Review of Teaching in the Anthropocene: Education in the face of the environmental crisis Karsgaard, C., Nielsen, A., Anayatova, D., & Silova, I. (2023, March 22). Review of Teaching in the Anthropocene: Education in the face of the environmental crisis by A. J. Farrell, C. Skyhar & M. Lam (Eds.) Education Review, 30. https://doi.org/10.14507/er.v30.3685 March 22, 2023 ISSN 1094-5296 Farrell, A. J., Skyhar, C., & Lam, M. (Eds.). (2022). Teaching in the Anthropocene: Education in the face of the environmental crisis. Canadian Scholars. https://canadianscholars.ca/book/teaching-in-the- anthropocene/ Pp. 338 ISBN: 9781773382821 Reviewed by Carrie Karsgaard, Ann Nielsen, Dilraba Anayatova, and Iveta Silova Arizona State University United States As the global environmental crisis escalates so does the publication of books about life in the Anthropocene. Gaining attention of readers across disciplines and genres, these books examine the origins, impacts, and implications of living in a geological age in which the activity of some humans has permanently altered the climate and the environment of the planet. But what does the age of the Anthropocene hold for education? This urgent question is the focus of the recently published book Teaching in the Anthropocene: Education in the Face of the Environmental Crisis, edited by Alysha J. Farrell, Candy Skyhar, and Michelle Lam. It is one of the few books to date that offers practical and theoretical insights for teachers and teacher educators facing the urgent challenges of the Anthropocene in their classrooms, schools, and communities, with particular relevance for (settler)1 colonial contexts. 1 Settler colonialism is a form of colonization whereby outsiders claim a land as their new home, displacing Indigenous peoples and establishing settler superiority through https://canadianscholars.ca/book/teaching-in-the-anthropocene/ https://canadianscholars.ca/book/teaching-in-the-anthropocene/ Education Review /Reseñas Educativas/Resenhas Educativas 2 From its very opening, the volume critically addresses contestations surrounding the concept of the Anthropocene, and particularly its omission of social justice issues. To address the environmental crisis, the authors collectively argue, we must confront social injustice by reversing the centuries-long normalizing hegemony of patriarchal power, colonial oppression, and neoliberal economics that justify exploitation of lands and bodies at the hands of some. The book urges all educators to step up and contribute to this urgent task: “We can no longer sit behind a curriculum designed for individualist, capitalist, corporate aims. Instead of upholding the notions of progress, growth, and economic stability, we must teach in ways that promote relationships with each other and the natural world” (see the opening chapter by Garson, p. 5). It is both a challenge and an invitation to respond, engage, and act. As readers explore the different sections of the book—(i) challenges to teacher education practice and praxis, (ii) the affective dimensions of teaching, (iii) relational pedagogies, and (iv) the empathic imaginations of future teachers—they are encouraged to engage with theory and practice in ways that open possibilities for education otherwise, against the foreclosures of education that indeed are inherent to our current climate and ecological crisis. The book addresses such foreclosures as education’s severing of knowledge from the land, denials of embodiment in favor of cognition, and racist exclusions that infuse environmental learning, offering concrete alternatives. Teaching in the Anthropocene does not require a linear reading of the book, inviting readers to access the material from their particular entry points of interest. As a whole, the hospitality of the text, and the interconnections its contributors draw across research, teaching, policy, and activism make the book invaluable for diverse purposes and readers. Offering multiple inroads into the content, the book presents a variety of theoretical perspectives across traditional disciplines that are brought to life through discussions of practical applications. For example, readers can engage with anti-colonial/decolonial, Indigenous, feminist, and justice- oriented perspectives in a manner that is easily accessible to all. Offering hospitality to diverse audiences, such efforts support anti-hierarchical co- worlding with readers, who are invited into the text through its pedagogical orientation, non-linear format, and reflexive style of many of the contributions, which share practitioner learning in an accessible and dialogical way. Chapters feature the work of practitioners as well as researchers in continuing education, administration, K–12, and post- secondary, which decenters research as the prime knowledge format and highlights the crucial knowledge and experience of those in practice. For example, Chapter 5 (Wilson) unpacks the social and ecological exploitation of Indigenous peoples, while Chapter 4 (Jiménez & Young) exposes the deep-seated masculinity inherent to formal education by asking questions policy, law, ideology, and culture. To see how settler colonialism intersects with the Anthropocene, see Bang et al., 2022; Davis & Todd, 2017; Tuck et al., 2014). Review of Teaching in the Anthropocene 3 like, “How might experiences of masculinities and femininities shape our engagement with the land?” By telling their conflicted childhood and adulthood stories that have taken-for-granted dualities (formal versus non- formal education, female versus male, western versus non-western science), the authors are calling to contest deep-seated hierarchies, giving space for alternative and relational knowledges. Complex topics, such as root metaphors of education (Ireland, Ch. 3), and styles of instruction, such as embodiment pedagogies, are articulated through researcher and practitioner experiences in the classroom. For example, authors share their stories in STEM classrooms to articulate means of distancing from an exploitative plantation mindset toward reimagining “mystery” in teaching STEM (Khan et al., Ch. 12). These examples help the reader to truly see the connections between theory and practice (praxis), while encouraging them to experiment, innovate, and build upon their own classroom practices. Importantly, the authors share multiple alternative pedagogies to help educators make radical shifts in educational pedagogies, frames of reference, and perspectives of learning. For example, topics range from exploring “Embodying Pedagogy as Ceremony” (Brant-Birioukov & Breant-Terry, Ch. 11) to attuning the reader to deep listening as a way to imagine a more regenerative future (Wolfstone et al., Ch. 19). Many chapters draw upon arts- based practices (i.e. poetry, photography, creativity in digital environments) and offer pedagogical suggestions for moving beyond learning as cognition in order to consider students’ agency, well-being, emotions, and mental health. While the text is rich with examples and discussions of these practices, it also models them, utilizing a variety of pedagogical modes from personal stories to research cases, imagery and artwork to thought-provoking question prompts after each chapter. The pedagogies inherent to the text itself work against hierarchical knowledge production and linear learning towards the kinds of creative, experimental, and alternative modes of learning that are necessary in the current Anthropocene moment. Another through-line of the text highlights deep connections to land and place that refuse a depoliticized vision of the environment. Such a vision problematically characterizes much Anthropocene literature—a reality noted by the editors in the introduction. Situated within Canada’s settler colonial context and reconciliatory efforts, the authors consider the ongoing accountability of Canadian education systems to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action (2012). The volume as a whole attends to Indigenous knowledges and cultures, particularly through recommendations for Indigenous leadership and pedagogy (Brant-Birioukov & Breant-Terry, Ch. 11) – or Indigegogy (Wilson, Ch. 5) – that foreground Indigenous peoples’ “contemporary contributions to Canada” (Call to Action 62), including Indigenous-led land protection efforts (Kluttz, Ch. 17). While the text is oriented toward the Canadian context, Teaching in the Anthropocene has relevance for other settler colonial—and potentially also for so-called postcolonial—contexts, which might similarly work against colonial Education Review /Reseñas Educativas/Resenhas Educativas 4 hierarchies among knowledge systems, engage with Indigenous understandings of the land, and attend to inequities and injustices. While the volume does not take an explicitly decolonial stance (and some chapters address the intersections of power and environmental issues more than others), it nevertheless undermines the coloniality of education and the coloniality of environmental discourse and decision-making through chapters that critique education’s grounding in colonial modernity (e.g., see Kerr & Amsler, Ch. 13). More importantly, the volume offers concrete alternatives for just education, including strategies for mobilizing teachers to participate in social change (Kluttz, Ch. 17; Burkholder, Ch. 20). Crucially addressing the marginalization of rural and migrant youth in environmental education (see Skyhar, Ch. 15 and Lam, Ch. 16 respectively), Teaching in the Anthropocene could be strengthened by further addressing the position of Black and other students of color in relation to the Anthropocene (for example, see Nxumalo & ross, 2019), particularly within Canada’s colonial context. As a gathering of scholars, including two settlers who span the 49th parallel, one who calls Kazakhstan home, and another one who straddles two homes in Latvia and the US, we are collectively committed to understanding—and reconfiguring—the ways in which education is systemically complicit in anthropocentric damages such as the climate crisis. From creative content and structure to innovative pedagogies and processes (that include both humans and non-humans), we deeply appreciate the book’s contributions to creating alternative grounds to the exploitative, individualist, and colonial-capitalist foundations of education. Towards this end, we found Teaching in the Anthropocene to be a hopeful text for education otherwise. References Bang, M., Marin, A., Wemigwase, S., Nayak, P., & Nxumalo, F. (2022). Undoing human supremacy and white supremacy to transform relationships: An interview with Megan Bang and Ananda Marin. Curriculum Inquiry, 52(2), 150–161. https://doi.org/10.1080/03626784.2022.2052635 Davis, H., & Todd, Z. (2017). On the Importance of a Date, or, Decolonizing the Anthropocene. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 16(4), Article 4. Nxumalo, F., & ross, k. m. (2019). Envisioning Black space in environmental education for young children. Race Ethnicity and Education, 22(4), 502- 524. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2019.1592837 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. (2012). Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action. https://crc- canada.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/trc-calls-to-action- english.pdf https://doi.org/10.1080/03626784.2022.2052635 https://crc-canada.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/trc-calls-to-action-english.pdf https://crc-canada.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/trc-calls-to-action-english.pdf https://crc-canada.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/trc-calls-to-action-english.pdf Review of Teaching in the Anthropocene 5 Tuck, E., McKenzie, M., & McCoy, K. (2014). Land education: Indigenous, post-colonial, and decolonizing perspectives on place and environmental education research. Environmental Education Research, 20(1), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2013.877708 About the Reviewers Carrie Karsgaard is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, funded by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Her research addresses the links between epistemic, social, and environmental justice in formal and informal education. Ann Nielsen is the Director of the Office of Global Engagement in Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. Her research explores the subjectivities of teachers, educator leadership and school level change. Her recent research has begun to explore teacher perspectives of education for sustainability in the context of the Anthropocene. Dilraba Anayatova is a Ph.D. student in the Educational Policy and Evaluation program at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University. Dilraba is interested in rural education and its intersection with environmental education in and outside classrooms in Kazakhstan. Iveta Silova is Professor and Associate Dean of Global Engagement at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. Her research explores the intersections of postsocialist, decolonial, and ecofeminist perspectives in envisioning education beyond the Western horizon. Her recent research has focused on environmental sustainability. Education Review/Reseñas Educativas/Resenhas Educativas is supported by the Scholarly Communications Group at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University. Copyright is retained by the first or sole author, who grants right of first publication to the Education Review. Readers are free to copy, display, distribute, and adapt this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and Education Review, the changes are identified, and the same license applies to the derivative work. More details of this Creative Commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. 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