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Designing for Climate Justice Education in a Canadian City: Learning with Black Ecologies
Toronto University of Toronto School of Cities Urban Challenge Grant |
The specific goals of the project are to: (1) advance understandings of how climate justice education can respond to the collective desires of Black families living in cities (2) generate insights on how Black ecologies can inform the design of culturally sustaining climate justice education, and (3) provide recommendations for the development of climate change education policies that are responsive to climate injustice. In collaboration with Black families with young children attending Toronto schools, this project uses participatory approaches to document how climate justice education can be grounded in and responsive to the local ecological relationships and concerns of Black urban families. |
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The Afro-Diaspora Futures in Education Collective
Melbourne and Toronto Melbourne-Toronto Research Partnership Development Fund |
The Afro-Diasporas Futures in Education Collective is a mobile incubator that convenes a series of events to initiate and sustain transnational dialogues on the ways in which education research and practice in Canada and Australia can be enriched by Black studies scholarship. Under the themes of Black futures, Black and Indigenous relationalities, Black methodologies and Black audio-visualities, the Collective will host interactive events that bring Black Studies scholars and artists into conversation with graduate students and early career scholars in education. |
Learning with PlaceToronto Kindergarten Children Connaught New Researcher Funded |
This Connaught New Researcher funded project seeks to advance understandings of environmental education that is focused on marginalized children’s relations with their specific local environments. Visual and textual data will be collected over one academic year as children and educators in a kindergarten classroom in Toronto conduct an inquiry on a local environmental issue that impacts them. This research will contribute important knowledge on advancing professional supports for educators to teach children about environmental issues in strength-based and justice-oriented ways.
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Climate Justice Pedagogies in eSwatinieSwatini Elementary Students SSHRC Funded |
Climate change brings vulnerabilities that are disproportionately distributed across socioeconomic lines, particularly in the Global South. In rural Eswatini, where this project is based, climate related drought and its accompanying effects are among several sources of social and ecological injustices for which young children have few opportunities and avenues to respond. Therefore, this SSHRC funded project investigates how culturally relevant climate justice education can actively engage children as participants in their community. Engaging visual participatory methods and intergenerational ecological knowledges, the project inquires into climate justice education practices that center the creative activisms of young children.
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Black Childhoods in the AnthropoceneConceptual Research |
This research aims to counter the ongoing absenting or essentializing of Black childhoods in dominant North American nature education discourses. Our lab is interested in examining ways in which Black feminist geographies might be generatively brought into early childhood education and early childhood studies as ways of knowing and doing that provide openings for inclusive, critical, non-anthropocentric and speculative child-nature pedagogies. We are particularly interested in developing pedagogies that foreground futurity, belonging and decolonial land relationships for Black children living and learning in anthropogenic North American contexts.
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Texas Water StoriesCentral Texas Intergenerational UT Austin - Planet Texas 2050 Funded |
This research is part of a larger project examining narratives of Texas waterways. Our lab aims to counter the marginalization of Indigenous knowledges and young people's perspectives in dominant climate change scholarship. Using participatory methods, we focus on intergenerational (elders, youth, children) Indigenous narratives of Yana Wana (Central Texas waters).
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Decolonial Place-Based EducationCentral Texas Preschool & Kindergarten SSHRC Partnership Development Grant |
This research investigates the development of environmental and place-based education pedagogies for young children that are responsive to local concerns Through a participatory action research project with teachers and children in a kindergarten class in Austin, Texas, the aim is to develop insights into children’s relations with their local environments, particularly in relation to climate-change related issues.
→ Link to Climate Action Childhood Network |
Stories of Ancient ResilienceCentral Texas Intergenerational UT Austin - Planet Texas 2050 Funded |
This project is part of a larger study that investigates interactions between environmental change and wellbeing in past societies. Our overall goal is to generate multiple understandings of resilience as applied to the past and the ways in which they can inspire a new visions of resilience in relation to effective responses to the climate crisis and its unequally distributed impacts.
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Waste Relations in Early ChildhoodBritish Columbia Preschool UT Austin - Summer Research Fellowship |
The aim of this ethnographic research project based at a preschool in British Columbia, Canada, Coast Salish territories, is to better understand children’s and educators’ strategies for encountering and relating to waste in early childhood education settings. Insights from this study will be used to consider possibilities for environmental sustainability pedagogies for young children in relation to waste. The intent is to consider possibilities for responsive and place-based environmental education pedagogies that are relevant to and situated in children’s everyday experiences.
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Enacting Sustainable Futures in Early Childhood Education
Global Contexts Early Childhood Spencer Foundation Grant |
Enacting Sustainable Futures in Early Childhood Education: Transforming Educational Systems in Relation with Living Lands, Waters and Languages across Global Contexts, aims to investigate the kinds of systemic transformations that are necessary to shift early childhood education towards just learning environments that build and nurture sustainable ecological futures. Collaborators: Nxumalo, F. (PI), Salazar Peréz, M. (Co-PI), Skerrett, M. (Co-PI).
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