T-Learning for geosciences education: a proposal for a sustainable pedagogy.

This is a response to Peppoloni & Di Capua’s (2021) “Geoethics to start up a Pedagogical and Political path towards Future Sustainable Societies”, in which the authors declare that the development of geoethics is at a turning point: the geoethical principles and values must be embodied into a pedagogical project that has to be inclusive, participatory, proactive; it has to be inspired by principles of dignity, freedom and responsibility. As researchers and teachers’ trainers, we share the same feeling of an urgent need of renovation in pedagogical practices; in times of ecological crisis, we also agree that these practices must be founded on a set of values that enhances an ethical regeneration of human beings and are consistent with the sustainable development goals. In this presentation, moving from the call-for-engagement made by Peppoloni & Di Capua, we point out the T-Learning methodologies (where “T” stands for transformative, transgressive and transdisciplinary) as valuable tools to connect science education with the broader concept of Education for Sustainability (Sterling, 2011). After a brief introduction, necessary to give some definitions about T-learning, we focus in particular on art-based methodologies. In accordance to Shelley Sacks’ definition of aesthetics (Beuys & Sacks, 2004) as the opposite of an-aesthetic, a creative approach implies an overcoming of insensitivity and pushes people to responsibility, one of the fundamental principles of geoethics (Marone & Bohle, 2020): art thus is suitable for building a new pedagogical path for geosciences education that is inclusive, participatory, proactive, but also transformative, transgressive and transdisciplinary. Finally, as an example of educational programs designed with T-learning methods, we describe two workshops that were held as part of an Earth Sciences didactics course for future teachers, in which participants worked with clay and gypsum using an artistic approach.