Dr Marilyn Ahearn

This chapter explores the significance of the deep-time story of the universe to environmental education, reimagining the place of socioecological learning within the contexts of the evolving deep-time scientific story and the Anthropocene. We use the concept of ‘journey’ as the metaphor to transcend ‘in-between’ entanglements (, ) of place/deep-time, adding richer layers of intuitive understandings to the existing scientific evidence on this subject. We incorporate arts-based forms through imagery, photography, art, prose, poetic dialogue and reflective discourse to forge broader perspectives, new connections and understandings of interdependence within the increasing unfoldings of our complex universe. The 13.8-billion-year Big History framework is reviewed through three pivotal signposts in time. The interconnected signposts traverse the flaring forth of the universe and its boundless possibilities, continuing its projectory through the emergence of elements as building blocks for non-living matter, nature, creatures, humans and the ticking clock of future possibilities for everyThing and everyOne. Our hope is that our intuitive interpretations of the scientific universe story resonate with socioecological learning, thus empowering hope and agency, in encompassing all aspects of the environment, the ‘non-human’, the ‘human’ and the ‘more-than-human’.

The purpose of this chapter is to critically examine socioecological learning within the context of the evolving scientific story of the universe through Big History. We orient the reader to an overview of Big History in the context of the post-Anthropocene. Big History promotes antidisciplinary boundaries, beyond siloing, to forge new connections within an increasingly complex universe. Incorporating the experiences of fifteen students, we represent their post-Anthropocene imaginaries revealing five distinct themes/concepts. These include: Big History is More than-Human; Big History Metanarratives; Antidisciplinary Learning through Big History; Whole-systems and Worldviews in Big History; Agency and Possibility of Transformative Thinking in Big History.