Re-assembling environmental and sustainability education: orientations from New Materialism

Abstract

A growing number of scholars call for the use of New Materialist frameworks for research across social and natural sciences. In general, however, there is little rigorous, in-depth or detailed advice on how postqualitative research is to be empirically conducted. Also, what the implications might be for environmental and sustainability education remain unclear. In response, drawing on data from a place-responsive heritage education project, employing theory from Deleuze and Guattari, I provide orientations for Assemblage Pedagogy and Assemblage Research. Assemblage Pedagogy involves educating for more sustainable ways of life through: (1) Interrupting existing education assemblages and experimenting with new approaches, (2) Practicing, relating, and entangling 'from the middle', involving the human and more-than-human to actualise the capacities and relations needed, and, (3) Evoking and performing new practices and expressions designed to create more sustainable ways of life. Wider implications for researching environmental and sustainability education are considered.