Currere and the Environmental Autobiography : A Phenomenological Approach to the Teaching of Ecology

Reframing the curricular challenge educators face after a decade of school deform, the books published in Peter Lang’s Complicated Conversation series testify to the ethical demands of our time, our place, our profession. In this resounding series of scholarly and pedagogical interventions into the nightmare that is the present, we hear once again the sound of silence breaking, supporting us to rearticulate our pedagogical convictions in this time of terrorism, reframing curriculum as committed to the complicated conversation that is intercultural communication, self- understanding, and global justice.

This book documents a high school ecology class that employs currere, William Pinar’s idea for curriculum as autobiographical text, and analyzes the course’s success from the author’s point of view as both the practitioner and the curriculum developer. Discussing individual students’ responses to currere in a project termed the Environmental Autobiography (EA) – a twist on currere that emphasizes environmental experience – this book examines how ecology is taught in high schools; how ecologists are produced, along with the importance of ecology in school curriculum today; the necessary preparation of the classroom and the students for the currere process; and the five themes that recur frequently in the EA project: caring, insecurity and gender issues, egocentrism, politicization, and definitions of success. ‘Currere’ and the Environmental Autobiography illustrates how the currere project brought an unprecedented richness and intensity to the ecology class, moving the students from «I know», to «I care», to «I want to do something about this».