Roundtable on Relational Research Methods in the Face of Climate Crises

Mainstream education and education research is complicit in the ongoing climate crisis due to its foundations in Western extractivist modernity. Drawing on the work of Escobar (2018) in Designs for the Pluriverse, we recognize how research design—in keeping with other forms of design—has historically contributed to the very extractivist processes that have led to our current climate crisis, often eliding questions of class, gender, race, and coloniality through a universalizing impetus. Considering these realities, we see a need for education research to instead engage with relational ontologies defined by connection to land and nature, which may offer other ways of relating to and with land and one another. Join a variety of scholars in discussing possibilities for relational educational research methods. We encourage participation for the full day, but attending individual sessions is also fine.