Sustainability education has typically centered the human-focusing on the changes and paradigm shifts needed to ensure a sustainable future for humans. Yet nonhuman beings, specifically plants and animals, are and have always been central to our lives, prompting wonder, curiosity, sensitivity and awe, as well as being important in their own right. In Multispecies Thinking in the Classroom and Beyond: Teaching for a Sustainable Future the contributors discuss the importance of seeking a more inclusive, more just, and ultimately a more hopeful future. They consider how everyday, entanglements with plants and animals can challenge us and expand our worldview. The contributors consider the importance of reciprocal relationships with plants and animals and provide practical strategies, approaches, and examples of how that looks in practice in all types of educational settings.
Patty Born is associate professor of environmental and STEM education at Hamline University.
Table of Contents List of Figures and Tables Introduction: Why Multispecies Thinking? Why Now? And How? by Patty Born Part I: Perspectives Chapter 1: Imagining Spaces of Hum(an)imality by Animalising Childhoods and Socialising Animalhoods by Tracy Charlotte Young Chapter 2: Entangled Kitchens: Eating with the Trouble by Kirsten Valentine Cadieux Chapter 3: Animals and the Gifts They Bring by Ruth Wilson Part II: Practice Chapter 4: Supporting Children's Ecoliteracy and Multispecies Relations through Critical Literacy Practices: Using Environmental Literature in the Elementary Classroom by Maggie Struck and Patty Born Chapter 5: Moments of Environmental Kinship: Learning in, with, about, and for the Whole of the Natural World by Sheila Williams Ridge and Megan Gessler Chapter 6: Pathways to Better Relationships with Wildlife: Clarifying Concepts and Considering Possibilities by Bryan H. Nichols Chapter 7: Taking the Long View: Applying Multispecies Awareness to Educational Observation by Patty Born Part III: Examples from the Field Chapter 8: Magical Moments and Spots of Sunshine: A Partnership to Support Multispecies Flourishing by Victoria Derr, Alice Miller, Madison Moreno, Kenton Parker, Juan Ramirez, and Cynthia Torres Chapter 9: Life in the Garden by Sheila Williams Ridge Chapter 10: Multispecies Entanglements in an Urban Park by Elizabeth Boileau Index About the Contributors
A plethora of diverse beings share our wondrous but fragile planet. This very important and eclectic book will readily serve to get people to think about individuals of all species, how they're deeply interconnected in numerous and surprising ways, and how the future and integrity of our magnificent surroundings depend on fostering multispecies thinking resulting in taking community-wide action for all. -- Marc Bekoff, author of Rewilding Our Hearts: Building Pathways of Compassion and Coexistence and The Emotional Lives of Animals Offering an interesting, and broad, spread of both theoretical discussion and practical classroom examples of how and why we need to look beyond the human in sustainability education, this book will be of deep interest (and delight!) to educators and others interested in learning more about multispecies relations. -- Nik Taylor, University of Canterbury
