‘Attuning-with’, affect, and assemblages of relations in a transdisciplinary environmental education

In these Anthropocene times humans are vulnerable through the effects of socio-ecological crises and are responsible for attending to past, present and future socio-ecological injustices and challenges. The purpose of this article is to challenge discursive structures that influence knowledge acquisition about/of the world through binary logics, acknowledging that we are never apart from the world we are seeking to understand, but that we are entangled through a mutual (re)configuring with the world. Through storytelling and entangled poetry from outdoor education and environmental science education contexts, this article explores discursive/material forces (socially meaningful statements/affective intensities) enacted through pedagogies ‘attuning-with’. As pedagogies ‘attuning-with’ take up a relational ontology, in which sense-making is generated from the grounded, lived, embodied and embedded politics of location in relationship with broader ecologies of the world, they illuminate a transdisciplinary environmental education. A transdisciplinary environmental education is important for these Anthropocene times, because it not only promotes a multivocal approach to environmental education, but in acknowledging our inherent and intrinsic responsibility and accountability for the kinds of worlds that we are co-constituting, it provides opportunities to change the story of how we choose to live with/in/for these Anthropocene times.

LEARNING ECOLOGICAL CONCEPTS BEFORE-AFTER TRACKING IN ENVIRONMENTAL TRAIL

Environmental-science education has aimed to educate about environmental aspects with theoretical and practical science-based activities involving both trails and laboratoryactivities. Here we assessed the effectiveness of using environmental trail in an Atlantic Forest fragment to improve ecological and biological concepts learning. The hypotheses tested were that there is biological and ecological concepts acquisition following the visit to the trail and that the activity increases the comprehension about the multiple functions of species and ecosystem processes. Eight groups of undergraduates and teachers from public schools (N = 161 people) participated of a three-step activity by: i) answering a questionnaire (pre-test); ii) discussing ecological subjects and observe scientific experiments while walking by trail; and iii) answering the questionnaire after the visit (post-test). Results showed significant difference between the pre-test and the post-test for all groups (p = 0.000), indicating that the use of trails increased the understanding of ecological and biological concepts. Furthermore, scores in multiple choices questions were always higher in the post-test showing that participants understood the multiple functions of ecosystem’s elements, enhancing their view and comprehension of ecosystem as a whole. The use of ecological restoration experiments seemed to be a new valuable approach to achieve these outcomes.