L.02. Ecological Narratives and Critical Pedagogy: Deconstructing and Reconstructing Imaginaries

Ecological and climate crises are also crises of imagination. Dominant narratives about nature and sustainability-shaped by anthropocentrism, techno-solutionism, green colonialism, and individualism-inform educational practices and limit the ability to envision alternative relationships with the living world. This panel explores the constitutive power of narratives in ecological education, critically questioning mainstream imaginaries that naturalize specific power relations. The stories we tell about the climate crisis are never neutral: they produce realities, shape subjectivities, and distribute responsibilities.
The discussion investigates which ecological narratives circulate in educational contexts and how nature, territories, and non-human species are represented in curricula and materials. It also highlights emerging counter-narratives rooted in educational practices, local cultures, Indigenous epistemologies, feminist and postcolonial perspectives. Narrative and multimodal pedagogical approaches are viewed as spaces for critical awareness, emotional elaboration (in response to eco-anxiety and ecological grief), and the development of transformative agency.
The panel seeks to explore how pedagogy can become a tool to deconstruct dominant imaginaries and foster new ecological and political imaginaries through storytelling, arts, and participatory practices. It welcomes theoretical and empirical contributions addressing educational narratives, narrative and critical pedagogies, participatory storytelling, decolonization of environmental and sustainability education, ecological emotions, and the role of literature and the arts in cultivating ecological consciousness and imagination for justice.