Fostering a relationship with the more-than-human world is understood to be crucial in wilding pedagogies. Yet for many, such a relationship is often developed in early life and is limited in complexity and nuance. In this paper, we propose to investigate what a mature relationship with the natural might look like. We do so in three parts. The first part introduces four moments of surprise or pause: “hunh?!” moments. These lead to four associated observations that suggest contemporary limitations on human relationship with place, and in one case, enhancement of it. They are: an idealisation of childhood relationship with the natural world, which is now kept in a separate category, rendering it inaccessible to the adult; an un-knowing of relationality with the natural world through cultural practices that deny or denigrate such a state; the myth of human autonomy, which comes with multiple cultural repercussions; and finally, what we are here calling natural imagination, which pulls in the opposite direction to the first three. An environmentally rooted Haudenosaunee model regards imagination as not simply the purview and possession of humans, but a shared space between people and the natural world. In response to these, in Parts 2 and 3, we propose that a relational ontology — one that enacts relationship between humans and the more-than-human — cannot be reached simply by progressing further in intent, sensitivity or theorising from the current assumed model of the psychological development. The abyss between current ontologies and an alternative must be hurdled, if it is to be crossed at all. This may be done by challenging presuppositions that underpin current ontologies and psychologies and moving from theorising to enacting an alternative model. Such a model, in part informed by the fungal research of Merlin Sheldrake, may lead to another way of being human, an enmeshing with the more-than-human, which we call amalgam-being.

Following inter-/transdisciplinary ideas, environmental education inherently collaborates with other subjects, including physical education. As the work with other subjects might be jeopardised by differing worldviews and paradigms, it is worth illuminating compatible and incompatible positions for inter-/transdisciplinary work. In physical education, the concept of physical literacy (PL) has recently gained considerable attention and adopts a student-centred perspective on human existence and learning. Therefore, the goal of the present narrative integrative review was to review the existing literature at the nexus between physical education and environmental education through a PL lens (five pre-defined concept assumptions). After screening for eligibility, a total of 129 articles were assigned to five different thematic categories: (a) conceptual discussion/argumentative patterns, (b) curricular discussion and international comparisons, (c) programming/intervention content, (d) teacher and enabler perspectives and (e) student outcomes/perspectives. The synthesis revealed that PL can harmonise with the educative work when respecting the disciplinary interests of both physical education and environmental education. However, few intervention studies translate the holistic PL claims into interventions. Accordingly, evaluations with teachers or students less frequently integrated holistic learning experiences in line with PL. In summary, previous research at the nexus has not yet exhausted its full inter-/transdisciplinary potential.

This essay begins by reviewing the theoretical debates within literary-critical “ecocriticism” over what Paul J. Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer termed the “anthropocene” and what Jason Moore terms the “capitalocene.” It explains how those debates are implicated in recent climate fiction, which Daniel Bloom dubs “cli-fi.” These debates have direct implications for the possibilities and prospects for environmental education, insofar as both “high” literature and “popular” fiction remain important objects of educational practice. The essay proceeds to a critical account of the climate fictions of the Californian science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson, arguably the leading contemporary Anglophone cli-fi writer, whose work regularly features in environmental education programmes.

Climate fiction (cli-fi) is widely assumed to have cognitive value for student and teacher understanding of climate change, often attributed to automatic mental processes based on trial and error. This study argues its cognitive value lies in systematic mental actions that transform cli-fi into school science problems for educational benefits to students and teachers. A guide, grounded in agentive activity theory, was developed to orient these actions and tested with three secondary school biology teachers. The participants worked with two excerpts from “The Ministry of the Future” by Kim Stanley Robinson and another adapted from the article “Scientists at odds over wild plans to slow melting glaciers” by Hannah Richter. Think-aloud and retrospective interviews were used. Three key stages emerged: narrative immersion in cli-fi, problem structuring and editing/correction. The findings indicate that the guide supports teachers’ agency and self-regulation during the transformation process, although there is a limitation related to teachers’ content knowledge. It is concluded that the guide enhances teachers’ control over cli-fi transformations, and the educational cognitive value of cli-fi may reside in agentive activity.

This article contributes to Wild Pedagogies by foregrounding love as an emergent, affective practice that takes shape through embodied, affective encounters with the more-than-human (Whatmore, 2006) and material world. Engaging post-qualitative sensibilities, it approaches walking and writing not as fixed methods, but as entangled, responsive practices that invite ethical attunement to the unfolding rhythms of the living world. While Wild Pedagogies emphasise relationality, they have yet to fully account for affect as a pedagogical force. Addressing this gap, the article traces how love moves through diverse encounters, shaping perception, responsibility, and responsiveness. Love is conceptualised through three interwoven affective pathways: shimmering rupture (moments that unsettle habitual perception), relational resonance (the affective flow that binds beings in co-becoming), and cyclical attunement (the rhythmic deepening of ethical engagement). These pathways reframe love as a material practice of staying-with (Haraway, 2016)—a commitment to returning, noticing, and responding to the world’s ongoing entanglements.

Traditionally, physical education has focused on movement competency to develop skills for successful performance in different physical activities. Recently, however, the focus of many physical educators is shifting to notions of physical literacy to promote human flourishing through embodied experiences across multiple and diverse movement contexts well beyond physical education. While this shift is a welcome corrective to more traditional approaches to physical education, mainstream conceptions of physical literacy remain unduly narrow as rooted in colonial logics that continue to separate humans from the Earth while locating dominant categories of the human in hierarchical positions of power. In response, this article is an entanglement of Western and Métis embodiments of physical literacy. Deconstructing universalising models and modes of physical literacy set in dominant Western constructs, we seek to foster culturally relevant and meaningful physical literacy to promote physical activity and the wholistic health and well-being of Indigenous, or specifically, Red River Métis teachers and learners in Winnipeg, Canada. In doing so, we seek to provide a (re)visioning of human/Earth relationships as cultivated through movement-with Land; and thus, strengthen physical educational practices that more adequately attends to social (human) and ecological (Earth) flourishing in the context of global climate change.

Recent scholarship has explored the concept of “wilding pedagogies” to more deeply engage the more-than-human world in environmental and outdoor adventure education. Thus far, the scholarship around wild pedagogies has been primarily epistemic and pedagogical, focusing on epistemological principles that can guide pedagogy. There has been less focus on ontological considerations for wild pedagogies. This paper offers a theoretical exploration into such ontological considerations that can further inform the practice of wilding pedagogies in outdoor adventure education. The emergence of (new) materialism coupled with an increasing awareness of Indigenous philosophy has problematised many of the ontological assumptions embedded within Eurocentric philosophical ideals. Challenging dualisms and the traditional boundaries of substance, these philosophies consider relations as ontologically primary. From this ontological posture, we can engage with the phenomenon that exists in the space between humans and nature, thinking with nature rather than about nature and recognizing the agency of the more-than-human world.

Braidotti describes the world as gasping for air as collectively we face a range of socioecological challenges. Young people are important actors in these challenges, making schools a critical space for this work. Physical education (PE) can contribute through promoting relevant embodied encounters that develop students’ physical literacies (PL). Noting the recent moves to extend the notion of a physically literate individual to include the ecological, alongside the Australian Curriculum that requires teachers to attend to their learning area, cross-curriculum priorities and general capabilities including sustainability and ethical capabilities, there are exciting possibilities for developing students’ PL to confront these challenges. Despite these opportunities, for PE to contribute meaningfully, teachers must progress from PE represented by sport techniques, linear pedagogies and driven by competition to PE that engages students to think and act differently in the world, ethically, ontologically and epistemologically. Using autoethnography, this paper presents vignettes to outline current issues and possibilities for PE. Through a posthuman lens, positioning teachers and students as learners who are always becoming, with the capacity to affect and be affected, it is possible to achieve the intended curriculum and develop young people’s capacities to make a meaningful contribution to the socioecological challenges we face.

In this paper we theorise climate fiction in the context of Dirrayawadha: Rise Up, by Anita Heiss (2024). Dirrayawadha: Rise Up is a literary novel that narratises historical truths in a dialogic encounter. Through an exploration of love, resilience and resistance, the novel recounts early moments of invasion while simultaneously revealing the links between colonial violence and environmental crisis. We examine four excerpts from the novel to illustrate how the narratisation of historical truths and usage of literary devices and language works. We also show how the translanguaging in the novel, where some sections shift between English and Wiradyuri, enable the text to transcend some of the limitations of English. The novel reveals how the genesis of environmental crisis in so-called Australia begins in the first moments of invasion. Heiss (2022) argues the need for settlers to read more First Nations writing as a form of truth-listening (Kwaymullina, 2020).

As climate change accelerates, its most devastating impacts fall on those already marginalised, deepening existing inequalities. This underscores the need for climate change education to attend not only to the scientific but also to social, cultural and ethical dimensions. Like science fiction, climate fiction (cli-fi) has often reinforced colonial, patriarchal and anthropocentric worldviews. However, some contemporary cli-fi narratives challenge these paradigms by offering alternative visions that centre climate justice and the voices of those most affected by climate change. In this paper, we examine two contemporary Australian cli-fi narratives — Merlinda Bobis’s Locust Girl and Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book — and their potential role in climate education. Integrating these cli-fi into a cross-disciplinary higher education curriculum can enrich climate change education by encouraging critical, ethical and imaginative engagement and prepare students to navigate and respond to the crisis in transformative ways. Not only do these texts critique climate inequalities but they imagine alternative ways of being, positioning characters in relational entanglements with climate, cultures and place. We conduct an ecocritical analysis, applying a critical posthumanist and ecofeminist lens, to examine how these narratives disrupt anthropocentric and patriarchal logics and advocate for relational, justice-centred approaches to climate issues. Climate change concepts that emerged from this analysis act as a guide for educators.

Calls for innovating environmental and sustainability education—including higher education—have been voiced for many years. New approaches are gaining traction, including the Wild Pedagogies framework and notions of rewilding education. A common denominator of these approaches is an emphasis on learning outdoors, and through a relational epistemological lens. Contributing to these developing approaches, this paper investigates the budding concept and practice of outdoor relational education at a university level, specifically Wageningen University (WU) in the Netherlands. Based on 31 semi-structured interviews with protagonists and other stakeholders involved in or affiliated with outdoor relational education at WU, we identify associations, key elements and perceived benefits. Our research provides insight into what outdoor relational education and associated concepts are perceived to be in this context, how they are engaged and what the key experienced opportunities and barriers are to implement outdoor relational education further at WU. Complementary to theorisations of wild pedagogies and related approaches, our results offer empirical illustrations of wild pedagogies “in action” in an institutional academic setting that is not necessarily conducive to such developments.

Friluftsliv is a Scandinavian concept that emphasises a deep connection with nature through outdoor activities. This study examines its transformative role in fostering physical literacy and environmental ethics among international students. The University of South-East Norway offers a year-long programme that integrates theoretical coursework with outdoor experiential learning, including multi-day expeditions, exemplifying embodied pedagogy. Students were observed for one week, and at its conclusion participated in creative focus groups where they discussed and illustrated their most memorable experiences. The winter expedition emerged as a clear highlight. Analysis of interviews and artwork revealed that the teaching methods used enhanced students’ skills, knowledge, social connections, and motivation to engage with nature, thus reinforcing the four pillars of physical literacy. It also fostered a significant emotional transformation. While students initially approached nature from an anthropocentric perspective, the challenges of the winter trip, in particular, helped most of them to shift their outlook towards a more ecocentric view by deepening their connection with the natural environment. This study highlights the powerful role that experiential outdoor education can play in cultivating both physical literacy and environmental stewardship.

This article examines the representation of climate as hyperobject — described by Timothy Morton as something that is “massively distributed in time and space relative to humans” (Morton (2013) Hyperobjects: Philosophy and ecology after the end of the world. University of Minnesota Press, p. 1) — in fantastique genres (inclusive of fantasy, speculative and science fiction, horror, supernatural and New Weird genres) that arguably characterised climate fiction’s beginnings. By positioning such climate fictions within “the literature of the impossible” (Boucher (2024) The specificity of fantasy and the “affective novum”: A theory of a core subset of fantasy literature. Literature, 4(2), 101–121), I investigate the difference between what might be considered more speculative climate fictions and the increasingly common, more realist and literary cli-fi narratives. In other words, I discuss what, now, is the “use” of the speculative and the fantastic in climate fiction when climate crisis itself is indeed real and far from “impossible.” Discussing N.K. Jemisin’s fantasy series The Broken Earth (2015–2017) and Jeff VanderMeer’s horror/New Weird series Southern Reach (2014–2024), I argue that “climate-fantastic” novels are well-positioned to narrativise climate change as a hyperobject due to the ability of speculative, fantastic genres to exceed the limitations of Western-capitalist-colonial storytelling practices. I also consider the role of speculative climate fictions in education, including the importance of reading, studying and writing into the speculative alongside the realist when it comes to climate crisis.

Education is essential for addressing the global environmental crisis and engaging students through experiential learning is crucial. In physical education, physical literacy offers a holistic approach to sustainable education, with plogging exemplifying this integration. This study investigates the perceptions of Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) students regarding the implementation of plogging in school curricula. Using qualitative interviews with 80 PETE students and analysing responses with NVIVO 12 software, the study reveals mixed feelings about this innovative practice. Participants see plogging as valuable for fostering both physical literacy and environmental awareness. However, concerns about feasibility include the need for institutional support, curriculum flexibility and community involvement. These findings highlight the potential of plogging to enhance educational programmes by combining physical activity with environmental stewardship. The results can inform the development of future educational strategies that integrate plogging to promote sustainability and holistic student development.

Wild pedagogies (WP) are emerging as critical, relational alternative to current, often unsustainable learning practices. WP aim to offer a way of learning in, with, through and for nature, embracing a post-humanist, relational perspective. So far, WP have mainly been explored theoretically. Increasingly, educators both within and outside of formal education, are inspired and apply WP in their education. Throughout the world, examples of learning that fit into WPs’ living definition, are emerging. However, concrete inspiration for how to bring WP theory into practice, is still largely lacking. In this paper, we explore three emerging approaches at Wageningen University (The Netherlands), that are inspired by wild pedagogies. Empirically, we combine formative evaluations of course designs with participant observation in a collective case study setting over three years. The empirical research is embedded in an explorative literature review that led us to four explorative areas of WP, namely (1) Wild and caring learning spaces (2) Learning from self-will and wonder (3) Relational learning with the world and (4) Disruptive learning for the world. Eventually we present concrete inspiration on those four areas for implementing WP in formal higher education.

We co-designed a bee sequence with a specialist primary science teacher at an Australian government school. Year 6 students learned about European honeybees and Australian native bees, including through Cli-Fi. In this paper, we explore the pedagogical power of providing students with opportunities to create Cli-Fi about bee futures in the Anthropocene. We present and thematically analyse examples of students’ bee Cli-Fi to argue that they generated these narratives to express how we ought to value bees and how we ought to conduct ourselves towards bees to realise more desirable futures. We propose that these students were futuring as normative myths. Students generated dystopian views of bee futures in adopting a human perspective, but also present were glimmers of hope for a more positive outlook that embraced more-than-human perspectives. We adopt a pragmatist semiotic approach to propose that these young people’s bee Cli-Fi constituted normative claims about the future of bees, as they outlined the aesthetics (how and what we ought to value) and ethics (how and in what way we ought to act) of humans caring for bees in an epoch of polycrisis. We suggest that Cli-Fi ought to be an integral part of climate change education in empowering students to assert their agency.

Western contemporary educational systems tend to re-produce, and thus maintain, the existent non-sustainable social structures, failing to live up to the present critical times. Their aim is confined to preparation for financial “success,” whereas they disregard the imminence of environmental crises and global social shifts and are rooted in the human sense of superiority over nature, that is, anthropocentrism. The present article acknowledges the need for reconsideration of humans’ place and role in the ecosystem and focuses on the importance of a more ecocentric pedagogy. A holistic in-service teacher training was designed and implemented in Greece, inspired by the wild pedagogies touchstones, mainly the notion of nature as co-teacher. Twelve participants met for the course of a year to immerse themselves in nature-centred, affective, relational, “wild” experiences. Changes were recorded using pre/post-semi-structured interviews to inquire into participants’ perceptions of self versus Self (i.e. acknowledging oneself as part of a larger whole) and perceptions of (environmental) education. It appears that deep, relational nature experiences (a) can shift the perception of individualised self towards Self, (b) can shift the perception of teacher identity towards that of a change agent and (c) can set ethics and values education as a priority among trainee-teacher participants.