Ecoportraiture

What changes in education, when it is not just humans whose teaching is sought and acknowledged? And how can educational research be accountable to the voices and agency of such more-than-human teachers, interlocutors, and kin? These have become pressing questions in an era of soaring interest in forest and nature schools, place- and land-based education. Ecoportraiture offers theoretical and practical guidance into an emerging methodology with deep roots in the anti-racist, emancipatory research tradition of portraiture initiated by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot and Jessica Hoffman Davis. Bracketed by the editors’ wide-ranging introductory essay and a closing critical conversation, five inspiring chapters take readers deep into the thinking and action that characterize ecoportraiture research. Ideal for researchers at all levels who want to explore more deeply how human learning is shaped and informed by the more-than-human, this book also invites a wider audience into the artful practice of close listening to the many voices of the natural world. Ecoportraiture seeks to evoke and to guide journeys of knowing that are both profoundly ecological and profoundly personal. This is an open-ended and transformative methodology: one that is less about finding answers than about asking better questions—about learning to participate more deeply, as student, teacher, parent, community member, and/or co-researcher, in the conversations of the Earth.

“This book recognises that we need ‘new ways of witnessing, interpreting, mulling over, reflecting on, listening to and dialoguing with the human and the more-than-human’. This is not for the purpose of novel research to serve an education industry, but because we need better ethical understandings if we are to seriously address our relationships with the more-than-human world and avert future global catastrophes. Ecoportraiture not only offers improved intellectual knowings, but is also a portal to much needed expanded existential understandings. As befitting of profound and beautiful ideas, it is also beautifully written. It’s a book that needs to be read by anyone who is serious about research and anyone who is serious about education.” —Dylan Adams, Cardiff Metropolitan University

Sean Blenkinsop (PhD, Harvard, 2004) is a professor in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. His work spans educational philosophy, outdoor and experiential education, and place-based schooling. His most recent book is Wild Pedagogies: Touchstones for Re-Negotiating Education and the Environment in the Anthropocene (2018). Mark Fettes (PhD, Toronto, 2000) is an associate professor in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. His work focuses on the educational and cultural interplay of land, language, imagination, and community. His most recent book is an Esperanto translation of Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetic masterpiece, La sonetoj al Orfeo (2020). Laura Piersol (PhD, Simon Fraser University, 2015) is a faculty associate in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. She is an experienced outdoor and nature-based educator who has published widely in the fields of environmental education and educational change.