Environmental Education Research Vol. 16, No.

2, April 2010, 233245

Problems and prospects in ecocritical pedagogy

Gregory Garrard*
Department of English and Cultural Studies, Bath Spa University, Bath, UK (Received 19 October 2009; final version received 7 January 2010 )
Taylor and Francis CEER_A_462979.sgm Environmental 10.1080/13504621003624704 1350-4622 Original Taylor 2010 0 00 g.garrard@bathspa.ac.uk GregGarrard 000002010 &Article Francis (print)/1469-5871 Education Research (online)

Place-based ecocritical pedagogy (PBEP) has been a key part of ecocriticism since the 1980s. In the last 10 years, the critical, theoretical, scientific and philosophical assumptions with which it has been associated have been subject to sustained critique, and yet PBEP remains the dominant model in pedagogical thinking within the field. In particular, developments in ecocritical thought associated with queer theory, globalisation and postcoloniality, indicate some severe limitations of PBEP. Moreover, published material on PBEP practice and research seems largely ignorant of developments in environmental education generally. I argue for a closer relationship between ecocriticism and environmental education and for ecocritical pedagogy to assume a more sceptical and empirical approach. Keywords: pedagogy; eco-criticism; education for sustainable development; higher education

Introduction In 1985, the Modern Languages Association published a collection of essays entitled Teaching environmental literature: Materials, methods, resources (Waage 1985). At once manifesto, prospectus and introductory guidebook, Frederick Waages textbook was part of an ecocritical insurgency (Buell 2005, 12) that gathered force in the early 1990s, resulting in environmental criticism of literature and culture assuming an important though still by no means central place in the humanities. First-wave ecocriticism, as Buell calls it, is a complex but coherent formation with critical, theoretical, pedagogical, curricular and philosophical dimensions, many of which are exemplified in Waages first collection. The publication by the MLA in 2008 of a sequel, Teaching North American Environmental Literature (Christensen, Long, and Waage 2008), offers an opportunity to evaluate the relationship between progress in pedagogical thinking and that in other areas of ecocriticism. Unfortunately, whatever innovations are practiced by ecocritics in their own teaching, published ecocritical pedagogy has remained both theoretically underdeveloped and empirically unresearched. At the same time, teachers of ecocriticism and environmental education researchers largely seem to work in mutual unawareness of the field developing in close proximity to their own. Ecocriticism is, centrally, literary and cultural criticism, carried out from an environmentalist standpoint, although recent developments have turned attention onto the discourse of environmentalism itself rather than taking it for granted as an ethical
*Email: g.garrard@bathspa.ac.uk
ISSN 1350-4622 print/ISSN 1469-5871 online 2010 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/13504621003624704 http://www.informaworld.com

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motivation. It was scholars working on western American literature who led the first wave, centred then as now on the Literature and Environment Programme at the University of Nevada at Reno. Unusually for academics in the humanities, most ecocritics maintain some allegiance to the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE), which was set up in 1992. Seminal early studies on William Wordsworth (Bate 1991) and Henry David Thoreau (Buell 1995) were complemented by extensive research on American nature writing, much of it published in ASLEs journal, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment. By the turn of the millennium, an interarticulated complex was clearly discernible that had the following features:

A place-based (or lococentric) ecocritical pedagogy, most often in the form of wilderness experience, founded in a romantic conception of the redeeming and educative possibilities of epiphany in nature. A nature writing curriculum beginning with Thoreaus Walden and incorporating a canon of American classics such as John Muir, John Burroughs, Aldo Leopold, Gary Snyder and Annie Dillard (Oelschlaeger 1991; Buell 1995; Glotfelty and Fromm 1996). A broadly mimetic theory of literary representation that rejected the excessive textualism of post-structuralism in favour of a return to a more literal reading of literary texts (Bate 1991; Kroeber 1994). A philosophical commitment to the thesis that environmental crisis is caused by privileging of the human race (anthropocentrism, human racism), and that reorientation towards metaphysical monism and ethical biocentrism is necessary in a context of environmental crisis (Sessions 1995). An implicit assumption that undisturbed ecosystems have a natural balance or harmony. A nature-endorsing stance on human nature at odds with the arguments of classic feminist and anti-racist theory (Soper 1995).

In the next section, I explore the intersection between the pedagogical and other aspects of first-wave ecocriticism, and then go on to outline how and why this consensus began to unravel. Finally, I discuss the causes and implications of the peculiar resilience of the pedagogical element. First-wave ecocritical pedagogy The idea of contact of what might be at least relatively unmediated experience of nature, and of its inherent pedagogical value is prevalent in some of the founding literary texts of ecocriticism. Wordsworths poem The tables turned advises us that One impulse from a vernal wood/May teach you more of man;/Of moral evil and of good,/Than all the sages can. Approaching a state of hysteria in his account of climbing Mount Ktaadn in Maine, Henry Thoreau (1972, 71) asks:
What is this Titan that has possession of me? Talk of mysteries! Think of our life in nature,daily to be shown matter, to come into contact with it, rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?

The notion of approaching the fundamentals of life through wilderness experience combines here with a secularised version of the religious sense of divine sublimity.

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Rather than systematic acquisition of knowledge, it is the momentary revelation the epiphany that educates. Aldo Leopolds Land Ethic is perhaps the most widely cited inspiration for placebased ecocritical pedagogy. Having disposed of enlightened self-interest as a possible motive for conservation, Leopold avows that:
An ethic to supplement and guide the economic relation to land presupposes the existence of some mental image of land as a biotic mechanism. We can be ethical only in relation to something we can see, feel, understand, love, or otherwise have faith in. (1949, 214)

For Leopold, telling stories about ecology depends crucially upon sustained personal experience; as a professor at the University of Wisconsin, he is concerned that Education is learning to see one thing by going blind to another (158). Like Wordsworth, Leopold fears that book-learning might actually substitute for knowledge of and hence love of and concern for nature. At the same time, though, Leopolds A Sand County Almanac is an extraordinary testament to the interanimation of a scientifically informed narrating consciousness and a deeply known place. The critical question for place-based ecocritical pedagogy is whether Leopolds loving intelligence of a location is either a necessary condition for modern environmentalism, as is widely assumed, or indeed (as seems less likely) a sufficient one. The presiding figure in place-based ecocritical pedagogy is David Orr, whose rhetoric, educational programme and critique of modernity epitomise first-wave ecocriticism and have helped shape it. Exhorting professors to profess openly the passions and experiences that motivated their environmental commitments, he expresses certainty that they derive from an early, deep, and vivid resonance between the natural world and ourselves (Orr 2004, 51). For him, it was a childhood in rural Pennsylvania, extolled for its virtues of thrift, self-reliance and community spirit even if, as he notes in passing, it would have failed even the most lax certification for political correctness (154) by later standards a phrasing that neatly represents moral progress as stifling bureaucratisation without entirely disavowing it. In common with many first-wave ecophilosophers and critics (Merchant 1990; Oelschlaeger 1991; Plumwood 1993), Orr blames Descartes, Galileo and Francis Bacon for founding the myths of modern education: the myths of intellectual, scientific and moral progress that promote anthropocentrism, the confusion of data with knowledge (10), the selfcontained character of disciplines, and the economic and instrumental orientation of education as a whole. According to Orrs version of what I call the anthropocentrism thesis, the distinctively destructive character of modernity is traceable ultimately to dualistic metaphysics and the privileging of instrumental reason, developments which were problematic at root. Orr makes no mention of the moral, intellectual or material benefits to humanity that flowed from the Enlightenment, nor does he consider the possibility that environmental crisis might be a disastrous side-effect of developments that are in other respects welcome, such as reduced infant mortality. The most ambitious aspect of Orrs (2004) programme is his call for a bioregional re-orientation of universities. Rightly observing that All education is environmental education (12), he argues that campus architecture, learning spaces, pedagogical approach and disciplinary boundaries, as well as just curriculum, need to be shaped by attention to place. There is a perpetual tension, though, between the progressive multidisciplinary problem-based learning that he seems to endorse in his vision of bioregional education, and the prescriptive list of scientific, economic and ethical

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ideas that he states should be understood by any graduate in any field (14). Notions such as environmental ethics, appropriate scale and carrying capacity are listed as if they were self-evident truths that could simply be transmitted to undergraduates without any disciplinary grounding, let alone sustained debate. On the whole, Orrs environmentalist imperatives seem to overwhelm his educational intentions; in part, I would argue, because the latter seem to be poorly informed by pedagogical theory and empirical educational research. A typical recent example of first-wave pedagogy seems to echo Wordsworths dictum we murder to dissect in the enthusiasm its author, Hal Crimmel, expresses for Teaching in the Field:
we discussed Willa Cathers My ntonia surrounded by a sea of restored tallgrass prairie on the campus arboretum. Certainly we could have dissected the text in the classroom, under the fluorescent lights, as one might a frog in a laboratory. But a short walk let us experience the numinous spirit of the Great Plains found in the novel. In the late afternoon, when the setting sun fell over the tallgrass, students could glimpse the Great Plains as they seemed a century ago, and share in the characters deep affection for the living prairie. (Crimmel 2003, 45)

This passage neatly exemplifies alignment of the canon (a western American rural writer), the teaching method (taking students outdoors), the romantic educational theory (experience the numinous spirit and so on) and Leopolds hope for affective and then ethical engagement with the land. Without wishing to be cynical about a well-intentioned experiment that may indeed have increased students deep understanding of Cathers lococentric text, as well as their affection for remnants of pre-Columbian prairie ecosystems, it has to be said that Crimmel has no evidence of how students were actually affected by his teaching. One contribution to his anthology claims that Epiphanies are common in the wilderness classroom (53), but gives only a single example. By its nature, of course, revelation is not well-suited to module evaluation forms, with a value that transcends mere student satisfaction on the corrosive consumerist model. On the other hand, although many of the essays in his book (Burkholder, Brew, Chandler, Taylor, Wingfield) cite enthusiastic student assignments especially journals none considers the ways in which anticipation of the instructors values and priorities shapes all assessment responses, nor does anyone explore the possibility that cognitive and affective responses are not necessarily aligned (Cook 2008). There seem to be no instances of the evaluator of the learning being different from the teacher who marks the work, a basic element of good educational research design. None of this is meant to impugn the integrity or commitment of teachers of ecocriticism; only to draw attention to the vulnerability of our pedagogical approaches in the absence of serious, impartial evaluation. The plural of anecdote is not data. Narrative scholarship, or critical, reflective storytelling lovingly embellished with examples from teaching and literature, is the predominant mode in first-wave place-based ecocritical pedagogy (Gruchow, Tallmadge, Lewis). In print at least, few take adequate note of Buells warning that if we idealize the sense of place as a panacea for the disaffections of modern uprootedness, we run almost as great a risk of cultural narcissism as when we accept the myth of place-free, objective enquiry (1995, 253); consequently the alignment of canon, critical method, mimetic literary theory, lococentric pedagogy and pro-environmental behaviour is never stringently analysed or subjected to empirical testing. Field trips are disrupted, to be sure by

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weather, mainly, and inadequate preparation on the part of students; occasionally serious illness and scary locals but the value and impact of the outdoor classroom remains unexamined. Conversations with ecocritics soon reveal that, in reality, they are well aware of the limitations of place-based approaches. Much of their teaching probably involves practices familiar to all teachers of English literature: close examination of texts in seminars and lectures, and traditional Socratic questioning and discussion. As discussed below, student-centred experiential and service-learning pedagogies seem fairly common in practice, but appear infrequently in the literature. It therefore seems that the sparse literature of ecocritical pedagogy has been subject to a certain selection bias, which has resulted in place-based ecocritical pedagogy attaining a disproportionate prominence. Perhaps, given the sedentary, solitary and wholly textual traditions of literary study, it is just that taking students outside seems the most radical and unusual thing we do. Further comparative research is needed to establish whether or not, compared with ordinary seminars, it is also the most transformative. Second-wave ecocriticism but not pedagogy The first-wave consensus outlined above is by no means over; many ecocritics remain committed to some or all of its tenets. Nevertheless, it is fraying under a number of pressures, including:

A dramatic broadening of the ecocritical canon to include urban literature, nonliterary cultural forms, ethnic American literatures and most recently postcolonial writing (Bennett and Teague 1999; Armbruster and Wallace 2001; Ingram 2000; Buell 2001; Adamson, Evans, and Stein 2002; DeLoughrey, Gosson, and Handley 2005). Critique of alleged ecocritical assumptions of nave mimeticism (Phillips 2003; Morton 2007), but also strong defence of complex neorealism (Buell 2005). Questioning of the historical reliability of the anthropocentrism thesis, emphasising the ecological unsustainability of some non-western societies (Coates 1998; Krech 1999; Diamond 2005). Rejection of mechanistic homeostatic conceptions of ecology (Phillips 2003, Garrard 2004). A shift towards nature-sceptical positions (Soper 1995), including antiessentialist ecofeminism, social ecology, Foucauldian critique of environmentality and queer ecocriticism on one hand (Warren 1994; Luke 1997; Sandilands 1999; Bookchin 2006 respectively), and a more thoroughgoing nature-endorsing Darwinian view of human nature on the other (Love 2003; Fromm 2009; Garrard 2010).

The expansion of the canon, mandated both by professional pressures and the rapprochement of ecocriticism and other more established critical practices (especially feminism, Marxism and postcolonialism) has posed no problems, and is amply reflected in the new MLA anthology: essays on teaching African-American, Chicano/a, Native American and Los Angeles urban literatures rub shoulders happily with approaches to teaching prairie nature writing and Silent spring that are essentially indistinguishable from those in the 1985 anthology.

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More troubling, yet unacknowledged in a volume that continues to pay extensive homage to Orr,1 is the potential contradiction between the continued emphasis on the redeeming powers of place and the advent of nature-sceptical positions such as queer ecology. So, whereas Orr treats the sexism, racism and homophobia of the place of his upbringing dismissively tagged political incorrectness as unfortunate but incidental to its wholesomeness, queer ecocritics claim that ideas and institutions of nature medical and biological science, zoological display, park and garden design (Mortimer-Sandilands 2008, 459) and so on have been designed both to shape sexual practices, and reflexively to represent heteronormative and patriarchal ideologies. It is not only that the general idea of nature has been deployed in reactionary causes; specific environments have, in quite detailed ways, been organised accordingly (Chisholm 2004; Sandilands 2005). Timothy Mortons response has been to contrast ecocriticism, which he represents as fatally enmeshed with reactionary nature and mimetic nature writing, with ecocritique, which thoroughly examines how nature is set up as a transcendental, unified, independent category (2007, 13). His call to think of ecology without nature demands, at least, rethinking the practice and parameters of place-based ecocritical pedagogy. Crucially, though, queer ecocritics have not proposed and defended their own pedagogies, insofar as these might depart from either traditional seminar teaching or place-based ecocritical pedagogy. To some extent, lococentric ecocritical pedagogy and queer ecology correspond to the ideas of reinhabitation and decolonisation respectively in Gruenewalds (2008) proposal for a critical pedagogy of place. However, whereas he admits that placebased education has developed an ecological and rural emphasis that is often insulated from the cultural conflicts inherent in dominant American culture (30910), queer ecologists would deny that place enjoys any such innocence. Although Gruenewalds peacemaking and constructively critical efforts are admirable, it may well be the idea of reinhabitation itself that needs to be decolonised. As Morton (2007) points out, irony provides a merciful counterweight to the xenophobia that always haunts the idea of dwelling. Reids (2008) argument for a critical awareness of place as messy, impure, amorphous (210) as always already queer might rescue the pedagogical practice, but at the cost of the redeeming moral and metaphysical ambitions that motivated it in the first place. Ecocritical pedagogy shows remarkably little awareness of this tension. In the MLA anthology, Glotfelty recites the:
hope that if we can relearn to form meaningful attachments to where we live, we will not only enrich and deepen our lives, curing a numbing sense of alienation, but also be more apt to defend these places from environmental degradation. (Christensen, Long, and Waage 2008, 347)

Other exponents of the virtues of place (Harris, Roorda, Henderson) describe enticing programmes of study, but record no theoretical qualms about them. Only Stacy Alaimo, charged with the unenviable task of teaching green cultural studies in Texas, registers the tension: she criticises students who take refuge from socio-ecological complexity in the formulaic epiphanic mode of nature-writing, and concludes that analyzing a particular place as both a natural and a cultural construction probably does not foster a sense of being inspired by nature (2008, 375). Concerned that the process Gruenewald calls decolonisation may leave students marooned in a quagmire of cynicism, she even considers but ultimately rejects a less critical approach

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in her teaching. Alaimos recommendation of a period of reflection on the tension between the ethical and theoretical dimensions of their studies is a sensible solution, but lacks the pedagogical ingenuity and energy that animates less self-conscious examples of lococentric practice. One of the key developments in ecocriticism, and the most conspicuous symptom of a centrifugal impetus in the second wave, is the globalisation of the canon and the beginnings of a hybrid theory of postcolonial ecocriticism (or poco-eco). Since the 2008 MLA anthology is, unlike the 1985 one, qualified as offering approaches to North American environmental literature, with further volumes to come, it is unsurprising that this shift is not evident there (Slovic, Love). Nevertheless, the challenges it brings to the lococentric assumptions of ecocritical pedagogy to date are both pedagogically serious and conceptually interesting. In her Sense of place and sense of planet (2008), Ursula Heise has presented a sustained critique of the place of place in ecocriticism, observing that it is, ironically, an obsession locally peculiar to American environmentalism. Its origins include:

Cultural resistance to federal authority. Reaction against the long-standing, pervasive mobility of Americans and its mythologisation. Guilt at the displacement and destruction that mobility has wrought upon indigenous populations. Philosophical attachment to versions of phenomenology that privilege the authenticity of direct physical experience (Abram 1996; Westling 1999). A largely unexamined commitment to an ethic of proximity that denies the affective and moral potential of mediated experience and intellectual engagement (Heise 2008, 328).

Having pointed out that local politics is often markedly hostile to environmentalism, while transnational organisations such as the UN and the EU have, in some respects, worked to promote ecological objectives,2 Heise affirms that the local itself is thoroughly unfamiliar to many individuals, and may be epistemologically as unfathomable in its entirety as larger entities such as the nation or the globe (41). In the UK, and in much of Europe, the very notions of place-based or bioregional education have little enculturated purchase or appeal. Even efforts to accommodate the global perspective tend not to register the ways in which it fundamentally unsettles lococentrism. So, for example, Slovic (in Christensen et al. 2008) takes account of postcolonial notions of hybridisation and creolisation as he teaches American national and regional environmental literature alongside Australian and Latin American counterparts, and endeavours to respect both commonalities and local differences. Ultimately, though, the object of the exercise is to compare stories about how cultures belong to and violate the ecologies of their places (214, my emphasis), rather than to develop a global or, as Heise urges, an ecocosmopolitan moral culture. Likewise, McKenzies (2008) proposal for an expansion of the where of place to include intersubjective experiences radically underestimates the extent to which friendship, art, literature, irony, cultural difference [and] community (362) are electronically mediated for young (and not-so-young) people. When even a hotel room in Beijing can apparently be a place for reinhabitation by an ecocritic (Nirmal Selvamony, personal communication), lococentrism has surely lost its claim to conceptual coherence and ethical torque.

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The tensions within the lococentric paradigm are perhaps best illustrated by Mitchell Thomashows (2002) Bringing the biosphere home. Having stated from the outset the guiding premise that The best way to learn how to perceive the biosphere is by paying close attention to the place where you live developing familiarity and intimacy with local natural history (5), Thomashow in fact gives us numerous reasons to question the priority afforded to locale: There is no such thing as a local environmental problem (7); environmental cognition is necessarily mediated by scientific instruments, computer models and databases; migration, diaspora and transience are ubiquitous in nature and history, as well as being, for many humans, sources of insight and liberation; and immediate experience itself is radically constrained: The limited framework of my observational capabilities is the tiniest opening in the window of biospheric perception (110). The books many practical and inspiring suggestions for teaching perceptual ecology on various temporal and spatial levels seem continually to militate against any automatic privilege for place, to the extent that Thomashow ends up aspiring, in conscious paradox, to an ethics of transience as criteria [sic] for permanence (190). So although he extols the value of the internet, the interstate and even the intercontinental flight for the biospheric knowledge and value they can provide, he reasserts that The message is simple to observe the complexity of the biosphere you have to slow down! The more still you become, the more life avails itself (148). Immediately following this statement of the notion of phenomenological authenticity that underpins lococentric piety, though, is the agnostic admission that Each place reveals some patterns and conceals others (148). Thomashows pedagogical praxis would seem to argue for a multi-level perceptual ecology with no particular priorities, while his own family history and personal experience (like that of the present author) exemplifies migration and deracination rather than dwelling and belonging; nevertheless, he protests that he is not willing to let go of this place-based philosophy (176). The theoretical assumptions that guided lococentrism in early ecocritical teaching, and the canon that exemplified and articulated it, have been seriously challenged in recent years, but the pedagogical literature seems to be lagging behind. In the context of such thoroughgoing critique, place-based ecocritical pedagogy requires substantial evidential support if it is to maintain its privileged position.

The future of ecocritical pedagogy The early hostility between ecocriticism and literary theory abated many years ago, as confirmed by the advent of queer ecology, but place-based ecocritical pedagogy continues to betray little awareness of educational theory. The plain fact is that much ecocritical research in this area is motivated by serious moral concerns, substantiated by years of teaching experience and enlivened by a host of practical suggestions, but entirely lacks an empirical dimension. In one of the most provocative essays in the new MLA collection, David Mazel (2008, 42) describes a standard model of ecocritical praxis that attempts at once to affirm ethically and to question theoretically the idea of nature, and asks:
Does that model ultimately work? Do students who read and write about green texts turn into more thoughtful and effective environmentalists than they might have been otherwise? I have yet to see any empirical research (or even anecdotal evidence) indicating that they do.

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To put it in the terms of environmental education, there remains a widespread, but largely untested and untheorised assumption that education about the environment (nature writing, ecopoetry and environmental literature) delivered through the environment (place-based education) will automatically be education for the environment (Fien 1993; Sterling 1997). With few exceptions (Murphy 1995; Tassoni 1998) pedagogical research in this field remains, so to speak, a gentlemans hobby, that does not attract the diligence critics dedicate to their real scholarship. To my knowledge, my own extremely limited, small-scale study remains the only one to examine the alignment of environmental knowledge, ecocritical study and to a very constrained degree pro-environmental outcomes (Garrard 2007). Although my research project did not specifically consider a lococentric example of ecocritical instruction, its conclusions were not flattering to the standard model. Place-based ecocritical pedagogy has perdured in the face of theoretical challenge and diversification of the canon, and has flourished despite (or perhaps because of) the lack of empirical evidence to support it. It retains, to be sure, several advantages:

A clear, practical programme for the design of curriculum, learning contexts and environments. To its adherents, philosophical and theoretical coherence founded in phenomenology, neo-realism and deep ecology. A well-defined and distinguished central canon in the USA. Active and principled resistance to the commodification, standardisation and instrumentalisation of education, which is seen by all environmental educators as threatening to sustainability (Sterling 2004).

On the other hand, the erosion of confidence in the other elements of the first-wave consensus leaves place-based ecocritical pedagogy exposed, particularly in the absence of independent research supporting its efficacy. Moreover, efforts to expand lococentric education to accommodate new curriculum and theoretical perspectives only make it seem a less persuasive overarching rubric. The fact that, on one level, little has changed between the 1985 and 2008 MLA anthologies might appear to vindicate the continuity in place-based ecocritical pedagogy, but to compare the cascade of confident assertions and peremptory demands in Earth in mind (Orr 2004) with, say, Rickinsons enormous, patient and carefully-balanced review of evidencebased environmental education research (2001) is to perceive Orrs self-involved narrowness and arrogance. Amongst Rickinsons numerous, partly-contradictory findings are:

Questions about the ethic of proximity because learners appear to think less environmentally when it comes to their own lives, and more when it comes to the planet. Evidence of qualitative differences in the types of feelings learners have about the environment, together with varied sources and origins, as opposed to Orrs simplistic assumptions about alienation and anthropocentrism. Instances of complex multiple [sometimes gendered] subjectivities in response to environmental questions. Diversity of senses of nature and the environment, some of them actively contradictory to environmental objectives, precisely as alleged by queer ecologists.

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Sustained fieldwork and service learning, both key practical elements of placebased ecocritical pedagogy (as attested by Roorda, Henderson and Keir in the MLA anthology), do find support from the research; however, the evidence produced by a range of methodologies refutes any simplistic alignment of environmental knowledge, attitudes, learning outcomes, learning practices and pro-environmental behaviours. On the other hand, there seems considerable potential for the development of pedagogies interarticulated with queer ecocriticism, Darwinism and eco-cosmopolitanism. Timothy Morton has described the use of walking meditation to help challenge the dichotomy, assumed in the ethics of proximity, of place as subjective and intimate, and space as abstract and uninvolving. Taking shoes off in class and experiencing mindfulness may show that the experience of space (not having things to hold onto) could be an intimate experience, not just a concept or an abstract thing out there (personal communication). From this point of view, the very idea cherished in literary study of close reading may be experienced as queer: at once intimate (a poems rhythm can be visceral, its form claustrophobic) and strange; embodied and (like the idea of poetic metre) abstract. Ursula Heises eco-cosmopolitanism, by contrast, would lend itself to exploration through multiple media, many of them effectively ignored by ecocriticism so far: Google Earth, avant-garde nature documentaries, and popular figures of environmental risk and toxicity. From the perspective of place-based ecocritical pedagogy, the online environmentalism of a Facebook group lacks the moral seriousness and emotional traction of lococentric commitments. The truth is, though, that at present we simply do not know what works. It is a clich to call for more research in the conclusion of an article, but the weaknesses of ecocritical pedagogy to date really make it mandatory. Crucial elements in the development of a programme of sound, well-founded research must be:

Acceptance that the notion of sustainability is itself complex and contradictory (Stevenson 2008; Stibbe 2009); hence, education for sustainability cannot prescribe a list of approved ides rus but must prioritise critical thinking (Palmer 1998; Sterling 2004; Webster 2004). The importance and value of ecocritics engaging with the mainstream of research in environmental education, both theoretical and evidence-based. Recognition that pedagogical research need not be limited to positivistic assessment of the weaknesses of students knowledge of ecology, but can adopt constructivist methodologies suited to new developments in ecocritical theory, questioning learners perceptions, meaning systems and discursive locations (Barron 1995; Bonnett and Williams 1998; Payne 1998).3 The need for critical, evidence-based evaluation of the relationship of environmental literary criticism, ecocritical theory in its major forms, pedagogical models (including, but not limited to, traditional place-based ecocritical pedagogy) and sophisticated ecoliteracy.

Of course, what has always to be recalled is that any imaginable form of ecocritical pedagogy has to be seen against a background of academic resistance (Alabaster and Blair 1997), institutional inertia, and the overwhelming emphasis in the UK and the USA at least on student employability and the role of universities in economic competitiveness. Moreover, the culture of unsustainability perpetually subjects our students to extremely well-funded, cleverly-designed campaigns of persuasion and misinformation during many of the hours when we do not have their attention

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(Webster 2004; McKibben 2006). In such a context, and given the urgency of a shift to some form of sustainable development, only the most effective ecocritical pedagogy is defensible. Acknowledgements
The insights, criticisms and suggestions of Scott Slovic and Timothy Morton were invaluable in the writing of this essay.

Notes
1. Apart from nature writers and ecopoets, Orr is the most frequently quoted author.

Thomashows work, which is rather more sophisticated, is cited only twice.

2. A notable example in this context is the UNESCO-sponsored Decade of Education for

Sustainable Development, which has not been mentioned in a single example of ecocritical pedagogy. 3. All three of these engage with primary learners. I am not aware of any research of this type involving tertiary learners.

Notes on contributor
Gregory Garrard is senior teaching fellow at Bath Spa Universitys Artswork Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. He is the author of Ecocriticism (Routledge 2004), the standard student introduction to the subject, the chair of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (UK) and production editor of Green letters: Studies in ecocriticism. In addition to articles and essays on ecocriticism, he has researched and published in the field of education for sustainable development, and in 2006 he was awarded a national teaching Fellowship.

References
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