photo Sea-Water Amplification (SWA) 2023

Abstract:¹

Using the example of our own art-research practice, we focus on outdoor pedagogy and environmental literacy of preschool-age children not only as a teaching of environmental content, but above all a form of listening that tries to create a deeper understanding of the network of human and more-than-human connections. As part of our artistic research, we point to the development of a method of performative mapping, which allows us to see subtler questions in a new way, for which there is no time left in the mainstream education process.In the text, we also try to point out why mainstream education supports only a narrow concept of listening, focused on the acceptance and understanding of human meanings. It follows that mainstream education is insufficiently equipped to listen to the affective and environmental dimension as a kind of vibration that is able to move all kinds of bodies. This is why cross-species listening needs to be expanded and cultivated in educational practice (not just for pre-school children), and to this end we propose several ways to develop this kind of listening. The text includes multiple perspectives, allowing each of us to look beyond our own experience and learn to synchronize ourselves across many different time horizons.

Key words:

outdoor pedagogies, slow pedagogies, environmental education, climate change, performative mapping, deep listening, multisensory learnig, interspecies communication, wheather, children geographies

1 The pedagogy for extended-interspecies listening encompasses a wider range of artistic-research activities that arise as part of the educational and research environment of the Sea-Water Amplification (SWA). SWA is established in collaboration with the artistic-research platform Ausdruck Books Hybrid Publishing Platform. These educational and research activities aim to expand and further define the so-called experience in relation to outdoor pedagogy and seascape epistemology.