Protest as pedagogy: Exploring teaching and learning in Indigenous environmental movements

Learning and Teaching Through the Online Environmental Justice Atlas: From Empowering Activists to Motivating Students

“…However, since the atlas was not designed for teaching purposes, but as a research and activist collaborative learning platform, this creates some challenges, such as the tension between timelines for reviewing cases for teachers and the atlas team or the requirements for case study selection or the dataform development (e.g., data quality, referencing, narrative voice). Nevertheless, the atlas is a showcase of the pedagogical opportunities inherent within social movements and activist work (Clover 2010; Hall 2009; Lowan‐Trudeau 2017). As such, we claim that the EJAtlas is a tool that allows students to learn from and engage with the global Environmental Justice movement (Martinez‐Alier et al.…”

“…Moreover, as a collaborative learning platform for researchers and activists, the Atlas can contribute to an emerging field that explores the pedagogical opportunities inherent within social movements and activist work, a field of research that different scholars signal as promising (Clover 2010; Hall 2009; Lowan‐Trudeau 2017).…”

“…Environmental justice movements can result in diverse intentional and unintentional learning outcomes for participants and observers (Clover 2010; Hall 2009; Lowan‐Trudeau 2017). Hall (2009, 46) highlights the individual, collective, spontaneous, and (re)generative pedagogical nature of social movements and outlines three common forms of learning related to social movements: (1) informal learning occurring by persons who are part of any social movement; (2) intentional learning that is stimulated by organized educational efforts of the social movements themselves; and (3) formal and informal learning that takes place among the broad public, the citizens, as a result of the activities undertaken by a given social movement.…”

Conceptualizing Learning in the Climate Justice Movement

“…Second, we believe that Marxist “Old Social Movement” theoretical frames (elaborated by Holst, 2002, 2018) help capture adult learning in social movements which occurs through the lived experience of repression by the state, and of the ideological hegemony and material practices of a deeply imbricated global corporate capitalism and ruling social classes (we take this to mean the “1%” or 5% of the mega rich and associated power structures). We understand the violence of state repression, and corporate and class hegemony to be real in both physical and symbolic terms, and to provoke conscientization, transformative learning, identity change, and activism for both individuals and the collective, as can the experience of patriarchy, racism, sexism, homophobia, dispossession of land, extreme economic inequality, and other oppressions (Etmanski, 2012; Hall, 2012; Hamilton, 2016; Hill, 2003; Lowan-Trudeau, 2017; Walter, 2007a, 2007b). In Freirian and feminist terms, we understand conscientization, transformative learning and educative-activism to happen across these various oppressions and associated social movements (Butterwick & Elfert, 2014; Clover, 2002; Irving, & English, 2011).…”

“…Again, these AEQ research streams were echoed and expanded in a wider SML literature in adult education, encompassing studies of adult learning in the disability rights movement (Church et al, 2016), poor people’s movements (Hamilton, 2016), the Occupy Movement (Hall, 2012), Indigenous Peoples’ movements (Prasant & Kapoor, 2010), the food movement (Etmanski, 2012; Sumner, 2016; Walter, 2013b), and the feminist movement (Butterwick & Elfert, 2014; Clover, 2005; Clover & Stalker, 2008). A growing body of research also exists on the environmental movement as a site of adult learning (Branagan & Boughton, 2003; Foley, 1999; Hall, 2006; Lowan-Trudeau, 2017; Ollis & Hamel-Green, 2015; Walter, 2007a, 2007b), with at least two studies on the environmental justice movement in particular (Crowther, Hemmi, & Scandrett, 2012; Scandrett et al, 2010).…”