Re imagining education in a time of polycrisis: relational pedagogies of becoming with

Abstract

In a time of polycrisis, education increasingly faces challenges that exceed technical solutions and individualised responses. This article argues that contemporary polycrisis may be understood, in part, as a crisis of relationality, emerging from human-centered assumptions that position humans as superior and separate from the more-than-human world. Drawing on Indigenous, feminist posthumanist, and new materialist scholarship, it explores relational pedagogies of becoming-with as a generative orientation for reimagining education. The article illustrates relationality in educational praxis through whanaungatanga, a foundational Māori concept and a principle of Te Whāriki, Aotearoa/New Zealand's Early Childhood Curriculum Framework. Through the interconnected themes of belonging, reciprocity and responsibility, whanaungatanga highlights how education can cultivate ethical relationships among people, places and more-than-human worlds. Rather than offering a solution to polycrisis, relational pedagogies create possibilities for collective flourishing within uncertain planetary futures.