Becoming-weather: posthuman pedagogy in times of climate and nature emergency in Ireland

In Ireland, weather has long shaped people’s understandings of place and numerous myths and folktales highlight embodied experiences of the land. Yet, many of these traditional relationships with weather and the environment seem increasingly disconnected from contemporary life and education. In response to the escalating climate and nature emergency, this paper argues that embodied encounters with weather offer valuable possibilities for rethinking education for sustainable development (ESD) in Irish secondary education, going beyond human-centred approaches. Thinking with posthuman relational materialism, we explore how weather can function as a pedagogical encounter that unsettles assumptions about human exceptionalism, agency and power. Focusing on a context-specific speculative intervention, through a single hail experience, we explore debates in posthumanism and ESD, as well as relevant questions of power and justice. We propose a posthuman pedagogy of becoming-weather as a way to reconsider the ontological, epistemological, and ethical foundations that shape ESD to date that (re)turns to Irish tradition and historical entanglements of people, place and weather. Thus, we suggest that researcher ∼ practitioners can cultivate more responsive and relational approaches to sustainability challenges that move beyond purely human-centred perspectives.