What is our pedagogical response-ability in the face of climate and pandemic crises?
Shared by AFFRICA TAYLOR, VERONICA PACINI-KETCHABAW AND MINDY BLAISE
This is the fourth of a five-part series of blogs – based around questions that Kathleen Kummen asked us in a video-recorded zoom conference panel session in September 2020. You can watch the video segment related to this blog below.
Reflecting on the extraordinary year of global pandemic and wildfires, Kathleen raises two related questions. Firstly, about our response-ability, in the Harawayan sense. Secondly, about the kind of pedagogical response needed to make more liveable worlds. Veronica differentiates between the liberalist moral notion of individual human responsibility and Haraway’s relational more-than-human notion of capacity to respond. She promotes a slow, tentative and situated pedagogy, and maintaining a space for speculating about more liveable futures. Mindy reflects on listening with humility as a crucial aspect of pedagogical response-ability, which she has learned from her Indigenous teachers. Affrica reminds us that we humans are not the only ones with the capacity to respond, and that the virus and the fires force us to recognise this. She explains this recognition, using Bruno Latour’s term, as a ‘facing Gaia’ moment.
References
Kummen, K., Pacini-Ketchabaw, V., Blaise, M. & Taylor, A (2020) Common World Pedagogies: Interview Part 4. Video-recorded zoom keynote panel session. North Shore Early Childhood Conference: To Learn, To Wonder, Vancouver, 25/26 September. https://youtu.be/FhgBMMBg3Z4