Lecturer and Researcher, International Teacher Education at NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences, the Netherlands
Dr. Elke Van dermijnsbrugge is Lecturer and Researcher in International Teacher Education at NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences, the Netherlands. She focuses on alternative research methods (in education) and is interested in the application of utopian and speculative thinking, the punk ethos and anarchist organisational philosophy to reimagine educational policy, research and practices that support collaborative, participatory, plural, just and imaginative futures.
We are confronted with global crises: political instability, environmental destruction, and increasing global inequalities. The dominant, evidence-based discourses in education do not seem to be offering adequate responses to these crises.
I consider crisis as an opportunity to interrupt the ‘normal’ order; to consider the conditions that have given rise to it, what it says about who we are as humans and how we might be able to imagine and do things differently to work towards collaborative, participatory, plural, just and imaginative futures. In this keynote, we will tackle the questions ‘How can educators respond to a world in crisis and create alternative futures in the present?’ and ‘How can the imagination be put to work in educational spaces?’
We will shift the focus from problem-solving and crisis responses to possibility and mutual aid. We will explore educational practices that involve imaginative, utopian and speculative thinking and acting. Education and schools in particular will be repositioned and reimagined as spaces where alternative futures emerge, starting here and now.
References
Cheng, I. N.-Y., & Lee, J. C.-K. (2015). Environmental and outdoor learning in Hong Kong: Theoretical and practical perspectives. In M. Robertson, R. Lawrence, & G. Heath (Eds.), Experiencing the outdoors: Enhancing strategies for wellbeing (pp. 135-146). Netherlands: SensePublishers.
Lee, J.C.K. (1997) Environmental Education in Schools in Hong Kong. Environmental Education Research, 3:3, 359-371.
Tilbury, D. (1997). Environmental education: A Head, Heart and Hand approach to learning about environmental problems. New Horizons in Education, 38, 13-30.