SOCIAL CONTEXT OF EDUCATION -

Social Context of Education, Ljubljana 2009

SOCIAL CONTEXT
OF EDUCATION

Edited by

DAMIJAN ŠTEFANC
BOŻENA HARASIMOWICZ

LJUBLJANA, 2009
3

Reviewer: Assoc Prof. Anna Kožuh, PhD

Prof. Vjačeslav Terkulov, PhD
Edited by: Damijan Štefanc
Bożena Harasimowicz

© Univerza v Ljubljani, Filozofska fakulteta, 2009.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or othervise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Main entry under title:
SOCIAL CONTEXT OF EDUCATION
Published by: University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts
For the publisher: Valentin Bucik, Dean
Issued by: Department of Education

Includes index.
1. Educational-Research-Slovenia-Adresses, essays.
2. Education-Social Sciences-Methods-Slovenia-Adresses, essays.
Damijan Štefanc, Bożena Harasimowicz.

CIP - Kataložni zapis o publikaciji
Narodna in univerzitetna knjižnica, Ljubljana

37.01(082)

SOCIAL context of education / edited by Damijan Štefanc, Božena
Harasimowicz. - Ljubljana : Faculty of Arts, 2009

ISBN 978-961-237-337-5
1. Štefanc, Damijan
249000960

Printed by Mellow
Technical Editor: Luka Novak
Publikacija je brezplačna

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CONTENTS

GIFTEDNESS AS A PEDAGOGICAL PHENOMENON................................... 7
1. Elena Bocharova

VISION OF THE DEMOCRATIC FUTURE OF THE NET .......................... 27
2. Richard Kahn

THE LOCAL SOURCES OF AN IDEA OF HOMELAND ............................. 47
3. Zbigniew Pucek

METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS OF CAUSALITY .................... 65
4. Alison Kington

THEORY OF META-ANALYTIC STUDIES ..................................................... 79
5. Boris Kožuh

ETHNOGRAPHIC APPROACH IN PEDAGOGICAL RESEARCH ............ 89
6. Jelena Maksimović

STEPS TOWARDS TO INCLUSIVE EDUCATION IN BiH ........................ 97
7. Nenad Suzić

SUPPORTING PURPOSE-DRIVEN TEACHING
8. Jodi Bergland Holen, Bonni Gourneau, Woei Hung

AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA, USA
A Teacher Education for the Future Project .......................................... 117

9. Teresa A. Hughes, Norman L. Butler, William A. Kritsonis,

PRIMARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION IN CANADA AND
David Herrington

POLAND-COMPARED: INTERNATIONAL IMPLICATIONS ................ 135

TEACHER’S ACTIVITY IN THE DEVELOPING
10. Danuta Skulicz

OF EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM ............................................................................. 143
5

11. Norman L. Butler, Barry S. Davidson, Ryszard

INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES: POLISH POST – SECONDARY
Pachocinski, Kimberly G. Grif�ith, William A. Kritsonis

VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS AND CANADIAN COMMUNITY COLLEGES:
A COMPARISON USING AN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
CONCEPTUAL MODEL .................................................................................... 159

DIGITAL SUPPORTS FOR PERSONS WITH MULTIPLE DISABILITY
12. María del Carmen Malbrán

AND COMPLEX COMMUNICATION NEEDS ............................................ 171

ACTION RESEARCH IN THE INCLUSIVE CLASSROOM ...................... 179
13. Natasha Angeloska-Galevska, Zora Jacova

Index ................................................................................................................... 185

6


Elena Bocharova
Нorlivka State Pedagogical Institute of
Foreign Languages
UKRAINE

GIFTEDNESS AS A
PEDAGOGICAL PHENOMENON

Under the conditions of modern social cultural situation,
which is characterized by rapid changes in different spheres of
the life of society and constant introduction of new information
technology, the problem of education of intellectually and
creatively talented personality, capable of non-standard thinking,
ready for refusing from templates and usual methods of activity
in searching something new and creative shouldn’t be neglected.
School should fulfill the social order for pupils’ all-round
developed personality, the future highly qualified specialist in a
definite sphere of creative life.
The future of Ukraine depends on intellectual and spiritual
power, creative potential of the growing generation, its desire
of acquiring the new knowledge, making new technological
innovations, creative thinking and taking constructive decisions. It
is confirmed on a government level with the Ukrainian President’s
introduction of the Program “The Gi�ed Child” and the decision
of the Cabinet of Ministers “About confirming Government
goal-directed program of working with the gi�ed youth during
2007-2010 years”. That is why organizing the normal conditions
for developing the gi�ed pupils and students is one of the most
actual problems in the modern psycho-pedagogical science.
So, the actuality of the problem is based on the necessity of
system research and generalizing the conception of gi�edness
and its kinds, describing the effective methods of diagnostics for a
7

Elena Bocharova: Giftedness as a Pedagogical Phenomenon
gi�ed personality, peculiarities of pedagogical process, which the
gi�ed children are involved in and forms of realizing the social
and pedagogical support for the gi�ed youth.
During the century in psycho-pedagogical science gi�edness
has being discussed in educational practice, reveal the gi�ed
individuals, organize their learning according to special
educational plans and programs. But the scientists have not come
to any univalent conclusion about what the gi�edness is, which
method is be�er for defining it, which instruments should be used
for revealing a gi�ed pupil.
From the point of view of D. Bogoyavlenska, the difficulty
and specificity with gi�ed children demand involving into this
problem different specialists. They are: teachers, psychologists,
sociologists, cultural and sport figures, managers from different
spheres of education. The work with gi�ed children cannot
base only on empiric experience. It should have scientific and
methodological fields, which permit to decide such important
questions as defining, teaching and developing a gi�ed child
[14].
From the psychological point of view the gi�edness is
a difficult object, in which cognitive, psycho-physiological
emotional, motivating and willing persons’ spheres are crossing.
The difficulty of the phenomenon is caused by the specificity
of work with talented children. In this process pedagogical
and psychological difficulties constantly appear and they
are connected and they are connected with different kinds of
gi�edness, a great amount of theoretical approaches and methods
which define it, lack of specialists, who are professionally ready
for work with different categories of gi�ed children in educational
establishments of different types [16].
The problem of gi�edness is considered to be psychological.
In addition there is no doubt that the notions “gi�edness”,
“genius”, “talent” belong only to psychological apparatus.
For a long time Psychology was developing in the network of
philosophy, thanks to which most of the categorical notions were
formed as philosophical, and only much later they became the
object of investigation of psychologists. That’s why we will begin
with the examination of the problem of gi�edness from the point
of view of Philosophy.
As far back as the times of Antiquity great hopes were set
on the people with prominent intellectual faculties, a special role
in the society was assigned to them. In particular, Plato believed
8

that people with a high level of intellectual faculties had to form
an elitist caste and to occupy the top of the social pyramid in
the ideal republic. Plato also thought that a person’s intellectual
faculties did not change with the lapse of time and that is why the
humanity did not have any opportunity to influence their level
[21, p. 27].
Long before Anno Domini some individuals appraised to
be cleverer than the others. In Ancient Egypt in order to begin
studying the art of a priest one had to stand the defined system
of the tests. At the beginning the applicant gave an interview
during which his biography, the level of experience and also
his appearance, the ability to hold a conversation were found
out. Then came the rest of his ability to work, listen to and keep
silent, ordeal by fire, water, fear and so on. It is recollected that
Pythagoras, a famous scientist of antiquity, stood the system of
the tests successfully and when he returned to Greece he found
there a school. One could enter it only a�er standing a number
of different tests which were like those ones which he had
stood himself in due time. The sources indicate that Pythagoras
appreciated the role of intellectual faculties and he asserted that
“it is impossible to turn Mercury out of every tree”. That is why he
a�ached a great importance to the diagnostics of these faculties.
Quintilian’s pedagogical theory is based on the learning
of the positive nature of a person. He believed that almost all
the children had abilities for learning and that is why a teacher
had to know and take into account in his work the individual
peculiarities and abilities of each child. He suggested beginning to
learn as soon as possible. According to Quintilian, every person is
gi�ed by the nature in different ways. The thinker emphasized the
great importance of education for forming gi�edness, he thought
that collective education did more good than the private one. He
also mentioned the great importance of school friendship [7, p.
158].
Hippocrates was the first to express the opinion about the
subordination of the human way of existence to the universal
law with endless variety of individual variations. Taking into
consideration the canons of ancient Greek philosophy (about
four origins) he developed the teaching about four types of
temperament, which explained individual differences between
people [17, p. 86].
Aristotle developed the theory of education of “the citizens
who were born by free parents”. From his point of view, a person
9

gets from the nature only bents which education can develop.
The mind is the God’s part of the human existence; people are
born with “clear mind” which is being filled by thoughts during
gaining the life experience. According to Aristotle, education must
ensure harmonious combination of physical, moral and mental
development of a person. In the sphere of mental education he
stood up for bread scholarship which is not compatible with
specialization in one of the kinds of activity which from Aristotle’s
point of view is unworthy of the people who were born by free
parents [7, p. 29].
In psychological investigations the problem of gi�edness
takes a long period of time. O. Klimchenko believes that it is
appropriate to divide it into two periods: before-scholastic and
a�er-scholastic. While analyzing before-scholastic period the
author defines that in philosophy of antiquity the existence of some
internal preconditions was not prohibited, however a person’s
perfection to the level of wisdom, gi�edness was considered
to be the product of will and freedom of any particular person.
Thus, almost in all the philosophical views of this period the
distinct differentiation of the notions of genius, gi�edness, talent
is absent, and related notions were defined by individual views
of thinkers [11, p. 25]. The situation changed in scholastic period.
The main difference from antique period was that scholastics
tried to prove the innateness of all the person’s qualities, the fact
that all these qualities were given to people by God. A high level
of the development of abilities is gi�edness, or God-given talent.
During a�er-scholastic period (Schopenhauer, Carlyle, Hirsch,
Jolly, Lafi�e, Reynard and others) differentiations of the notions
of gi�edness, genius and talent appeared. Thus, the problem of
origin of the highest human abilities – gi�edness, genius, talent
– in philosophy became a basis for systematic and scientific study
of this phenomenon in psychology and helped the psychologists
to develop the theory of gi�edness.

Renaissance
The epoch of Renaissance is the epoch of passion for the
culture, knowledge art and the wide demand for painting. A
famous Polish pedagogue and writer of political essays Andrew
Frich Modrzewsky wrote about school orientation which
consisted in the selection of pupils to schools according to their
abilities. He emphasized that the task of parents was the support
10

of development of children’s abilities and the task of teachers was
to educate the children in the way so that they could bring joy and
pleasure to their relatives.

XVII Century
The conception of the development of children’s abilities
thought appropriate encouragement of pupils to intellectual
activity in the process of teaching appeared. (R. Descartes)

XVIII Century
Zh.-Zh. Rousseau in his conception of “free education” stated
that abilities and other features of gi�edness had to develop
without any interference of teachers, and education had to come
only to allocation of the possibilities of the free choice. Rousseau
thought that the main factors of education were the nature, the
people and the objects of surrounding world.

XIX Century
Y. Pestalozzi propagandized the elemental development of a
person according to his character and inclinations. Education and
teaching, according to Pestalozzi, had to correspond to the child’s
nature and the instincts which were put in it.
A German philosopher, pedagogue Johann Fredrick Herbart
(1778-1841) stated: “The variety of human mental faculties makes
the biggest problems in school education. Not taking this fact
into account is a fundamental mistake of any legislation which
concerns education” [23, p. 19].
In the XIX century the emphasis was laid, essentially, on
intelligent development of pupils, but all the pupils were taken
as homogenous group, without taking in account their individual
peculiarities.
At the beginning of the XX century, due to Swedish
teacher’s work “Ellen Key the Century of the Child (1990)”, the
a�itude to a pupil and importance of the school education was
changed. Reorganization of the teaching content, differentiation
of programs and methods of teaching has been going on over a
period of the whole century [23, p. 19].
In 1916 German psychologist William Stern (1871-1938)
published the work “The growth of talents” in which he
ascertained, that due to abilities a child develops rapidly over a
program of acess and enriching course in a primary school, which
obliged to include not only 2% of talented children, but another
11

10% of clever pupils. It’s necessary to mention, that these clever
statements were formed more than 90 years ago! [23, p. 20].
The investigation of the problem of human abilities was
started in the XX century and promoted the accumulation of the
information data about the nature of gi�edness. The increasing
of this problem was promoted by the interest of famous authors
and thinkers. The works which were appeared in the second half
of the XIX century concerned to explications of the existence of
creative process.
In the Ukrainian publication of “The Pedagogical
Dictionary” it was defined that “gi�edness is the individual
potential peculiarity of inclinations of a person, owing to
which one can achieve success in a certain branch of activity”.
The necessary natural inclinations for the development of the
gi�edness do not define it themselves. Gi�edness is developing
in a process of mastering by an individual cultural and other
wealth of the humanity, individual’s creative activity. Gi�edness
can be technical, musical, poetical and artistic. The high level of
gi�edness is called talent. The general gi�edness is an ability of
people to different branches of activities [7, 236].
In the psychological encyclopedia of O. M. Stepanova
gi�edness is a level of the development of general abilities which
defines the range of intellectual abilities of a person and provides
the achievement of considerable success in the accomplishment of
different kinds of activity. Gi�edness is a basis for the formation
of a great number of abilities and the result of the development of
special abilities [17, p. 228].
The main function of gi�edness according to V. Molyako is
a maximum adaptation to the surroundings, finding decisions in
all kinds of situations, when unpredictable problems which need
creative approach appear. The researcher thinks that a person
must get specific potential of abilities (ancestral factors and
earned experience). That’s why gi�edness cannot be supposed as
unique or rare phenomenon [13].
The literature analysis of scientific sources shows that the
concept of cleverness has being used in different meanings till
now.
Thus, in 1792 in the official report of the state department
of the USC (the Congress) the following definition of gi�edness,
which has being used by American specialists was proposed by
now: gi�ed and talented are those pupils, who are exposed by

12

professionally prepared people as persons who have a potential
for great achievements under outstanding abilities [15, p. 15].
B. Teplov defined gi�edness as the peculiar consolidation
of abilities. The success of realization of an activity depends on
it. He thinks that “general gi�edness can be defined in a general
meaning as the gi�edness for the wide range of activities” [19, p.
15].
American psychologist Rensulli J. S. emphasizes that
gi�edness is a number of interacting components and that it is
impossible to indentify it by only one description. According to
it he suggested the scales of estimation of the peculiarity of the
gi�ed children’s behavior in the educational, motivational and
creative and leadership sphere. One of the most holistic concepts
of the gi�edness in the world of psychology is the J. Renzull’s
theory about three rings. The concepts describe the gi�edness as
the interaction of three groups of person’s qualities. The models
contain three elements: mental ability, which surpasses the
middle level, insistence (the motivation is oriented on the task)
and creativity [24].
In this theoretical model the knowledge on the basis of
practice and favorable society is also taken into account. The
author noted that due to his concept the number of gi�ed children
might be rather higher than according to IQ-tests identifying the
achievements. He does not connect the term “gi�edness” only to
extremely high marks in every sphere. His model is democratic.
This makes it possible to refer the children who showed high
results even in one parameter to the category of gi�ed.
At the beginning of the XX century American psychologist
Ch. Spearmen assumed that gi�edness is based on the special
“mental energy” which is constant for certain individual and
considerably distinguishes one person from another.
In A. Matushkin’s concept the psychological structure of
gi�edness coincides with structural elements, which characterize
the creativity and creative development of a person. The gi�edness
is regarded as general ground of creativity in any profession,
science or arts [12].
Researchers distinguish a great number of indications of
gi�ed children. On the basis of principle of systematization they
may be united in three groups:
- Leading cognitive development;
- Psychosocial sensibility;

13

- Physical peculiarity.
According to this, there are three tasks for the pedagogical
work: to promote person’s development, to draw the individual
achievements of the child to the maximum level as soon as possible,
to promote social progress using the resources of gi�edness.
In foreign psychological researches there is a great number of
“lists of abilities of creative personality”. We will dwell on two of
them. The first belongs to E. Torrans and L. Holl. The peculiarities
of genius personalities are:
1)”the possibility of working miracles. Miracles mean the ac-
tions which go out of bounds of usual, natural phenom-
enon, but do not contradict the laws of nature”
2) The high level of intrusion into needs and wills of people;
3) The aureole of peculiarity that possesses the ability to give
to the people, he communicates with, the belief in their
power;
4) The ability of solving conflicts, especially in that situation
when they do not have any logical solution;
5) The presence of feeling of future, vivid imagination that is
connected with reach fantasy and intuition;
6) The a�itude to the transcendental meditation. The basic
aim of the meditation is to reach the condition of self-
actualization and perfectness [8, p. 28].
The American psychologist K. Taylor points out such
features of a gi�ed personality as: the desire for being always the
first; the independence; the tendency to a risk; activity; curiosity
– the insistence in searching, dissatisfaction with existing
methods, traditions that provokes dissatisfaction with society;
unconventional thinking; the reclines to make a decision of gi�ed
communication; the talent of prevision [8, p. 28].
Summing it up, it is possible to say that particularities of a
gi�ed person are: the versatile knowledge and in-depth study of
searching process of objects which give him an opportunity to
learn the inherent laws and to forecast their further development;
the original way of thinking and creating the ability of enriching
the science and art with new fundamental ideas and discoveries
which are directed to creating new sciences and spheres of
knowledge, new theories, paradigms, directions or styles in art
that finally may cause a revolutionary renewal in culture of people
or a new interpretation of known; the independence of thinking is

14

a great influence, not only during your life, on social and spiritual
activity of society; insistence in achieving aims [8, pp. 30-31].
Due to the widespread researches of cognitive abilities it is
possible to trace the way of forming the term “gi�edness”, for
example, in mental gi�edness.
The investigation of the problem of human abilities was stated
in the XX century and facilitated accumulation of information about
the nature of gi�s. The interest of popular creators and thinkers
promoted growth of this problem. The works, that appeared in
the second half of XIX century concerned the explication of the
existence of the creating process. Their results se�led that people
are quantitatively differ from each other according to their mental
abilities. In course time they came to resume that individualities
differ from each other according to the mental abilities not only
quantitatively but also qualitatively. Qualitative differences are
caused be presence of mental ability in structure except general
mental components, factors which are responsible for mental
abilities. The time has proved this theory as now they distinguish
two types of gi�edness: special and general.
But the concepts of that time form not intellect but its outside
display, when the intellect is unlimited in its outside displays.
In psychological sciences there is an opinion that mental
development is determined by anatomical and psychological
particularities of neurotic relations and processes and also by
some psychological person qualities, his volitional, emotional and
motivational spheres. Scientists mentioned that the links between
the separate facts and phenomena which are known from the
previous practice and the speed of processes that are responsible
for exchange of information are marked on the efficiency of the
mental activity.
L. Vygotsky indicted, that the idea is being formed in the
sphere of needs and interests. When solving one or another
problem, the thinking of a human thinking time a�er time
distracts from the basic activities and processes information,
produces ideas which are not connected with the content of a
problem which is being solved. O�en the idea of solving is lost.
Thus, the ability of concentrating on the problem is necessary for
making your brain work. It is an important component in the
structure of intellect [5, p. 24].
Sorting out an individual tendency of learning some
development of intellect, cognitive and relative in particular, led
to the consideration of creative abilities.
15

The problem of connection of intellectual and creative
abilities is not new. The highest expansion achieved the result of
Terman’s experiment who, having measured intellectual abilities
of 1500 children, noted the results of their creative activity, while
being adults. He came into conclusion, that there is a close relation
between person’s intellectual and creative abilities of a person
and as the argument, he came up with the fact, that pupils who
have achievements in two academic branches show much more
creative hobbies [1, p. 15].
Veil and Martinson include to the main characteristics of
intellectual children’s abilities an early speech, usage of different
words, early learning of counting and arithmetical action over
numbers and reading, curiosity, tenacious memory, quick
perception, rich imagination [2, p. 77]. Those children make up
sentences with complicated syntactical structures. It is typical
for them to classify information and experience. Barco, Panuc,
Lasarevsky, Vasilchenko, Guilbuh mention that very o�en gi�ed
persons show an excessive a�ention and wide vocabulary.
In young ages they are capable of intuitive brain leaps during
thinking process.
The next feature of intellectually gi�ed children is persistence
in achieving their aims and ability to concentrate themselves in
one kind of activity.
Those children possess the ability to get connections and
relations between the objects and phenomenon. In their characters
the desire to do everything by their own is showed brightly.
They express mostly resourceful various propositions towards
a concrete situation. They can look at the same problem from
another side. Intellectually gi�ed children crave for completeness,
order and precision, they have a high energetic level which give
them an opportunity to solve many problems at the same time.
They are fond of making models and systems. They also pay
a�ention to the ability of asking questions. The persons mentioned
above make up new words and give definitions to conceptions
which come to their mind, the main point of phenomenon,
process, quality or fact which are under examination. They
give their preference to intellectual games; most of them have
inclination to mathematics. The independent thinking is typical
for these children which is shown both in creative for founding the
self-made solving a problem and in learning without an excessive
directions of teachers and parents. They give their preference
rather to difficulties than to easy ways. They are mainly erudite. At
16

last, from the very childhood these children have special abilities
which are concerned to one or several kinds of abilities. As for
the physical development of intellectually gi�ed children, some
scientists say, that they begin to walk earlier, have tall stature,
coordinative movements; they are healthy and a�ractive, though
these indications are not typical for every person.
Many scientists stated that every intellectually gi�ed
child, except his general indications, inherent to the majority
of these types of persons, differ from others by his uniqueness
that complicates the process of his detection. Altogether the
independent features of these persons can be inherent to ordinary
pupils. It leads to the mistaken identity.
That is why, in order to get a reliable prediction of intellectual
development of the children, they use quantitative values of
their intellectual abilities that is to the testing diagnostics of the
intellect.
First tests of intellectual abilities appeared at the beginning
of XX century in connection with the pragmatic program of
showing out those pupils who lag behind their class-mates and
therefore they are not able to learn material, except by educational
programs.
Later they made a test to measure intellectual abilities of a
wide range of pupils in order to range pupils on the basis of the
development of intellectual activities, dividing them into groups
and organizing their differentiated education.
These tests are widely known. In fact, the usage of them gives
the basic reason to control not only the level of development, but
also some of manifestations and intellectual skills, that’s why it
will be correct to call them as the tests of intellectual skills.
Thus, intricacy of it is that you should give the answer to
the question: what meaning of the level of intellectual skills of
some pupils alienates the intellectually gi�ed children from
usual pupils. Associating the higher intellectual skills with
good inclinations of the person that nature gives him. Such
kind of pupils is used to be called the gi�ed pupils. In such
way we get to know about term “gi�edness”, but with this one
we have new problems of scientific and practical character.
By this moment we don’t know unique and exhaustive term of
“gi�edness”. As though manifestation of gi�ed pupils is not end
of itself, but it is a component of complex action for organization of
differentiated studies, development of skills, social rehabilitation,
so in this situation the criteria of gi�edness should be special for
17

numbers of gi�ed pupils to correspond with opportunities of
practical work with supporting and helping. Thus, in reviewed
artistic literature we have found a few terms of gi�edness. The
gi�edness is reviewed as the most special combination of skills
which predetermines the possibilities of a person, the level and
the originality of the activity of a person. But from another hand
the gi�edness is an intellectual capability, undivided individual
characteristics of perceptional opportunities and skills for studies.
Besides, the gi�edness is the totality of skills, characteristics of
extent of expressing and originality of natural reasons for skills.
Sometimes the gi�edness has some associations with availabilities
of internal conditions for famous achievement in an activity. As
you know, the high level of development of personal skills is also
called the gi�edness. This item also gives some opportunities to
do the best in the specific activity. The gi�edness is a talent in
some kind of activity and unique creative abilities; the high level
of intellectual and academic abilities. The term of “gi�edness”
means that pupils have some unusual abilities to study at its
own discretion and power of abstract and independent thought.
The gi�edness is not a discrete, but continuous formation, it’s
impossible to speak about presence or absence of gi�edness
because it is inherent for everyone but in different extend. It
is now thought that the extend of gi�edness are the results of
human’s work and due to it one creates something new or open a
great deal of opportunities for achievements in something in the
easiest way without charges of time and energy.
Thus, the basis of gi�edness is a special combination of
inclinations that is a guarantee of high intellectual abilities and at
last ends with great achievements in perceptional activity.
If we compare the definition of the term “talent”, which is
given in “The pedagogical vocabulary”: “Talent is a combination
of different levels of genetic gi�edness and work” [7, p. 326], we
can see that the boundaries are uncertain.
Moreover, such a feature of talent as preference of a particular
kind of activity is almost the same as the terms of different kinds
of gi�edness.
We agree with Shepotko V. P. and Voloschuk I. S. who
believes that general and special gi�edness is the basis for the
human talents. However, the life success of a person is defined
not only by the level of the development of gi�edness if teachers
defined his talent correctly [21, p. 42].

18

As it has been already mentioned gi�edness is basically
connected with general abilities of a person and his achievements
in studies. Earlier the gi�edness was connected with general
abilities of a person. Then it became clear that high intellectual
possibilities are based on special personal abilities. The new
approach includes either special abilities or the high general
intellectual development [6, p. 115]
For a long time gi�edness has been associated just with the
intellectual abilities of a person. Then besides the intellectual ones
academic, art, social, physical and other kinds of gi�edness are
used
We are sure that it is correct to use the term of general
gi�edness and connect the specific combination of abilities which
define intellectual, mental and physical spheres of a person with
it. The general gi�edness is realized in one of the kinds of special
gi�edness: scientific, technical, organizational, art, physical. Each
of them is realized in a practical activity in the form of this or that
talent.
Having worked over the scientific-pedagogical literature
we agreed to the points stated by Grabovsky who classifies the
gi�edness in the most complete and reasonable way. He defines
several criteria for the differentiation of the kinds of gi�edness with
qualitative and quantitative aspects. The analysis of qualitative
characteristics of gi�edness is going to define its specific types
in connection with the specification of the psychological abilities
of a person and peculiarities of their realization in these or those
kinds of activity. The analysis of quantitative characteristics
allows describing the level of realization of psychological abilities
of a person. There are several criteria of gi�edness: 1. the kind
of activity of psychological sphere which supports it; 2. the level
of development of gi�edness; 3. the form of its realization; 4. the
level of realization in different kinds of activity; 5. the peculiarities
of age. Following the first criterion of the classification of types
of gi�edness is realized according to five kinds of activity which
reflect three psychological spheres and the level of different stages
of psychological organization. Practical, theoretical, esthetical,
communicative, mental are the main kinds of activity. The
psychological spheres are subdivided into intellectual, emotional
and volitional [19, p. 510].
The following kinds of gi�edness can be divided into:
the practical activity – the gi�edness in trades, sport and

19

organizational ones; the cognitive activity – choreographic, stage,
literary, art, musical ones; the communicative activity – leading
and a�ractive ones.
In the mental activity we define the gi�edness in creation
new mental values, the service to people. According to such
an approach the gi�edness is shown as integral realization of
different abilities for the concrete activity. The same kind of
gi�edness may have its unique character, as some its components
that different people have may be realized differently.
It is necessary to organize the conditions for the forming of
the internal motivation of the activity, straightness of the person
and the system of the values which make the basis of the stature
of the spiritual personality.
According to the criterion “the level of the forming of the
gi�edness” it can be differentiated as the actual and potential
gi�edness. The first is the psychological characteristic of the child
with the researched indices of the psychological development,
which reveal themselves and on a higher level of the execution of
the activity in the concrete subject-branch by comparison with the
age and social standard. It goes without saying, that in this case
not only learning activity is mentioned but also the wide rank of
the various types of activity.
The special category of the mentally gi�ed people consists
of the talented children who reach the results which meet
requirements of the objective novelty and social significance. As
a rule, the concrete product of the activity of a talented child is
estimated by the expert as one which corresponds to the criteria
of the creation.
The potential gi�edness is a psychological characteristics of
the child which has only certain psychological possibilities for the
high achievement in the certain type of activity, but he can’t realize
them at the moment because of his functional insufficiency.
The maturity of this potential can be delayed because of the
unsuitable reasons (the hard family circumstances, insufficient
motivation, the low of the self-regulation, if the receives of the
abilities of people let compensate the absence or not enough
expressed components, necessary for the successful realization of
the activity.
The special striking gi�edness or talent say about the presence
of the high gi�edness and a great number of the components
for the realization of activity and also about the intensity of
the integration process together with the personal sphere. The
20

various contribution of the leading components in the structure
of the cleverness can give a paradox picture when the effective
learning of the activity, intelligence and creation do not coincide
with the expression,
The facts of this difference in the expression of the gi�edness
do not say in one meaning for the benefit of the distinguishing its
types (academic, mental, creative). The activity is always realized
by the person. The aims and motives influence on the level of
the quality of the realization. If a pupil prepares his home task
just for not being shouted because of bad marks or not to lose
the prestige of the rank of a good pupil then the activity is done
rather doubtful and its result even in the best realization does not
surpass the normal requirements [18, p. 92].
The gi�edness forces the involvement in the subject, activity
that the child does with love, he constantly makes be�er, realizing
new thoughts, born in the process of working. As a result a
new product is rather higher than the first idea that is why it is
impossible to say about “development of the activity”. If the last
one is realized with the initiative of the child, this is the creativity
[4, p. 151].
The theoretical approach has a very important result,
researching the development of gi�edness, it is impossible to
limit the work only by the construction, the program of the
absence of the necessary environment. The expression of the
potential gi�edness requires the high prognoses of the diagnostic
methods which are used because the question is about the system
of the abilities which has not been formed yet, about the future
development of which could be considered only on the basis of
separate features.
The integration of the abilities, which are necessary for
the high achievements is absent yet. The potential gi�edness
is showed according to the suitable conditions, which provide
for certain developing influence on the outgoing psychological
abilities of the child [9, p. 17]
According to the criterion “the form of manifestation” there
are evident and hidden gi�edness. According to the criterion “the
width of manifestation in various types of activity” the general
and special gi�edness can be distinguished. General gi�edness is
shown with a regarding to the various kinds of activities and sticks
out as the basis of its productivity. The general gi�edness defines
the level of the understanding of what is happening, the depth of

21

the emotional and motivational involvements in the activity, the
effectiveness of the aim-formulating and self-regulation.
The special gi�edness reveals itself in the concrete types of
activity (music, arts, sports etc). The special gi�edness influences
the specialization of general psychological resources of a person,
increasing its uniqueness of the gi�ed child.
According to the criterion of the age development, it is
possible to distinguish the early and the late gi�edness. The temp
of the psychological development of the child and also those age
stages on which the gi�edness is brightly defined are the decisive
markers here. It is necessary to take into consideration the fact
that the rapid psychological development, the early defining
of the gi�edness of a child do not always determine the high
achievements further. At the same time the lack of them at the
childhood does not mean any negative conclusion concerning the
prospects of the further psychological development of a person.
The example of the gi�edness is the children called “infants”.
There is some dependence between the age at which the
gi�edness is defined and the sphere of activity. The earliest
gi�edness is determined in arts, especially in music, a bit later
in the sphere of fine arts. In the science the achievements of
important results in the form of famous explores, creation of new
spheres and methods of investigation take place later than in arts.
Besides, it is connected with the necessity of acquisition of deep
and wide knowledge without which the scientific discovers are
impossible. As a rule, the talent for mathematics is determined
earlier than those.
It was already mentioned above that differences in
gi�edness may be connected both with the level of manifestation
of its features and with the control of the level of the child’s
achievements. The defining on this basis notwithstanding the
conditional character is being realized with the help of comparing
different markers with the average age standard. The uniqueness
is known to counterbalance with mediocrity. So, the individual
development influences greatly the peculiarities of the gi�edness.
Thus, the abilities of some children exceed to some extent the
average level of abilities of their coevals. Their gi�edness is not
always visible. But they have the basic definite features and must
be evaluated by teachers and school psychologists.
Others show rather striking intellectual, artistic,
communicative or other kinds of inclinations. As a rule, their
gi�edness is evident for the people surrounding them.
22

At last, there are some children who go beyond their age
standards that does not allow to speak about their unique and
special gi�edness. The success of their activity may be extremely
high. At the same time they o�en form “a risk group” as they
have serious problems which require a special a�ention and
appropriate support from teachers and psychologists. It is very
important to take into consideration the level of the defining of
gi�edness as there are certain principles of its demonstration and
dynamics depending on its level [10, p.132].
Summing it up we can sort out the particularities of the
gi�ed child. They are: uniqueness of knowledge and the depth
of penetration in exploring processes or objects that give him an
opportunity to investigate interior regularities and to anticipate
their further development; originality of thinking and creativity,
the ability of enriching science and art by new fundamental ideas
and discoveries which lead to the creation of new science and
branches of knowledge, new theories, paradigms, tendencies or
styles in arts that finally can lead to the revolutionary renewal in
the culture of people or the new interpretation of the old known;
independence and liberty of thinking: a great influence (not
only in life) the social and spiritual life of society; persistence in
achieving targets [8, pp. 30-31].
Generalizing everything which was mentioned above a
very rapid development of the intellect concerning the child’s
age is considered to be a sign of gi�edness. This development
is connected with the maximum combination of anatomy-
psychological peculiarities which were received at one’s birth
and which define mental faculties, character of moral and will
qualities and psycho energy. Talent shows that the creative level
of development of abilities which are specific for every kind of
human activity is characteristic for a child.
Thus, every individual case of a child’s gi�edness may
be evaluated from the point of view of all the criteria of the
classification of its kinds which are enumerated above. Thereby,
gi�edness is defined as a multifarious phenomenon according
to its character. For a practitioner it is a possibility and also a
necessity of a more concrete view on the originality of talent of a
particular person.

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// Учителю об одаренных детях / под. ред. В. П. Лебедевой,
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25


26


Richard Kahn
University of North Dakota
USA

THEORIZING A NEW PARADIGM
OF ECOPEDAGOGY THROUGH
TEACHERS’ EMANCIPATORY
PRACTICES

While environmental education o�en stresses a variety of
physical, affective, imaginative and moral methods of learning
from and about the environment, it is hardly a controversial
statement to say that environmental education is additionally
a way of making a form of critical inquiry into the world.
Minimally, there is the expectation that students need to inquire
into the workings of nature and pose questions about the
nonhuman order that can in turn be experienced and evaluated
in order to generate knowledge that will serve the be�erment
of civic society. Environmental literacy so defined reaches back
to the field’s beginnings, as in the formulation given by Stapp
(1969). The U.S. Office of Environmental Education, created
under the George W. Bush administration, also now promotes a
related form of critical environmental literacy.1 Considering that
this is a political administration that has been deemed the most
environmentally unsound in history (Pope & Rauber, 2004), and
which has routinely moved to block scientific findings that may
support sustainability as well as overturn or ignore important
environmental regulations on corporations and the military
(Kellner, 2005), current State-endorsed critical environmental
literacy frameworks must therefore be judged as suspect (at
least in the United States). Alternatively, well meaning reformist
programs of outdoor education, like those promoted by the
No Child Le� Inside Coalition and writers such as Richard
Louv, tend themselves to reduce environmental education to a
27

Richard Kahn: Theorizing a new Paradigm of Ecopedagogy...
single-issue focus that over-privileges under-theorized states
of nature and wilderness. In this way, environmental educators
can adopt problematical epistemologies and work ideologically
against the aims of emancipatory multicultural movements and
anti-oppressive education, as a reified form of environmental
education likewise becomes curricularly tethered to the natural
(and not the social) sciences (Kahn & Nocella, Forthcoming).
Increasingly then it is becoming clear that if contemporary
environmental educational literacy practices are not themselves
made the object of critical inquiry, they are at least as liable to
work on behalf of a social hegemony involved in the domination of
nature as they are to work against it. In other words, environmental
education—as with the world in which it a�empts to work—now
stands in a moment of crisis, a concept that implies the need for
our informed collective judgment and diagnostic deliberation. As
Capra (1984) has remarked, such crisis implies both measures of
danger and opportunity hanging in the balance. But, crucially
for this paper, it is also “a moment of decisive intervention…of
thorough-going transformation…[and] of rupture” (Hay, 1999,
323).
Despite environmental education’s potential limitations as
a critical field of study, significant theoretical inroads have been
made over the last 10 to 15 years that have sought to intervene and
reconstruct it as an advocacy pedagogy capable of transformatively
engaging with the socio-political and cultural contexts of
environmental problems. It is thus not altogether uncommon now
to hear critical environmental educational theorists speak of the
need to either develop pedagogical methods that can work both
for ecological sustainability and social justice or mount critique of
environmental education from an oppositional variety of racial,
class, gender, queer, and non-ableist standpoints. Institutionally,
this has translated into the recent emergence of education for
sustainable development as environmental education’s heir
(Gonzalez-Gaudiano, 2005) along with a�empts to blend forms of
environmental education with work hailing from the tradition of
critical pedagogy (for examples, see McKenzie, 2005; Gruenewald,
2003; Gruenewald & Smith, 2007; Fawce�, Bell & Russell, 2002;
Bell & Russell, 2000; Cole, 2007; McLaren & Houston, 2005;
O’Sullivan, 2001; Kahn, 2008a; 2008b; 2006; 2002; Andrzejewski,
2003; Gado�i, 2008).2
While some of this work, like that of McKenzie, Russell,
Fawce�, and Andrzejewski has been concerned with the need
28

for a critical literacy of nonhuman animals, the majority of the
socio-ecological turn in environmental education has either
ignored nonhuman animal advocacy issues or has worked only
ambiguously on nonhuman animals’ behalf through an a�empt
to teach non-anthropocentric values. Though deconstructions of
anthropocentrism are no doubt useful towards reconstructing
educational frameworks, they have however been deployed
for different and sometimes contradictory ends by a variety of
groups. Hence, a curriculum of deep ecology might critique
anthropocentrism in order to establish norms of greater equality
between species and to challenge human identities through an
a�empt to foster biocentric or ecocentric literacies of planetarity.
This could work well with outdoor education and other
wilderness-oriented pedagogies. Animal welfarist educators, by
turn, might promote reformed visions of humanity as a good
steward for life on earth and thereby uphold human rights to
use nonhuman animals within an ethics that is less imperialist
and more paternalistically familial. The curricular model here
could question painful or needless dissection exercises in science
education or promote the value of using classroom pets to teach
character traits of responsibility and non-violence. Yet, neither of
these theoretical perspectives, despite whatever positive outcomes
they may tend toward, entail the production of knowledge about
the ways in which the plight of nonhuman animals is structurally
necessitated by our current system of political economy based
on exploitative capitalism, violent militarism, and industrial
technics. Moreover, they do not demand that we understand the
subjugated status of nonhuman animals in our society as related
to or concordant with the historical reality of oppressed human
groups as well as with the domination of nature generally.
Without seeking to limit the multiple pathways that
liberatory pedagogy may presently take—that is, I recognize
differences between sociopolitical struggles even as I seek to
promote recognition of their common causes—my feeling is
that a new paradigm3 of what might be inclusively termed “total
liberation ecopedagogy” is now at hand and beginning to be more
fully articulated in the practices of a vanguard of educators. This
total liberation ecopedagogy a�empts to work intersectionally
across and in opposition to all oppressions (including those of
nonhuman animals) and for ecological sustainability. Producing
what Haraway (1988) has called “situated knowledges,” total
liberation ecopedagogy may in any given instance favor analysis
29

of the primacy of one social antagonism over another, or one set
of antagonism over the others, in generating inequalities of power
and privilege. Again, there is still room for the application of
ecofeminist educational theory, for example, and it need not give
way to the universalization of vegan Third World ecofeminist
anticapitalist Queer disability (etc.) pedagogy, no ma�er how
much I might welcome the la�er.4 But total liberation ecopedagogy,
following the advances of multicultural educational theory, views
oppression in systematic and complex terms, what Collins (2000)
has termed the “matrix of domination.” This not only allows for
a more refined analysis of the ways in which power circulates
throughout nature and culture, to the systematic advantage of
some and disadvantage of others, but by increasing the number
of epistemic standpoints from which to teach and learn we free
a potential multitude of educational subjects from the culture of
silence generated by the dominant mainstream pedagogical and
political platforms.
To backtrack, save for perhaps lacking a strong commitment
to the moral challenge that society’s treatment of nonhuman
animals now poses for robustly democratic educational theory,
those taking the socio-ecological turn in environmental education
already tend to integrate intersectionality into their analyses. What
distinguishes total liberation ecopedagogy, then, is its normative
requirement that we also educate against what intersectional
social psychologist Melanie Joy (2008) calls, “arguably the most
entrenched and widespread form of exploitation in human
history: speciesism” (p. 17). This would be to go beyond, for
instance, teaching non-anthropocentric values. For by developing
educational platforms that illuminate the socially-constructed
nature of “species,” total liberation ecopedagogy does not seek to
just destabilize human power in the abstract, but roots this in the
need to support cultural and political practices that actively seek
to overthrow speciesist relations across society.
To put speciesism on the agenda in a major way is crucial
now for a number of reasons. First, we live in a time of a mass
species extinction event such as we have not witnessed on the
planet for nearly 65 million years.5 The zoöcidal eradication of
unprecedented numbers of mammals, amphibians, reptiles,
birds, fish, insects, and other animals that is now fully underway
is analogous to the mass-murder of American bison or the great
whales that took place during the 19th century. Only there,
species were driven to extinction at the direct point of the gun
30

and harpoon; here, we must learn the ways in which speciesist
ideology is folded into and intersects with nearly every array
of social relations and institutional practice, including the
institution of education proper (Kahn, 2007). A second reason to
take up speciesism within intersectional pedagogy involves the
exponential growth over the last few decades of the industrial
factory farm model of animal agriculture as a worldwide
standard. As animal advocates like Peter Singer (1975) have made
famously clear, the ubiquitous low price and high availability of
supermarket meat comes at a tremendous cost to the sentient
nonhuman animals themselves, who spend whatever lives they
have being tortured until their brutal slaughter in order to provide
such meat. More recently, people are becoming increasingly
aware of the environmental effects of factory farming—including
its role in deforesting the Amazonian rainforests for soybean
monocrops, its toxic effects on streams, water tables, soil, and
the air local to such farms, and its being recognized as a primary
cause in aggravating global warming. Moreover, recent books like
Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation (2005) and Eisnetz’s Slaughterhouse
(2006) reveal how the nightmare of factory farms extends into
its role as an exploitative and racist labor industry as well as its
corrupting influence on public health in the name of maximized
profiteering. Still a third reason I believe that it is important to
demand an intersectional, anti-speciesist pedagogy at this time
is because I believe that exactly this form of education has been
developing within grassroots activist circles in recent years. What
is more, slowly but surely, the “cognitive praxis” (Eyerman &
Jamison, 1991, p. 44) of this movement pedagogy has started to
become established within formal education across its various
levels and to challenge prevailing approaches to environmental
education and critical pedagogy. Yet, it is ultimately my argument
that intersectional critical literacies forged from the practices of
anti-oppressive/critical pedagogues, ecological educators, and
nonhuman animal advocates remain, unfortunately, a potential to
be far more powerfully realized in the future.
In this essay, therefore, I draw upon a series of interviews
conducted with nine new paradigm educators in order to chronicle
and contextualize the challenges to their work across elementary
and secondary education, higher education, and nonformal
education sectors. By so doing, I do not seek to describe their
total liberation practices in detail. Neither do I wish to suggest
that each is the possessor of specific pedagogical a�ributes
31

(beyond their commitment to the development of the kind of
critical intersectional literacies I hope for) that therefore allow me
to create a character sketch of a total liberation ecopedagogue.
None of these educators self-identifies to my knowledge as being
“total lib,” and while I believe that all demonstrate anticipatory
elements of and problems for a total liberation ecopedagogy built
upon critical intersectional literacy practices, I also desire to let
them speak for themselves as much as possible.
I do aspire, however, to call a�ention through their stories to
the crisis now faced by the form of total liberation ecopedagogy
I theorize, even as we maintain that such pedagogy represents
a coherent a�empt to respond to the crises of contemporary
environmental education, critical pedagogy, and animal
advocacy in kind. By so doing, I aim to provide a kind of critical
counterstorytelling (Yosso, 2006)—tentative and introductory
in scope—that may serve as a seed for future dialogue on the
issues pertinent to these educators with a wide variety of more
majoritarian environmental educators, as well as with their
colleagues working primarily for either social justice or animal
advocacy in education and other fields.6

Humane Education in Elementary and Secondary Schools
Anyone interested in intersectional total liberation
ecopedagogy simply must study the history of the humane
education movement, which represents its original form.7
Emerging circa 1870 along with the formation of humane
societies, humane education initially worked at the juncture
of animal and child welfare, a�empting to encourage public
sentiment for abandoned or neglected children and nonhuman
animals. While the increase of social service agencies in the 20th
century led to the narrowing of humane education, such that it
became a pursuit largely concerned with ending domestic animal
cruelty, the last two decades have found humane education
reinventing and revisioning itself, at times in radical ways. In
the 1980s, for example, humane education broadened its scope to
include wildlife issues as well as to question the use and treatment
of nonhuman animals in institutions such as zoos, aquariums, and
circuses. Moreover, when the 1990s saw a surge of interest in the
animal advocacy movement by citizens concerned with achieving
progressive change across society, key humane educationalists
such as David Selby and Zoe Weil responded by articulating
how humane educational theory could integratively incorporate
32

environmental and human rights issues alongside its ongoing
focus upon the violence, exploitation, and injustice done to
nonhuman animals (Weil, 1998).
According to Rae Sikora, who co-founded The Center for
Compassionate Living (ultimately to become the Institute for
Humane Education) with Weil in 1996, there were also strategic
reasons for moving the field to an intersectional focus. For despite
Sikora and Weil having developed a thriving certificate and M.A.
program in humane education through the Institute that has
trained over 1200 elementary and secondary-level educators,
humane education has been described somewhat accurately as the
“Ultima Thule” (Selby, 2000) of education – a far-away, unknown
region, barely if at all recognized by emancipatory educators
working in related endeavors such as environmental education or
critical pedagogy because of its advocacy for nonhuman animals.
Thus, Sikora believes that intersectionality has made it easier for
humane education “to be seen as more consistent and credible”
and that “More doors open for the work when it incorporates all
life” (Sikora, Personal communication, 2008).8 Indeed, in the 32
years that she has been involved in catalyzing this work, she has
witnessed it ripple outward from being virtually unpopulated to
the point where many of the programs she designed now occur
under others’ names and she is sometimes contacted by students
who unknowingly communicate workshop or website ideas to
her for which she was the original impetus (ibid.).
But a critical problem for humane education remains its
lack of adequate resources and school or other stakeholder
support. For example, Dani Dennenberg, who obtained an M.Ed
in Humane Education from the Institute for Humane Education
student and founded Seeds for Change (a non-profit humane
educational organization), found that her work as an adjunct
faculty member and director of a small educational non-profit
equated to less than $30,000 annually with no health care, benefits,
or savings plans available to her to draw upon (Dennenberg,
Personal communication, 2008). Further, when private funding
for her organization expired a�er 6 years she was forced to retire
her operation despite the success of having created one of the
first high school courses devoted to examining global ethical
issues from an intersectional humane perspective. The Canadian
humane educator, Lesley Fox, who helped to found the Power
of One secondary education program through the Vancouver
Humane Society in 2006, provides additional evidence of humane
33

education’s chronic resource problem. Fox discovered that with a
li�le ingenuity it was surprisingly easy to gain access to Canadian
schools and to network with the Ministry of Education in British
Columbia. As such, her program grew quickly to provide a wide-
range of intersectional curricular offerings for any and all takers.
However, as she relates:
Our program was part of a small non-profit organization with a limited
budget. There were no resources in terms of staff to help with presentations
and grant writing and fundraising. The program became too much for one full
time staff person to manage. The demand for the presentations and resources
could not be met. Ultimately, the program was such a success it became its own
undoing. (Fox, Personal communication, 2008)
In our opinion, if the critical intersectional literacies of humane
education can become be�er integrated into environmental
education standards and frameworks, it will undoubtedly serve
to more sufficiently support humane educators who might then
realize the added benefit of stable employment opportunities
within school districts. While I do not imagine that many schools
consider themselves more cash positive than the majority of
animal advocacy non-profits, it still must be the case that with
greater legitimacy within formal education institutions the work
of humane educators can more fruitfully advance and proliferate
in a timely manner.

Critical Intersectional Literacy Developments in Higher
Education
In order to achieve the developments that I would like to
see happen in schools of elementary and secondary education, as
well as in the ranks of grassroots activism, there will have to be a
correlative shi� in the sphere of higher educational discourse to
develop and teach critical intersectional literacies as part of a total
liberation ecopedagogy movement. If environmental education
degree programs integrate social science such that students are
trained in issues of the brown agenda9 and environmental justice,
or the ecological effects of globalization, this should translate
into more critical forms of environmental studies for youth in
schools that can supplement curricular forays privileging nature
walks and outdoor appreciation exercises. What is additionally
required, though, is that the “animals agenda” not be le� out
of the equation. Too o�en forms of conservation science are
still offered uncritically as a form of pedagogy that implies that

34

nonhuman animals are natural resources that can be managed to
produce maximum sustainable yields or harvests. Relatedly, more
and more students are asked to explore how invasive species are
ecological threats without a corresponding demand that students
question the histories of colonialism and world trade that have
produced the invasive species problem. What is more, with its
known advantages in contributing to a low ecological footprint,
should any environmental educator be allowed to graduate today
without having seriously investigated the ecology and politics
of veganism? But how common is this practice really in higher
education?
Connie Russell, Associate Professor in the Faculty of
Education at Lakehead University and co-editor of the Canadian
Journal of Environmental Education, seems to us to be a leader in
environmental education that is working to transform the field
in light of the total liberation-oriented problems I raise here.
In her own work, she consciously organizes the curriculum to
focus on “the interconnections between social and environmental
justice and animal issues” (Russell, Personal communication,
2008). She is careful to point out that, in her opinion, this does
not require the formation of a new educational field of study.
Rather, Russell believes such critical intersectional literacy can
emerge reconstructively within present forms of environmental
education, including outdoor and experiential approaches:
[T]here is a subset of outdoor educators out there who aren’t making
connections to social issues and whose work seems too overly science education-
focused, or about pursuing adventurous or recreation-oriented activities
outside. But on the flipside, I also see many environmental educators who seem
to have li�le experience with other animals or the more-than-human world. So
I guess I get nervous when I see what almost looks like a discounting of outdoor
experiential education approaches. For me, tackling anthropocentrism means
paying some a�ention to natural history and ge�ing to know the places where
we live and our more-than-human neighbours. It is not an either/or approach, a
zero-sum game, but a broadening of our horizons (ibid.).
Another intersectional educator I contacted is Julie
Andrzejewski, who has explored the possibility of a new field for
this work.10 Andrzejewski co-founded the M.A. program in Social
Responsibility at St. Cloud State University in 1995, which she
now directs. In recent years, Professor Andrzejewski has worked
to radicalize what could otherwise be a social justice-oriented
program through in-depth examinations of how the animal rights

35

movement offers an inclusive standpoint for the emancipation of
oppressed persons and the restoration of environmental justice.
While she finds that students increasingly have some familiarity
with nonhuman animal issues, and overwhelmingly respond
to her courses by changing their life practices and engaging
in collective activism, she also guardedly believes that “Very
few others are doing this work and there are very few support
systems for it” (Andrzejewski, Personal communication, 2008).
In 2006, Andrzejewski therefore a�empted to organize a Critical
Interspecies Special Interest Group (SIG) within the American
Educational Research Association in order to gather educators
around these issues and provide them with a platform for
ongoing research. However, the SIG proposal was rejected,
ostensibly because the application commi�ee believed that the
subject ma�er was already covered thematically by the SIG for
Ecological and Environmental Education. Whether or not this is
correct, and in Andrzejewski’s opinion it is not, I believe that this
is further confirmation of the need for environmental education to
step forward and demonstrate a leadership role on total liberation
issues in order to accord critical intersectional literacies wider
institutional legitimacy.
The case of highly influential ecofeminist, Greta Gaard,
supports this conclusion. Despite having produced a large body
of important feminist work, she has found Women’s Studies itself
to be an unwelcome home and thus has o�en had to strategically
find courses in Interdisciplinary Studies, the Humanities, or
English in order to teach. As she told me, “teaching ecofeminism
has always been difficult since most introductory Women’s Studies
textbooks still ignore the environment as well as the vast body of
work produced by vegetarian (eco)feminists, and there is still no
single introductory textbook for a course on ecofeminism, women
and ecology, or feminist environmentalism” (Gaard, Personal
communication, 2008). If teaching critical intersectional courses
has proven difficult for Gaard, though, finding receptive colleagues
who will not punish her for her radicalism has been harder still.
While she remarked that her tenure at Fairhaven College, a place
known for cu�ing-edge interdisciplinary pedagogy, was a warm
experience, in another teaching appointment at the University
of Minnesota-Duluth she felt that her politicized intersectional
coursework was tolerated only because it was offered as a
summer option that served to generate revenue at a time when
other faculty did not care to work. More shocking still, the recent
36

release of Gaard’s book The Nature of Home (University of Arizona
Press, 2008) was pointedly ignored by her colleagues in English at
the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, who then added to their
protest, she said, by voting “overwhelmingly against retaining me
due to my excessive emphasis on environmentalism, feminism,
and creative writing” (ibid.) on ma�ers such as the suffering of
animals.
As I consider these stories about a total liberation ecopedagogy
that works to include social, ecological, and animal justice issues
in higher education, I must conclude that critical intersectional
literacy is gaining ground but continues to encounter resistance.
As the examples of Russell, Andrzejewski, and Gaard intimate,
this new paradigm of pedagogy is excitedly surging forth on
campuses across both Canada and the United States. Yet, there
is also significant fear of and a�empts to repress it (Kahn,
Forthcoming). For the time being, critical intersectional literacy
practitioners will undoubtedly continue to face opposition in their
professional and personal lives. Still, I am hopeful that a moment
has finally arisen in which future perspectives on this struggle
are starting to coalesce and to have the ear of ever more allies in
academia and beyond.

A Movement for Cognitive Praxis
As previously noted, a major impetus to transformative
change in higher education is coming from scholars who have one
foot in, or ear open to, emancipatory grassroots social movements.
As Connie Russell mused, “I entered academia as an activist and
have remained one, just a different type of one than I originally
envisioned…any social movement needs some members who can
step back and analyze the work we are doing, and academics are
in a unique position to do that. That is the beauty of academic/
activist collaboration” (Personal communication, 2008). With this
in mind, then, I would like to briefly relate the current efforts
of three emerging academic-activists that we believe are on
the cu�ing-edge of furthering the type of critical intersectional
literacy work representative of total liberation ecopedagogy.
Breeze Harper is doing research on critical food geographies
at University of California Davis and considers her scholarship
a kind of “literary activism” (Harper, Personal communication,
2008). Several years ago, Harper came to examine the role diet had
in her health as a black American woman and came to the opinion
that she was a member of a demographic suffering environmental
37

racism, one whose diet was colonized by brutal corporate agendas
designed to exploit life. She took this knowledge to a practical
level and “decolonized” (ibid.) her diet by rejecting the Standard
American Diet and instead adopted a whole food, plant-based
diet instead. She also began to organize other vegan females of the
African diaspora through a project called “Sistah Vegan!.”11 This
has resulted in an anthology (Harper, Forthcoming) of black female
voices “who resist and/or combat the systemic oppression that
has manifested as diabetes, uterine fibroids, obesity, depression,
environmental pollution, and the inhumane treatment of non-
human animals” (Harper, Personal communication, 2008). More
than a statement of identity politics, Harper hopes that this book
can stimulate dialogue on issues of public health, environmental
justice and sustainability, and the corporate food industry’s role in
establishing the Standard American Diet.
For her part, Lauren Corman, an assistant professor of critical
animal studies at Brock University, has used her position as long-
standing host of the radio show Animal Voices (CIUT 89.5) to
put “environmental, social justice, and animal advocacy issues
in conversation” with one another and with current scholarship
(Corman, Personal communication, 2008). Interviewing a myriad
of major activists and academics whose work she believes informs
the animal rights movement, Corman is very interested in using
her medium as a form of public pedagogy to encourage “a cross-
fertilization of ideas” (ibid.). Specifically, she hopes the Animal
Voices show can work pedagogically and politically to make:
academic ideas more accessible to a wider audience, or…provide an entry
point into theories while it simultaneously pushes scholars to demonstrate the
practical relevance of their research. Additionally, it introduces the public and
other animal activists to the burgeoning field of animal studies. Among the
most important contributions, though, is that the radio show ekes out a space
within the public sphere for critical perspectives on animals, while disrupting
the stereotype that all animal activists are terrorists, humourless, self-righteous,
hysterical, exclusively white and middle-class, North American, etc. Crucially,
too, it demonstrates to other social justice and environmental movements that
many animal activists and scholars are not single-issued in their approaches,
which hopefully provides incentive for coalitions. Similarly, it promotes critique
and reflexivity within the animal movements, and foregrounds a diversity of
perspectives.
Lastly, I would like to call a�ention to the work of Anthony
Nocella, a doctoral student in Syracuse University’s Maxwell

38

School for Social Science and co-founder of the Institute for Critical
Animal Studies.12 Nocella has served in the past as an organizer for
Earth First!, animal rights and prisoner support campaigns, and has
drawn upon his penchant for intersectional political collaboration
as an editor of two path-breaking books on the animal liberation
and revolutionary environmentalist movements, Terrorists or
Freedom Fighters? and Igniting a Revolution (Best & Nocella, 2004;
2006). Containing contributions from an extremely diverse mix
of radical scholars and activists who are variously pushing for
social or environmental justice as well as animal rights, Nocella
sees these publications as an a�empt to forge solidarities between
oppressed groups by effecting dialogue on issues of mutual
(or potentially mutual) interest. Another way in which he has
a�empted to link academic research and intersectional activism
is by creating a non-profit organization, Outdoor Empowerment,
which he described as “ecopedagogy in action—dedicated to
providing alternatives to violence, environmental awareness, and
empowerment skills in an outdoor se�ing for urban community
members” (Personal communication, 2008). Currently, the
organization works with youth in a detention center to critically
explore their lived environments, practice conflict resolution
exercises, and experiential methods for living according to what
Nocella calls “the 5 Ss—safety, simplicity, sustainability, service
and social justice” (ibid.).

Concluding Remarks
As should now be clear, it is a misnomer in some ways to
label the educators I have here chronicled as either elementary/
secondary, post-secondary, or movement educators. Those with
present or future careers as university faculty almost invariably
have an interest in mobilizing their pedagogy amongst children
and youth, and many of those involved in providing curricular
materials and presentations to elementary and secondary
schools either have been or are involved with developing
formal graduate degree and certificate programs in fields such
as humane education. Additionally, most if not all of these
educators are involved with practice on the boundaries between
formal and nonformal education, are teacher-activists, and
should be regarded as cognitive praxists—public intellectuals
who are integrating social movement theory, practice, and values
into academic discourse as well as a�empting to bridge such
discourse with the everyday needs of community organizations
39

or concerned citizenry. This ability to resist being standardized
and confined within a particular educational sphere strikes me as
a particularly crucial aspect of the form of total liberation work
that is our interest.
As the critical educator Paulo Freire remarked, education is
not itself the lever of social change but it can play an important
role to the degree that it works curricularly to generate
counterhegemonic knowledge and stir the feelings of socio-
political protest in students (Shor & Freire, 1987). In our opinion,
the new paradigm of total liberation ecopedagogy that I have here
a�empted to highlight should be understood as part of an evolving
social movement that has been struggling to emerge over the last
couple decades—one whose militant advocacy is informed by a
holistic respect for life up to and including the planet and which
strongly rebukes the ongoing instantiation of classism, racism,
sexism, ableism, speciesism, and other “dominator hierarchies”
(Eisler, 1988). Liberation pedagogy offering critical intersectional
literacy has thus far been blocked (i.e., Selby’s “Ultima Thule”)
from formal educational circles, in part, because it has critiqued
the ideological blind spots of much that is considered legitimate
educational discourse. Moreover, its transdisciplinarity and
desire for affecting qualitative change in students’ identities pits
this new pedagogical paradigm against mainstream discursive
demands for specialization and quantitative accountability.
But the time for critical intersectional literacy has finally
arrived. I feel certain that a pedagogy for total liberation is no
longer locked in the remote Hyperborean imagination of the
ultra-radical Le� but is rather flooding like rays of light into
the dawning work of a new generation of environmental and
ecological educators, social justice-oriented critical pedagogues,
anti-oppression teachers, humane education instructors, and
other faculty with an abiding interest in the pedagogical aspects
of realizing a be�er world for all beings. In other words, I believe
that a conscientization of these fields is underway, which should
produce significant changes both within the academy and the
world-at-large. Yet, without dialogue across these fields, as
well as between those working in other educational se�ings (be
they elementary, secondary, post-secondary, or nonformal), the
transformative possibilities resulting from these pedagogies will
remain limited.
What is more, the dialogue that I feel is necessary does
not translate merely into trading syllabi or thoughts on what
40

constitute emancipatory “best practices.” Instead, it must foster
the kind of critical encounters that best relate the situation of the
school to that of society, as well as that analyze the structural
forces that disrupt a�empts to alter the institutional status-quo
of our everyday lives. I also seek dialogue toward what the
philosopher Steven Best (2003) has termed “interspecies alliance
politics,” or the organization of solidarities across a wide-range
of educational actors that should in turn propel them to occupy
spaces of power. In order for this to happen, however, those
working for environmental education and animal rights need
to begin to robustly engage with political issues such as white
supremacy and class privilege, even as it suggests that those
working for the benefit of peace and equality between human
groups need to critique their own potentially speciesist and/or
industrialist-urbanist assumptions.
Undeniably, it still is not easy to think, much less work,
intersectionally without quickly spiraling into a bevy of
contradictions. But these contradictions should become the
foundational context for new progressive theories and literacy
practices, not the raison d’etre for debunking them. We must try
to unravel the systemic causes of the present misery and end our
future peril. That we can now name zoöcide (Kahn, 2006) as the
historical condition for our work in environmental education
means that we possess both the necessary and sufficient condition
for the field’s radical reconstruction in accordance with a total
liberation ethic. The massive desecration of our planetary ecology
that is now taking place, a crime that includes an unparalleled
a�ack upon the great mass of nonhuman animals and the
generation of global social upheaval that equates to dire poverty,
disease, starvation, and the unending threat of armed violence
for many billions of people, simply demands that we aspire to
nothing less.

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Notes
1
See h�p://www.epa.gov/enviroed/basic.html.
2
For additional scholars exploring the crossroads of environmental
education and critical pedagogy, see Greenwood (2008, p. 338).
3
By “new paradigm” we do not mean to assert that the work that
we chronicle does not have a significant history of theory and
44

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