Understanding the Ecopoetics Pedagogy of Preservice English as a Second Language Teachers: A Case Study Using Robert Frost’s Fire and Ice

The prevalence of ecological and environmental hazards that adversely impact human lives necessitates the intensification of ecological literacy for the populace. This deepening of people’s knowledge of environmental science for disaster risk reduction and mitigation can be realized through literary pedagogy centering on ecocriticism. Hence, this qualitative study utilizing a case study approach aims to describe the pedagogy of ecopoetics as performed by a group of preservice teachers of English as a Second Language (ESL). By examining the insights they gained from a critical analysis of Robert Frost’s poem “Fire and Ice”, scientific constructs can be identified that can be translated into learning opportunities, learning tasks and assessment tools that can promote ecological literacy. The qualitative data gathered from the participants’ analysis of ecopoetry reveal their scientific constructs in three major themes: risk perception, risk analysis, and risk reduction and mitigation. These served as their abstractions and realizations from the ecocritical interpretation of the provided poem. These generated insights dealing with consequences of human action, nature’s retribution, earth’s destruction, and valuing the environment for sustainability and resilience derived from their transactional reading of the poem are considered by the participants to be the core of teaching ecopoetics to promote ecological literacy. Also, the data gathered from the transcript of the conducted Focus Group Discussion (FGD) with the participants reveal their preference for collaborative viewing and representing activities in designing learning opportunities, and on reflective writing and performance tasks in assessing intended learning outcomes to inculcate ecological literacy among their future students. Moreover, the framework developed by the researcher exemplifies the preservice teachers’ pedagogy of ecopoetics.