New pathways for teaching and learning:
the posthumanist approach
Prepared for the Canadian Commission for UNESCO
By Fiona Blaikie, Christine Daigle, and Liette Vasseur
Ottawa, Canada, December 2020
i
For further reading, see:
Canadian UNESCO Chairs: Reflections on the Futures of Education (2020)
Old Ways are the New Way Forward: How Indigenous Pedagogy can Benefit Everyone (2017)
To cite this article:
BLAIKIE Fiona, DAIGLE Christine, and VASSEUR Liette, “New pathways for teaching and learning: the
posthumanist approach”, Canadian Commission for UNESCO, Ottawa, Canada, December 2020.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect
the official policy or position of the Canadian Commission for UNESCO.
ii
Table of Contents
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 1
Alternative approaches to teaching and learning......................................................................................... 2
What the future of education could be……................................................................................................... 3
Re/turning to holistic ancestral and Indigenous ways of knowing ............................................................... 3
Reframing relationships between scholars, teachers, and learners............................................................. 4
The importance of learning settings ............................................................................................................. 4
Towards holistic system thinking .................................................................................................................. 5
Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................................... 5
References .................................................................................................................................................... 6
iii
Introduction
In the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, our lives and what is considered “normal” have been disrupted. As
populations are required or requested to stay at home under various orders of social distancing, the
education system is being affected at all levels. At the time of writing, although some countries have
started reintegrating students in school, many around the globe are still not back in the classroom
(UNESCO 2020). Instructors have been asked by their various institutions to adopt distance teaching to
ensure that learning continues.
Pedagogy, the method and practice of teaching, is relational and complex, situated in the conditions of
each moment. While online distance learning may seem like a sensible thing to do, systematically
resorting to it as a suitable replacement for face-to-face instruction indicates a misunderstanding of
what education is, narrowly understanding it as content delivery. The logic at work in the current crisis is
that since content cannot be delivered in classrooms, instructors and their students can rapidly adopt
alternate technological tools to engage in teaching and learning at a distance. This approach requires
students to learn in something of a vacuum, and their parents, guardians or caregivers need to take on
roles as educators—often without access to hardware, the internet, or the ability, time and interest to
facilitate learning (Cerna 2020, UN 2020).
This approach is problematic in many ways; it assumes that everyone has a reliable and accessible
internet connection, for example. It doesn’t take into account relationships between teachers and
students in real-world contexts, with the various ways in which teaching and learning ares relational and
situated in time and space. It also limits the experiential component of learning that can introduce other
elements, such as the natural world.
In all cases, we question this approach that narrowly construes pedagogy as efficient delivery of
knowledge from an informed teacher to an uninformed—and yet to be formed—pupil. This view of
education is grounded in a patriarchal humanist worldview of the developed Western world and its
colonial outreaches (Murris 2018). The humanist subject emerging from this worldview is a white, able-
bodied, cisgendered, heterosexual male, which places all other humans in positions of inferiority, and
thereby justifies regimes of oppression (e.g., residential schools) that continue to plague our societies.
Via industrialization and globalization, this view has become dominant. It erases collective memories,
territorial and cultural identities, and relationships between places and people where traditional
knowledges encompass and form essential infrastructures and meanings in our lives (Colonna 2020).
The humanist view of education operates on the basis of hierarchies and binaries that separate the mind
from the body, the human from nonhuman lives, and humans from the natural world as a whole. This
view justifies the use and exploitation of some humans, nonhumans and the environment – and is
therefore responsible for the manifold crises we face (Braidotti 2013, 2019; MacCormack 2020).
Creating the new ideas that our world urgently needs requires new modes of teaching that disrupt old
ways of thinking and create new knowledges. This is what a posthumanist perspective can bring to our
education systems1
Posthumanism2 offers new ways of conceiving humans, including teachers and learners, as non
exceptional and entwined with other beings. Posthumanism’s key idea is “entanglement” (Alaimo 2016,
Barad 2007, Bennett 2010, Coole & Frost 2010, Cielemęcka & Daigle 2019). It refers to an assemblage of
entities and beings (think of the microbiome in your intestine, for example) that are also part of various
other assemblages (the ecosystem it inhabits, the cities and countries it lives in, the technology it uses
and is entangled with, and so on). We are beings with permeable boundaries (such as our skin or lung
membranes) and are not distinct or autonomous from the world around us, as construed by the
1
humanist worldview. Every being, from the atom to the earth system, is itself an agent, and its actions
can have significant impacts on any other agent or system. For example, the body’s cells and organs, the
gut bacteria, the organisms living on the surface of our skins all exercise some action and sometimes act
against our own conscious intentions. We see this in our world in the global impact of the tiny COVID-19
virus.
How does one “posthuman” teach another? Applying a posthumanist approach to education involves
rethinking pedagogy, knowledge production and dissemination. If there is a need to understand the
world differently, we must “defamiliarize [our] mental habits” (Braidotti 2019, 77) by moving away from
a humanist worldview. This worldview has not only shaped our thoughts, but also our institutions.
Universities and education systems are structured around binaried teacher-learner relationships, as well
as seeing disciplines and school subjects as discrete entitites with their own objects and methods of
study and practices. What changes must we bring about so that we can imagine and understand the
world and ourselves in new ways? A posthuman approach can change the way we value ourselves,
other species, the planet, and beyond. It requires thinking about the system as a whole instead of each
agent as a perfect independent entity; it requires valuing all agents and their relationality.3
Alternative approaches to teaching and learning
In the nineteenth century, humanist western education viewed the child as a passive recipient of
knowledge. Teaching was founded on prescribed canons of great works – written largely by male
scholars, writers, scientists and artists. The teacher was an authoritative, detached, knowledgable other.
Still today, some view the child as in the “process of becoming-adult (Man)” (Murris 2018, 2). The child is
viewed as simplistic, ignorant, inexperienced and inert, with few ideas or experiences to offer: a
(grateful) vessel to be filled with discipline specific information. This perspective, unfortunately,
continues today.
In the twentieth century, alternative models of western pedagogy began to emerge. For example, John
Dewey’s progressive education (1938) featured teaching through a child-centric lens, using an
experiential inquiry-based approach. Here the child builds capacity by engaging in co-creating self-
directed learning experiences in order to develop as a reflexive learner. Play and discovery are key to
learning, especially in early childhood. This practice is foundational in Montessori schools4, and A.S.
Neill’s (1960) exemplary Summerhill5, a private school founded in the 1920s, which continues at Lyme
Regis, England. Summerhill’s experiential pedagogy, located in play and discovery, offers a unique “free
range” learning experience, in and beyond the classroom. Alongside these progressive views, the
sociologist of education George Counts (1969) proposed that educators engage in pedagogical reflection
with their students as a political and moral exercise, with social reform as a key goal of education. He
proposed that public schooling be a vehicle for critiquing society and moving towards a “new social
order”, thus preparing students to reimagine democracy and work towards more socially just and
equitable societies in the US and beyond. Simultaneously, during World War II, Herbert Read (1943)
proposed a pedagogy of peace and social justice to be achieved through learning centred in and through
the arts and humanities.
A Canadian example of an alternative pedagogical approach is Greenwood College School6, a private
environmentally focused school which began operating in 2002 in Toronto. Another example is the
School Without Walls, which started in 1971 at the George Washington University. School Without Walls
offers a different educational experience where the city is reflected in the classroom. However, it has
been considered elitist as entry requirements are strict, reinforcing that even an alternative education
system may promote a Western neoliberal worldview.
2
The School Without Walls has been adapted in Ontario with some schools in the Peel District School
Board embracing what they call “classrooms without walls”7 , managed by the Peel Field Centre.
Students are involved in environmental education through workshops, outdoor classes, activities such as
vermicomposting, experimenting in nature, and so on.
Other examples of alternative curriculum or modes of delivery exist8, but these remain quite marginal,
and the vast majority of children and young adults are educated through a system that is discipline-
based and organized around big data testing.
What the future of education could be…
In turning to posthumanism, we propose a conception of pedagogy that is holistic, where boundaries
are porous, and students develop capacities to feel, think, and imagine themselves relationally. Indeed,
relationality is at the heart of pedagogy: it is not only between students and teachers9 but also in
relation to the settings in which teaching and learning take place. In a posthumanist approach, we view
learners as “entangled” with, connected to, and responsible for themselves, alongside the life and
habitats of all humans, non humans, the environment, the planet, and space, including entities beyond
our planet.
A posthumanist approach to education challenges us to interrogate and dismantle humanist structures
upon which many current education systems rest. As Bayley claims, “How we ‘do’ education, arguably,
lies right at the heart of rising to the challenges of developing thinking-strategies for participating in the
complexities of 21st century living and working” (2018, 20). We propose that a posthuman pedagogy
explores and features the following key elements:
• Re/turning to holistic ancestral and Indigenous ways of knowing;
• Reframing relationships between scholars, teachers, and learners;
• Considering material physical learning environments in which knowledge is co-created; and
• Embracing the need to move toward postdisciplinary conceptions of knowing, curriculum, and
knowledge creation
o (Darbellay, 2020; Ferreras, Bidwell and Pernecky, 2020).
Re/turning to holistic ancestral and Indigenous ways of knowing
Indigenous ways of knowing differ fundamentally from humanist approaches to teaching and learning,
which exacerbate the disconnections we experience from ourselves, from one another, from nature,
and from the Earth as a holistic integrated entity. In Canada, Indigenous peoples’ ways of knowing is
linked to two tenets in education: “everything is alive, and we are all related” (Restoule and Chaw-win-is
2017, p. 12). For Moré people in Burkina Faso, the word “environment” does not exist: everything is
“part of the same system,” the environment, and soil, plants, water, animals, etc. are not differentiated
as concrete and separate entities (Vasseur, pers. experience). There are therefore interesting similarities
and differences between Indigenous ways of knowing and posthumanist pedagogies. They should not be
lumped together as one view though, just as Indigenous ways of knowing and worldviews are not one
and the same across cultures and peoples. More work remains to be done in unearthing potential
alliances.
Neverthless, many of posthumanism’s holistic and relational ideas can be found in ancestral modes of
thinking (Bignall & Rigney 2019, Murris 201810). Scholars interested in points of convergence between
Indigenous ways of knowing and posthumanist pedagogy point out that for both there is a critical
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stance, and sometimes an outward rejection of pedagogy located in the intellect rather than in instinct,
affect and experience.
Reframing relationships between scholars, teachers, and learners
In a humanist perspective, learners—children, adolescents and adults—are treated as individual minds
waiting to be filled with the more complete knowledge of teachers (Murris 2016, 4), and by extension,
the knowledge of scholars. Posthumanism, however, considers scholars, teachers and learners to be co-
creators of knowledge. The learner is no longer seen as occupying an inferior position (Moss 2016),
aligned to and restricted by nature. A posthumanist approach therefore moves us away from what
Murris refers to as the view of the “child as deficit”(2018), which considers learners as limited, not yet
knowledgeable, skillful, cultured, or fully adult. In such a view, it is the job of teachers and all humans to
support learners (children) in becoming part of the world, facilitating their full participation (2018, 8).
Such a stance poses important questions about teachers, and by extension, about scholars. Murris
explains “If the teacher is neither a guide, nor an instructor, nor a trainer, nor a discipliner, nor a
facilitator, nor a socializer, nor a protector, nor a diagnoser, nor a medicator, then what kind of teacher
is s/he/it?” (2018, 19) Therefore, a re-evaluation of the teacher’s role is essential. For example, the
notion of “flipping” the classroom is popular in posthumanist approaches to education, but the point is
to recalibrate teacher-learner relations so they are neither hierarchical, nor potentially oppressive.
Therefore, pedagogy can be seen as a co-created journey of discovery, rather than simple content
delivery.11
Scholars who advance this approach to pedagogy are interested in pushing further and reviving some
views of education that have remained marginal and alternative,12 and they seek to position these
approaches at the center of a posthuman pedagogy. They are passionately interested in a posthuman
conception of pedagogy that situates humans in multi-modal contexts beyond the intellect, to consider
other species, place and space13, and the planet as a whole, and the important role of physical learning
environments.
The importance of learning settings
The settings in which we engage in pedagogy are expansive and inclusive. They range from informal
spaces and activities such as chatting around the dinner table at home to school-related activities such
as learning how to garden, field trips, sewing, sports, learning online, thinking through a problem,
attending formal lectures and doing group work in a kindergarten setting.
From a posthumanist perspective, the objects, bodies, and spaces in which we engage in pedagogy as
scholars, teachers and learners, all do things: they are agents that actively shape teaching and learning,
in that we learn in and from spaces and places. Posthumanist pedagogy asks us to be attentive to these
settings and attempt to create new ways of thinking by disrupting the spaces we traditionally use for
teaching, by recognizing and attuning to the spaces and places that have always been pedagogical – like
the kitchen at home. The school buildings, the windowless concrete classrooms in which we meet our
students, the enrolment sizes dictated by budget concerns, and other very mundane and concrete
factors all impact how we teach and learn. Settings teach as much as the teacher does. Verlie points to
this by indicating that the classroom in which she was teaching is the co-author of the paper she wrote
on her pedagogical experience (Verlie & CCR 15, 2018).
Therefore, posthuman pedagogy is not simply a matter of taking a class outside into nature and open
spaces. Posthumanism invites us to understand how learners are interconnected with space. This takes
4
us into the realm of thinking about pedagogy holistically, an approach that differs fundamentally from
discipline-based pedagogies of the mid-twentieth century.
Towards holistic system thinking
As discussed earlier, the “back to the disciplines” movement, also known as academic rationalism
(Vallance, 1986), called for greater rigour within disciplines as discrete entities, in the sciences
especially. Faculty silos, like disciplinary silos, continue to dominate current education systems in
universities and schools. Since the 1970s, the use of terms such as multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity
and transdisciplinarity have become more widespread. In a strange twist, interdisciplinarity has been
relegated to niche programs such as specialist arts high schools and Indigenous Studies programs at
universities.
We need to move beyond disciplines to a much more radical approach that is not discipline centric, but
rather holistic. This is what posthumanist thinkers advocate. The problems we are facing in the world
today are complex, and only modes of thinking that acknowledge, remove, and bridge disciplinary
divides and in fact operate beyond them, considering many intricate aspects of problems, offer
workable possibilities. Exposing learners from kindergarten to graduate level to such thinking will allow
them to think about the world and all of its beings, spaces and places, as entangled, as interconnected.
It will prevent silo thinking and foster the capacity to experiment, explore, and discover, letting the
creativity of children and educators thrive.
Teaching via themes rather than disciplines could promote holistic systems thinking. For example,
consider a theme such as “water”in a variety of settings, ranging from elementary school to
undergraduate studies programs: It could be addressed across arts and science disciplines, which would
allow for genuine learning in complexity. Such a shift in teaching and learning could facilitate new ways
of thinking, feeling, and taking responsibility for ourselves, one another, non humans and the planet.
Conclusion
In the context of the global crisis of COVID-19, it is important to reflect on how we can shift our
approach to teaching and learning. But we also have to be careful and avoid the trap of thinking that
everything can be done virtually. More broadly, we must ask ourselves: How can we engage all teachers
and learners, in fact, all humans, in thinking, feeling and being responsible for ourselves, one another,
and the planet? This shift includes abandoning humanist worldviews, embracing a posthuman pedagogy
and returning to holistic, ancestral and Indigenous ways of knowing; non-hierarchical relationships
between teachers and learners; recognizing the importance of learning environments, and creating
learning opportunities that offer holistic system thinking and feeling. A curriculum that values the
interconnected existence of all beings and their actions, rooted in and beyond classrooms, and truly by
innovative pedagogical methods, will truly support globally minded citizens who are able to think and
act holistically.
5
References
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London: University of Minnesota Press.
Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the
Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. London: Duke University Press.
Bayley, A. (2018). Posthuman Pedagogies in Practice: Arts based Approaches for Developing
Participatory Futures. Cham (Switzerland): Palgrave Macmillan.
Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham (NC): Duke University Press
Bignall, S. and D. Rigney (2019). “Indigeneity, Posthumanism and Nomad Thought: Transforming Colonial
Ecologies.” Posthuman Ecologies. Complexity and Process After Deleuze. Rosi Braidotti and Simone
Bignall (eds.). New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 159-181.
Braidotti, R. (2013). The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Braidotti, R. (2019). Posthuman Knowledge. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Cerna, L. (2020). “Coronavirus school closures: What do they mean for student equity and inclusion?”
OECD Education and Skills Today, April 16. 2020. https://oecdedutoday.com/coronavirus-school-
closures-student-equity-inclusion/
Cielemęcka, O. and C. Daigle (2019). “Posthuman Sustainability: An Ethos for our Anthropocenic Future,”
Theory, Culture & Society, 36 (7-8), 67-87.
Colonna, A. (2020). Creating communities of knowledge and connecting to landscape. In UNESCP (Ed.).
Humanistic futures of learning. Perspectives from UNESCO Chairs and UNITWIN Networks. UNESCO,
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Coole, D. and S. Frost (Eds.) (2001). New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, Politics. Durham, NC: Duke
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Counts, G. (1969). Dare the school build a new social order? New York: Arno Press.
Darbellay, F. (2020). Postdisciplinarity: imagine the future, think the unthinkable. In Pernecky, T. (Ed.).
Postdisciplinary Knowledge. (pp. 235-250). London: Routledge.
Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and Education. New York: Touchstone.
Ferreras, M., Bidwell, D. and Pernecky, T. (2020). The university as a maquila. In Pernecky, T. (Ed.).
Postdisciplinary Knowledge. London: Routledge, 200-214.
MacCormack, P. (2020). The Ahuman Manifesto. Activism for the End of the Anthropocene. London:
Bloomsbury.
Miller, J.P. (1996) The Holistic Curriculum. Toronto: OISE Press.
Moss, P. (2016). “Introduction” in Murris, K. The Posthuman Child: Educational transformation through
philosophy and picturebooks. London and New York: Routledge.
Murris, K. (2016). The Posthuman Child: Educational transformation through philosophy and
picturebooks. London and New York: Routledge.
Murris, K. (2018). Posthuman Child and the Diffractive Teacher: Decolonizing the Nature/Culture Binary.
In Research Handbook on Childhoodnature, eds. Amy Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, Karen Malone, and
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Elizabeth Barratt Hacking. Springer.
Narve, R.G. (2001). Holistic education: Pedagogy of universal love. Brandon, VT: Foundation for
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Neill, A.S. (1960). Summerhill. New York: Hart.
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Read, H. (1943). Education through Art. London: Faber and Faber.
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can benefit everyone’’, the Canadian Commission for UNESCO’s IdeaLab, October 2017. 18 pp.
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1
Strom et al. examine education doctoral programs in particular and say “we argue that to pursue actual changes
that will help create a more just world, we need to think differently about ourselves, the world, and our
connections with/in it, and apply that thinking to educational practice and systems change.” (2018, 270) They
explain that while some education doctoral programs emphasize systems-thinking and communities of practice
perspectives, they miss the extra step taken by critical posthumanism which sees the organizational collective in
terms of human and nonhuman groupings in which all elements share agency (271). This is why they think it is
necessary to adopt posthumanist perspectives.
2
Posthumanism is to be distinguished from transhumanism. Transhumanism is a movement that seeks to go
beyond the human because it considers it to be fallible. By using technology and science, the hope is to surpass the
fallible bodies and minds that we are. Posthumanism, by contrast, focuses on humans as materially embodied and
interconnected with all beings and examines the potential of the multiple relations we are always entangled with.
3
It should be noted that part of the posthumanist approach, especially among material feminists, is to extend
agency to nonhuman beings such as nonhuman animals, natural phenomena, and objects such as rocks. This is key
to posthumanist material feminist proposals and informs the posthumanist pedagogical approach we discuss here.
4
It is of note that these approaches are also similar in spirit to Waldorf and Rudolf Steiner
5
See: http://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/books-by-asneill.php accessed April 26 2020
6
See: https://www.greenwoodcollege.org/about/mission-and-vision accessed July 14th 2020.
7
7
The classrooms without walls program at Peel District School Board in Ontario can be viewed here:
https://www.peelschools.org/schools/fieldcentres/commprogramming/Pages/default.aspx accessed on July 14th
2020.
8
For example, the International School of Hellerup in Denmark (https://ish.dk/academics/primary-years-
programme/) focuses on the acquisition of social and personal skills in addition to academic skills. Based on
student-to-student learning and a project-based approach, this alternative system seeks to produce well-rounded
students. The programme is structured around six transdisciplinary themes (Who we are; Where we are in place
and time; How we express ourselves; How the world works; How we organize ourselves; Sharing the planet). The
documentary School’s Out (http://schoolsoutfilm.com) about a kindergarden that is held in the forest also explores
alternative approaches. Likewise, the UNESCO Associated Schools Network (https://aspnet.unesco.org/en-us/)
seek to use alternative methods to pursue education on global peace.
9
Obviously, the pandemic has forced a shift in the student-teacher relation as it has moved it in the virtual space
of online teaching. While it puts it under stress, it does not eliminate that relation.
10
For example, she points out that African humanism does not embrace the nature/culture dichotomy (e.g.
Ubuntu) (Murris 2018, 12). The child in Africa never grows out of childhood: one is always the child of a parent.
11
As mentioned above, this is very challenging in a pandemic context where distance online learning is the main
educative tool. The digital settings in which teaching and learning increasingly happen alters the pedagogical
experience. Settings matter as we argue in the next section.
12
See for example Miller’s (1996) holistic view of education as transformation which extends Nel Noddings’ ethic
of care for self, others and the environment, across species and across cultures. Such a position can be seen as
bridging the path between early ethics of care and contemporary posthumanist thinking.
13
See e.g. Narve (2001) for whom a pedagogical goal for all citizens is to value animal, human and plant life as
interconnected.
