can know all about anything, then there is the possibility for unexpected connections to be made, unplanned events to occur, and simple explanations to become more complex.

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Touchstone #3: Locating the Wild

The wild can be present everywhere but difficult to find. It can be made hard to see by cultural tools, by colonial attitudes, and, in urban spaces, by concrete itself.

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Touchstone #4: Time and Practice

Building relationships within the more-than-human world takes time and discipline. For many, this will also require slowing down, changing habits, and listening to our own bodies and those others around us, in different ways.

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Touchstone #5: Socio-Cultural Change

The way many humans currently exist on the planet needs to change. This change is cultural and education is a necessarily political player in this process. However, much of current educational practice is anti-environmental. It will not be enough to simply tinker with its edges.

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Touchstone #6: Building Alliances and the Human Community

We must listen and learn from each other while creating equitable and flourishing communities. Diverse platforms bring more perspectives to our conversations and can lend support to each other.

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Touchstone #7: The Imagination—Limits and Possibilities

Change can only happen when we can imagine alternatives, while also seeing ourselves as capable of acting in new ways. Yet, imagination is not unfettered. The edges of imagination are drawn by complex combinations of culture, experiences, histories, and our own creative practices.

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Bibliography

Book: Jickling, B., S. Blenkinsop, N. Timmerman, & M. Sitka-Sage. 2018. Wild Pedagogies: Touchstones for Re-negotiating Education and the Environment in the Anthropocene.  Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave-MacMillan.

Special Issue Journals: Jensen, A., M. Heggen, B. Jickling, & S. Blenkinsop. Canadian Journal f Environmental Education. Special Issue: Wild Pedagogies for Change. Volume 25, 2022.

5. Blenkinsop, S., B. Jickling, & M. Morse. Policy Futures in Education.  Special Issue: Wilding Educational Policy – Hope for the Future. Volume 19, Issue 3, April 2021.

Articles and Chapters (partial list):

Blenkinsop, S., M. Morse, & B. Jickling. 2022.  Wild Pedagogies: Opportunities and Challenges for Practice. In M. Paulsen, J. Jagodzinski, & S. Hawke. Pedagogy in the Anthropocene. Pp. 33-51. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Blenkinsop, S., Beavington, L., Katz, E., Heggen, M., & C. Beeman (2022). The Paradox of Wild Pedagogies: Loss and Hope Next to a Norwegian Glacier. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education. 25 (1), 37-54.

Jorgensen-Vitterso, K., Blenkinop, S., Heggen, M., & H. Neegaard (2022). Friluftsliv and Wild Pedagogies: Building pedagogies for early childhood education in a time of environmental uncertainty. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education. 25 (1), 135-154.

Jensen, A., Heggen, M., Jickling, B., & S. Blenkinsop (2022). Wild Pedagogies for Change. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education. 25 (1), 5-12.

Morse, M., S. Blenkinsop, & B. Jickling (2021). Wilding Educational Policy: Hope for the future. Policy Futures in Education, 19(3), 262-268.

Ford, D. & S. Blenkinsop (2021). Letters from a dying college: How the climate crisis demands a wilder pedagogy and wilder policies. Policy Futures in Education, 19(3), 387-399.

Morse, M., Jickling, J., Blenkinsop, S. and Morse, P. 2021. Wild pedagogies. In, Outdoor Environmental Education in Higher Education: International Perspectives. G. Thomas, J. Dyment, & H. Prince (Eds.). Pp. 111-121. Chaim,Springer

Blenkinsop, S. 2021. Nature as Co-Teacher, Nature as Colonized, and Teacher as Activist: Two schools in British Columbia, Canada. In, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse, Democratic, and Sustainable Communities. R. Martusewicz, J. Edmundson, & J. Lupinacci (Eds.). Pp. 266-267. New York, Routledge.

Jickling, B., & S. Blenkinsop (2020).  Wilding Teacher Education: Responding to the Cries of Nature. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 23(1), 121-138.

Jickling, B., & S. Blenkinsop. 2020. Wild Pedagogies and the promise of a different education: Challenges to change.  In, Social Ecology and Education: Transforming Worldviews and Practices. D. Wright & S. Hill (Eds.). Pp. 55-64.  London, Routledge.

Blenkinsop, S., B. Jickling, M. Morse, & A. Jensen. 2020.  Wild Pedagogies: Six Touchstones for Childhoodnature Theory and Practice. In: Cutter-Mackenzie A., Malone K., Barratt Hacking E. (eds) Research Handbook on Childhoodnature. Springer International Handbooks of Education. (Pp. 451-468) Springer, Cham 

Blenkinsop, S., & D. Ford. (2018).  The Relational, the Critical, and the Existential: three strands and accompanying challenges for extending the theory of environmental education.  Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education 21 (3), 319-330.

Ford, D. & S. Blenkinsop. (2018).  Learning to Speak Franklin: Nature as co-teacher. Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education 21 (3), 307-318. 

Jickling, B., S. Blenkinsop, M. Morse, & A. Jensen. (2018).  Wild Pedagogies: Six initial touchstones for early childhood environmental educators. Australian Journal of Environmental Education 34(2), 159-171

Blenkinsop, S., R. Affifi, L. Piersol, & M. Derby. (2016).  Shut-up and Listen: Implications and Possibilities of Albert Memmi’s Characteristics of Colonization Upon the “Natural World”.  Studies in Philosophy and Education, May 2017, 36 (3), 348-365.

Blenkinsop, S. & C. Beeman 2010. The world as co-teacher: Learning to work with a peerless colleague.  Trumpeter, 26 (3), 26-39.