Framed by biological and environmental education, this paper addresses eight questions posed in Wild Pedagogies: Touchstones for Re-Negotiating Education and the Environment in the Anthropocene. These questions ponder more-than-human methodologies, positionality of the natural world, embedded anthropocentricism and research implications for the natural world. Wild pedagogues aim to reclaim and reimagine an educational system toward intentional praxis less reliant on quantifiable learning outcomes, with a move toward active, ‘‘self-willed pedagogy’’ with an agential nature as co-teacher. This bold enterprise challenges dominant Western-colonial paradigms rooted in power and control over nature and learners. My responses explore Tim Ingold’s notion of a ‘‘modest, humble, and attentive’’ science, ecocentric place-based research, questions dissection and animal experimentation, and offers Goethean science and Indigenous philosophy as alternatives to rational-reductionist Newtonian science. Lab-based science is contrasted with natural history, and creative, contemplative practice are suggested as tools of the wild researcher. How can we transform science education through the lenses of deep ecology and philosophical posthumanism? This paper contributes to the ongoing dialogue of ecological and environmental education during the Anthropocene, especially in regard to the life sciences and the often-unquestioned use of nonhuman animals in science teaching and research.

This paper begins with crises; environmental, social and democratic. And then it posits that in the midst of these crises there might be an opportunity. One that involves not so much “saving” democracy and sustaining current ways of life but shifting attentions towards potentially creating (re-creating) something different. Something we are calling eco-democracy. There have long been voices, calling for a more environmentally thoughtful form of democracy. After tracing a short discussion of this history including some of the critiques we turn to an exploration of eco-democracy in environmental education. Our argument is that some forms of environmental education are already thinking in more eco-democratic ways without necessarily naming the project as such. In order to do this, we focus on five ‘seedlings’ of eco-democracy that already exist in environmental education. These seedlings allow us to do two things. First, draw connections to Wild Pedagogies and second draw out four key considerations for environmental educators if they are interested in having more eco-democratic practices: voice, consent, self-determination and kindness. The paper ends with a short speculative exploration of what might happen pedagogically if environmental education were to assume an eco-democratic orientation through honouring voice, consent, self-determination, and kindness.

This article explores strategies for rewilding pedagogy through three life-opening arts-based educational practices: nature writing, propositions, and minor experiences. Drawing on wild pedagogies, diverse perspectives on life, and various approaches to arts education, we examine how these practices can be twisted to promote life-friendly education, in support of more-than-human life, disrupting life-forgetful educational and societal norms. By reflecting on the (re)wilding strategies and their actual as well as imagined outcomes, we offer ideas on how to break with dominant conceptions of education and life in the Anthropocene.

In the edginess of our predicament, violences of the -isms (capitalism, colonialism, imperialism) impact life: ecological degradation and inequalities are some matters of concern and care, regionally and planetary. Such crisis accentuates the call for relational education, a worlding process emerging within and being immanent to practice, probing power-relations, decentring the human and highlighting the enmeshment of peoples and environment. Wilding pedagogies is one way of responding to such call. This contribution, a postqualitative assemblage, attends to the formation of wild as a philosophical concept emerging in-practice working the relationality of theory, artmaking and storying. It defamiliarizes domesticated visions of education by mapping the movement of practices of peoples and conditions of life in (and beyond) Southeast Mediterranean. In so doing, it problematises new materialist, Deleuzoguattarian and indigenous philosophies and cosmologies and suggests such frictions crucial for environmental education. I re-visit and re-enliven — in Karen Barad’s discussion — projects with children, communities, and the more-than-human world in Southeast Mediterranean through artistic (urban sketching) and teaching-pedagogical practice probing wildings as dynamic, unfolding process refuting isolation and fixity. Wildings emerges as differentiating process reworking ethical relations, intensifying and nuancing wild pedagogies and re-imagining environmental education.

This article explores what we identify as two forms of intuition. The first is a form called teacher-intuition, which is described as expertise-based, rational, and individualised. The second form, relational-intuition, is inspired by Intuitive Interspecies Communication and presented as an embodied, reflexive, and connected way of being with/in the more-than-human world. Guided by hermeneutic methodology, anecdotes and research vignettes aid in understanding the ontological and epistemological differences of these two intuitions. We consider how teacher-intuition might unduly limit the possibilities available for ecologically minded pedagogies, especially in comparison to relational-intuition, which opens more ontologically diverse ways to be teacher — thereby expanding one’s options for interacting with students and creating space for ecological connection. Wild Pedagogies (Jickling et al., 2018) is drawn upon to help situate relational-intuition. We conclude with questions that educators may consider with regards to the form and range of their own intuitions, with a view to perhaps bringing forward more relational forms.

This paper describes how four rural schools on the mid-north coast of NSW pushed back against the current indoor classroom education model, instead prioritising the importance of ecologising learning beyond the school gate. While there has been considerable attention paid to Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander practices associated with food systems and geographical domains in Australian school curricula, less attention has been paid to the natural Lore of the land and the underlying knowledge and practices shaping and maintaining sustainable land management. Here the authors recount the crucial role of the Gumbaynggirr people’s historical and contemporary cultural knowledge systems that acted as a cornerstone for school students to build their learning about Climate Change authentically with/within nature. Aboriginal knowledge systems derive from a deep relationship between plants and animals, entwined with spiritual practices. However, despite the potential significance of their contributions, Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people have not been adequately represented in the national discussions about Climate Change (HEAL Network & CRE-STRIDE (2021). Discussion Paper, Lowitja Institute, Melbourne, doi:10.48455/bthg-aj15.). This research found that when representatives from the local Aboriginal community lead teachers in Climate Change education, overwhelmingly student learning is enriched when it occurs in settings enabling a deep relationality with nature and Culture.