Key messages

• Critical education has potential to bring about needed change in education.

• A Harawayan Bee Hotel approach intervention could help to tackle the challenges of the Anthropocene.

• To catalyse emancipatory change through and beyond ESD in pre-service teacher training there is a need to embrace an interdisciplinary, innovative and student focused approach to learning.

Introduction

According to many commentators, today we live in a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene is a polymorphous, and deeply problematic, concept (Haraway, 2015; Moore, 2016): at its core, it brings into stark relief the fact that humankind has become a force of nature and that it is causing global, rapid, multidimensional change, most notably, and worryingly, an unprecedented crisis of the Earth’s ecosystems. Living in the Anthropocene has produced a range of reactions, from utter desperation that the future of the planet – humanity included – is doomed, to hubristic boosterism that human technoscientific prowess will eventually fully master nature, to cautious hope that these crises become an opportunity to transform human–nature relationships (Latour, 2014; Asafu-Adjaye et al, 2015).

The article intends to make a positive contribution to the latter dimension by drawing on the potential of education. Education participates in the socialisation and shaping of the minds of present and future generations (Apple, 2004): as such it can play a central role in addressing the current ecological crisis.

Cognisant of this, many authors in the field have recognised that ‘education-as-usual’ can only compound the current plight and have accordingly explored the potential that ‘critical’ forms of education possess to ameliorate, if not resolve, the situation (Lloro-Bidart and Banschbach, 2019; Sutoris, 2022). The article adds to this lively debate by discussing a small, but big in potential, project: the Harawayan Bee Hotel (HBH).

The project was developed by the Institute of Education at the University of Reading in England during the 2022–23 academic year and involved six trainee teachers (TTs) on a one-year postgraduate certificate in education (PGCE) programme. Its aim was to use insights developed by ecopedagogy and by Donna Haraway to catalyse the emergence of a nature-respecting stance in the participants. This, it was thought, could in turn help them to better integrate the Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) agenda in their teaching activities and, second, to create the opportunity for them to problematise and subvert this agenda.

To provide some context and highlight the necessity for projects like the one discussed here, the article starts by offering a brief overview of ESD and its implementation in England. After this has been done, the following two sections examine the theoretical sources that were used to develop the HBH project, namely insights from ecopedagogy and from the theory developed by Donna Haraway. The article then provides a description of the Harawayan Bee Hotel, including an overview of the Bee Meadow project from which it was developed. It then goes on to examine the data collection tool we used (a questionnaire) to assess the effects of the intervention. Finally the conclusion summarises the promising potential that projects such as the HBH hold.

Education for Sustainable Development: a brief overview

The roots of ESD can be traced back to the 1980s. In 1980 the World Conservation Strategy report (IUCN et al, 1980) coined the term ‘sustainable development’ (SD) to describe how the needs of a population should be met without destroying the natural resources upon which the meeting of these needs depends. During the following years, the principle of SD became increasingly prominent in the field of environmental education and in 1988, a year after the UN World Commission on Environment and Development (the Brundtland Commission) proposed its influential definition (UNWCED, 1987), it formally became the guiding principle of all the UN agencies, including those responsible for the promotion of environmental education, notably UNESCO.

By embracing SD, the 1992 Earth Summit represented a turning point: it marked the official birthdate of ESD. With the Earth Summit there crystallised an awareness that SD could not be achieved simply by using technological, political or financial interventions: it was necessary that present and future generations think and act in a different way. This called for a new type of education that, as Chapter 36 of Agenda 21 states, not only provides quality basic education but that is also informed by and disseminates the principles of SD, namely ESD (Leicht et al, 2018; UNESCO, 2014; 2017). Over the years, Agenda 21 inspired a series of UNESCO-led initiatives (Filho et al, 2015) culminating in the current ‘ESD for 2030’, which started in 2020 and will last until 2030.

ESD for 2030 emphasises the synergistic relationship that exists between education and the achievement of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The 17 SDGs, launched by the United Nations in 2015, are a veritable achievement in that they provide a globally agreed-upon articulation of the notion of SD. They offer a holistic vision of the future where behaviours and ways of thinking at all levels, from the economic to the political, are transformed in a way that promotes a sustainable, prosperous, peaceful and more equitable life for present and future generations: crucial for the realisation of all these objectives is a healthy natural environment.

For this vision to come true, each individual, irrespective of whether they live in the Global North or in the Global South, needs to learn notions, skills and behaviours that are conducive to this outcome. ESD plays a crucial role in the achievement of this goal (UNESCO, 2017): for example, it requires learning institutions to integrate the teaching of the 17 SDGs in the courses they offer, in this way increasing the learners’ SD skills and knowledge. Additionally, it recommends that the subjects are taught in a way that promotes interdisciplinarity.

For the purposes of the article, it is important to delineate some problematic aspects of the world view that informs ESD. First of all, some authors have argued that ESD is informed by an anthropocentric and ‘resourcist’ world view: it would in fact focus primarily on the flourishing of (some) human beings to the detriment of natural entities, which are conceptualised in objectifying, instrumental terms – ‘passive’ mechanisms to be either ignored or exploited (Stevenson, 2006; Bonnett, 2007; Fox and Alldred, 2020). Relatedly, by portraying economic growth as the solution to several social and ecological problems, SD, and with it ESD, would prescribe as a cure the very same cause of the ills it intends to treat. In so doing, (E)SD would obscure the causal connection that exists between the two, while at the same time it would legitimate and promote capitalist interests (Kopnina, 2012; Redclift, 2005; Tulloch and Neilson, 2014; Washington, 2015).

Lastly, and more generally, some authors have asked whether education should be ‘for’ anything at all, rather than being an as normatively neutral as possible activity aimed at providing learners with notions and critical tools to independently use: an education that is ‘for’ anything carries the risk of producing colonising effects.

ESD in England

Turning our attention to England – in the UK education is a devolved matter (Martin et al, 2013) – environmental education, within formal education, began in 1989 with the introduction of a cross-curriculum themed approach. Despite the groundbreaking character of this decision, its implementation seemed to many half-hearted (Glackin and King, 2020). As time went by, successive governments introduced various initiatives to promote ESD, such as the famous 2005 strategy ‘Securing the Future’, which aimed to embed SD at the heart of the education agenda. It is undoubtable that during the late 1990s and early 2000s environmental issues acquired salience but this, contrary to hopes, was not reflected into a widespread implementation of ESD across the education system (Firth and Smith, 2013; Glackin and King, 2020). After 2010, interest in environmental issues (and the ESD agenda) seemed to wane in comparison to other issues such as the economy.

This ‘downgrading’ is notable at a variety of levels: the funding for many ESD-relevant programmes such as the Sustainable Schools Initiative and the National Framework for Sustainable Schools was discontinued (Greer et al, 2023). Additionally, school curricula have consistently placed emphasis on subjects such as English, Science, Mathematics, but not so much on ESD (Glackin and King, 2020). Moreover, it has been noted that climate change is mainly presented in school curricula as an opportunity to innovate and boost the economy rather than as a cautionary tale to prompt a reconsideration of the relationship between humanity and nature (Greer et al, 2024). Lastly, climate change (and other nature-related issues) has not been addressed in an interdisciplinary manner but is predominantly confined to Science and Geography (Dunlop and Rushton, 2022).

Overall, the lack of a clear and strong ESD policy in England has translated, with some notable exceptions, into a poor practical implementation of ESD (Martin et al, 2013).

This analysis reveals that despite efforts taken at both the international and national level, implementation of the ESD agenda is still unsatisfactory; even if opportunities opened up through the most recent Department for Education strategies related to climate education (DfE, 2022; 2023) offer some hope, the need for new initiatives remains pressing.

ESD at the University of Reading, England

The Strategic Plan 2020–26 of the University of Reading set out a ‘whole institution approach’, according to which sustainability should inform, in a holistic and diversified way, all the university activities, from reducing carbon emissions to embedding this principle in all the education curricula that it offers (UoR, 2020).

In 2022–23 the Institute of Education (IoE) at the University of Reading made a commitment to embed Climate and Sustainability Education across its Initial Teacher Education programmes (ITE) as part of the National Action Plan for Climate Education (UoR, ndb). This coincided with the launch of the Department for Education Strategy. Accordingly, all ITE programmes have to offer TTs the opportunity to learn a variety of knowledge, skills, values and competencies that relate to climate change, sustainability and climate justice. The HBH project was part of the IoE’s efforts to pursue the ITE’s Climate and Sustainability Education objectives. The project drew on the ethical, epistemic and ontological insights of two sources: ecopedagogy and Donna Haraway.

Ecopedagogy: a brief overview

Ecopedagogy is a relatively new movement (Kahn, 2010). It draws on a variety of theoretical influences: it is heavily indebted to the thought of Paulo Freire, but it also relies on several other authors and influences, from Eric Marcuse to Ivan Illich to Fritjof Capra. The ecopedagogy movement is diverse and in constant evolution; this notwithstanding, shared features can be clearly identified. Generally speaking, ecopedagogy has a deep emancipatory commitment: it aims to transform both individuals and society in general in a way that brings to light, analyses, problematises and reinvents from within (Misiaszek, 2020; Warlenius, 2022) the anthropocentric, objectivising, racist, colonising, sexist, forms of oppression that traverse current mainstream Western(ised) (and not only) societies (Kahn, 2010; Misiaszek, 2020; Warlenius, 2022). Its goal is to promote in their place social justice as well as a ‘fraternal coexistence between humans and other species that make up the community of life on the planet’ (Norat et al, 2016: 180) It is, in the words of Antunes and Gadotti (nd: 197) a ‘pedagogy centred on life’.

Moving on to consider more specifically the basic features that characterise the ecopedagogical movement, we find that at the ontological level, ecopedagogy rejects the Western mainstream mechanistic view of nature, which informs the ESD agenda (see the earlier discussion on ESD); in its place, it embraces a ‘systems view’ whereby reality is considered as a ‘complex living system where every component is interconnected in a web. A sense of unity, interconnection and belonging to the community of life is stressed on’ (Norat et al, 2016: 183). At the level of ethics, ecopedagogy promotes empathy, care and deep respect for the ‘present and future community of life of the planet’ (Norat et al, 2016: 183). As for the educational goals, ecopedagogy promotes not only transmission of knowledge but also the development of affective, creative, ethical and aesthetic dimensions of the learner. In addition to this, ecopedagogy promotes investigation, discussion and problematisation of the various political, social and ethical components of the phenomenon/a studied with a view to bringing to light and challenging oppressive practices and conceptual frameworks (Kahn, 2010).

As for the epistemological dimension, ecopedagogy endorses democratic, horizontal, interactive democratic dialogue between learners and between learners and teachers, leading to a collective construction of knowledge. Moreover, ecopedagogy embraces interdisciplinarity, critical thinking in lieu of the unidirectional transmission of knowledge from teacher to learner (what Freire referred to as the ‘banking system’), and learning based on direct, hands-on, practical experience (Norat et al, 2016; Misiaszek, 2020).

Ecopedagogy has great potential to promote respect for nature and human beings: in this sense it can be profitably used to not only facilitate the implementation of the ESD framework but also to push it in a direction that challenges and overcomes the oppressive dimensions that traverse it, as discussed earlier. However, ecopedagogy itself suffers from blind spots and aspects that need rectification. First, ecopedagogy appears to be, at the most, biocentric insofar as it recognises the worth of living entities but seems to fail to do the same for entities that are regarded as non-living, such as rocks, water and so forth, leaving these open to instrumental conceptualisation and practice.

Second, the terminology occasionally used by some of its exponents seems to move away from biocentrism to embrace an anthropocentric stance: Misiaszek for example uses the term ‘environmental justice’ (Misiaszek, 2020: 617, 621, 625), which concerns the distribution of risks and benefits 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 prominent ecopedagogists (Norat et al, 2016: 180) what was used above precisely to highlight this issues, there appears there term ‘fraternal’ to describe the relationship that should obtain between human and non-human entities. The use of such terms is dangerous in that it risks perpetuating and normalising dangerous ‘-isms’, in this case androcentrism.

Pointing these issues out is not meant to be a rejection of ecopedagogy in toto: on the contrary, the project intends to build on ecopedagogy’s self-reflective critical dimension to further stimulate its emancipatory potential. To achieve this goal, the HBH relied on the ideas of Donna Haraway.

Donna Haraway and the Lego® view

Donna Haraway is a prominent American feminist philosopher whose ongoing theoretical production over the years has exerted profound influence in many fields of knowledge. Haraway rejects what can be regarded as the mainstream characterisation of reality, what on account of its features will be referred to as the ‘Lego© view’ of reality.

The Lego© view of reality imagines the world as a ‘space’ traversed by clear dichotomies (nature/culture, subject/object, active/passive animal/human, machine/organism) and populated by block-like entities, each possessing well-defined, sharp boundaries and a stable, objective, self-sufficient essence and features. These entities can combine in different ways, without this combining action changing their essence. The Lego© view also presupposes that human beings are the only entities endowed with creative agency: except for them the world is populated by passive, and at best fascinatingly complex, mechanisms (Haraway, 1997). Notably, this is a view of reality that, as seen in the earlier discussion, seems to inform the ESD agenda. Haraway has passionately criticised this view of reality in her writings.

The American philosopher stipulates, but not in a dogmatic fashion (Haraway, 1997), that reality should be conceptualised as ‘nature culture’, an entangled, dynamic, destructive and poietic assemblage devoid of insuperable distinctions among its constituent and emerging-through-interaction parts where specificity and heterogeneity thrive (Haraway, 2016). It is at the always shifting intersection of these multi-agent, multidimensional, unequal power-infused constitutive dynamic relationships that reality materialises (Haraway, 1991).

Haraway deepens and develops this fundamental tenet of her theorising throughout the years and engages with a variety of fields of knowledge from science to dog training. This article draws on concepts and insights of the more recent theorising period, populated by the ‘queer family’ of ‘companion species’ figurations rather than on the previous ‘Cyborg’-centred period, although inter-pollinations across Haraway’s theorising are inevitable and necessary (Haraway, 2016). The reasons for concentrating on the companion-species period are two: it pays relatively more (but not exclusive) attention to the ‘macro’ biological part of reality than the previous ‘cyborg’-inspired period, like the HBH does. Second, it aims to capture and trouble the present socio-historical-political-technological-economic power relations rather than those that existed in the late 1980s US and, more loosely, Western and Westernised world, like the cyborg instead does.

With the figuration of ‘companion species that become with’, Haraway wants to express a plurality of insights. At the ontological level, it conveys the notion that entities, with all their specific features, abilities and vulnerabilities, are to be regarded as the ephemeral imperfect ‘sclerotisation’ of plural, ‘promiscuous’ processes of creation and destruction that take place across non-Euclidean time-space. According to this companion (but by no means ‘fuzzy and touchy-feely’ (Haraway, 2016: 112)) species ‘vision’, the smallest ontological unit is therefore not a self-enclosed, unitary, autopoietic entity but the processes of relating. Second, for Haraway all entities, animate and inanimate, from microbes, to trees, to human beings, to wheelchairs, to crutches, to digital cameras (Haraway, 2008), should be regarded as companion species that become with: accordingly, every entity, and not just human beings, is a creative ‘witty’ agent (Haraway, 1991).

At the level of epistemology, acquisition of knowledge is not intended as a practice where a human actor unobtrusively observes from a distance an object of study and, from this detached position, authors faithful, objective, universally true representations. This is a dangerous and destructive deception because it does not recognise ‘the world’s active agency’ (Haraway, 1991: 199) and because it presupposes that certain actors, namely the human observers, can perform what Haraway characterises as the ‘god-trick’, in other words extricate themselves from their network of constitutive relationships.

According to the companion-species vision, knowledge is always already knowledges – the plural form to signal that knowledge is intrinsically manifold: it emerges in/through the ‘non-innocent’, power-inflexed multistranded ‘situated’ thickness of communal relating ‘that cobbles together nonharmonious agencies and ways of living’ (Haraway, 2016: 100). Knowledge is therefore a process that is imagined as democratic, in the sense that it involves not only a plurality of human beings, like ecopedagogy recognises, but also other-than-human entities, the world’s ‘witty’ agency.

The companion-species standpoint produces important ethical upshots. The view that all entities, and not just humans, are companion species leads the American philosopher to argue that human beings can, and should, acknowledge and respect other human as well as other-than-human beings. For Haraway, to respect does not mean to adopt an uncompromising ‘no harm’ position. The American philosopher is quite aware that our world is imperfect: life and death, creation and destruction, harm and benefit are mutually implicated and necessary. In recognition of this, what Haraway proposes is that we should try and get on with, and be accountable to, the entities that constitute the world as well as we can and ‘somehow live and die well here, with each other’ (Haraway, 2016: 207; see also Haraway, 2008: 41, 106).

We can now turn to exploring how these Harawayan and ecopedagogical insights were deployed within the HBH project.

The Harawayan Bee Hotel project

The HBH was a development of the Bee Meadow project. The Bee Meadow was a teaching and learning space that aimed to engage learners with nature. The original idea emerged through discussions held with the University of Reading’s School of Agriculture in 2021. The development of the site began with a competition that asked children from local schools to design a bee hotel. Following the competition, thanks to funding provided by the Friends of the University of Reading, the Bee Meadow site was launched in May 2022 on World Bee Day. A designer was employed to build a bee hotel, whose layout was inspired by the six winning entries from the competition; once completed, the hotel was installed near a flowering patch located on the University of Reading campus where teacher training was taking place.

The project was further developed and became part of a one-year long PGCE Secondary Programme during the 2022–23 academic year. Its aim was to stimulate the creation of original teaching material and to increase the sustainability competencies in the participating TTs.

To recruit participants, at the first Staff–Student Partnership Meeting, the project lead outlined the Bee Meadow to subject student representatives as well as PGCE secondary subject leads and asked them to share this information with their cohorts. As a result of these efforts, six TTs specialising in Biology, Chemistry, History and Geography decided to join the project.

The Bee Meadow was conceptualised as revolving around face-to-face workshops. Since the PGCE programme required the learners to be on school placements for most of the time, it was necessary to engage them on the relatively few occasions when they were on campus. For this reason, four two-hour-long workshops were scheduled to take place at the end of four university training days across the academic year. The participating TTs were paid to take part in these workshops.

The HBH was born out of our interest in discovering whether the Bee Meadow project could be further developed to serve as a catalyst to generate (more) nature-respecting attitudes in the TTs and see what effects, if any, this could have on the implementation of the ESD agenda. With this aim in mind, the project drew on the ontological, epistemic and ethical insights of two sources, Donna Haraway and, to a lesser extent, ecopedagogy, which were examined above.

In terms of the relationship between the HBH and the Bee Meadow projects, the former was nested within the latter, seamlessly adding a new and important dimension to it. Logistically speaking, it took place during the same workshops and involved the same six TTs.

The HBH was imagined as a microcosm of sorts where TTs were offered, by focusing on bees and bee-related entities and issues, the thinking tools and the supportive environment to, first, further advance the ESD agenda by learning how to more effectively integrate SDGs and interdisciplinarity into their teaching practice. This was regarded as an important goal, in that, as our analysis earlier highlighted, despite decades-long efforts at both the international and national level, the ESD agenda is still poorly implemented in England. A second aim of the project was to help TTs to think critically about how nature and human beings are conceptualised in mainstream Western culture and correlatively within the ESD framework. Lastly, and in creative tensions with the first objective, the HBH aimed to offer TTs the opportunity to go beyond the limiting and problematic aspects of the ESD agenda and imagine and practise a way of teaching that promotes a (more) respectful view of human beings and nature.

It was thought that the encounter with Harawayan and, to some extent, ecopedagogical ideas would encourage TTs to become (more) attentive, (more) curious about and (more) respectful towards the world, both within and outside the HBH. This might have accordingly encouraged TTs to abandon the still predominant, hubristic view of what being human means (as also reflected in the ESD agenda) and instead adopt a more ‘nature-respecting’ or, more broadly, an ‘existence-respecting’ one.

In light these considerations, the HBH project had clear aims, it stood ‘for’ something; this alerted us to the possible risk of it becoming a form of colonising indoctrination (Jickling and Spork, 1998) and measures were accordingly taken to prevent this from happening. For example, drawing on ecopedagogical insights, the introduction of Harawayan material was carried out as a suggestion for TTs to consider and play with in a democratic way: when Harawayan-related topics were discussed, the TTs were explicitly and repeatedly made aware that they did not have to agree with or use Harawayan insights in their teaching practice during placement nor in their Bee Hotel-related projects.

The HBH was put in practice mainly, but not only, through the four workshops already mentioned. The workshops introduced the TTs to a variety of ideas and resources that they could avail themselves of, from archives located at University’s Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) to scientific tools such as portable CO₂ detectors to a printout of the 17 SDGs to insights from Donna Haraway’s theorising. In addition to the workshops, a variety of reading materials, useful links and various types of information were shared with and by the TTs on a dedicated Microsoft Teams group and by email.

During the first two workshops, TTs were given an overview of Haraway’s theory; in addition, examples were offered of how these insights could be used to conceptualise and realise in practice an HBH, including activities that could be performed to help the participants to these activities ‘think with’ and ‘act with’ the ontological, epistemic and ethical Harawayan insights.

From the second workshop onwards, discussion in class was firmly focused on the projects that the TTs were developing. As part of the Bee Meadow project, in fact, TTs were asked to design individual ad hoc bee-related projects and, if circumstances permitted, implement them during their school placements; this requirement was integrated within the HBH project.

Feedback on and discussion of these projects provided opportunities to consider a number of Harawayan and other insights: questions were asked and comments made to draw attention to the situatedness of the given project, to how entities, both human and other-than-human, ‘co-become’, to the way in which the various dimensions of politics, economy and biology ‘tentacular-ly’ intertwine and shape one another, to how the agency, creativity and worth of each natural entity can be properly acknowledged and valued. Additionally, during the workshops attention was given to highlighting possible connections between the TTs’ projects and SDGs that were deemed relevant. This was done for three main reasons: (1) because the HBH was inscribed within the ESD agenda and was therefore necessary to discuss its main tenets; (2) to help TTs appreciate, in line with the ESD for 2030 agenda, that the UN SDGs framework is relevant not only in the so-to-speak ‘remote’ context of the ‘Global South’ but also in the ‘Global North’, specifically the ‘here and now’ of Reading, England; and (3) lastly, and importantly, discussion of the SDGs was meant to tacitly facilitate the production of a creative, dissonant tension with Harawayan insights that might stimulate critical, creative thinking and possibly pave the way for the emergence and flourishing of visions and practices that re-evaluate and depart from the ESD framework.

In order to assess the TTs views and chart their ‘learning journey’ during the intervention, we developed a questionnaire. Its aim was to assess whether the HBH intervention produced an effect on the TTs in three areas: their view of nature, human beings and their relationship; second, their implementation of the ESD agenda in their planning and teaching activities; and third, the presence of indications that the ESD paradigm had been problematised and overcome.

Methodology

The questionnaire comprised three questions (see Table 1): the first question aimed to evaluate the respondents’ view of nature and, indirectly, of human beings and their relationships. The other two questions aimed instead to assess the way in which this view of nature and human beings was correlated with the way in which the ESD agenda was implemented both in theory (second question) and in practice (third question).

The questionnaire was administered in three of the four workshops. The first batch was administered in the first workshop, prior to the discussion of Harawayan insights: its goal was to provide a snapshot of the pre-intervention views and practices held by the participants. The second and third batch were administered in the third and fourth workshop respectively: these batches were aimed to monitor possible changes in the TTs’ attitudes during and at the end of the HBH intervention.

To explain and interpret the answers of the questionnaires we devised analytical categories. We individuated these categories by using an inductive method modelled on the ‘emergent analytic coding’ as deployed by Haney et al (2004). Guided by our interest in finding out the understanding TTs had of nature, human beings and ESD as articulated in the questionnaire, each of us independently read through all the questionnaires that had been compiled by two of our six participants. While reading the answers we isolated what we thought were significant statements, assigned them to what we identified as ‘content themes’ and, based on this, elaborated a number of analytical categories. Once this was done, we met, compared our results and agreed on analytical categories that we would use as an interpretative lens for the questionnaires. As a result of this process, we identified four analytical categories (Table 2) each consisting of two mutually exclusive items; the level of presence of each item was graded from low to high.

Once the analytical categories had been agreed upon, we used insights from critical discourse analysis (CDA), combined with Harawayan notions, to analyse the answers provided in the questionnaires. The choice of CDA was motivated by the fact that it is a powerful method of investigation and because its founding principles are consonant with the ideas propounded by Donna Haraway.

Developed by Norman Fairclough (2013), CDA is concerned with identifying the dominant ideas present in a discourse as well as with the ways in which these ideas may be challenged and possibly subverted; in this sense, CDA has a normative component, in that it highlights what is considered ‘wrong’ with a particular discourse, opening the possibility of rectifying or mitigating it.

Discourses are defined by CDA as semiotic productions and therefore include written and oral language, body language, visual images and so forth. Strongly consonant with the Harawayan notion of ‘nature culture’, one of the fundamental assumptions of CDA is that a given discourse and the context broadly intended of which it is part are inextricably and co-constitutively intertwined. Accordingly, discourses (and those that use and produce them) participate in complex ways in either the perpetuation or the subversion of the sociocultural context of which they are part and of which they are an expression.

The article draws on the insights of CDA and proposes, first, that the answers TTs provided in the questionnaires are discourses: this means that they are viewed as the congealed representation of the views of the respondents and, through them, of some of the ideas circulating in their ‘naturecultural’, to use Harawayan terminology, context concerning nature, humanity and ESD.

Building on CDA, Harawayan and ecopedagogical insights and ‘armed’ with the four analytical categories we had chosen, we read each answer focusing our attention on a variety of levels: specific words, combination of words and, when present, graphic signs (arrows, lines, small drawings) that were used to describe human beings, natural entities, their activities, their relationships and other elements we considered significant. At times we were required to make some limited inferences by considering the broader context – other answers, or the totality of the questionnaires. This multilevel analysis enabled us to individuate the respondents’ views and assign them to our categories with relative ease.

Analysis and findings

The section, first, will analyse the questionnaire’s answers in the way we have described to bring to light the conceptualisation of nature, human beings, their relationship(s) and the ESD agenda held by TTs prior to being introduced to the ideas of the HBH project; to this end, the analysis will consider the first batch of questionnaires. The section proceeds to appraise whether democratic discussion of Harawayan insights had stimulated any TTs to adjust their dominant worldview about nature and human beings: to do so, the analysis will focus on the second and third batches of questionnaires. To conclude, it will examine whether any correlation can be noticed between the world view held by TTs and the implementation of the ESD agenda in the course of the intervention.

One of the six respondents, B, a specialist in Geography, will be considered the ‘control group’ because B only took part in the first and in the last workshop, missing the workshops where the Harawayan insights were discussed in more depth.

Lastly, after direct quotes, in parenthesis is found a letter, representing the anonymised respondent, and two numbers: the first number indicates the batch of questionnaires while the second represents the question number.

Starting with the analysis of the first batch of questionnaires, A, a specialist in Physics, portrays an image of nature that seems mechanistic insofar as it does not possess any creative form of agency but reacts to human action. In describing climate change, A mentions ‘deforestation’, ‘domesticated agriculture’, ‘introduction of non-native species’, ‘erosion’, ‘GMO’ (A 1 1): these are activities in which nature is consistently the passive recipient of human agency. Relatedly, even if they are never mentioned by name but only appear in a mediated form through their practices/actions, human beings are considered as the sole active creative agents that have the power to dominate nature, often in a destructive and instrumentalising way. In question 2 we in fact read about mining, industrialisation and lithium extraction. It must be noted that the answer does mention ‘sustainability’ and the value of ‘repairing/mending things’ (A 1 2); however, analysis of the wider context enables us to conclude that such activities and notions seem to be deployed only to protect the instrumental value of nature rather than to acknowledge its moral worth.

A’s answers also reveal that human beings are conspicuously absent from the description of nature provided, suggesting that to be nature is not to be human and vice versa. And lastly, the disposition of the elements in the answers provided in the first batch, their somewhat pithy description, the minimal use of arrows or lines or other graphic devices interlinking them, indicate a view of reality that seems to be lacking in complexity. The characterisation of human beings, nature, their relationship and reality that appear in A’s first batch of questionnaires is shared, with some variations and isolated differences, by all the other participants.

For example, with regards to the fact that human beings are considered as that which is ‘not’ nature, C, a specialist in Geography, clearly distinguishes between ‘human nature’ and ‘natural processes’ (C 1 1) and B separates ‘physical nature’, comprising ‘wild life’ and ‘forest’, from ‘human nature’, which is instead associated with the realm of ‘values’ (B 1 1). As for the characterisation of nature as a passive mechanism whose workings can be unilaterally altered by the creative agency of human beings, in describing climate change, D, a specialist in Biology, for example writes that human action seems to cause sweeping alterations of nature, from ‘behaviour/mating seasons/breeding success rates, etc.’ to ‘rising sea levels … droughts’ to ‘reduction of biodiversity’ (D 1 1) whereas nature seems devoid of similar creative agency. It should be pointed out that although phenomena such as flooding, drought and so forth might seem to indicate creative (and destructive) agency on the part of nature, careful analysis of the context reveals that these phenomena are considered as mechanistic reactions to human action. And with regard to nature being depicted in instrumentalising terms, C, for example, writes that ‘nature is something … that we all need to be exposed to’ because of, as an arrow indicates, its ‘calming effect’ (C 1 1).

All in all, the analysis of the first batch of questionnaires reveals that, to different degrees, human beings are regarded as the sole creative agents; nature is instead understood as a relatively simple mechanism devoid of any ‘creative’ agency, an entity that is and should be instrumentalised and dominated by human beings. Additionally, the view of reality that emerges from the respondents’ answers lacks in complexity: the entities and the concepts mentioned in the answers are few, and regarded in ‘atomistic’ terms, in other words, as self-standing and poorly interrelated. Overall, this is an understanding of reality that shares the features that characterise the ‘Lego© view’ described earlier in the article.

Let us now consider the second and third batch of questionnaires to assess whether the HBH intervention facilitated changes in the TTs world view regarding nature and human beings. Starting with A, in the second batch of questionnaires, the respondent writes that ‘Insects, bees, trees and other organisms are sentient beings. They have more knowledge of nature, and they interact with each other … than we think’ (A 2 1). The passage suggests that A’s view has shifted considerably from the first workshop insofar as natural entities are considered active and creative. In addition to this, A seems to embrace the view that human beings are not separate from nature but are a constitutive part of the ecosystem: ‘[anthropocentric] climate change is affecting our lives and all the living things in it’ (A 2 1) and ‘humans are just a cog in the machine. We should find out innovative ways to coexist with the [sic] nature’ (A 2 3). The latter passage is also interesting because it highlights that for A human beings should relate to nature in a more respectful way. This, though, does not mean that human or, better, capital-centric, interests should be forgone. In a passage from a different answer we read: ‘A country can’t function without business. The only way to prevent climate change is to be responsible and work with business’ (A 3 1). Together, these passages illustrate a tension between respect for nature and a defence of anthropocentric/‘capital-centric’ interests, a dissonance that is remindful of Haraway’s ethics.

Similar characterisations of nature, human beings and their relationships reverberate across many other TTs’ answers. Making a direct reference to Haraway, C highlights the agency and intelligence of bees: ‘Haraway → bee activities → “how clever they are”’ (C 2 1); in the third batch of questionnaires C recognises human–nature interaction, writing ‘Humans + nature interacting with each other’ (C 3 1). In addition to this, similarly to A’s, C’s answers touch on ethical considerations and reveal a tension between the pursuit of human well-being and a caring attitude towards nature: in the third batch of questionnaires, C for example describes SDG 11 as ‘human nature and action [to] “look after the bees”’ (C 3 2). Respect for nature, though, does not exclude that nature can also be used instrumentally: in fact, underneath the description of SDG 11, C characterises SDG 3 as ‘nature as a caring space/wellbeing space’ (C 3 3). This is a characterisation of nature that highlights its instrumental role in the furthering of human well-being. Establishing a more respectful way to interact with nature is also a concern expressed by others, such as F and E.

D’s position regarding the conceptualisation of nature and human beings has also changed, albeit more modestly than other TTs. The answers D provided in batches 2 and 3 show that nature is still regarded as a mechanism whose value, overall, does not seem to extend beyond instrumentality. It is humans that are the only creative agents and that, through their actions, dominate over nature. For example, in the third batch of questionnaires, we read that to protect against climate change–driven extinctions of species, human beings should adopt conservation strategies including ‘seed banks’, ‘zoos’, ‘sanctuaries’ and ‘aquaculture’ (D 3 1). These are activities that to some extent protect natural entities but only for their instrumental value to human beings: no mention is made of the possible needs and ‘wishes’, so to speak, of these natural entities. At the same time, it can also be noticed that in one answer, D includes ‘appreciation of nature’ as an activity that could play a part in the promotion of the ESD agenda (D 3 2): ‘appreciation of nature’ is significant because it signals that nature could also possess non-instrumental value.

As for our ‘control group’, B’s conceptualisation of nature and of human beings remains substantially, albeit not completely (see B 3 3), unchanged between the first and the last workshops – the only ones B attended. Similarly to the first batch of questionnaires, nature seems to remain conceptualised as a mechanism that ‘moves’: ‘ecosystem are changing’, B writes, but only because they are affected by anthropogenic action, in the form of ‘climate change’ (B 3 1). Nature seems unable of independent creative ‘witty’ agency. Furthermore, in addition to their creative (and destructive) agency, humans are also still considered as that which is not nature: in one of the answers, we in fact read that nature is described as comprising ‘trees, green spaces, ozone layer’, leaving human beings conspicuously unmentioned (B 3 1).

From these considerations, we can conclude that the HBH intervention seems to have produced some significant changes in the worldview of those TTs that attended all the workshops. Specifically, and to summarise, there is a movement away from a Lego© world view towards one that recognises, at least to some degree, nature as an entity that is an active, ‘creative’ agent in its own right and, second, that acknowledges the complex humanity–nature interrelationships. In addition to this, it is a world view that embraces humanity–nature’s respectful coexistence – without this meaning that human, or capital-centric, interests should be forgone – and that is characterised by a more complex understanding of reality. To all intents and purposes, this is a world view that in many significant ways is consonant with the Harawayan companion-species characterisation of reality that was outlined earlier.

Assessment of the questionnaires

There are several important considerations that we can draw from the analysis of the questionnaires. First, they reveal that at the start of the project, the TTs by and large possessed a Lego© view of reality. The questionnaires also display that as the workshops progressed many TTs adopted a markedly Harawayan world view: at the ontological level, various TTs’ answers indicate that natural entities were considered as creative agents, and that there is an interaction, possibly constitutive, between human beings and natural entities. At the ethical level, multiple answers from the second and third batches of questionnaires reveal that the humanity–nature relationship should be informed not only by instrumentality and commodification of nature but also by respect towards it. This is a tension that is evocative of the account of ethics provided by Haraway, for whom the relationships between companion species are characterised by a respectful but realistic ‘getting on together’ where a degree of harmful and destructive behaviour is deemed necessary and inevitable for life to continue. The questionnaires also seem to show that the adoption of a more Harawayan world view is positively correlated with better, more thoughtful ESD planning and practice. The examples provided earlier reveal that the TTs were able to better integrate the 17 SDGs in their teaching practice and to link them with real world issues and with the subjects they taught. Additionally, there was also evidence that the TTs adopted a more interdisciplinary approach in their planning and teaching activities.

Lastly, the analysis has shown that the HBH intervention stimulated some TTs to adopt several Harawayan notions that are dissonant with the ESD worldview. For example, it was seen that some of the answers the TTs gave in the second and third batches of questionnaires describe natural entities as creative agents. Other answers highlight that nature was recognised and respected as a worthy entity, irrespective of its instrumental value. This dissonance, however, was not acknowledged by any TTs during the course of the intervention and did not lead to a problematisation of the ESD agenda or to requests for its supersession.

Since the changes described above were not observed (at least to the same degree) in our ‘control group’, it can be concluded that there was a strong, possibly causal, correlation between the changes observed (and discussed earlier in this article) and the HBH intervention.

Conclusion

The article has argued that ‘critical’ education has tremendous potential to bring about much-needed change in these times of crisis: it has shown, in the best ecopedagogical tradition, that democratic, respectful, open engagement with Harawayan ideas facilitated the emergence in the participating TTs of ways of thinking and acting that acknowledge and respect (but not in an ‘ideal’ way) the uniqueness and the tentacular inter-constitution of entities, both human and other-than-human.

The conclusion the article arrives at is that for education to fulfil its potential in advancing and possibly going beyond the ESD agenda – contributing in this way to tackle the challenges the Anthropocene poses – interventions such as the HBH should be promoted.

Doubtlessly, the project also suffers from some limitations and caution should therefore be used before drawing general conclusions. To start off with, the HBH was small scale: accordingly, it can be problematic, if not unwarranted, to draw broad, general conclusions on its efficacy. Additionally, the changes in the TTs’ world view and teaching practice may have been due to factors external to the HBH project or, conversely, connected to the very design of the project. It can in fact be postulated that the TTs that took part in the project already nurtured an interest in nature-related issues and may therefore have been more open to consider and (at least partially) accept the Harawayan-based nature-respecting world view that animated the project. Lastly, absence, or a limited degree, of change may have been due to institutional constraints such as, importantly, the curricular requirements during their placements: this is a concern that was explicitly expressed by some participants (D 2 1) and that is well known in the literature (James, 2018).

This said, we believe the article has shown that in these troubling times of the Anthropocene there is every reason to be hopeful that change for the better is possible. And a new, ‘critical’ type of education can play a powerful role in making this change a reality.

Funding

This research was funded by a University of Reading Teaching and Learning Enhancement Funding during the academic year 2022–23.

Institutional Review Board statement

Institutional ethical approval from the University of Reading was obtained prior to the commencement of this study, following BERA guidelines.

Declaration of interest statement

There is no declaration of interest.

Informed consent statement

Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

Data availability statement

The data collection is for the purpose of developing this article and further dissemination of the work through conference presentations and networking workshops.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.