Embracing a Terra Plena Ethos in Urban Science Education

Bibliographic Data

ID21392737
AuthorsMarijke Hecht (0000-0003-2299-6534, The Ohio State University Columbus Ohio USA, corresponding author)
Year2026
Volume110
Issue3
Pages974-986
Publication date2026-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueScience Education (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0036-8326 • E-ISSN: 1098-237X
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1002/sce.70046
OpenAlexW7117101017
LanguageEN
References cited59

Conceptual and material forms of the colonial logics of terra nullius —the fiction that both lands and minds are empty and should be filled—are embedded in many science education practices which draw on Eurocentric‐based orientations towards land and knowledge. For science education to reach its potential in effecting substantive change for people and planet, I propose a theoretical framework for educators and educational researchers to practice an ethos of terra plena , meaning full earth, where both cultural and natural histories are (re)positioned as vital for learning in ways that challenge dominant notions of land as property. Terra plena rests in tension with terra nullius by forcing an explicit coupling of visions for healthier environmental futures with our deeply troubled pasts and presents. It positions communities as places of educational possibility where care‐centered interactions between and among human and more‐than‐human communities become vehicles to repair the world. If terra nullius is both conceptual and material, then terra plena must be as well. The proposed theoretical commitments and pedagogical practices graft existing approaches, including critical place‐based pedagogy, socioecological systems thinking, and Indigenous land‐based pedagogies. I focus on urban science education as a prime opportunity to practice terra plena . With the majority of the world's human population now urban and many peoples living on lands we are not Indigenous to, terra plena offers a pathway for the embodied ethical repair work needed to meet our responsibilities to support the material transformation of cities into healthy, just, multispecies communities

Conceptual framework · Ethos · Indigenous · Indigenous Education · Meaning (existential) · Population · Science education · Traditional knowledge · Vision · Environmental and Cultural Studies in Latin America and Beyond · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Indigenous and Place-Based Education