'The Bud Disappears When the Blossom Breaks through': Composing Dialectical Lectures as Environmental Education
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| Title: | 'The Bud Disappears When the Blossom Breaks through': Composing Dialectical Lectures as Environmental Education |
|---|---|
| Language: | English |
| Authors: | Ramsey Affifi (ORCID |
| Source: | Environmental Education Research. 2026 32(1):1-20. |
| Availability: | Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 530 Walnut Street Suite 850, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Tel: 215-625-8900; Fax: 215-207-0050; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals |
| Peer Reviewed: | Y |
| Page Count: | 20 |
| Publication Date: | 2026 |
| Document Type: | Journal Articles Reports - Evaluative |
| Education Level: | Higher Education Postsecondary Education |
| Descriptors: | Environmental Education, Plants (Botany), Graduate Students, Preservice Teachers, Science Teachers, Ecology, Epistemology, Caring, Lecture Method |
| DOI: | 10.1080/13504622.2025.2493878 |
| ISSN: | 1350-4622 1469-5871 |
| Abstract: | This article illustrates and discusses 'dialectical pedagogy' through reflections on five lectures on plants composed for Environmental Education postgraduates and Initial Teacher science educators. It argues for dialectical pedagogy's place in 'ecologising' environmental education curriculum. Ecologising represents the fallible, ongoing attempt to attend to and improve ecological relations, and ecologising education entails doing so while perceiving educational processes as ecologies arising through open-ended, dynamic, co-constituting relations between living beings. To do so, this article's dialectical approach draws from Hegelian tradition but rejects its deterministic and teleological assumptions, emphasising the flowing and inclusive interplay of thought, where earlier ideas contribute to an organic development rather than being invalidated and dichotomised. My approach considers both the dialectics of thought, the dialectical development of that which thought attends -- in this case, plant life -- and the dialectic between them. The article presents lecture segments as artistic compositions, demonstrating how dialectical pedagogy can unshackle the life of the mind and its relation to the world. This approach aims to interrupt conceptualisations that deaden perception and participation in arising ecologies, inviting students into considering thinking as a living movement that builds itself up and breaks itself apart while reaching into and caring for the world. |
| Abstractor: | As Provided |
| Entry Date: | 2026 |
| Accession Number: | EJ1503360 |
| Database: | ERIC |
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| FullText | Links: – Type: pdflink Url: https://content.ebscohost.com/cds/retrieve?content=AQICAHj0k_4E0hTGH8RJwT4gCJyBsGNe_WN95AvKlDbXJGqwxwH7MXM1W5LiQWfvKJKrxFpEAAAA4zCB4AYJKoZIhvcNAQcGoIHSMIHPAgEAMIHJBgkqhkiG9w0BBwEwHgYJYIZIAWUDBAEuMBEEDCiDZjGrFpg3VYyvWwIBEICBmxW3QcRs6ytzibD2d1ZmGKWl4xc7jCed_xKGwgOv_2LVAM-jKwxGRcKf6BUx8ds8VE7zimjmUp-SMdiPR1R4iLBTedMPA-LVbFE38xw5vAvqMGeu9IFQvh0BOiaxuwbhepRtOiBiCcfmUwBMKLzPiliuc3fI1PmLexDP8wNurrVO4WbYBfIOjMJ1JKyUcu-joFuZq3vrK5Ny99KV Text: Availability: 1 Value: <anid>AN0190508667;eed01jan.26;2025Dec30.04:22;v2.2.500</anid> <title id="AN0190508667-1">'The bud disappears when the blossom breaks through': composing dialectical lectures as environmental education </title> <p>This article illustrates and discusses 'dialectical pedagogy' through reflections on five lectures on plants composed for Environmental Education postgraduates and Initial Teacher science educators. It argues for dialectical pedagogy's place in 'ecologising' environmental education curriculum. Ecologising represents the fallible, ongoing attempt to attend to and improve ecological relations, and ecologising education entails doing so while perceiving educational processes as ecologies arising through open-ended, dynamic, co-constituting relations between living beings. To do so, this article's dialectical approach draws from Hegelian tradition but rejects its deterministic and teleological assumptions, emphasising the flowing and inclusive interplay of thought, where earlier ideas contribute to an organic development rather than being invalidated and dichotomised. My approach considers both the dialectics of thought, the dialectical development of that which thought attends – in this case, plant life – and the dialectic between them. The article presents lecture segments as artistic compositions, demonstrating how dialectical pedagogy can unshackle the life of the mind and its relation to the world. This approach aims to interrupt conceptualisations that deaden perception and participation in arising ecologies, inviting students into considering thinking as a living movement that builds itself up and breaks itself apart while reaching into and caring for the world.</p> <p>Keywords: Environmental pedagogy; plants; dialectical pedagogy; ecologising education</p> <hd id="AN0190508667-2">Introduction: dialectical pedagogy and ecologising education</hd> <p>This article's ambition is to illustrate and discuss an approach l refer to as 'dialectical pedagogy', by reflecting on excerpts from five lecture on plants I composed for Environmental Education postgraduate students and/or Initial Teacher science educators. My aim is to present and articulate this approach, and to argue for its place, amidst a suite of pedagogies, in 'ecologising' environmental education curriculum and pedagogy.</p> <p>As I use it, 'ecologising' is the fallible, ongoing attempt to attend to the ecological relations people individually and collectively participate in, for the purpose of improving those relations (e.g. Affifi [<reflink idref="bib13" id="ref1">13</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref2">15</reflink>]). Ecologising <emph>education</emph> means perceiving and participating in how events in the educational process are themselves ecologies which arise through open-ended and dynamic, co-constituting relations between living beings (see Affifi [<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref3">15</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref4">16</reflink>]). In what follows, I hope to show how dialectical pedagogy can enact this open-ended dynamic through unshackling the life of the mind, and its relation to the life of the world, and will return explicitly to its relation with ecologising education in the discussion section.</p> <p>The term 'dialectical' is most closely associated with Hegel (1976). Hegel understood thinking as a dynamic, living process that goes through a series of transformations. Thinking elaborates itself through stages of developing ideas and then transcending them. Like metamorphosis, these stages are intrinsic to the ongoing development of thought, individually and culturally-historically. For example, consider how gaining insights into how I am similar to another person might also shed light on how we are different, which in turn deepens my understanding of the nature of our connection. But also notice how this overall pattern may play out in the relationship between cultures meeting each other over a larger scale of time. Seeing relationships between thoughts as dialectical emphasises a flowing and inclusive interplay: flowing because one moment of thinking leads to the next, even when they are apparently opposed; inclusive because earlier thoughts are not invalidated by later ones but instead are seen as part of the organic development of a larger growing thread. In presenting and discussing my lectures on plants below, I attempt to show how thinking about plants can be dialectical and why this is an appropriate pedagogy for plants.</p> <p>However, the approach taken in this article is not purely Hegelian. First, unlike Hegel, or at least common interpretations of him[<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref5">1</reflink>], I do not assume a necessary direction or endpoint to dialectical processes. For example, my use of dialectical does not presume unidirectional progress, or even progress, nor any formulaic process (such as the 'thesis-antithesis-synthesis' triad Fichte attributed to him). Nor do I assume that dialectical development always depends on the relationship between 'opposites'. Contrast or difference is sufficient[<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref6">2</reflink>]. At its heart, dialectics is concerned with the arising of novel possibilities inherent in tensions, and the continuous work of keeping thought alive rather than it becoming mechanised, automated, or otherwise deadened. The symbiotic interplay and development of ideas does not need Hegel's 'modernist' metaphysical baggage, and is more 'ecological' without it, as we shall see.</p> <p>Second, my lectures on plants are not solely interested in the dialectics of thought. They are also concerned with the dialectical development of that which thought attends, which, in the case of these lectures, is (most often) the life of plants. Unlike Hegel, who emphasised the dialectic of thought, and Marx who focused on that of economic and labour relations, it is Engels who attempted (infamously) to articulate a dialectics of nature (see Marx and Engels [<reflink idref="bib56" id="ref7">56</reflink>]). Unfortunately, Engels shared Hegel's (and Marx's) deterministic and teleological approach, which led to many distortions and simplifications in his conception of nature, and dangerous political systems attempting to live by them, like Stalinism. Rejecting his metaphysical baggage therefore also only strengthens (and ecologises) the dialectical view.</p> <p>The open-ended, contingent and co-constituting nature of dialectical relations in biological systems is well-described by Levins and Lewontin: 'that one thing cannot exist without the other, that one acquires its properties from its relation to the other, that the properties of both evolve as a consequence of their interpenetration', (1985, p.3) are properties they (and I) consider dialectical. For example, Lewontin ([<reflink idref="bib54" id="ref8">54</reflink>]) applied this thinking to evolutionary relationship between organism and environment. This led him away from the dominant view that natural selection is a process whereby organisms are selected by a static 'environment', and towards a dynamic conception interrogating how organisms alter their environments (and therefore the 'selection pressures' affecting them and others) over time. This insight has blossomed into a research field known as 'niche construction theory' (e.g. Odling-Smee, Laland, and Feldman [<reflink idref="bib62" id="ref9">62</reflink>]) and is a pillar in recent 'agentic' theorising of evolution (e.g. Walsh [<reflink idref="bib81" id="ref10">81</reflink>]).</p> <p>If ecologies are always at least partially co-determining and indeterminate, it is an environmental educator's responsibility to interrupt conceptualisations that deaden perception and participation in what is arising (Affifi [<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref11">14</reflink>]). For example, consider the relationship between predator and prey. This relationship is dialectical because the dynamics between both species generates something new, in this case the ecological context established through their ongoing relationship, which in turn affects how each of those species act. But that context is much more complicated and contingent than the simple 'sin wave' typically attributed to it. Put simply, the ecologies in the fields and forests are dialectical, as are those ecologies of the mind, and their interaction is a core concern. Dialectical approaches to pedagogy[<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref12">3</reflink>] aim for a 'living understanding of nature ... as flexible and mobile as nature itself' (Goethe [<reflink idref="bib77" id="ref13">77</reflink>], 64), whereas nondialectical pedagogy remains rigid and unable to re-constitute itself in dynamic relation what it seeks to engage.</p> <hd id="AN0190508667-3">Composing lectures</hd> <p>Lecturing is not the only, or even the main way I engage with plants in my teaching. However, it is the focus of this article because I am interested in its prospects for <emph>showing</emph> and <emph>inviting</emph> students into considering thinking as a living, breathing movement, building itself up and breaking itself apart as it reaches into and cares for the world. Composing such lectures also shows and invites <emph>me</emph> into that same movement, which is why I use it to develop themes that often actually end up in some other pedagogy rather than lectures I actually deliver. Indirectly, this paper therefore offers a partial, but qualified, defence of creating and offering lecturing insofar as doing so can present and entice people into exploring the life of the mind, the life of the earth, and their dynamic relationship.</p> <p>A teacher's responsibility is to bring to students encounters they might not come to on their own. This sometimes means interrupting habitual ways engaging and inviting students into deeper consideration of their world, and how they show up, with, and towards that world (Biesta [<reflink idref="bib22" id="ref14">22</reflink>]). I attempt this through a number of philosophical questions, hypotheses and possibilities about plants (and life) raised through these lectures. The reader should understand I am not trying to solve the issues raised, as any one of them would require substantive discussion. Rather, I am demonstrating the dialectics of thinking in, or better 'as', pedagogy, which will be discussed explicitly in the concluding section, and exposing my pedagogy to critical evaluation from the reader.</p> <p>I offer five lecture segments written either through reconstructing or reworking previous lectures, or in preparation for future ones, in postgraduate Environmental Education and/or Biology Education contexts. Composing a lecture is an artistic process, and by considering composition <emph>as</emph> research this paper therefore falls broadly under arts-informed (Cole and Knowles [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref15">27</reflink>]) or arts-based approaches to environmental education. A premise of such approaches is that while form and content necessarily interact, the medium 'does things' that speaks for itself and cannot (or should not) be 'translated' into explanations (Eisner [<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref16">36</reflink>]). I follow each lecture composition with considerations of <emph>some</emph> dialectics at play. Pulling out threads and themes is not done to re-present in 'telling' what the lecture does in 'showing'. This would undermine the interplay between medium and message which, as Eisner noted, is foundational to the arts. Rather, I hope to highlight and bring to critical scrutiny the spirit of the dialectical work invested into the lectures, be it in plotline, topic, or execution.</p> <hd id="AN0190508667-4">Lecture 1: caffeine, consciousness, and curriculum</hd> <p>My first lecture explores questions about consciousness through considering the evolution and ecology of caffeine. A range of dialectical relationships arise in its back-and-forth movement between possibilities and questions, setting the stage for an approach I take across the series. These include the dynamic interplay between beneficial substance and poison, between human consciousness and that of other creatures, and between matter and mind.</p> <p>Last weekend, I was perusing articles on the origin of humanity's favourite stimulant, sitting – obviously – with a coffee in hand.</p> <p>Dozens of plant species, across unconnected families, produce caffeine. This indicates it has evolved separately, many times. That seems surprising, but according to Huang et al. ([<reflink idref="bib46" id="ref17">46</reflink>]), it really isn't: Plants synthesize caffeine in different ways, but each start with a 100-million-year lineage of enzymes conserved for crucial but unrelated biochemical purposes. Co-opting these enzymes to synthesize caffeine is, therefore, always an ongoing possibility. If all caffeine-producing species went extinct, we can imagine caffeine would likely again evolve.</p> <p>I find that strangely consoling, perhaps due in equal measure to my joint addictions to both caffeine and to imagining and thinking about evolution. But what makes caffeine so valuable that it has repeatedly emerged? After all, producing it, like any metabolite, has costs. What kind of selection pressures would pull its synthesis, again and again, from mere possibility into actuality?</p> <p>That it evolved separately in different evolutionary lines suggests caffeine synthesis may have different roles in different contexts. There are broadly two kinds of theories associating caffeine with a plant's defence system in the literature. One is that caffeine's antifeeding and pesticidal properties protects it against herbivory. The other is that the release of caffeine into the soil inhibits germination of nearby seeds, reducing competition from neighbours. From my own experience with caffeine, I know its pleasant lift can quickly go awry, so it's no shock that it would be detrimental to other creatures.</p> <p>But – I also know the slide from elation to irritation is dose dependent. Could a small hit have positive effects for any other animals? Perhaps even for those very insects – and competing plants – it seeks to debilitate?</p> <p>Some ingenious experiments on bees shed light on this question. In a story all too convenient for punsters across the world, it turns out caffeine gives bees 'a buzz'. Bees on caffeine become more energetic and are more likely to remember the location of caffeinated nectar in complex environments (Wright et al. [<reflink idref="bib82" id="ref18">82</reflink>]). Think about this for a moment. According to Evogeneao's Tree of Life Explorer <emph>[an online graphic resource]</emph>, humans and bees' closest ancestors are blob-shaped entities that lived about 630 million years ago. Could it be that virtually all of the species between us and bees, and even that blob, can get high on this stuff? Or is the response to caffeine similar to caffeine itself – evolvable should a species be lucky enough to land in situations where its own endogenous possibility for botanical exhilaration strums into existence?</p> <p>As I look further, it seems a whole range of insects and molluscs fall for effects Homo sapiens know only too well: they get hyperactive on caffeine, but succumb to tremors and lose their appetite and their focus on larger doses (e.g. Nathanson [<reflink idref="bib61" id="ref19">61</reflink>]). Mustard's (2014) review of studies administering caffeine to insects, molluscs and mammals concluded its effect on behaviour is conserved across animal species. At least one study sees this 'biphasic' pattern repeat in another kingdom entirely: A small dose of caffeine stimulates the growth of sunflower plants, but inhibits it at larger concentrations (Khursheed et al., 2009).</p> <p>On the other hand, cases of immunity to caffeine seem a rare consequence of deft symbiotic mergings – such as those of the Coffee Borer (Hypothenemus hampei), and gut microbes like Pseudomonas fulva (Ceja-Navarro et al. [<reflink idref="bib24" id="ref20">24</reflink>]). In this case, the bacteria consume the caffeine and allow the Coffee Borer to live its life burrowing into the beans containing, according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory ([<reflink idref="bib52" id="ref21">52</reflink>]), a lethal dose equivalent to 500 shots of espresso.</p> <p>But the borer and its bacteria are an exception. Returning to the rule: do these other organisms really get high?</p> <p>Biologist Jakob von Uexküll is well-known for launching a research programme aimed at gleaning insights into other species' lived experiences (e.g. von Uexküll 2010). According to him, by carefully observing an organism's behaviour, we can see what 'shows up' in its environment as relevant and what is ignored, and use these to make inferences into how the world appears meaningfully to that being. His intention was to create a science interrogating the subjective experience of the biotic world. He was well aware humans would never really know what it is like to be a bee. After all, we cannot really know what it is like even to be our own spouse or child. but we can get ever closer, especially if we try. For example, many people are familiar with studies revealing that bees see a different spectrum of light, and hence floral patterns invisible to our eyes. This is an example of an insight falling within an Uexküllian focus.</p> <p>Does caffeine tell us anything about the lived experience of other creatures? As far as I know, Uexküll never asked this question. Some would deny it, arguing that another species getting hyperactive and jittery when on caffeine does not prove they consciously experience it. It merely shows, the argument goes, that caffeine produces stereotypical physiological reactions. If a conscious organism ingests caffeine, then it obviously would experience those physiological reactions. The majority of the biotic world is not conscious according to this view, and reactions to caffeine happen, and have consequent ecological effects, all the same. Such a perspective forms the basis of a dominant assumption in biology research which also suffuses science curricula: if a biological system can be understood mechanistically, there is no need to appeal to consciousness. It is at best pointless; at worst, it is dangerous and anthropomorphic.</p> <p>But, of course, those very same chemical changes occur in human physiology too, and the behaviour of a human on caffeine can also be understood mechanistically without appealing to human consciousness. And yet, human consciousness clearly exists. A double standard seems baked into biology. I am keen to find a way out of this. Perhaps if we figure out what role consciousness plays for humans, we can infer whether it is also active in other species. This turns out to be a difficult job, and one I am hoping another cup from my French press will help facilitate.</p> <p>As humans go about their lives, they are generally trying to do things. To accomplish those things, some things matter and others do not. Our bodies filter out what does not likely matter, presenting only what is deemed relevant. These relevant features can then be seen in relation to one another. For instance, <emph>[picking up my coffee mug]</emph> I am aware of only a small subset of things going on right now: that the coffee is starting to scatter my focus, and that this conflicts with my ability to give an organised lecture. Because I am conscious of these two things, I am able to realize that I should slow down my drinking <emph>[put down the coffee mug]</emph>.</p> <p>Consciousness is perhaps like a map of important features in ongoing play, a global representation of relevant internal states vis-à-vis relevant external features. Given the complexity and contingency of dynamic environments, it is likely all organisms would be faced with a similar situation: a lot more things are going on than a creature can attend to, and there is a need to respond only to what is relevant, instead of getting buried in details. Consciousness may just be that porous map.</p> <p>I do not see other species waffling about, as we might expect if a global map did not exist to simplify the relationship between the organism and its world. Instead, I see other species' focus directed by what is relevant to them. If caffeine interrupts or enhances that focus, it makes sense that this would show up too, as it would be relevant for the creature that its capacities had changed. Different decisions might be needed. What do you think?</p> <p>The consciousness of other animals is increasingly acknowledged by scientists (see for example the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness (Low, et al. [<reflink idref="bib55" id="ref22">55</reflink>]), and is even posited by plant scientists (e.g. Trewavas [<reflink idref="bib76" id="ref23">76</reflink>]), but Uexküll's vision remains totally eclipsed in biology education. The assumption that life is nothing but mechanism pervades even apparently 'progressive' school provision, such as Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence's (steadfastly mechanistic) biology learning outcomes. What is the reason for this, and what effect does it have on the way youth see the world? Who benefits and who loses when education is the buzzkill at the party? Some historians claim caffeine accelerated the Enlightenment (Pollan [<reflink idref="bib66" id="ref24">66</reflink>]). Could investigating its role in the biosphere enlighten schools too?</p> <hd id="AN0190508667-5">Dialectical reflections on lecture 1</hd> <p>In the introduction, I noted how rigid ways of perceiving deaden us to what is different, unique, and possible in what we encounter, and suggested this was relevant for ecologising education. Part of the environmental educator's craft is the dialectical work of making the familiar unfamiliar, to <emph>transfigure the commonplace</emph> as Danto ([<reflink idref="bib28" id="ref25">28</reflink>]) put it, so as to invite students back into the world. Because caffeine is such a common part of daily life, it serves well as the context for the dialectical movement of drawing surprising possibilities from what we might habitually ignore. Caffeine immediately pulls us into a second interplay between anthropomorphism and deanthropocentrising (see Affifi [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref26">6</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref27">9</reflink>], for a more sustained discussion) that arises through considering intoxicants in other species. It might <emph>seem</emph> that anthropomorphism leads to anthropocentrism, but avoiding anthropomorphism at all costs cuts off our capacity to empathise with other creatures or see more concretely how they might be similar and different from us. In different ways, this is a recurring dynamic across the lectures that follow.</p> <p>A third dialectic involves the interplay between whether a substance is a poison or beneficial, and how these opposites are connected in dose and context dependent ways. My work developing an 'ecologising' way of thinking sees this insight as crucial in getting beyond pernicious dualisms that constrain how we engage in environmental and sustainability education (e.g. Affifi [<reflink idref="bib13" id="ref28">13</reflink>]). This introduces a general point that turns out relevant for a fourth dialectic concerning the relationship between mechanistic and nonmechanistic ways of treating other species. I composed the lecture with the intention of having my students find the mechanistic perspective at least <emph>somewhat</emph> convincing. After all, it develops an argument that comes from a core operating assumption many scientists hold and which is a prevalent idea in the contemporary world. I have deep suspicions about this view, and yet, I also <emph>get</emph> the logic. I went through my own 'Cartesian' phase of toying with the idea that all creatures are merely '<emph>res extensa</emph>'. Could this view itself be helpful to consider in small doses even if it is poisonous when overconsumed? A dialectical approach would grant the view one opposes a place in the developing ecology of the ideas explored, looking for how it transcends itself when we take it seriously.</p> <p>Finally, I want my listeners to consider why they (or why so many 'modern' others) so easily accept mechanical explanations for behaviour in other creatures, when similar activity in humans is given a mental or psychological explanation. I want them to really wonder: if material interaction underwrites everything, including human action, then what is the function, or functions of consciousness anyway? There would seem to be no space in the physical universe for it to do anything causally (Kim [<reflink idref="bib48" id="ref29">48</reflink>]). Does it do anything or is it just epiphenomenon? Did it evolve, and if so why, or is it just accidental biproduct? These are not just philosophical questions, nor just biological ones either. Exploring these questions gets at the heart of some of the barriers Western culture has erected between humans and other creatures, and has relevance for sustainability. This is because the 'null hypothesis' that other creatures are nonconscious unless proven otherwise (more like rocks than people) has led to our treating them thoughtlessly (Affifi [<reflink idref="bib5" id="ref30">5</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref31">10</reflink>]).</p> <hd id="AN0190508667-6">Lecture two: vegetal bebop</hd> <p>Many environmental educators and philosophers do not teach much about DNA. Because it is located within cells, for some it is not seen as relevant to the environment. For others, the biochemical world is seen with suspicion: the world of (apparent) mechanism threatens to suffocate the richness of lived phenomenological experience (e.g. Abram [<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref32">1</reflink>]). We already encountered this threat in the previous lecture. And yet, even from within this 'scientific' context, we are increasingly coming to understand that the genome itself is an ecology, one that interacts with those outside of the organism, and which is indeterminate and continuously reinterpreted (Shapiro [<reflink idref="bib70" id="ref33">70</reflink>]; for a good recent review, see Ball [<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref34">18</reflink>]). In this lecture, I engage in some interconnected polarities (the micro and the phenomenological, the mechanistic and the wild, as well as the material and mental), again by putting them into dynamic interplay that seeks to move beyond dualistic habits of engagement.</p> <p>In normal times, the genes peppered across a plant's DNA function more or less according to the common metaphors of popular science. Here, they look very much like 'instructions' used to build the plant's body and direct its behaviour. But when a plant encounters an unexpected circumstance, things get wild. The 'instruction' metaphor breaks down, and a new insight into the interconnected nature of genes, organism and environment is revealed (c.f. Affifi [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref35">7</reflink>]).</p> <p>I will zoom in on one wild phenomenon here, to make the point. Forty years ago, cracks in the genes-are-instructions view had already appeared with the discovery of 'alternative splicing' (Berget, Moore, and Sharp [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref36">21</reflink>]). Alternative splicing occurs when a gene gets transcribed differently than 'usual'. One way to think about what this means is to imagine a gene to be a paragraph of text. Under normal circumstances, the gene is expressed by pulling specific words and sentences from the paragraph and putting them together to be read. But in certain conditions, some of those words or sentences might be omitted, or others put in. In language, this amounts to a change in meaning. In genetics, this means changed physiology and behaviour.</p> <p>Gene transcripts are shuttled away to get translated into long stringy molecules called proteins. Different parts of proteins push and pull at each other, and the strings often fold into complex but very specific shapes that then specify how the protein interacts. A dizzying array of different protein shapes enable and participate in an equally dizzying array of functions. If alternatively spliced transcripts are translated, these proteins – known as protein isoforms – have a different shape than their regular counterparts, and so can interact differently.</p> <p>Some protein isoforms seem like well-established alternatives that can be pumped into action in the face of common disturbances, such as drought. But not all alternative proteins are evolutionarily conserved 'Plan Bs' waiting idly in the toolkit (Mastrangelo et al. [<reflink idref="bib57" id="ref37">57</reflink>]). For better or worse, it appears the number and nature of protein isoforms is not prescribed. A door is opened for the creative role that indeterminacy plays in plant life. Some isoforms turn out to be nonfunctional. They are quickly degraded and their building blocks re-used. Others wreak havoc in the form of deformity and disease. Still others end up assisting the plant in new ways.</p> <p>It turns out that alternative splicing in plant genes is especially prolific when a plant encounters a novel stress. Why would a plant bother creating all these variants, with nonfunctional or unpredictable effects, at a time that requires urgent coordinated response? The answer turns out to be exquisitely Darwinian: in precarious times, it may be advantageous to produce a lot of new possible solutions to a danger. To do so, it adopts a randomization strategy. In risky times, it pays to take risks. Doing so, the plant increases the odds of an adaptive response. By generating variations of its gene products, the plant is increasing its repertoire, brainstorming without a brain.</p> <p>This is roughly the same thing that happens in species at the population level in the process known as 'natural selection' (Darwin [<reflink idref="bib30" id="ref38">30</reflink>]): diversity in a population of organisms increases the likelihood that when given an environmental disturbance, at least some organisms of that species will survive long enough to pass on their genes. At the organism level, alternative splicing increases the chance that some behavioural response to a stress will be beneficial for the plant's survival.</p> <p>So, plant genes are more likely to produce predictable proteins when living conditions are stable, but the plant quickly generates creative chaos out of its genes when it needs to. With this insight, what happens to the 'instruction' metaphor? It seems to me this: the plant regulates and deregulates its genes, streamlining their effects in some contexts, relaxing those constraints in others. When genes behave in a streamlined way, it looks like they are deterministically instructing the plant cells. But alternative splicing during stressful conditions shows that if such determinism sometimes exists, it is only because the plant is determining it. The instructor is the organism, shifting how it uses its cellular resources in response to its shifting environment. In some situations, it relies on routine, in others on creativity.</p> <p>Alternative splicing is common in all eukaryotes, not just plants. But because plants cannot escape threats by running, slithering or flying away, the capacity to generate novel possible solutions seems especially crucial to the way they make a living. Readers of this journal might know that the 'secondary metabolism' of a plant is the set of processes whereby plants generate those complex chemical orchestras that so define their unique contributions to ecology as much as to economy. Consider the deluge of alkaloids, polyphenols, and terpenes that plants bring into the world: it is these chemicals that are used to ward off pests and attract allies, but that are also concentrated into tinctures and suffuse our aromatherapies. Notably, the secondary metabolism of plants seems highly susceptible to alternative splicing. For instance, 75% of Solanum lycopersicum (tomato) genes associated with producing secondary metabolites undergo alternative splicing (Clark et al. [<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref39">26</reflink>]).</p> <p>In humans, there are more genes getting alternatively spliced – and spliced in more different ways – in the brain than anywhere else in the body (Yeo et al. [<reflink idref="bib83" id="ref40">83</reflink>]). Just as animals employ alternative splicing to increase the problem-solving versatility of their neurons, plants use it to improvise volatile variations on their favoured fragrant themes.</p> <hd id="AN0190508667-7">Dialectical reflections on lecture 2</hd> <p>My student listeners are well-acquainted with the notion that genes somehow contain 'information', but in my experience they often have a reductionistic conception of what information means in this context. The explanation provided in textbooks and in media employs metaphors borrowed from computer science, and sees information as what a code produces when it is translated by a machine (in this case, the ribosome). To contrast this, in composing this lecture, I am consciously engaging in a 'hermeneutic turn'. Specifically, in comparing genes to paragraphs, I indirectly appeal to Schleiermacher's ([<reflink idref="bib69" id="ref41">69</reflink>]) well-known point that one cannot understand the meaning of a word without understanding the book it is written in, and vice versa. There is a mutual co-constitution of meaning in the dialectic between the parts and the whole. I see this as importantly related to similar dialectical relationships between parts and wholes in organisms and ecosystems:</p> <p>[A]s the parts acquire properties by being together, they impart to the whole new properties, which are reflected in changes in the parts, and so on. Parts and wholes evolve in consequence of their relationship, and the relationship itself evolves. (Levins and Lewontin [<reflink idref="bib53" id="ref42">53</reflink>], p. 3)</p> <p>We can see this applies equally to writing a story as it does to the role and behaviour of an organism, which cannot be understood in isolation of the ecosystem to which it contributes (Affifi [<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref43">2</reflink>]). In other words, meaning-making is itself a ecological process, I want to suggest, and propose it occurs at the genetic level too.</p> <p>A biological insight connects to pedagogy in this lecture. Dewey (1922/2002) describes how freedom does not evolve out of mechanism, which is what is presumed in materialist conceptions of the universe that start with deterministic inanimate matter and end up with life. Drawing from Peirce's Darwinian metaphysics, Dewey argued that mechanism is a habit that has proven to work, the <emph>outcome</emph> of a developmental dynamic between a spontaneous thing and the context within which it interacts. This idea was crucial to his pedagogy, within which key concepts such as 'growth' are fundamentally concerned with the limitations and possibilities of habits (e.g. 1916/2004). The importance of this discussion is that, by emphasising a dynamic that occurs in mental life, in gene-organism interaction, and in evolution, another opportunity for fostering a senses of kinship and commonality across life becomes possible, despite our many differences.</p> <p>Turning from topic to pedagogy, consider my attention to linguistic details such as the alliteration in the last sentence serves a dialectical role. I did this despite the fact that I never read aloud or memorise a narrative that I have created. Composing the lecture, choosing specific words, developing narrative arcs, omitting things, and so on, in service of the emerging subject has preparatory value. The reason for developing storyline and language, and dialogue between answers and questions, ahead of time is more- not less-important if one wants to remain flexible and give a topic space to breathe. My work of composing lectures often ends up instead in my creating an activity that enacts or explores its ideas in a different form. And so, while spontaneity leads to automated habits, such habits open up the possibility for new kinds of spontaneity, an interplay that occurs across living processes, from genes to thoughts. This is, in short, the dialectic between freedom and structure, manifest in how planning can serve as an 'enabling constraint' (see Juarrero [<reflink idref="bib47" id="ref44">47</reflink>]) for the increased spontaneity I seek so I can engage freshly with the life of the mind and the world (see Affifi [<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref45">16</reflink>] for a sustained discussion of this dialectic in pedagogy).</p> <hd id="AN0190508667-8">Lecture three: Christmas tree philosophy</hd> <p>Holiday season behind us, I walk down the street. Christmas trees are strewn across the pavements for collection. Well, that is the way we talk about it, at least. Their root systems lobbed off doesn't seem to bother holiday merrymakers, perhaps because that part of the tree is invisible anyway. But roots are complex structures comprising a significant quantity of a tree's mass and volume. And so, it must be asked: in what sense do we really decorate 'trees'? Soaked in water, the tree continues to perform in minimal ways we think make it a tree; it sits there, stays green for a while, and emits fragrance from its resins. But like believing a corpse is merely sleeping because his nails and hair are still growing, are we oblivIous to a macabre spectacle? What is lost when roots are cut off?</p> <p>In his last decades, Charles Darwin was increasingly devoted to studying plants. He wrote a number of illuminating but less well-known books on flowers, plant evolution and behaviour. Co-written with his son, "On the power of movement in plants" (Darwin and Darwin [<reflink idref="bib29" id="ref46">29</reflink>]) was his penultimate study. Its last few pages propose an arresting hypothesis that laid largely buried for over a hundred years. After conducting several experiments – pressing or burning root tip apices and examining subsequent changes to plant growth – they noticed an interesting phenomenon. If burnt on one side of a root tip, the plant's aerial parts would grow the other way, even though this response would not occur were it burnt anywhere else (including further up the root). Injured plants seem to respond as a whole to local impacts on individual root tips. The root tips, they surmised, therefore play a special role in picking up relevant information and centralising a coordinated whole-organism response to it. The Darwins concluded root apices functioned analogously to a simple brain.</p> <p>Is it absurd to use neural analogies to understand plants? Some assert it is plainly so (e.g., Alpi et al. [<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref47">17</reflink>]). But many metaphors used to describe neurons and their synapses were themselves borrowed from botany. Consider 'arborisation', 'dendrite branching' (double whammy there), and neural 'pruning': if plants prove an effective source to describe aspects of neurons, why deem it anthropomorphic (or animal-centric) to go the other way and investigate how neural thinking might better help us understand plants?</p> <p>The Darwins' intriguing idea remained uprooted until the rise of contemporary plant behaviour and signalling research (Baluska et al. [<reflink idref="bib19" id="ref48">19</reflink>]). According to these authors, plants are analogous to animals with their heads buried in the soil. Superficially, this seems to make sense—at least according to our mental image of the typical animal and the typical plant—roots, like mouths, are where plants take in nutrients, while leaves and flowers are excretory and sexual organs respectively. However, the more important question is not to what extent the upside-down analogy is roughly true, but how much the root system really does coordinate responses to information a plant receives.</p> <p>One way to approach this question is anatomically. Is the root system organised (or not) 'like' a brain? The point is not to find specific similarities. For instance, a chemical that serves as a neurotransmitter in an animal might be doing things broadly served by a different chemical in a plant. On the other hand, that neurotransmitter might exist in plants but be involved in totally unrelated activities. The anatomical approach gets beyond such a parochial strategy by seeking broader correlations in structure and function between brains and roots.</p> <p>However, the anatomical approach immediately leads to a problem. Root system architecture tends to be vertical. Roots break into smaller roots, and so on, without evident channels between them—in obvious contrast to the messy, circular and interconnected nature of neurons in a brain. Lateral connections between parts of the brain are reinforced or atrophy – facilitated, reinforced or softened through use and disuse. It seems intuitive that lateral connections between roots would be a minimum structural requirement for an organ whose function is to coordinate information, because otherwise it would seem hampered by the siloing constraints of its shape. Can something like this be found between a plant's roots? Perhaps we ought to look at root hairs (and their associated mycelia) as such flexible lateral structures. Like neurons, root hairs are usually long single-celled structures. Their copious growth means they certainly come into contact with other hairs of their own, or other roots. Root hairs grow and atrophy relatively quickly and easily. Looking at the growth of root hairs might be analogous to dendrite branching, while volatile organic compounds released in the soil regions between root hairs might be roughly synaptic. One concerns transmission along linear tissue, the other across spaces between such tissue. Sadly, research into communicative activity in root hairs is virtually non-existent.</p> <p>Nevertheless, there is no point in looking for anatomical structures that might be organised like neural networks if no behaviour warrants the search for these structures in the first place. For this reason, a second area of research has to do with plant behaviour. It is certainly the case that coordinated plant responses are well-detailed and commonplace. A lot of plant coordination is owed to the release of hormones, such as jasmonate and auxin. This is not the kind of integrated activity we would be looking for in an organism with something brain-like about it. Instead, we would be searching for a globally coherent activity that involved differentiated responses amongst its parts (Affifi [<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref49">3</reflink>]). For instance, we might look for electric signals transmitted between cells, leading to local but coordinated responses. Electric signalling has been known in plants since even before Darwin's experiments. Like Darwin's root apices, its significance was also downplayed until evidence could no longer be ignored (Davies [<reflink idref="bib31" id="ref50">31</reflink>]). Action potential, for example, is now recognised as pervasive in plants. More detailed studies into signal transduction in roots, cambium, and other tissue that extends throughout the plant body is needed.</p> <p>A second issue is that coordinated plant responses do not appear to be as coordinated as, say, those in vertebrates. In investigating plant responses to stimuli, what level of centralising is needed to deem it 'brain-like control'? Plants may be more decentralised than vertebrates, responding to their worlds more like a confederacy than a dictatorship (Firn [<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref51">37</reflink>]). Response may be either at the cellular level, the tissue level or something more global – depending on the situation. An organism is likely to centralise its response to the extent it needs to, and plants may not need to – or at least not need to as much. But we should be wary of drawing dichotomies across kingdoms. Animal behaviour is not equally centralised across its phylla, either. By any anthropocentric measure, octopuses are highly intelligent – but they have more neurons in their arms than in their heads. On the other hand, citing Shomrat and Levin ([<reflink idref="bib72" id="ref52">72</reflink>]) points out that flatworms are able to regrow brains once their heads have been cut off, and retain memories of their prior experiences.</p> <p>When very young, some conifer cuttings can grow new roots, but not once the tree is big enough to wrap with tinsel and adorn with red balls. It would seem only small and simple bodies can get by without brains – or roots – long enough to sprout fresh ones. With or without an artificial supply of nutrients, such trees slowly die. Whatever it is, something more fundamental than a flatworm's brain was taken from these firs and pines, their colours dull and bodies brittle, as they await pick-up above pools of dry needles.</p> <hd id="AN0190508667-9">Dialectical reflections on lecture 3</hd> <p>The first lecture opened up questions, ways of thinking, and hypotheses about consciousness in animals. Following this theme, I further consider sentience in plants. I take up this challenge by considering a Darwinian suggestion rekindled in recent 'plant neurobiology'. This raises questions about the dialectical relationship with past figures and past ideas, which I also explore below. However, the interplay between knowing (and metaphor) and reality arises as a dominant dialectical thread throughout.</p> <p>Analogies and metaphors are often viewed as but the product of human whimsy, and without empirical purchase. But a countercurrent of diverse scholars, from Vico ([<reflink idref="bib79" id="ref53">79</reflink>]) to C.S. Peirce ([<reflink idref="bib64" id="ref54">64</reflink>]), and up to Hofstadter and Sander ([<reflink idref="bib45" id="ref55">45</reflink>]) and Zwicky ([<reflink idref="bib86" id="ref56">86</reflink>]) in contemporary thought, question this view. For instance, Zwicky ([<reflink idref="bib86" id="ref57">86</reflink>]) sees metaphor as having fallible (and crucially, <emph>falsifiable</emph>) correspondence with relational structure in the world itself. Independently of human perception or knowing, the world has meta-patterns, similarities of structure and process across different phenomena and different scales, and metaphors can gear into their 'gestalt' structure, or 'pattern that connects' (Bateson [<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref58">20</reflink>]). This has significance for environmental education, explored in more detail elsewhere (Affifi [<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref59">4</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref60">15</reflink>]).</p> <p>The lecture's excursion into comparative anatomy can be seen as a kind of metaphorical approach. However, while I initially advocate for it, my dialectical move puts confidence in metaphor into question. After all, a naive attitude towards the relationship between metaphor (well, any knowing) and the world, erases difference between self and other. I end up problematising <emph>both</emph> the view that knowing is a correspondence with 'the world' <emph>and</emph> that it is arbitrary and alienated from it (see Affifi [<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref61">4</reflink>] for further exploration of this idea). In interplay, a focus on similarities reveals differences, and the reverse is true too. A living epistemology grows by making, breaking and re-making contact with otherness in the world. This theme is deepened in the next lecture.</p> <p>There is a pedagogical reason to focus on Darwin beyond the hypothesis he proposed. In environmental education, Darwin's theory of evolution is often equated with neo-Darwinism (popularised by Richard Dawkins), which narrows the relevant causal actors to 'gene mutations' and 'the environment', while squeezing out an organism's agency (Walsh [<reflink idref="bib81" id="ref62">81</reflink>]). Its focus on 'survival of the fittest' means it is also often seen as having developed out of, but in turn re-enforcing, a capitalist worldview (e.g. Levins and Lewontin [<reflink idref="bib53" id="ref63">53</reflink>]). By attending again to Darwin, we can see the pedagogical value of deconstructing habitual interpretations of the past and so recovering it, unshackling from it possibilities of new meaning, and developing it further (Caputo [<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref64">23</reflink>]). This re-application of the freedom-structure interplay from the previous lecture provides another way to replace dualistic accounts and linear progress narratives with dialectical reinterpretations of our relationship with historical figures and their significance.</p> <hd id="AN0190508667-10">Lecture four: hogweed and the tilia tree</hd> <p>"I love Hogweed," I said to a friend a few days ago.</p> <p>But can people love whole species? A species is a category and, according to some, a humanly constructed one. Category-thinking is often maligned in environmental education. It allegedly creates a boundary of inclusion and exclusion, while pulling us away from the particularity of 'this' being (or this becoming) in 'this' moment. What could it possibly mean to love a cold and divisive lattice of generality? On the face of it, it seems like a misdirected emotion—can we possibly love anything that is not absolutely unique and irreplaceable? – and possibly a reflection of my own human-centeredness, that is my own failure to see the individuality of the plants themselves. Could this be this superficial species masquerading as love?</p> <p>That I am endeared to Tilia trees on the basis of having one in the back garden of my childhood home is a betrayal of the depth of experience I actually had with that particular tree. It seems unlikely people would love all other humans by virtue of a deep connection with a specific one. Doesn't it? And if that did happen, it would seem somehow wrong—dehumanising. You can only love a category to the extent to which you fail to see the uniqueness of its members.</p> <p>And yet, my feeling of attraction to, and desire to care for certain plant species is greater for some than it is for others.</p> <p>And yet, and yet. A species also feels to me like something more than 'just' a category. It is also a recurrence. The growth and development of Hogweed is tied to the passing seasons. The pattern is real and very visceral: it is a yearly return of bright green hands splayed across the bare spring soil, frizzy white wrinkled leaflets skyward bound, a rapid acceleration towards the sun, the flower's rupture from its papery sheath, the explosion of symmetry in pink or white, the spicy grapefruit and cardamom scented seeds left behind to dangle from dying stalks as the light and warmth recede. It is a return of associations with other plants, animals and with my memories too. Perhaps long-lived trees—those veterans seeped with centuries of idiosyncrasy—do not need to reproduce their pattern to keep these realities alive (see Affifi [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref65">12</reflink>]). We can simply wander back to the same tree again and again. But the return of annuals, and the way they stitch themselves into the memory of people and places, requires, it seems, the transcendence of the individual organism. After all, the bumblebee yearns for the Bramble blossom every July.</p> <p>Each spring, my backyard Tilia spreads out new shoots and the tree's form shifts, from the canopy all the way down to its epigenetics. Some view a deciduous tree as a decentralised fury of annuals tied to a woody structure for ease of water and nutrient. So, perhaps we never return to the 'same' tree either. The idea of loving an individual and distrusting the love of a recurring pattern is perhaps not anthropocentric speciesis at all, then, but rather the conceit of those with central nervous systems!</p> <p>Perhaps. But I am not sure even this is quite right. Plants teach us about the reality of types, a kind of platonism that wraps its lessons back even into the human: is it not true that when we love another person, in some sense we love the recurrence of their pattern, too? Is this pattern not itself the collaborative recreation of countless beings and processes? Every cell is recycled, every memory and habit restored. Differences and repetitions, themes, and variations, through and through.</p> <p>It would be absurd to say that I only love my wife in a series of present moments. I also love her overall person, even though this 'her' is not instantiated in any specific moment. I only experience her in individual moments, but those moments are part of an overall pattern which includes all the moments I have and will experience with her. I have never met that overall person, because I cannot experience all these moments simultaneously. But I love that person anyway. Loving a species is extended across instances in space, loving an individual person is extended across instances in time. All individuals are types, all categories are unique patterns of becoming. And love happens in the interplay between all these contradictions.</p> <hd id="AN0190508667-11">Dialectical reflections on lecture 4</hd> <p>The underlying dialectic I engage in this lecture is the interplay between the unique and the general, which I encounter in a variety of ways through the experience of love. What is at stake is, again, the relationship between humans and nature, and the relationship between human knowledge and the living world.</p> <p>The interplay between the unique and the general works at an epistemological level (categories providing conditions for idiographic encounters, and vice versa, as a way of knowing) and at on ontological one (how categories and uniqueness also co-occur 'in' the living world). I have previously explored these dialectics extensively because I am concerned with how environmental education scholarship often posits the general as an epistemological construction against the unique, which is viewed as in some sense 'really' real (see Affifi [<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref66">11</reflink>], 2022). This amounts to a multi-limbed dualism, as it severs the universal from the particular <emph>and</emph> from the world, while also cutting the particular from knowledge, <emph>and</emph> knowledge from the world. Instead of collapsing dualisms into unities, dialectical thinking sees the mutual interpenetration of apparent opposites as a creative tension, both in thinking and in the world.</p> <p>A second dialectic, which has occurred in different forms already in previous lectures, is the interplay between anthropomorphism and vegemorphism (Affifi [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref67">8</reflink>]). This occurs through how human ways of being gain insight into the ways of other species, which inflect, in turn, what it is to be human. Such a view disrupts the clutch of echo-chamber epistemologies (that humans construct their experience or knowledge and have no 'access' to what is beyond it) for a more dynamic, and ecological view of knowledge (see Affifi [<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref68">15</reflink>]).</p> <p>In that vein, a third dialectic concerns the shift to the experienced worlds of other creatures, a <emph>biosemiotic</emph> acknowledgement that it is not 'we' alone who categorise and respond to 'kinds' (see Hoffmeyer [<reflink idref="bib44" id="ref69">44</reflink>] for an introduction into this field). All living beings are 'epistemological' in the sense that they categorise things as mattering or not, and as holding certain significance and not others, making 'subjectivity' a shared and empirically evident dimension of the 'objectivity' of the subject-filled multispecies world[<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref70">4</reflink>] (Affifi [<reflink idref="bib5" id="ref71">5</reflink>]). The bumblebee, already a co-conspirator from a previous lecture, and lover of plants if ever there was one, hopes to serve this purpose.</p> <hd id="AN0190508667-12">Lecture five: impatience with impatiens</hd> <p>For my last lecture segment, I centre attention on the pedagogical dialectic between author and audience, and creation and interpretation, by leaving it to the reader to draw out their own dialectical movements.</p> <p>I was born and raised in a settler city sprawling through the middle of Anishnaabe territory. Despite living and breathing land traditionally kept by Anishnaabe people, my education occurred within, and indeed maintained, a bubble separating me from this broader cultural world. I grew up with a love, admiration and care of the living world around me, and yet even here, my stock of concepts was influenced by people born to those across the Atlantic, not by the traditional children and tenders of my own watershed.</p> <p>Despite this all too familiar scene, concerns crept into my consciousness about some of the environmental narratives that circled around me. One concern is with the term "invasive species', a label cast so casually by those within my bubble. Even if these creatures were shaking up existing ecological balances, it bothers me how reflexively adults around me teach children to villify them. Under the guise of 'education', I wonder if the phrase victimises not only garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata), purple loofestrife (Lythrum salicaria) and countless other animals and plants, but also the young recipients of these words, whose story of the world has now traded in the possibility of enchantment for experiences of judgment and division. When the xenophobic language of the populist right regularly hits my social media feed, I can't help but wonder whether a stock of metaphors used in politics is being imported into ecology. I was struck by an apparent contradiction: many of my environmentalist friends are appalled at the use of such language in the human realm but adhered to it unflinchingly in the field of the green, the feathered, and the furry.</p> <p>How could the impulse to "other" others be condemned in one context but taken up in another? Even if invasive species were sometimes causing disturbance to local ecosystems, is calling them 'invasive', creating 'eradication programs' and all the rest of the militarism, really the best way to approach them? Are many of us settlers and globally mobile citizens unsettled in our depths about where we 'should' be living? Are environmentalists projecting onto other species a darkness within? Is something Jungian at play? What inner work do we need to do before treading into questions of how we might treat these prolific newcomers?</p> <p>Now living in the land my grandfather was born, and still not feeling quite at home, I stand at the edge of the Water of Leith watching its inexorable flow under the crisp winter sun. I imagine clusters of Himalayan Balsam (<emph>Impatiens glandulifera</emph>) clambering along its edges some time after the summer crests and the days start shortening again. The government has occasionally called the Royal Marines in to destroy this showy pink flower, and researchers are concocting new biological diseases to wipe them out. While this is going on, bees quietly accepted this plant into their web of relations, delighting in what seems a joyous frenzy from its copious nectar. When does a plant -or a person- become native to a place?</p> <p>Newspapers regularly remind us of 'pollinator collapse' set in motion by a collision of threats from pesticide use to habitat destruction. Might Himalayan Balsam's flourishing be part of ecological rebalancing rather than disruption? Few questions so quickly furrow my ecologist friends' brows. Perhaps their irritation is warranted. Alongside other local species, bees seem to prefer Himalayan Balsam (Royal Horticultural Society [<reflink idref="bib68" id="ref72">68</reflink>]). The presence of Himalayan Balsam may thereby reduce the pollination of other species, some already curbed to the sidelines by Balsam's fecundity.</p> <p>But like many ecological studies, how we bracket our vision turns out to be crucial. A study must have a beginning and an end, and conclusions are drawn from within these boundaries. While the results are in a certain sense objective, the decision of when to start and stop the study is not. In this case, as long as the balsam's bounty exceeds the needs of the bee population, bees may well favour it to the detriment of other plants. But such a scenario is obviously temporary. So much food increases the pollinator population to a point where Himalayan Balsam can no longer supply the demand. Other less alluring food sources are then sought out. Davis ([<reflink idref="bib32" id="ref73">32</reflink>]) calls this the car dealership effect. In recent years some popular science books now argue that invasive species seemed to cause much less extinctions that previously assumed (Pearce [<reflink idref="bib63" id="ref74">63</reflink>]; Thomas [<reflink idref="bib75" id="ref75">75</reflink>]). Perhaps they jump in to fill precarious niches and provide some breathing space to catalyse evolutionary change.</p> <p>Others point out many invasive species run rampant because they have no natural predators. Maybe so, but the best way to ensure a predator develops is to let a would-be prey expand its range. If there is any ecological rule, it is that an unexploited niche is an evolutionary opportunity. It is not clear how long we'd wait for animal grazers to step in, but we can be confident opportunistic microbes will quickly emerge. Again, the question is timescale. People are currently testing fungi that might infect Himalayan balsam (Tanner et al. [<reflink idref="bib74" id="ref76">74</reflink>]). But we know that if we didn't something would evolve anyway. What is the rush? What kind of hero story do we need to maintain? Why do we need to insist that restoring balance be an intervention that come from us rather than nature? And how does this hero story link up with the villain story? Is there a tragic feedback loop between guilt and hubris? Instead of revelling in a nature increasingly manipulated to fulfil an image we've concocted from the arbitrary past, might we not become careful students and attentive lovers of the process by which ecosystems adjust and accommodate change? Is nature an active intelligent process or a static process to be preserved?</p> <p>Might ecosystem self-regulation exceed our comprehension? The biosphere, after all, evolved myriad creatures in complex co-existence with all their countless fascinating features. Surely the arrival of new species, be it through hitching themselves on the backs of birds, on the logs projected into the seas from violent monsoon rivers, through continental merging, or evolutionary drift, is nothing new in the story of the Earth. What role does patience, indeed humility, play in conservation?</p> <p>With these thoughts in mind, I google how Anishnaabe people view invasive species. As many Anishnaabe people still live in intercourse with the land, I imagine invasive species might impact their lives more directly than urbanites who malign these creatures' encroachment on their places of leisure. Reo and Ogden ([<reflink idref="bib67" id="ref77">67</reflink>])'s ethnography of Indigenous Anishnaabe communities reveals some common features lacing through a wide variety of views and practices towards invasive species. Anishnaabe people are likely to see invasive species as migrating communities, or, as they call it, Nations. Many consider all Nations to have gifts to share, and understand that accepting their gifts fosters reciprocal responsibilities of care and respect. Human and more-than-human Nations may not yet know or understand the gifts a new nation might bring to a place, but all have an active role in co-determining the new relationship that will emerge. So, while the important food and medicines are often significantly affected by the arrival of a new species, for the most part the attitude is "let's wait and see." In other words, the process begins with listening.</p> <p>Perhaps we need not wait for fungi or bacteria to make food of Himalayan Balsam. It has been around the British Isles long enough for many of us to know how delicious its yellow seeds can be. To me, they taste a bit like young elm samaras. Both have a fresh hint of watermelon. If more of us consumed this offering with gratitude, their numbers might be controlled but not eliminated, and our community made the better for it. That might be a better lesson for our children.</p> <hd id="AN0190508667-13">Discussion</hd> <p>In what follows, I explore several broad topics pertaining to this paper: (<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref78">1</reflink>) the relationship between theory and the world in dialectical as opposed to other prevalent approaches in EE, (<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref79">2</reflink>) how dialectical lectures sit in the 'active' versus 'passive' learning debate, (<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref80">3</reflink>) the relevance of dialectical lectures for 'ecologising' education, and (<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref81">4</reflink>) the pedagogical role of studies such as this.</p> <hd id="AN0190508667-14">Theory and world in education</hd> <p>For complex reasons, the past few decades have seen a trend in environmental education from the 'biological' or 'scientific' aspects of environmental curriculum towards environmental education theory and pedagogy. In their own ways, the critical, postmodern and new materialist theoretical waves in EE, each emphasise philosophical and political questions about the relationship between students and teacher, or students and world, which (deliberately or inadvertently) background educational inquiry dedicated to attending to particular creatures and environments. Even papers advocating place-based education or phenomenological encounter with particular others can linger on general arguments about their merits instead of dwelling in the details of particular beings, processes and their actual or possible features. This is because theory is double-edged. While it can sometimes clear prior conceptions and re-sensitise our attention, it can also close in on itself in self-referential cascades. For instance, we can think about <emph>how we think about</emph> elm trees, and while doing so may disclose unhelpful perceptual blocks about these lovely trees, it can also create new barriers preventing openness to them. After all, the trees themselves are occluded when in critical reflection. As I hope to have shown, dialectical environmental pedagogy aims for an interplay between content-informed theory and theory-informed content that deepens concepts, attention to otherness, and the dialogue between them.</p> <p>The past decade's so-called return from epistemology to ontology in EE (see Hart and Hart [<reflink idref="bib42" id="ref82">42</reflink>] for a review) holds promise, even its level of generality often still betrays the sense that philosophy is not yet serving its pedagogical potential. 'The environment', 'the more-than-human', 'nature', and so on, articulate and hold our attention as abstract entities at a time when inquiry into how to sustain concern, care and curiosity for the concrete and particular is needed. 'Matter' is another such pernicious generality. More often than not, we do not need to encounter 'the' more-than-human, but particular more-than-humans that stir us in specific ways (for the distinction see Affifi [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref83">6</reflink>]). <emph>Environ</emph>-mental education that does not acknowledge and work with <emph>encountering</emph> beings 'other-than', bigger, or beyond the human is incoherent, even if it is abstractly 'about' such othernesses.</p> <p>However, as I hope the lecture compositions make clear, the dialectical view presented here does not insist on opposing the villainous generic with ecstatically meeting some irreducible other in phenomenological primacy suspended of all category or memory. We live in a world where others exist and participate in co-constituting a shared environment with generality and particularity, difference and similarity, kinship and alterity, knowing and mystery, and so on, and the ongoing relationship between such contrasts at various levels of granularity and richness. Dialectical pedagogy embraces a plurality of contact points, and the story of the relational dynamics between them <emph>as itself</emph> part of that shared world.</p> <hd id="AN0190508667-15">The active student in the dialectical lecture</hd> <p>In the 'student-centered' orientation common in current western educational theory, lecturing is often seen as pedagogically naive, or worse, colonial or undemocratic. Entrenched in progressive educational theory and policy, and grounded in a tradition of incisive critics (e.g. Dewey 1916/2004, Vygotsky [<reflink idref="bib80" id="ref84">80</reflink>]; Freire [<reflink idref="bib39" id="ref85">39</reflink>]), is the apparent opposition between 'active learning' and 'teaching', with the latter often discouraged. For example, it is often pointed out that little of what is heard is remembered or understood, despite the teacher's mental (and physical) labour to serve their passive students. Or it is asserted that a teacher who directs a curriculum imposes hierarchical power structures, and therefore prepares students for a similarly rigid future workplace rather than doing anything really educational (e.g. Gatto [<reflink idref="bib41" id="ref86">41</reflink>])[<reflink idref="bib5" id="ref87">5</reflink>].</p> <p>Environmental education discourse is similarly oriented. According to a well-cited review of the field, in good education students are "not just passive receivers of ... information or communication' and teachers 'facilitate students' pursuit of answers" (Stern, Powell, and Hill [<reflink idref="bib73" id="ref88">73</reflink>], p. 583), defined by a list of terms deemed to constitute 'effective' environmental education programming: 'active participation', 'project-based learning', 'group learning', 'play-based learning', 'investigation', 'reflection', 'issue-based learning', 'learner-centered instruction', and so on. A number of comparative studies in science education add weight to the suggestion that 'active learning' approaches are simply more effective (e.g. Freeman et al. [<reflink idref="bib38" id="ref89">38</reflink>] in STEM subjects, Knight and Wood [<reflink idref="bib50" id="ref90">50</reflink>] in biology).</p> <p>The popularity of nonfiction books, podcasts, and films suggests people like being 'told' stories rather than being 'active learners' in ways asserted to be good pedagogy nowadays. Is this mere decadence and laziness? I do not think so. The best of these works <emph>make sense</emph> of information and facts, pulling them into the view of a story, enlivening them, showing a new terrain but also a new horizon with new questions. Many do so by employing philosophical and autobiographical techniques with great craft (e.g. see Yong ([<reflink idref="bib84" id="ref91">84</reflink>]), Kimmerer ([<reflink idref="bib49" id="ref92">49</reflink>]), Sheldrake ([<reflink idref="bib71" id="ref93">71</reflink>])). Like these kinds of storytelling, a good lecture arranges and offers a story, but does so as a vital encounter, one where the speaker's body, voice and gesture convey the intrigue, passion, risk, and flutter of ideas in real time, and in a risk-filled address (as Fulford and Mahon ([<reflink idref="bib40" id="ref94">40</reflink>]) note in their discussion of Cavell) to others. Body language and prosody are crucial for the meaning and significance of the ideas themselves (and are under threat, given the rise of digital and asynchronous learning). Although I omit their consideration here and focus on the drama of the ideas themselves, I recommend the reader to Affifi and Hensley ([<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref95">14</reflink>]) where I explore such dimensions of education more explicitly.</p> <p>In its concern with the ongoing relationships between various characters and contexts, dialectical pedagogy – like humanities lectures – offers stories of the living world, 'readings' of a series of events, a 'take' on how things are connected together, and where uncertainties in that take arise. Indeed, as Fulford and Manon ([<reflink idref="bib40" id="ref96">40</reflink>]) note, this harkens back to the etymological root of the word 'lecture' (<emph>legere)</emph>, which means 'to read' (p. 371).</p> <hd id="AN0190508667-16">Reading the world as ecologising education</hd> <p>There is something ecologically restorative in providing such close readings. Arne Naess ([<reflink idref="bib60" id="ref97">60</reflink>]) asserted that in ecosystems, all things 'hang together'. Ecologies arise through co-constituting relations, and so knowing and teaching should develop as an ongoing co-constituting process as well. An <emph>ecologising approach</emph> to environmental education attends to both the <emph>curricular ecology</emph> of how ideas, knowledge and the world hang together, and also to the <emph>pedagogical ecology</emph> of how diverse cadences, in questions and answers, risk and safety, and many other aesthetic contrasts, come into dynamic form-content interplay with their topic through an educational event (see Affifi and Hensley [<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref98">14</reflink>]). A story or narrative, in the sense described and exemplified in this paper, can aim towards the dynamic integration of these educational ecologies.</p> <p>The educational point is not whether the 'hanging together' a narrative establishes is a 'true' depiction of what is discussed. Students can be invited into encountering <emph>an attempt</emph> to see how things connect, to take this challenge seriously, and with it the assumption that the world itself is richly connected in ways worthy of attention. Without offering such interpretations, the implicit curriculum is that there is no coherent set of relations to interpret, the world filled instead with bits and pieces to manipulate. Pedagogically, a world fractured into "a thousand stupid facts" (Morin [<reflink idref="bib58" id="ref99">58</reflink>], p. 8) is similarly doomed, as it is incapable of meeting the heart or mind. Similarly, if we follow the pedagogical recommendations sometimes taken from 'constructivist' learning theory, and as a matter of principle pass on the interpretive work to students, the take home message might easily devolve into the view that one interpretation of the world is as good as any other, and all merely 'subjective'.</p> <p>In such cases, students are withheld from experiencing some of the deeper interpretive challenges that come from trying to catch sight, in detail and in overall gestalt, a view that is foreign, counterintuitive or nuanced in ways not immediately and easily accessible. A good lecture offers an encounter with a world that may be very different from how one habitually understands it. It takes work on the part of a student to enter into it and consider it, and should be composed to invite (and deserve) such commitment. But it is a door opening, showing that stories matter and giving a growing sense that not all stories are equal. Those that attend with care to the world celebrate its nuance and complexity, and invite different ways of living and participating in it.</p> <p>For a professional philosopher my treatment of many 'grand' issues will seem 'fast and loose', traipsing over topics that often form the basis of entire courses, or indeed, careers. Looked at educationally, the purpose of 'philosophising' shifts. By developing viable possibilities and then leaving things incomplete and suggestive, a topic is offered <emph>to the student</emph> for further development. In this way, the student is invited to enter into, and participate in ongoing, co-constitutive relation between thought and context anew. From this angle, a dialectical lecture employs philosophy to serve its content; its suggestiveness is what invites further relations and developments in the story and keeps its ecology alive.</p> <p>Through emulating the co-constitutive logic of ecologies writ large, dialectical lectures promise to restore to the ecology of thought anew for other pedagogical approaches including those labelled 'student centered' and 'active' – now set within a context established through listening and receptivity. This leads to questions about how to attend to the relationship – again the dialectics – between lecturing and discussions (perhaps, but not necessarily, dialectical ones in the Socratic sense), students creating their own mini-lectures or vignettes on topics, outdoor learning, and a suite of other pedagogies I, and my colleagues often employ. Students can follow and develop suggestions offered through lectures in many modalities, which can contribute to the integrity and open-endedness of their growth.</p> <hd id="AN0190508667-17">Scholarship as dialectical pedagogy</hd> <p>The reader may note the paper's back-and-forth between 'lecture' and 'reflecting on lecture' could itself be presented 'as' a lecture. This might be especially important in working with teachers, as teacher educators (like myself) are continuously engaging with the pedagogical question of what, and when, we 'reveal' reasons for decisions we make (see Affifi and Hensley [<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref100">14</reflink>]). One could look at these discussions as a possible layer depending on whether the intention is to foreground the curriculum, or the pedagogy, or their interplay in the lecture.</p> <p>When the inclusion of these reflections is warranted, there obviously emerges dialectical relations between the topics and how one thinks about teaching it. The reflections themselves open up further possibilities in turn, work through developments of answers and questions, and refuse to surrender to a definitive fixed account or a birds-eye view of what is happening. Just like our plants, a teacher's intentions are always beyond such totalisations, working themselves out in an ecology with their students, their life, and the life of the topic they engage.</p> <p>Coming full circle, perhaps there is something 'planty' about the movement of thought. Comparing thinking to vegetal growth, Hegel noted we might approach the different historical moments in philosophical debate as not merely a series of arguments and refutations, but as the ongoing development of a process, a spirit. In a passage as poetic as it is poignant, he writes:</p> <p>The bud disappears when the blossom breaks through, and we might say that the former is refuted by the latter; in the same way when the fruit comes, the blossom may be explained to be a false form of the plant's existence, for the fruit appears as its true nature in place of the blossom. The ceaseless activity of their own inherent nature makes these stages moments of an organic unity, where they not merely do not contradict one another, but where one is as necessary as the other; and constitutes thereby the life of the whole. (1977, p. 2)</p> <p>This series of lectures is about the dialectical spirit of thinking and plants, but also about the dialectics of the lecture itself as a medium putting them into dialogue. A lecture can seek to develop, through twists and turns, ongoing 'organic unities'. 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Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology. Durham, NC : Duke University Press.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Zwicky, J. 2019. The Experience of Meaning, Montreal, Canada: McGill‑Queen's University Press.</bibtext> </blist> </ref> <ref id="AN0190508667-20"> <title> Footnotes </title> <blist> <bibtext> People sometimes categorise readings of Hegel as 'critical' or 'pre-critical.' Pre-critical readings, called such because in them Hegel appears not to take Kant's warning about the limits of reason seriously, argue that Hegel viewed thinking (and history) as having a knowable absolute direction and progressive teleology (culminating in the western Enlightenment). Critical readings argue instead that Hegel had much more nuanced perspectives. For example Žižek (e.g. 1993) sees contingency and unpredictability throughout Hegel's project, while Pinkard ([65]) argues that his account of western reason can be read as the genealogy of a particular kind of reason rather than reason 'itself.' It is not my purpose to defend a particular interpretation, but instead to articulate what kind of dialectical approach casts insight into the nature of mind and life as ecological processes.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Because my version of dialectics abandons Hegel's necessary and predetermined teleological progress, (and the collapse of alterity and difference that comes with this), I actually see it as aligned with Caputo's ([23]) (and Derrida's) deconstructionist project (e.g. see Affifi and Hensley [14]).</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> The term 'dialectical pedagogy' is not common, and where it occurs is usually concerned with Marxist or neo-Marxist approaches (e.g. De Smet [33]). An exception is Chiang and Karjalainen (2022), who explicitly acknowledge a Hegelian dynamic in what they call the 'fluidity' between 'pedagogical antimonies.' My use of the term in this article foregrounds some, but not all of the antimonies these authors describe.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> This point forms the basis of Bateson's ([20]) description of <emph>creatura</emph> as opposed to <emph>pleroma.</emph></bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> I note in passing that suspicion of didactic approaches mirrors the suspicion of science discussed in the previous subsection. In both cases, approaches developed through sustained experience are dismissed on (undialectical) political grounds, even if they might offer concrete encounters with otherness not easily achievable without the redirection of attention they can provide.</bibtext> </blist> </ref> <aug> <p>By Ramsey Affifi</p> <p>Reported by Author</p> </aug> <nolink nlid="nl1" bibid="bib13" firstref="ref1"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl2" bibid="bib15" firstref="ref2"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl3" bibid="bib16" firstref="ref4"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl4" bibid="bib56" firstref="ref7"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl5" bibid="bib54" firstref="ref8"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl6" bibid="bib62" firstref="ref9"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl7" bibid="bib81" firstref="ref10"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl8" bibid="bib14" firstref="ref11"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl9" bibid="bib77" firstref="ref13"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl10" bibid="bib22" firstref="ref14"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl11" bibid="bib27" firstref="ref15"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl12" bibid="bib36" firstref="ref16"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl13" bibid="bib46" firstref="ref17"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl14" bibid="bib82" firstref="ref18"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl15" bibid="bib61" firstref="ref19"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl16" bibid="bib24" firstref="ref20"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl17" bibid="bib52" firstref="ref21"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl18" bibid="bib55" firstref="ref22"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl19" bibid="bib76" firstref="ref23"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl20" bibid="bib66" firstref="ref24"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl21" bibid="bib28" firstref="ref25"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl22" bibid="bib48" firstref="ref29"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl23" bibid="bib10" firstref="ref31"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl24" bibid="bib70" firstref="ref33"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl25" bibid="bib18" firstref="ref34"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl26" bibid="bib21" firstref="ref36"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl27" bibid="bib57" firstref="ref37"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl28" bibid="bib30" firstref="ref38"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl29" bibid="bib26" firstref="ref39"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl30" bibid="bib83" firstref="ref40"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl31" bibid="bib69" firstref="ref41"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl32" bibid="bib53" firstref="ref42"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl33" bibid="bib47" firstref="ref44"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl34" bibid="bib29" firstref="ref46"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl35" bibid="bib17" firstref="ref47"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl36" bibid="bib19" firstref="ref48"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl37" bibid="bib31" firstref="ref50"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl38" bibid="bib37" firstref="ref51"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl39" bibid="bib72" firstref="ref52"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl40" bibid="bib79" firstref="ref53"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl41" bibid="bib64" firstref="ref54"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl42" bibid="bib45" firstref="ref55"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl43" bibid="bib86" firstref="ref56"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl44" bibid="bib20" firstref="ref58"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl45" bibid="bib23" firstref="ref64"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl46" bibid="bib12" firstref="ref65"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl47" bibid="bib11" firstref="ref66"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl48" bibid="bib44" firstref="ref69"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl49" bibid="bib68" firstref="ref72"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl50" bibid="bib32" firstref="ref73"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl51" bibid="bib63" firstref="ref74"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl52" bibid="bib75" firstref="ref75"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl53" bibid="bib74" firstref="ref76"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl54" bibid="bib67" firstref="ref77"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl55" bibid="bib42" firstref="ref82"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl56" bibid="bib80" firstref="ref84"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl57" bibid="bib39" firstref="ref85"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl58" bibid="bib41" firstref="ref86"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl59" bibid="bib73" firstref="ref88"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl60" bibid="bib38" firstref="ref89"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl61" bibid="bib50" firstref="ref90"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl62" bibid="bib84" firstref="ref91"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl63" bibid="bib49" firstref="ref92"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl64" bibid="bib71" firstref="ref93"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl65" bibid="bib40" firstref="ref94"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl66" bibid="bib60" firstref="ref97"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl67" bibid="bib58" firstref="ref99"></nolink> |
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| Items | – Name: Title Label: Title Group: Ti Data: 'The Bud Disappears When the Blossom Breaks through': Composing Dialectical Lectures as Environmental Education – Name: Language Label: Language Group: Lang Data: English – Name: Author Label: Authors Group: Au Data: <searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Ramsey+Affifi%22">Ramsey Affifi</searchLink> (ORCID <externalLink term="https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3333-9807">0000-0002-3333-9807</externalLink>) – Name: TitleSource Label: Source Group: Src Data: <searchLink fieldCode="SO" term="%22Environmental+Education+Research%22"><i>Environmental Education Research</i></searchLink>. 2026 32(1):1-20. – Name: Avail Label: Availability Group: Avail Data: Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 530 Walnut Street Suite 850, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Tel: 215-625-8900; Fax: 215-207-0050; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals – Name: PeerReviewed Label: Peer Reviewed Group: SrcInfo Data: Y – Name: Pages Label: Page Count Group: Src Data: 20 – Name: DatePubCY Label: Publication Date Group: Date Data: 2026 – Name: TypeDocument Label: Document Type Group: TypDoc Data: Journal Articles<br />Reports - Evaluative – Name: Audience Label: Education Level Group: Audnce Data: <searchLink fieldCode="EL" term="%22Higher+Education%22">Higher Education</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="EL" term="%22Postsecondary+Education%22">Postsecondary Education</searchLink> – Name: Subject Label: Descriptors Group: Su Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Environmental+Education%22">Environmental Education</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Plants+%28Botany%29%22">Plants (Botany)</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Graduate+Students%22">Graduate Students</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Preservice+Teachers%22">Preservice Teachers</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Science+Teachers%22">Science Teachers</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Ecology%22">Ecology</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Epistemology%22">Epistemology</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Caring%22">Caring</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Lecture+Method%22">Lecture Method</searchLink> – Name: DOI Label: DOI Group: ID Data: 10.1080/13504622.2025.2493878 – Name: ISSN Label: ISSN Group: ISSN Data: 1350-4622<br />1469-5871 – Name: Abstract Label: Abstract Group: Ab Data: This article illustrates and discusses 'dialectical pedagogy' through reflections on five lectures on plants composed for Environmental Education postgraduates and Initial Teacher science educators. It argues for dialectical pedagogy's place in 'ecologising' environmental education curriculum. Ecologising represents the fallible, ongoing attempt to attend to and improve ecological relations, and ecologising education entails doing so while perceiving educational processes as ecologies arising through open-ended, dynamic, co-constituting relations between living beings. To do so, this article's dialectical approach draws from Hegelian tradition but rejects its deterministic and teleological assumptions, emphasising the flowing and inclusive interplay of thought, where earlier ideas contribute to an organic development rather than being invalidated and dichotomised. My approach considers both the dialectics of thought, the dialectical development of that which thought attends -- in this case, plant life -- and the dialectic between them. The article presents lecture segments as artistic compositions, demonstrating how dialectical pedagogy can unshackle the life of the mind and its relation to the world. This approach aims to interrupt conceptualisations that deaden perception and participation in arising ecologies, inviting students into considering thinking as a living movement that builds itself up and breaks itself apart while reaching into and caring for the world. – Name: AbstractInfo Label: Abstractor Group: Ab Data: As Provided – Name: DateEntry Label: Entry Date Group: Date Data: 2026 – Name: AN Label: Accession Number Group: ID Data: EJ1503360 |
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| RecordInfo | BibRecord: BibEntity: Identifiers: – Type: doi Value: 10.1080/13504622.2025.2493878 Languages: – Text: English PhysicalDescription: Pagination: PageCount: 20 StartPage: 1 Subjects: – SubjectFull: Environmental Education Type: general – SubjectFull: Plants (Botany) Type: general – SubjectFull: Graduate Students Type: general – SubjectFull: Preservice Teachers Type: general – SubjectFull: Science Teachers Type: general – SubjectFull: Ecology Type: general – SubjectFull: Epistemology Type: general – SubjectFull: Caring Type: general – SubjectFull: Lecture Method Type: general Titles: – TitleFull: 'The Bud Disappears When the Blossom Breaks through': Composing Dialectical Lectures as Environmental Education Type: main BibRelationships: HasContributorRelationships: – PersonEntity: Name: NameFull: Ramsey Affifi IsPartOfRelationships: – BibEntity: Dates: – D: 01 M: 01 Type: published Y: 2026 Identifiers: – Type: issn-print Value: 1350-4622 – Type: issn-electronic Value: 1469-5871 Numbering: – Type: volume Value: 32 – Type: issue Value: 1 Titles: – TitleFull: Environmental Education Research Type: main |
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