Wilding educational policy: Hope for the future

This introductory paper begins by summarizing the premises of this special issue on “Wilding Educational Policy.” That is, first, current normalized educational practices in education are not adequate for these times of extraordinary social and ecological upheaval. Second, an important way forward will be to problematize modernist tendencies to control discourse and practice in education in ways that tend to “domesticate” educational possibilities. We then describe how the papers in this collection are framed around two emergent thematic arcs. One arc is directly aimed at initiating conversations with and amongst policy-makers. The other arc illustrates how authors have been expanding their understanding of the premises of this issue and how “wilding” can be interpreted in different cultural settings. These papers all add to a growing body of literature that builds on experiments and musings in “wild pedagogies.”

Wilding educational policy: The case of Botswana

Teaching and learning must be transformed in order to prepare learners to respond to escalating social, economic and environmental challenges. The primary purpose of this paper is to contribute to the process of wilding pedagogy. The lessons learned in this paper emerge mainly from a desktop study and educational excursions to a natural resources management centre in a rural village and an educational reserve. The excursions provide practical illustrations of learning in the wild by students. Responding to social, economic and environmental challenges can be facilitated through pedagogical policy interventions. In Botswana, educational policy seeks to promote learner-centred approaches to education. However, in practice, there are limited opportunities for a wilding of pedagogies. Most schools are constrained by a number of factors when trying to facilitate wildness in teaching and learning, yet the natural environment provides seemingly unlimited opportunities for active teaching and authentic learning. Though not explicitly stated, it is taken for granted that learning institutions are limited in their abilities to practise wild pedagogies due to budgetary constraints and a congested curriculum. This paper suggests that educational policy interventions can be implemented to enable transformative change that also promotes students’ engagement, discovery and autonomy while also learning in outdoor settings that support the aims of wild pedagogies.

‘From lone-sailor to fleet’: Supporting educators through Wild Pedagogies

Enabling educators to meet new and challenging times requires fundamental shifts to ways of imagining and enacting their practice. A central yet often understated aspect of this educational change are the various ways in which educators receive training and development. From initial teacher training through to continuing professional development, cultures which underpin policy change in educational institutions emerge from the practices of educators. In this paper we examine educators’ experiences of a Wild Pedagogies gathering which took place over three days in central Devon in late spring 2019. Part workshop, part informal social gathering and mutual exchange, this continuing professional development event enabled conversations, sharing (and shaping) of practice, and imagination of the future of personal and institutional educational priorities. This paper positions itself as an account of a gathering of wild pedagogues – captured as reflection, discussion and activities – and brings the participants’ reflections into conversation with wider themes emerging from previous Wild Pedagogies gatherings. It makes the assertion that such dialogic continuing professional development, constructed on foundations of relational and place-responsive pedagogies, can underpin future practitioner development in the event of a policy shift toward greater availability of outdoor learning and nature connection in the UK. The paper ends with four principles for infusing new or existing environmental education continuing professional development with place-responsive and wild pedagogical approaches.

Imagining a wilder policy future through interstitial tactics

This paper takes as its central concern the concept of wilding education policy and explores implications for systemic change in education. It starts from shared premises with wild pedagogies, namely, that current human operations are unsustainable and require deep transformation, and that education is (or should be) a partner in this transformation. The arguments herein focus on the relationship of the institution of formal schooling to the ‘wild,’ and posits that, because of the inherent tensions between the two, interstitial policy tactics are required. This paper proposes five working principles of interstitial tactics and examines these against a meta-synthesis of recent research on transformative environmental and sustainability practices in schools.

Wild and willful pedagogies: Education policy and practice to embrace the spirits of a more-than-human world

Education faces a dilemma: policy and practice are primarily humanist in orientation, and yet the environmental challenges education hopes to confront require moving beyond humanist perspectives – to posthumanist awareness. Recent policy advances in Victoria, Australia, highlight the empowerment of students. Yet widening the scope of education policy to embrace posthumanist ideas and the more-than-human world is a challenge not yet conceived by most policy-makers and teachers. In this paper the relevance of posthumanist ideas to education is taken seriously, and arguments presented which connect policy and wildness, two words not often considered co-supportive. Wildness and policy come together in habits, in practices, where self-will and social civility are bonded together. I introduce anthropomorphism, in its connection with irreducible anthropocentrism, as a means to understand human engagement with the wills, spirits, habits, of nonhumans, in a more-than-human world. Anthropomorphism is one way to enable moral consideration to be extended beyond humans, offering a way to shift education policy and practices, thereby supporting understanding of wild pedagogies.