Marching Out From Ultima Thule - Critical Counterstories of Emancipatory Educators Working at the Intersection of Human Rights, Animal Rights, and Planetary Sustainability

Oct 15, 2026

Marching Out From Ultima Thule investigates how environmental educational theorists pursue methods that serve both ecological sustainability and social justice, while arguing that most socio-ecological approaches fail to treat nonhuman animal advocacy as a serious educational concern. The essay develops a case for total liberation pedagogy and critical intersectional literacy across all oppressions and ecological sustainability. It then presents and contextualizes practices of nine educators in formal and non-formal settings.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages17

Reading Time43 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Environmental education, sustainability, and social justice

Limits of socio-ecological integration of animal advocacy

Total liberation pedagogy and counterstorytelling

Nine new paradigm educators across formal and non-formal arenas

Marching Out From Ultima Thule: Critical Counterstories of Emancipatory Educators Working at the Intersection of Human Rights, Animal Rights, and Planetary Sustainability Richard Kahn, University of North Dakota, United States & Brandy Humes, Toronto, Canada Abstract It is not altogether uncommon now to hear environmental educational theorists speak of the need to develop pedagogical methods that can work both for ecological sustainability and social justice. However, the majority of the socio-ecological turn in environmental education has failed to integrate nonhuman animal advocacy as a serious educational issue. In this essay, then, we critically inquire into the theoretical practices of these environmental educators and thereby offer the future promise of a total liberation pedagogy that works to further critical intersectional literacy on behalf of all oppressions and ecological sustainability. We then introduce and contextualize the practices of nine new paradigm educators at work in both formal and non-formal arenas. Résumé Il n’est pas tout à fait rare maintenant d’entendre les penseurs de l’éducation écologique parler du besoin de développer des méthodespédagogiques qui peuvent servir à la fois la durabilité écologique et la justice sociale. Cependant, en majorité, le virage socioécologique de l’éducation écologiquen’apas réussi à intégrer la défense des animaux en tant que question éducative sérieuse. Dans cet essai, nous faisons ensuite des recherches sérieuses dans les pratiques théoriques de ces éducateurs de l’environnement et decette façon, offrons la promesse future d’une pédagogie de la libération totale qui travaille à l’avancement du point de rencontre critique de la litéracie contre toutes les oppressions et pour la durabilité écologique. Nous présentons et contextualisons ensuite les pratiques de neuf éducateurs nouveaux paradigmes à l’oeuvre dans des arènes à la fois formelles et non formelles. Keywords: critical intersectional literacy; humane education; ecopedagogy; counterstorytelling While environmental education often stresses a variety of physical, affective, imaginative, and moral methods of learning from and about the environment, it is hardly a controversial statement to say that environmental education is Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 14, 2009 179 additionally a way of making a form of critical inquiry into the world. Minimally, there is the expectation that students need to inquire into the workings of nature and pose questions about the nonhuman order that can in turn be experienced and evaluated in order to generate knowledge that will serve the betterment of civic society. Environmental literacy so defined reaches back to the field’s beginnings, as in the formulation given by Stapp (1969) . The U. S. Office of Environmental Education, created under the George W. Bush administration, also now promotes a related form of critical environmental literacy.1 Considering that this is a political administration that has been deemed the most environmentally unsound in history (Pope & Rauber, 2004), and which has routinely moved to block scientific findings that may support sustainability as well as overturn or ignore important environmental regulations on corporations and the military (Kellner, 2005), current State-endorsed critical environmental literacy frameworks must therefore be judged as suspect (at least in the United States) . Alternatively, well meaning reformist programs of outdoor education, like those promoted by the No Child Left Inside Coalition and writers such as Richard Louv, tend themselves to reduce environmental education to a single-issue focus that over-privileges under-theorized states of nature and wilderness. In this way, environmental educators can adopt problematical epistemologies and work ideologically against the aims of emancipatory multicultural movements and anti-oppressive education. As a reified form of environmental education it like

FAQs

Why does the essay argue that socio-ecological environmental education often falls short?

It contends that most approaches fail to integrate nonhuman animal advocacy as a serious educational issue, leaving an incomplete framework for intersectional critique.

What pedagogical direction does the essay propose?

It offers the promise of a total liberation pedagogy intended to further critical intersectional literacy on behalf of all oppressions and ecological sustainability.

How does the essay describe the educators it studies?

It introduces and contextualizes nine new paradigm educators working in both formal and non-formal arenas.

Oct 15, 2026

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