Thursday, April 14, 2016

Vibrant Earth - Interactive Symposium at the American Educational Research Association

Weaving as a Metaphor for
Biocultural Embedment
Photo by B. Mayer, 2016
At the recent American Educational Research Association meeting in Washington, D.C., the interactive symposium entitled "Vibrant Earth: Bioculturally Embedded Educational Encounters Catalyzing Earth Regenerative Creativities" involved dynamic experiential dimensions and international scholarship at the intersection of bioculture, ecology, and sustainability. Here was the overview description: 
Educational researchers reveal regenerative creativities sourced in Earth that promise biocultural regeneration, creative restoration, and diverse liberations. This interactive symposium draws from a rich, international, transdisciplinary synergy of research projects to generate a creative space for interchange about creative diversities sourced in earth connection. These proposals break the human/nature binary and share in the mutualism of matrixial biocultural embedment. They explore how biocultural embedment, at multiple scales, produces regenerative capacity. Through arts-based approaches, indigenous ethnographies, experiential STEM, and complexity methods, these projects suggest directions for catalyzing change. The earth itself, as the first teacher, in and through embedded learners and learning collectivities, suggests innovations for critical and creative empowerments to catalyze diverse democracies.
 Keywords: transdisciplinary, creativity, eco-restoration, arts-based research, decolonizing methods

The papers presented included

  • Theorizing Earth Regenerative Creativity in Education Design – Marna Hauk, Ph.D. – Prescott College and the Institute for Earth Regenerative Studies
  • After Embeddedness: Dreaming Soil Ecologies Through Arts-Based Research – Barbara Bickel, Ph.D. – Southern Illinois University
  • Decolonizing Development: Freeing Biocultural Diversities in Egypt to Enhance Regenerative Capacity – Abeer Salem, Ph.D. – MSA University, Cairo, Egypt
  • Democratizing Mathematics via Embodied Learning and the Arts in a Teaching and Learning Garden – Susan Gerofsky, Ph.D. – University of British Columbia, Vancouver

 And we learned to make cordage and worked with weaving spring willow. Brett Mayer, a graduate student from Prescott College, helped with the symposium.