Reimagining teacher education through eco-pedagogy: Transitioning curriculum silos towards situated, justice-oriented learning

Abstract

In the face of escalating ecological crises and widening social inequalities, reimagining teacher education through eco-pedagogy becomes not only urgent but transformative. This article examines how eco-pedagogical principles can be embedded across a four-year Bachelor of Education (BEd) programme at a South African university to cultivate ecological consciousness and social justice. Framed within Freirean critical pedagogy and implemented through Participatory Action Learning and Action Research (PALAR), the study positions teaching and learning as relational, justice-oriented, and situated within the more-than-human world. The Anthropocene, understood here as both an epochal crisis and an ontological condition that exposes the interdependence of humans and the earth, provides the conceptual context. Grounded in Indigenous and situated knowledges as the ontological foundation for eco-pedagogy, the research extends the 4B model (Bridging, Becoming, Belonging, and Being) to integrate ecological awareness, ethical responsibility, and community engagement throughout teacher formation. Drawing on collaborative data from lecturers, student teachers, community members, and in-service teachers, the study proposes a developmental framework that disrupts curriculum silos and redefines teacher education as a site of ecological activism and curricular decolonisation. The article contributes to emerging scholarship that links ontological reorientation, participatory praxis, and curriculum transformation as interdependent dimensions of justice-oriented learning in the Anthropocene