Twenty-eighth International Conference on Learning

Abstract

De-colonizing our economies, ecologies, cultures, and cosmologies are essential to revalue the importance of the earth and to find our place in this living eco-system (Eyers, 2016). Such a shift requires that we stop considering human needs as the most important variable of our value system and instead, reposition ourselves as part of a larger living system that we must protect and steward for our own survival. The societal shifts we require imply a move away from anthropocentric to ecological approaches to curriculum that value empathy, sustainability, and creativity. Indigenous science and sensory communication have in common to focus on a different kind of listening. They both use “broad-focused attention” (McGilchrist, 2019), an embodied listening that is essential to observe, imagine, and perceive the environment as more than mere passive objects. It is crucial to help youth regain access and celebrate their broad-focused attention and to foster and value youth’s wandering and creative mind to ensure they can develop hope and decolonized solutions to the problems they will face. In this study, we explore how creative activities, during which students observe their experience of boredom and stillness, can be conduits to decolonizing their senses and regain access to the sensory communication tools and the language they need to become aware of their environment and to explore their place in it.