Indigenous pedagogies and environmental education: starting a conversation

As part of the process of developing transformative pedagogies in the 21st century, the important question arises for us – as teachers, learners and researchers – of how to better align education with the diverse realities of students’ lives and the places they inhabit. Conversely, we might also ask how we can value and harness this diversity in background and locus as a pedagogical tool for facilitating experiential, groupdynamic and student-centred learning experiences. The answers to these questions are of great importance in terms of how we address the growing rejection of, apathy towards and alienation from the education system felt by many students, particularly among disadvantaged groups. In order to address these questions, it is necessary for us to re-evaluate existing models of teaching and learning, and re-conceptualise alternative pedagogies and their underlying epistemologies. In this paper, I will focus on exploring the principles that underpin Indigenous pedagogies and environmental education, and their potential to complement one another in a transformative endeavour.