in 1993. In 1995, a mahasabha 3 of 200 Adivasi leaders expressed a demand for an Adivasi school. Since then, VBVT has been working with members of the community to create a culturally appropriate and contextually meaningful ecosystem of learning for their children. While the nature of issues faced by the organisation has changed over time, the fundamental aim has always been for the community to experience education as an emancipatory force. Critical pedagogy presents a framework for transformative education that challenges the traditional role of schooling and
among human beings, rather than among human and non-human beings, as the notion of ‘ecological justice’ does. Authors such as Bowers (2005) have also argued that Critical Pedagogy, one of the main sources of inspiration of ecopedagogy, is riven by several Western-centric cosmological assumptions, such as the notion that human beings are the sole entities to be intrinsically autonomous and creative. Relatedly, despite ecopedagogy’s commitment to reject several oppressive ‘-isms’, some of its exponents seem to occasionally perpetuate them. For example, in a quote from
) Fear and shame: students’ experiences in English-medium secondary classrooms in Tanzania , Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development , online first. doi: 10.1080/01434632.2022.2093357 Ajaps , S. and Mbah , M.F. ( 2022 ) Towards a critical pedagogy of place for environmental conservation , Environmental Education Research , 28 ( 4 ): 508 – 23 . doi: 10.1080/13504622.2022.2050889 Alexander , R. ( 2009 ) Towards a comparative pedagogy , in R. Cowen and A.M. Kazamias (eds) International Handbook of Comparative Education , New York
the need for critical pedagogies as developed by Freire (1973) and hooks (1994) that seek to articulate and explicitly deal with such values. Critiques of traditional models of schooling highlight how teacher-led models of knowledge transmission did not enable students to develop the capacity for deep learning and critical thinking. Interestingly, though, contemporary critiques suggest that the move towards an outcomes-based model of education may have led in a similar direction. This has happened through a contradictory movement: on one hand the installation
resilience. Place-based and critical pedagogy, incorporating Indigenous people’s perspective and linking with students’ livelihoods, creates a strong foundation for nurturing a sense of responsibility, fairness, inclusivity and equity – all of which are essential for education as a tool for environmental justice and education for sustainable development. Achieving environmental justice requires the development and implementation of equitable policies and programmes, supporting school-led initiatives, multistakeholder engagement and collaboration, inclusion of affected
