‘Educating to transgress’: ecotopian pedagogies for the Symbiocene

With climate and biodiversity collapse accelerating, fundamental socio-ecological transformations are required as a matter of urgency. Education for sustainable development (ESD) positions education as an important context for tackling the ecological crisis. However, dominant ESD pedagogical approaches are insufficiently critical of the systemic drivers of unsustainability and the present ecocidal status quo. In this conceptual article, we bring together three intersecting critical-pedagogical traditions – critical, utopian and eco pedagogies – to build an ethico-political foundation for what we call ‘ecotopian pedagogies’. Ecotopian pedagogies, as a theory and transformative political praxis, seek to fundamentally disrupt the systemic drivers of our ecocidal present, interrupt the replication of (neo)colonial and anthropocentric futures, and (re)ignite students’ critical and imaginative capabilities for building multispecies-just worlds. We define ‘ecotopian pedagogies’ and structure this article around five values to serve as a non-didactic starting point for anyone who wishes to work with and develop them.