Desire and agency: posthuman perspectives of becoming a ‘rebel teacher’ on a wounded planet

This paper tells the story of my journey as a teacher and my attempts to understand and shape my education for sustainability practices over a period of 40 years. It is also an attempt to speak to younger teachers and to exemplify a process of becoming an educator that may be useful for others in navigating the urgent need to transform teaching to respond to the current climate crisis. Using autoethnography, this paper reflects on the process of becoming a ‘rebel-teacher’ on a wounded planet. I use Deleuzian concepts of desire, becoming and multiplicities and Barads posthumanist concepts of agential realism and diffraction, interpreting key moments in time defining my engagement with the natural world through arts-based pedagogies, outdoor education, curriculum development and research. I trace a progression from anthropocentric theories and pedagogical practice related to sustainability, to understanding through diffractive posthumanist perspectives. I situate these reflections beginning in the 1980s when environmental concerns were filtering into education in Australia, to the present time where the climate crisis demands all educators take a rebel stance to imbue pedagogy with approaches for ameliorating and living with climate change. I posit that the arts, creative curriculum and posthumanist viewing of the world can effect an activist attitude, highlighting place-based perspectives and offering the possibility for considered decisions on action toward education for regenerative living.