Education as Aesthoecology

Abstract

This thesis investigates the significance of aesthetics and ecology for education. Both these topics are considered in detail from a number of different perspectives including their social and philosophical emergence as significant entities since the 19th century. Their particular significance in more recent years is discussed within the framework of posthumanism and new materialism, in order to postulate the contribution that they might make to educational futures. An autoethnographic and theoretical approach has been used to frame the arguments for the importance of aesthetics and ecology. Using experiences from personal education practice, I examine the ways in which the complex interrelationship between aesthetics and ecology might influence educational debate and how this might fundamentally underpin any consideration of affective and emergent education philosophy. I argue that aesthetics and ecology might combine as a symbiotic entity. In this form its impact for education might be even more pervasive. This new organic entity, for which I have formulated the term aesthoecology, operates in its most dynamic form when mediated by a rhythmicity that maximises the affective and connected characteristics of the relationship between the two. Fundamental to the impact of aesthoecology is its role in processes of transformation in nature and culture. Features of this transformation such as symmetrical form, liminality and anticipation are considered from a theoretical perspective subsequent to locating them in the dimensions of space, place and time. The importance of the theoretical construction of aesthoecology is considered as the starting point for its potential application to education within a world that is experiencing significant and unprecedented challenges. Specific reference is given to examples of education practice that might illuminate the theory of aesthoecology, particularly from my personal interest in museums and galleries and from extensive school and community education experience. The thesis concludes with an invitation to education practitioners to reflect upon and consider significant elements of aesthoecological theory to experiment with and apply to the transformational processes within their own practice.