Social Ecology and Environmental Diversity in Teacher Education

This paper offers reflections on the development and potential of a transformative teacher education project as one component of the Professional Development Programs (PDPs) at the Faculty of Education of a comprehensive Canadian university. The work of our teacher education program is set in Vancouver and utilizes the lenses of social ecology and environmental diversity (or SEEDs) to examine the roles of teachers in bringing an awareness of local/global sustainability issues to student learning experiences. Using auto-ethnographical methods our project reflects on a critical and place-based teacher education agenda highlighting democratic and participatory methods in its approach. We use our experiences combined with relevant literature to explore what inspirations might be drawn from our evolving approach. Drawing from Bookchin’s social ecology, our teacher education practices are based on the conviction that most of our present ecological problems originate with/in deep-seated social problems. It follows, from this view, that ecological problems cannot be understood, let alone solved, without a more careful understanding of our existing society and the irrationalities that often dominate it. In our most recent work, our teacher education candidates identified strongly with the related theoretical notions of Social Ecology and Diversity; hence, our identity (as seeds or seedlings) is in a state of flux as we continue to move and adapt to our current socio-political conditions.