Living Soil and Sustainability Education: Linking Pedagogy and Pedology
By Dilafruz Williams and Jonathan Brown
Sustainability is now permeating educational institutions. Yet the emerging discourse on sustainability education is in many ways caught in a modern web of theoretical, ontological, and epistemological assumptions that are incongruent with sustainability. We introduce an ecologically grounded metaphoric language rooted in living soil as an alternative regenerative framework for linking sustainability pedagogy with pedology (the study of soil). Five principles that guide this relationship are presented: valuing biocultural diversity, sensitizing our senses, recognizing place, cultivating interconnection, and embracing practical experience. Nurtured within an environment of curiosity, wonder, and questioning, and set to the rhythm and scale of localized ecologies, soil serves as an embodiment of life right beneath our feet rather than the reach of distant stars. In learning gardens, living soil and pedagogy surface in dynamic ways to create an ecological landscape of sustainability education.
FullPDF: WilliamsBrown2011
TAGS: ecological pedagogy, learning gardens, linking pedagogy and pedology, Living soil
Dr. Dilafruz R. Williams is professor and co-founder of the Leadership for Sustainability Education (LSE) program at Portland State University, Portland, Oregon. She is co-author of Learning Gardens and Sustainability Education: Bringing Life to Schools and Schools to Life (Routledge) and co-editor of Ecological Education in Action: On Weaving Education, Culture, and the Environment (SUNY). She is recipient of several awards and grants. An avid gardener, she is also co-founder of the Learning Gardens Laboratory and the Sunnyside K-8 Environmental School in the Portland Public School District. These successful initiatives address ecological and cultural foundations of K-12 and higher education with strong community-university-school partnerships. She was elected city-wide and served on the Portland Public School Board 2003-2011. She is Principal Investigator for "Science in the Learning Gardens: Factors that Support Ethnic and Racial Minorities in Low-Income Middle Schools" funded ... MORE
Jonathan D. Brown is Adjunct Faculty, Leadership for Sustainability Education program, in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. He has served as instructor at the Learning Gardens Laboratory and co-founded a campus community garden at Simon's Rock College of Bard, a small liberal arts college MORE