Teaching for EcoJustice in an Era of Polycrisis
A Special Issue for Critical Education
Co-Editors:
Brandon Edwards-Schuth, Augusta University
Maria Helena Saari, University of Oulu
We invite submissions for a special issue devoted to the theme of “Teaching for Multispecies Justice in an Era of Polycrisis.” This special issue seeks scholarship that critically examines the role of education in addressing the interrelated systemic injustices and logics of harm directed toward both human and more-than-human lives. As we face an intensifying polycrisis—characterized by the entanglement of climate catastrophe, capitalism, mass extinction, social inequities, and ongoing legacies of colonialism (Homer-Dixon, & Rockström, 2022; Homer-Dixon et al., 2022)—questions of justice, pedagogy, and educational transformation become urgent imperatives. We welcome contributions that explore how educators, teacher-educators, and scholars are reimagining educational practice to resist dominant cultural assumptions undergirding the polycrisis and to center multispecies flourishing.
Drawing from the fields of EcoJustice Education (Lupinacci et al., 2018; Martusewicz et al., 2021), Multispecies Justice-oriented education (Rautio et al., 2021; Tammi et al., 2023; Saari, 2025), critical ecopedagogies (Edwards-Schuth & Lupinacci, 2021; Lupinacci et al., 2023), Indigenous land based decolonizing pedagogies (Basso, 1996; Tuck et al., 2014), Critical Animal Studies (Corman & Vandrovcová, 2014; Nocella II et al., 2014; Pedersen, 2025), Earth Democracy (Shiva, 2015) and prefigurative politics (Raekstad & Gradin, 2020), and related frameworks, this special issue asks:
- How has education become a transformative practice that challenges anthropocentrism, human supremacy, and hierarchical ways of being?
- What pedagogical approaches enable learners to recognize, resist, and reconstitute relationships with the more-than-human world in ways that support social and environmental justice?
- What can we learn with/from the more-than-human and land to (re)imagine ways of being in the here and now, and who/what counts as teachers/educators?
- What kinds of learning and praxis occurs beyond formal classrooms that are essential to doing
Social and Environmental Justice?
We are particularly interested in work emerging from educational contexts—including but not limited to teacher education, K-12 classrooms, higher education, and community-based learning—that demonstrates how critical, creative, and arts-based pedagogies can foster multispecies consciousness and scholar-activist engagement with the polycrisis. We seek interdisciplinary contributions from environmental education, educational philosophy, curriculum studies, cultural studies of education, geography, anthropology, Indigenous studies, science and technology studies, and related fields. We especially welcome submissions from diverse contexts and bioregions, activists, and LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC perspectives.
Topics could include:
- Ecocritical projects in teacher education
- Teacher learning and professional development around EcoJustice, Ecopedagogy, humane education, and Critical Animal Studies
- Multispecies Justice-oriented education in formal/non-traditional educational settings
- Arts-based research around more-than-human relations
- Indigenous and Decolonizing perspectives in education
- Community Activism, Prefigurative Politics, and Earth Democracy in practice
- Short Film and/or book reviews of 800-1200 words (please contact the editors with your ideas and/or for a list of suggested texts)
Abstract Requirements
- Include author information, title and an abstract of 250 words max
- Include 3-5 keywords
- Email ABSTRACT SUBMISSIONS to: bedwardsschuth@augusta.edu by August 15th, 2026
Manuscript Submission Requirements (after abstract acceptance)
- Manuscripts should be between 3,000 and 6,000 words (including references), APA 7th
- Include an abstract of 250 words max
- Include 3-5 keywords
- All submissions will undergo blind peer-review
- Submissions due November 15, 2026 (via Critical Education submission portal)
Timeline
- August 15, 2026 – Abstract proposals due (250 words maximum)
- September 15, 2026 – Authors will be notified of abstract acceptance by
- November 15, 2026 – Full manuscript submissions due
- December 15, 2026 – First round of peer review feedback to authors
- January 31, 2026 – Revised manuscripts due
- 2027 – Publication of special issue
Special Issue Editors
Dr. Brandon Edwards-Schuth
Assistant Professor of Educational Research
Augusta University
Email: bedwardsschuth@augusta.edu
Dr. Maria Helena Saari
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
University of Oulu
Finland
Email: maria.saari@oulu.fi
For inquiries about the special issue, please contact: bedwardsschuth@augusta.edu
References
Basso, K. H. (1996). Wisdom sits in places: Landscape and language among the Western Apache. University of New Mexico Press.
Corman, L., & Vandrovcová, T. (2014). Radical humility: Toward a more holistic critical animal studies pedagogy. Counterpoints, 448, 135–157.
Edwards-Schuth, B. & Lupinacci, J. (2021) Pedagogies of Diverse Bioregions: An Ecotistical Move from Ego to Eco. Europe Now, 45. https://www.europenowjournal.org/issue-45-november-2021/
Homer-Dixon, T., Renn, O., Rockström, J., Donges, J., & Janzwood, S. (2022). A call for an international research program on the risk of a global polycrisis (Version 2.0). Cascade Institute. https://cascadeinstitute.org/technical-paper/a-call-for-an-international-research-program-on-the-risk-of-a-global-polycrisi
Homer-Dixon, T., & Rockström, J. (2022, November 13). What happens when a cascade of crises occur? The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/13/opinion/coronavirus-ukraine-climate-inflation.html
Lupinacci, J., Edwards-Schuth, B., Happel-Parkins, A., & Turner, R. (2023) Ecocritical pedagogies and curriculum. In P. Davies, E. Clinton, and G. Carolyn (Eds.) International encyclopedia of education, 4th edition, Volume 2 (pp. 202-209). Elsevier. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-818630- 5.08045-3. ISBN: 9780128186305
Lupinacci, J., Happel-Parkins, A., & Turner, R. (2018). Ecocritical scholarship toward social justice and sustainability in teacher education. Issues in Teacher Education, 27(2), 3-16.
Martusewicz, R. A., Edmundson, J., & Lupinacci, J. (2021). EcoJustice education: Toward diverse, democratic, and sustainable communities (3rd ed.). Routledge.
Nocella II, A. J., Sorenson, J., Socha, K., & Matsuoka, A. (2014). Defining critical animal studies: An intersectional social justice approach for liberation. Peter Lang Verlag. https://doi.org/10.3726/978-1-4539-1230-0
Pedersen, H. (2025). Post-anthropocentric pedagogies: purposes, practices, and insights for higher education. Teaching in Higher Education, 30(2), 344–358. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2023.2222087
Raekstad, P., & Gradin, S. (2020). Prefigurative politics: Building tomorrow today. Polity Press.
Rautio, P., Tammi, T., & Hohti, R. (2021). Children after the animal turn. In N. J. Yelland, L. Peters, & N. Fairchild (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of global childhoods (pp. 341–352). SAGE Publications Ltd. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781529757194
Saari, M.H. (2025) A Multispecies Justice Approach to Climate Change Education. in L. Griffin, L. Ropartz, S. Bannister & A. Merrick (Eds.) Climate Change Education Research Collection. International Baccalaureate Organization. Commissioned Report.
Shiva, Vandana. (2015). Earth democracy: Justice, sustainability, and peace. North Atlantic Books.
Tammi, T., Hohti, R., Rautio, P. (2023). From child–animal relations to multispecies assemblages and other-than-human childhoods. Barn, 41(2–3), 140–156. https://doi.org/10.23865/barn.v41.5475
Tuck, E., McKenzie, M., & McCoy, K. (2014). Land education: Indigenous, post-colonial, and decolonizing perspectives on place and environmental education research. Environmental Education Research, 20(1), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2013.877708
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Sandra Mathison: Privatizing private schools should top list of funding changes
Published in The Province (Vancouver, BC)
October 9, 2019
Since 2013, the province has subsidized private schools to the tune of $2.6 billion. The subsidies for 2018-19 alone were $426 million, and projections for this school year are $436 million. Julia McKay / The Whig-Standard
Privatizing private schools should top list of funding changes
By Sandra Mathison
Opinion: With a public system still reeling from more than 15 years of cuts by the previous government, there is no excuse for funnelling billions of dollars to private schools.
As the B.C. education ministry rethinks how to fully and adequately fund the province’s schools, at the top of their list should be privatizing private schools by discontinuing public subsidies to independent schools.
Since 2013, the province has subsidized private schools to the tune of $2.6 billion. The subsidies for 2018-19 alone were $426 million, and projections for this school year are $436 million.
These subsidies to private schools have increased at an astronomical rate: funding increases (adjusted for inflation) to private schools have increased by 122.8 per cent since 2000-01, compared to a 15.9-per-cent increase in funding to public schools during this same period.
According to recent surveys by the Institute for Public Education, CUPE B.C. and the B.C. Humanist Association, most British Columbians believe public funding of private schools needs to end. In a poll that Insights West conducted for us in May, four in five British Columbians (78 per cent) oppose providing taxpayer funds for elite private schools. Sixty-nine per cent of British Columbians oppose funding to faith-based schools.
Let private schools be private, and let them deserve the label “independent schools.”
Private schools cost taxpayers by direct taxpayer-supported subsidies, but also by exemptions from paying property taxes, numerous personal tax benefits for individuals, and collecting large sums of tax-deductible donations.
Private schools also cost B.C. in non-economic ways. Faith-based schools are allowed to ignore human-rights laws and discriminate against employees based on marital status or sexual orientation. Our poll shows that few British Columbians are aware that faith-based schools are exempted from the B.C. Human Rights Code, but once they were aware of this, 81 per cent of respondents did not believe they should be allowed this exemption.
Private school admission processes segregate students by class and/or beliefs, rejecting students who don’t “fit” their values. These schools are therefore isolating students from peers who are not like them. Many B.C. taxpayers’ children would not be admitted to these private schools — because they can’t afford them, do not have academic credentials, or they are not suitable given the school’s philosophy.
Private schools reject the idea that schools ought to be about equity, about providing an education for all students regardless of their individual attributes.
If the education ministry needs a plan, they could immediately end subsidies to elite “Group 2” schools, those spending more per student than public schools and charging significant tuition fees. These are schools such as St. George’s in Vancouver and Shawnigan Lake on Vancouver Island.
Then they could phase out subsidies to faith-based schools over a short period of time, say two to three years.
The ministry should review private schools that serve needs not currently well met by the public schools (possibly, Indigenous schools and programs for students with special needs) and work toward integrating those schools/programs into the public education system. They should ensure there is sufficient funding provided to public schools to meet those needs.
And at the same time, tax exemptions that diminish revenue that could support public education need to change.
With a public school system still reeling from more than 15 years of cuts by the previous government, and students with special needs bearing the brunt of the underfunding, there is no excuse for funnelling billions of dollars to private schools. That money should be allocated to the public school system where it can help every child achieve their fullest potential.
Sandra Mathison is the executive director of the Institute for Public Education B.C., a professor of education at the University of B.C., and co-director of the Institute for Critical Education.
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Posted in BC Education, Budgets & Funding, Children & Youth, Commentary, Government
Tagged BCEd, BCPoli, British Columbia, Government, government budgets, ICES, independent schools, IPEBC, private schools, Privatization, public school funding, public schools, UBC