Verifying the efficacy of eco-pedagogies during a climate crisis
Using Wittgenstein's post-foundationalism in defence of the shallow ground for arts-based and place-based environmental education
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11952866 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jeff Stickney (0000-0002-5519-8769, University of Toronto, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 60 |
| Issue | 1-2 |
| Pages | 23-44 |
| Publication date | 2025-07-17 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Philosophy of Education (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0309-8249 • E-ISSN: 1467-9752 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jopedu/qhaf044 |
| OpenAlex | W4412964125 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 39 |
Responding to calls for more theoretical and empirical research on ‘effective’ environmental education pedagogies, the author explores the difficulty in doing this in the case of arts- and place-based learning. Drawing on Ludwig Wittgenstein's later philosophy, investigations into performances of these practices reveal that they do not lend themselves to causal enquiry; in talking about their ‘effects’, we mean something very different from the ‘effects’ of climate change or of technologies. The latter, scientific language-game provides for a greater degree of certainty, drawing more on formal education than the ‘system of verification’ operating across the knowledge conveyed through the liberal arts. The former language-game, that of judging the efficacy of arts-/placed-based practices, hinges on more tacit, practical knowledge, acquired informally through acculturation and training. It is more like talking about the ‘effects’ of a concert than the ‘effectiveness’ of a light bulb. Sorting through this conceptual muddle, which is more than equivocation in terms, helps to therapeutically release us from the burden of justifying time-honoured eco-pedagogies, embracing the shallow ground on which these ecstatic and emplaced practices rest. The aim is to free educators from a ‘picture holding us captive’: that of achieving a veritable pedagogical science
Aesthetics · Certainty · Epistemology · Higher education · Liberal arts education · Pedagogy · Political science · Sociology · The arts · Critical and Liberation Pedagogy · Environmental Education and Sustainability · Outdoor and Experiential Education · Psychology · Law · Philosophy
The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue
Phenomenology of Practice
Pedagogies of place
Evaluating the Public Climate School—A School-Based Programme to Promote Climate Awareness and Action in Students
Shifting paradigms in environmental research methods through the visual arts
Young people’s conversations about environmental and sustainability issues in social media
Participatory approach in practice
Normalizing catastrophe
Approaches to embedding sustainability in teacher education
Philosophical Walks as Place‐Based Environmental Education
Emerging Praxis of Environmental and Sustainability Education in Teacher Education in Canada
Emplaced Transcendence’ as Ecologising Education in Michael Bonnett's Environmental Philosophy
Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations and Bildungsroman literature
What Ought to Be Done to Promote Education for Sustainability in Teacher Education
Seeing Trees
Training and Mastery of Techniques in Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy
Life and death in the Anthropocene
Wittgenstein's ‘Relativity’
Creating Aesthetic Encounters of the World, or Teaching in the Presence of Climate Sorrow
Wittgenstein's Contextualist Approach to Judging "Sound" Teaching
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |