Mid Sweden University

Along the environmental crisis and the need to respond, also educationally, new pedagogical thinking has evolved in recent years, as alternatives to mainstream Western educational thinking and practice, thematizing how education ought to be reimagined to change our relationship to the world (Cars & West, 2015; Jickling and Sterling, 2017, Paulsen, jagodzinski and Hawke, 2022). This paper introduces one of these alternatives, the northern-American educational concept and movement Wild Pedagogies (WP) (Jickling et. al., 2018), and asks what it has to offer in a Nordic Bildung context. It does this by putting WP in dialogue with the Bildungtradition (Paulsen, 2022). The result of this encounter is the argument that WP is compatible with reflective-critical theories of Bildung (but not vulgar Bildung theories) and holds potentials to bring out clues about how to ecologize Bildung-thinking and practice (Wilhelmsson and Blenkinsop, 2023). This by emphasizing how the more-than-human living world can function as a co-teacher that can help to explore and create ways of beingin- the-world that transcend existing modernist framing – and its ecologically problematic way of thinking (Bhaskar et. al., 2012). 

It is suggested that WP put forth at least two lines of thought: (1) it envisages that we need to break free from a modernist relationship with the world, that holds us back because it does violence to many and restrict the ways we think, act and live (Blenkinsop et. al., 2022). According to WP, modernist education brings out too few possibilities for relational engagement with the natural world (Ibid.). Based on the premise that education is a necessary partner in changing our relationship with the world, and such a change is needed as a response to the ecological crisis, WP argues (2).

What WP brings to the play, is that it invites education to take place within the living world where it is most alive (not in classrooms), learning with and from the living world (and not only from human culture), with the living world as the highest context (and not only humanity), envisioning a radical ‘more-than-human’ democracy. We conclude (with some hesitations on the concept of nature) that WP is in accordance with postmodern Bildung thinking, that it radically breaks with anthropocentric norms and envisage ways to revitalise Bildung-oriented education in an Anthropocene age of ecological disaster. The authors of the paper organise an WP gathering in Enaforsholm in Sweden, August 2023, where many proponents of the WP movement come, but also others; and here it is the authors intention to study how WP situates in a living world, in a Scandinavian location. Findings from this will tab into the further reflections of the paper. 

References

Bhaskar, R., Høyer, K.G., & Næss, P. (2012). Ecophilosophy in a World of Crisis. Routledge.

Blenkinsop, S., Morse, M., & Jickling, B. (2022). Wild Pedagogies: Opportunities andChallenges for Practice. In Paulsen, M., Jagodzinski, J., & Hawke, S. M. (Eds.). Pedagogy in the Anthropocene: Re-wilding education for a new earth. Springer Nature, 33-51.

Cars, M. & West, E E. (2015). Education for sustainable society: attainments and good practices in Sweden druing the United Nations Decade for Edutaion for Sustainable Delvelopment. Environ Dev Sustain, 17, 1-21.

Jickling, B., & Sterling, S. (Eds.). (2017). Post-sustainability and environmental education: Remaking education for the future. Springer.

Jickling, B., Blenkinsop, S., Timmerman, N. & De Danann Sitka-Sage, M. (2018). Wild Pedagogies: Touchstones for Re-Negotiating Education and the Environment in the Anthropocene. Springer International Publishing AG.

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

Paulsen, M. (2022). Bildung and technology: Historical and systematic relationships.In Bildung in the Digital Age (pp. 7-28). Routledge.

Paulsen, M., Jagodzinski, J., & Hawke, S. M. (Eds.). (2022). Pedagogy in the Anthropocene: Re-wilding education for a new earth. Springer Nature.

Wilhelmsson, L. & Blenkinsop, S. (submitted). Ecologizing Bildung: Educating for the ecosocial-cultural challenges of the twenty-first century: Canadian Journal of Environmental Education. Volume 23.