Feminist new materialism and environmental education from home during a pandemic

Keywords: Children, environmental education, online, PAR
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

Using the ‘feminist new materialist’ approach my paper discusses research with high school children during the school-from-home in the earlier phase of the global pandemic in 2020. The children's boredom and the unpreparedness of high school teachers to shift into online teaching has become the biggest challenge to the learning process and this becomes the impetus of my collaborative research with the teachers.

Through an online environmental education program, the teachers let me invite the children to map their daily lives and their relationships with non-human objects at home. This then becomes a space where children tell stories of their everyday pandemic environment. Using a participatory action research approach, the children were invited to control the knowledge production process. Environmental learning to children then to become: finding alternative lifestyles for consumerism, building relationships with earth-others, organizing youth environmental networks, knowing the chemical content of their skincare, soap, and nail polish remover. I conclude that the diversity of narratives is important as an alternative point of view to challenge the current dominant education practice which ignores how the earth-others and children are interrelated. Involving acts of being, doing, and thinking as human beings embedded in a nonhuman world, this research process significantly accommodates the diverse experiences, backgrounds, emotions, and desires to empower discussion with children as well as interrogates my position as an academic/activist.