Arts-based environmental education (AEE) denotes an emerging field of pedagogy wherein facilitated art practice intersects with and informs learning about our natural and cultural environments. In it, artmaking is appreciated as a form of coming to knowledge, of making meaning, in its own right, on par with other approaches such as inquiry-based learning in the science classroom. In this article, the author, himself a practitioner, foregrounds two different orientations in learning about nature through art that he considers both as being expressive of AEE. The first one, here called “artful empiricism”, is more established and has its footings in “the Goethean approach”. Participants investigate natural phenomena through direct observation and experience of the world. This is then complemented by intuitive perception. Yet, for the most part, they are absorbed in what Dewey would call a receptive sense of “undergoing”. Aesthetic sensibility is foregrounded, encouraging participants to fine-tune their senses in order to perceive the phenomenon in nature with “fresh eyes”. The second orientation is hardly articulated as an epistemology yet. Here it is called “improvising with emerging properties” and it features an element of working with unforeseen properties that emerge in and through an artmaking process that thematises natural phenomena. It is intrinsically open-ended and an active “acting upon” the world takes centre stage. Through artmaking, participants explore the relationships between themselves and their environs. In his discussion, the author analyses these approaches as two modalities both expressive of a Deweyan cycle of alternating between a receptive undergoing of and active acting upon the world, in different phases of a reflective experience.
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Aim: Participation of adolescents with autism spectrum disorder hardly occurs in settings outside of home and school. Little is known about how their participation is influenced by environmental factors. This study explored how and why adolescents with autism spectrum disorder perceive aspects of their environment as facilitators or barriers to their participation outside of home and school. Method: This explanatory case study explored the participation experiences of adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (15–21 years) from Zurich and surroundings with in-depth interviews and photo-elicitation, using photos made by the participants during activities outside of home and school. Data was analysed with a 7-step procedure. Result: The presence of two main themes seemed necessary to facilitate participation outside of home and school: “environmental prerequisites to attend activities”, which consists of five subthemes, such as “the company of trusted persons” and “the provision of knowledge and information”, and “social interchange and engagement”, which consists of three subthemes and describes how actual involvement can be supported. Conclusion: Our findings highlight the influence of trusted persons on adolescents with autism spectrum disorder, and the need to extend the support network for these adolescents to other individuals, services and society so that their participation in activities can be encouraged.
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This chapter offers an account of a workshop in arts-based learning called “Metamorphoses of Organic Forms”. This detailed description of a particular practice may inform a discussion of ways in which artful approaches, in general, may come to matter in STEAM education, with implications for both educational research and practice. Added to that, the chapter argues that such art-based practices can also be relevant more widely in the context of sustainability education, such as on the theme of climate change. Precisely because the content of the art workshop at hand is not prima facie linked to it, there is an unexpected potential to take up such a tangential theme in an unusual way. Typically, participants feel invigorated to enter new territory – both spatial and mental. On a meta-level, the session can also be seen as a practice in facing complexity, uncertainty, not knowing. The chapter suggests that such artful educational practices have intrinsic merit if we are to equip new generations with skills to live in and endure “post-normal times”. In the workshop “Metamorphoses of Organic Forms”, participants are invited to imagine how forms in nature might either evolve or disintegrate over time. The workshop lends itself to follow-up lessons in biology and natural history. The outcome is not given. Participants go through a shared process step by step, following a sequence that is outlined for them as they go along. They are encouraged to imagine how natural phenomena might grow or decay in time and they do this in a series of short sessions where they sculpt works in clay. Such a practice in art-based environmental education is arguably a form of “poor pedagogy”. This educational activity is primarily and fundamentally an open-ended process. Rather than requiring an extensive methodology, its practice requires participants to surrender themselves to a process that will be unique each time it is performed. Such a practice is an expression of a view on education that is not centred on the transmission of knowledge but rather looks at attention as education and the education of attention.
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