Widening students’ ways of knowing global environmental issues through deepened local understandings: Childhood ecopedagogy for praxis

Education is situated between pervasive, multifaceted forces of globalization from above and from below that help and hinder teaching for socio-environmental justice and planetary sustainability. Environmental pedagogues are caught between these forces, complicating teaching students to understand environmental violence in an increasingly globalizing world, connections to social injustices, and valuing Nature’s wellbeing beyond anthropocentric perspectives—all foundational goals of ecopedagogies. We present two case studies that elucidate the enmeshed Nature of the local and the global within student sensemaking. They explore real-world examples of transdisciplinary asset-based environmental learning that counter dominant hegemonic pedagogical approaches that are prevalent due to globalizations from above.