Methodology: Cases, establishing a T-learning ‘archive’ and approaching this knowledge commons collection reflectively

Working with and across civil society, youth, academic, government and community partners across nine countries in diverse areas that are vulnerable to arising impacts at the climate-energy-food-water security and social justice nexus the ISC T-learning TKN aimed to 1) initiate, 2) frame and 3) investigate expansive, transgressive approaches to learning in selected sites in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe. The TKN aimed to develop theory, methodology and practice, especially transgressive learning theory and practice and generative, interventionist, learning-centred research methodologies.

The T-learning TKN purposefully embraced a principle of heterogeneity in its work with a diversity of case studies. Local learning actions, and networked learning actions formed the focus of two different types of case studies at multi-levels and scales in order to enhance capability for transformations to sustainability. We worked on cases of local level expansive learning (Ethiopia, Malawi, Sweden, Netherlands, Vietnam, South Africa), and cases of networked, multi-levelled learning (South Africa, Zimbabwe, India, Colombia). The case sites were identified in consultation with participating communities and organisations, who worked with T-learning researchers to co-define matters of concern, 2) identify potentially catalytic focus areas or practices for further expansive learning within collaborating communities of co-researchers, 3) develop situated T-learning methodologies for learning-led change, and 4) undertake reflexive reviews of these processes of learning with emphasis on observing and commenting on power relations, contextually relevant debates around T-learning (e.g. pluralism, decolonial sensibilities, complexity etc.) and emerging sustainability outcomes emerging in practice (cf. Lotz-Sisitka et al., Reference Lotz-Sisitka, Ali, Mphepo, Chaves, Macintyre, Pesanayi and McGarry2016 for an overview of the co-defined research process). Importantly, the emergent co-engaged methodological approaches adopted by the research teams allowed for deliberative action learning in a diversity of social-material relations, contexts of risk, political complexity and associated contradiction, where there is a need to “learn what is not yet there” (Engeström, Reference Engeström2016).

The specific sustainability activities that were in focus for T-learning co-engaged expansions included the following: 1) developing local food systems including alternative economies (The Netherlands); 2) expanding solidarity and networked relationships amongst organic food production associations, contributing to new organic food production practices (Zimbabwe); 3) dealing with water crisis issues in rural and urban contexts; youth mobilisation for transformative change; food surplus management and transformation of markets for local green economy development; citizen monitoring of water quality and biodiversity; and environmental and social justice activism in a range of contexts related to mine pollution, pollution of river systems, water scarcity issues, food sovereignty and sustainable food systems development (South Africa); 4) legalising and promoting the conservation of sacred natural sites (SNSs) and bio-cultural diversity, and sustainable food system development (Ethiopia); 5) resolving food insecurity associated with severe climatic drought events in Lake Chilwa basin (Malawi); 6) dealing with climate change impacts and agricultural system development for adaptation in the Mekong Delta (Vietnam); 7) urban development, water systems, pollution and educational quality (India); 8) decolonial biosphere and eco-village development (Colombia); and 9) eco-schools praxis development (Sweden). Appendix A contains a short description of the cases with references to associated published works that emerged from the cases (see also www.transgressivelearning.org). Sites have expanded to ocean governance and fisheries.

The TKN also included in-depth theoretical reflection on T-learning approaches and underlying theoretical orientations, particularly in the specific case contexts, showing usefully that there is more than one way of supporting T-learning from a theoretical point of view (see Appendix A, and discussion below). By the end of 2020 (four years), the TKN had produced a substantive ‘archive’Footnote ² or collection of work, other than the published references in Appendix A. Overall, the programme catalysed work with over 3500 people in more than 10 countries, 15+ post-graduate studies, and a substantive collection of published works, songs, films, poems, curricula, demonstration sites, and other co-engaged relational artefacts, captured in the programme archive or knowledge commons collection.Footnote ³ In-depth meta-reflective theoretical work across the TKN cases and knowledge commons collection was not easy to do at the time, due to the scope and dynamism of the emergent research in the short period of the ISC funded part of the TKN’s research, although some reflexive work across cases, materials, processes and contexts did emerge by 2020, and some reflection concepts being worked with was emerging (e.g. O’Donoghue, Reference O’Donoghue2014; Peters & Wals, Reference Peters and Wals2016; Bengtsson, Reference Bengtsson2019; Macintyre et al., Reference Macintyre, Tassone and Wals2020; Temper et al., Reference Temper, McGarry and Weber2019; Vogel & O-Brien, Reference Vogel and O’Brien2019). Since 2020, further published work, and contributions to the knowledge commons have emerged expanding the scope of the first phase of the research programme.

This paper takes a meta-reflective look across the ‘archive,’ representing a “curatorial” example of working with this TKN knowledge commons collection, with emphasis mostly on published works.Footnote ⁴ I use the term “curatorial” as discussed by Martinon (Reference Martinon2013), who differentiates it from “curating” to refer to “thinking the activity of curating.” He states that “curating” is a professional practice setting up an exhibition, while the “curatorial” does not refer to the staging of an event, but rather the “event of knowledge itself.” Bal (Reference Bal2012) refers to the curatorial process as a process of “framing,” that requires sensitivity to audience and purpose of the framing and selection of materials from an archive. The purpose is not to venerate the objects in the archive, but to make them visible and educationally relevant to the intended audience (Hooper-Greenhill, Reference Hooper-Greenhill and Hooper-Greenhill2012). It is in this sense that I work from the T-learning ‘archive’ in relation to the focus of this paper, namely an interest in revealing a politics of transgression in environmental education research.

In doing this, I seek out a low theory approach to reading these works as philosophy from below, generated with “the displaced, the marginal, and the recalcitrant and — through them — the possibility of a new world” (Wark, Reference Wark2021, pg. 144). Contrary to the often narrowing reductive approach to systematic reviewing, I instead converse expansively with the revealed commitments and contributions of studies that have been emerging from the T-learning TKN, offering not a reductive or “high theory” of transgressive politics in environmental education research, but rather insights into the low theory embodied in practices of transgressive politics as movement in environmental education research, as revealed in and through the studies in the ‘archive.’

Curating the ‘archive’ for a transgressive politics of environmental education research

I begin by situating the curations from the ‘archive’ in a review that reveals practices of transgressive politics as movement in environmental education research. The three practices that I review are working with theory, research practice, and knowledges co-produced.

1. 1. Working with theory as low theory politics in T-learning research

Our 2015 review of theoretical influences that were shaping emerging commitment to T-learning research identified that T-learning emerges with diverse ontological foundations and epistemic commitments in different contexts. In other words transformative, transgressive learning in transformations to sustainability settings is a process characterised by plurality. This indicates that attention needs to be given to the ontological situatedness of transformative learning, as well as epistemic and cultural diversity in T-learning processes. In short, a summative view of the early reviews pointed to four “streams of emerging transformative, transgressive learning research and practices in the sustainability sciences: 1) reflexive social learning and capabilities theory, 2) critical phenomenology, 3) socio-cultural and cultural historical activity theory, and 4) new social movement, postcolonial and decolonisation theory” (cf Lotz-Sisitka et al., Reference Lotz-Sisitka, Wals, Kronlid and McGarry2015 for further elaboration), with these being emerging influences shaping a politics of transgression in environmental education research.

Subsequently, a theoretical review of the emergence of the concept of transgression in the social sciences literature pointed to its inherently political character. Tracing the concept of transgression is an enormous project that cannot be fully covered here, but wide engagement with this concept can be found in the fields of theology, arts, literature, politics, decolonial research and more. In this literature, the concept emerges as being imbued with political meaning(s) that also reflect substantive ambiguity. Tracing the etymology of “transgression” from earlier religious discourse to later political and creative arts discourses, Julius (Reference Julius2002, pg. 19), summarises transgression thus:

Offering further nuance, Collett (Reference Collett2019, pg. 3) explains that “a fundamental aspect of transgression [is] its transitive property” as a movement (most often) against something. She argues that Foucault’s (Reference Foucault1977) work on transgression “assists in considering the social implications of such an act,” with Foucault explaining that the act of transgression and the boundary are dependent upon the other, “each requiring the other in a form of relative co-definition” (Collet, Reference Collett2019, pg. 3), indicating the political dynamism and fluidity of the notion of transgression (cf. Jenks, Reference Jenks2003). Transgression, Julius (Reference Julius2002) argues, seeks to “make the familiar strange and the unquestioned problematic” (pg. 26, cited in Collet, Reference Collett2019; cf. also McGarry’s, Reference McGarry2023 recent work on the “suitably strange” as inspiration in transgressive learning research), with capacity to reveal a societies communal limitations. Collet (Reference Collett2019, drawing on Booker, Reference Booker2011) further argues that transgression works subtly, “by gradually chipping away at certain modes of thinking that contribute to the perpetuation of oppressive political structures.” She notes that Booker further indicates that while genuine transgression is possible, there is also need to examine transgressive works for “hidden complicities with the powers-that-be” (pg. 9–10). Related to earlier critical theories and eco-critical pedagogy development, is Booker’s description that identifies Marxism, feminism and deconstruction as transgressive critical movements. To this we added decoloniality, and some of the emerging new materialisms (see below).

Booker’s view on transgression embraces “the disruption of hierarchies, taxonomies, or limiting systems of all kinds,” and the categorical “systems of rationalisation that produce exclusions or oppressions of particular marginal groups” (Booker, Reference Booker2011, pg. 12, cited in Collett, Reference Collett2012, pg. 8). Showing the politics of transgression, Booker’s work also challenges methods of categorisation and classification traditionally used to structure the Other (e.g. class, race, gender, etc.) i.e. the “systems of rationalisation that produce exclusions or oppressions of particular marginal groups.” This links transgression to Kristeva’s (Reference Kristeva1982) conception of abjection, which raises the important point that the concept of transgression, when coupled with abjection, can act as “reminders of the aspects of life that dominant culture seeks to repress” (pg. 14, cited in Collett, Reference Collett2012, pg. 8), such as women, black people, Indigenous knowledge, unsustainability, and social injustice amongst others. Other applications of the concept of transgressive, such as “transgressive solidarity” (De Bono & Mainwaring, Reference DeBono and Mainwaring2020 ) and aesthetics of transgression (e.g. Dierkes-Thrun, Reference Dierkes-Thrun2011; Ibrahim, Reference Ibrahim2019; Jamison, Reference Jamison2001) with emphasis on “interruptive emergence” and advice to constantly be open to reworking own transgressions or “remixing its remix” (e.g. Gunkel, Reference Gunkel2012) to avoid repression and appropriations were also useful to consider. T-learning researchers added ethics of cognitive justice, care, inclusion, regenerativity, reconciliation, forgiveness and empathy as transgressive decolonial acts (McGarry, Reference McGarry, Corcoran and Hollingshead2014, Reference McGarry2015, Kulundu-Bolus et al., Reference Kulundu-Bolus, McGarry and Lotz-Sisitka2020; Kulundu-Bolus, Reference Kulundu-Bolus2023; Pesanayi, Reference Pesanayi2015, Reference Pesanayi2019; James, Reference James2019, Reference James2022; Burt, Reference Burt2019; Van Borek, Reference Van Borek2019, Reference Van Borek2021; Chaves & Wals, Reference Chaves and Wals2018; Chaves et al., Reference Chaves, Macintyre, Riano, Calero and Wals2015; Francis & McGarry, Reference Francis and McGarry2023, amongst others), a form of “ontological politics” described by Chaves et al. (Reference Chaves, Macintyre, Verschoor and Wals2016; cf also Escobar, Reference Escobar2020 on an ontological politics of struggle). All of these informed and influenced emerging meaning(s) of transformative, transgressive learning in the T-learning programme as it developed over time.

Particularly bringing critical and decolonial research commitments together and earlier research with critical theories shaping a politics of transgression in environmental education research is the decolonial African feminist critical scholarly work of bell hooks and her “Teaching to Transgress” pedagogical praxis (Reference hooks2014). Her work embraces a radical form of decolonial resistance as a pedagogy of freedom. Inspired by Paolo Freire (Reference Freire1975) and African feminism, hooks brings joy, reciprocity, and teaching and learning processes into focus that are not afraid of transgressing boundaries, or of calling a politics of transgression into focus in educational research and praxis. She, together with other decolonial scholars (e.g. Fanon (Reference Fanon2004), Mignolo (Reference Mignolo2018), Gordon (Reference Gordon2018), Lorde (Reference Lorde2012), Dei (Reference Dei2009)) who transgress white boundaries of social and spatial exclusion bring to the surface a type of “living learning” that is grounded in both ontological and political transgressions in life, living and experience in the world, resonating with African feminist (Kulundu-Bolus, Reference Kulundu-Bolus2017, Reference Kulundu-Bolus2020; Francis & McGarry, Reference Francis and McGarry2023) and critical realist dialectical transgression interests (e.g. Burt, Reference Burt2019; James, Reference James2019, Reference James2020; Burt et al., Reference Burt, James and Price2018; Schudel, Reference Schudel2015, Reference Schudel2017; Lotz-Sisitka, Reference Lotz-Sisitka2019, Reference Lotz-Sisitka2022; Olvitt, Reference Olvitt2017) amongst some of the researchers in the T-learning TKN.

Related to this is an expansive learning cultural historical activity theoretical trajectory emerging from the cultural psychology and educational research work of Engeström (Reference Engeström2015, Reference Engeström2016; Engeström & Sannino, Reference Engeström and Sannino2010, Reference Engeström and Sannino2021), that helped researchers to foreground and surface often hidden and/or oppressed cultural historical realities and epistemologies of marginalised African communities. This trajectory helped to reframe the role of the researcher in these settings in which they could comfortably take up the role of insider co-engaged formative interventionist researchers (Mukwambo et al., Reference Mukwambo, Lotz-Sisitka, Mukute, Kachilonda, Jalasi, Lindley and Kuse2022) working with communities to resolve pressing challenges and contradictions. This surfaced ways in which expansive T-learning research grounded in an onto-epistemic revealing and reclaiming of hidden or oppressed cultural histories and resolution of arising contradictions provides a means for insider formative researchers and their communities to co-define pathways to emancipation from historical oppressions through environmental education research (cf. Jalasi, Reference Jalasi2020; Mphepo, Reference Mphepo2020; Mudokwani & Mukute, Reference Mudokwani and Mukute2019; Mukute et al, Reference Mukute, Mudokwani, McAllister and Nyikahadzoi2018; Pesanayi, Reference Pesanayi2019). This has since lead to work that more explicitly links cognitive justice and decolonial theory with onto-epistemic political experience, cultural historical activity theory and critical realist dialectical research (Lotz-Sisitka, Reference Lotz-Sisitka2022; see also earlier work by Mukute & Lotz-Sisitka, Reference Mukute and Lotz-Sisitka2012; Mukute, Reference Mukute2015), articulating an emancipatory form of cultural historical activity theory research that is decolonial in scope and outcome (Lotz-Sisitka et al., Reference Lotz-Sisitka, Thifulufhelwi, Chikunda, Mponwana, Hopwood and Sannino2023a, Reference Lotz-Sisitka, Chakona, Rosenberg and Kulundu-Bolus2023b; Mphepo, Reference Mphepo2020; Mudokwani & Mukute, Reference Mudokwani and Mukute2019).

Other scholars in the T-learning research programme explored non-dialectical forms of post-human immanence and/or speculative disruption as resources for transgressive politics in their research, following thinkers such as Foucault (Reference Foucault1977), Deleuze and Guittari (Reference Deleuze and Guattari2019), Barad (Reference Barad2007; cf King, Reference King2016), and Derrida (Reference Derrida2012), with Bengtsson’s (Reference Bengtsson2019) review on diffracting orientations to T-learning revealing the possibilities of these perspectives for conceiving political transgressions in T-learning research, which have since become more visible in commitments to new materialisms in environmental education research (Clarke & Mcphie, Reference Clarke and Mcphie2023). New materialisms mostly draw on Barad’s (Reference Barad2007) work inspired by quantum physics which views the world as a whole rather than as composed of separate natural and social realms, and develops a theory of agential realism that connects epistemology, ontology and ethics on an immanent plane (King, Reference King2016). As argued by Bengtsson (Reference Bengtsson2019), “excess” (after Bataille, Reference Bataille1991) frames endless potentiality of transgressions in T-learning, while Derrida’s hauntology surfaces a deeply felt transgressive politics of absent and excluded memories (Derrida, Reference Derrida2012), a perspective which has since developed more strongly in some emerging T-learning studies (e.g. Francis & McGarry, Reference Francis and McGarry2023; Martin, Reference Martin2023). Closely related to this immanent theoretical trajectory are inspirations from object-oriented-ontologies of Morton (Reference Morton2016), post-humanism (e.g. Wolfstone, Reference Wolfstone2018; Wessels et al., Reference Wessels, Bakker, Wals and Lengkeek2020) and speculative realism (e.g. Rousell, Reference Rousell2023), which offer theoretical inspiration for conceptualising a politics of transgression in environmental education research that takes embedded relationality with the more-than-human into account through intra-actions and vitalism (cf. Bengtsson, Reference Bengtsson2019; McGarry et al., Reference McGarry2023; Van Borek, Reference Van Borek2021; Wals, Reference Wals2019; Weldemariam & Wals, Reference Weldemariam and Wals2020; Wessels et al., Reference Wessels, Bakker, Wals and Lengkeek2023), while African feminisms and queer theory bring queering, black and female bodies, and spiritual dynamics of learning into focus in emerging transgressive politics in environmental education research (cf. Kulundu-Bolus, Reference Kulundu-Bolus2020; Reference Kulundu-Bolus2023; Caniglia & Vogel, Reference Caniglia and Vogel2023; Chaves et al., Reference Chaves, Macintyre, Verschoor and Wals2016; McGarry et al., Reference McGarry, Weber, James, Kulundu-Bolus, Pereira, Ajit and Khutsoane2021). Expanding these commitments in the T-learning programme, Bayo Akomolafe’s inspirational work brings to the fore the “errant, monstrous, ironical, nonlinear and indeterminate” (Akomolafe & Ladha, Reference Akomolafe and Ladha2017, pg. 819) nature of a transgressive politics of emergence, squarely challenging colonial-modernity’s notions of emergence and progress, a trajectory that has been taken further by T-learning researchers in ongoing studies (cf. Koenig et al., Reference Koenig, Seneque, Akomolafe, Fazey, McGarry, Kulundu-Bolus, McKenzie and Proyer2024; Kulundu-Bolus, Reference Kulundu-Bolus2023; McGarry, Reference McGarry2023).

This brief overview of theoretical commitments of studies in the growing T-learning research ‘archive’ or knowledge commons collection usefully show that there is more than one way of supporting T-learning from a theoretical point of view. This may be seen in the traditional academic sphere as being contradictory, if we were following a path of “high theory.” However, in all cases one can describe the ways of working with theory as a form of “low theory,” as articulated in the citation by Wark above. Researchers interests were not to use or develop “high theory“Footnote ⁵ for environmental education to direct their cases or to analytically confine them, rather they sought inspiration from this divergent theoretical platform to inspire and make sense of the emerging politics of transgression, agency and change in their grounded, co-engaged T-learning research, although these trajectories have divergent and contradictory notions of emergence and agency when probed with more depth, a matter that requires more substantive research. As stated by Bengtsson in his theoretically diffractive review of the T-learning programme in 2019, working with the concept of transgressive, “politically involves transgression to aim to engage with the ontology of current hegemony and to move beyond that hegemony, for example, by bringing into view the possibility of parallel multiplicities of ontology excluded in the current ontological outlook sustained in the reality as defined by a status quo” (pg. 3430).

Research practice as politics of co-engaged, expansive and explicitly transgressive learning praxis

In Malawi, South Africa, Colombia, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe there was an explicit focus on local territorial and Indigenous knowledge in T-learning processes which raised a number of interesting perspectives for T-learning research including the politics of language, cultural histories, issues of oppression and marginalisation of knowledges. For example Mphepo (Reference Mphepo2020) worked with marginalised women in Malawi to challenge gender relations and their Indigenous knowledge exclusion in the local farming system in response to recurring drought and hunger, while Burt (Reference Burt2019, Reference Burt2020) worked with environmental justice activists to surface resistance practices in response to acid-mine pollution of local rivers in mine-affected communities in South Africa. Belay Ali (Reference Belay Ali2015) worked in Ethiopia with communities to surface their knowledge of SNSs as a response to land degradation, and Macintyre and Chaves (Reference Macintyre and Chaves2016) surfaced silenced knowledges in building peace and eco villages in biospheres in Colombia (Chaves et al., Reference Chaves, Macintyre, Verschoor and Wals2016; Macintyre et al., Reference Macintyre, Tassone and Wals2020). This raised the focus in the programme on cognitive and hermeneutic justice (Fricker, Reference Fricker2007, Reference Fricker2017) and its intertwined ontologically grounded nature as a key concern for T-learning research and practice, which became a focus of four T-learning PhD studies (Burt, Reference Burt2020; Mphepo, Reference Mphepo2020; Macintyre, Reference Macintyre2020; Pesanayi, Reference Pesanayi2019). These case studies advanced a politics of decoloniality in T-learning research, with this becoming an intensive focus of three of the PhD studies (Kulundu-Bolus, Reference Kulundu-Bolus2020; Macintyre, Reference Macintyre2019; Vallabh, Reference Vallabh2015, Reference Vallabh2022; Lotz-Sisitka et al., Reference Lotz-Sisitka, Le Grange and Mphepo2024).

In South Africa, Burt, James, Pereira-Kaplan and Kulundu-Bolus presented a panel on their work “Muddy waters: questions arising in T-learning praxis” in a local Popular Education Network (PEN). The PEN was a gathering of popular educators from South Africa, a collective of Ghanaian representatives of the struggle for the Songor Lagoon Ghana, and others from Zimbabwe, and Puerto Rico. These T-learning researchers centred their political research practice in movements that foreground those most marginalised in society (human and more-than-human) (Burt et al., Reference Burt2020). This surfaced the importance of an ethics of care in T-learning research, foregrounding feminist principles of care, listening praxis, and cognitive and environmental justice (Burt et al., Reference Burt2020; James, Reference James2022), advancing T-learning research as a form of transdisciplinary scholar activism (Burt, Reference Burt2019; Erwin et al., Reference Erwin, Pereira, McGarry and Coppen2022; Francis & McGarry, Reference Francis and McGarry2023; Pereira & Erwin, Reference Pereira and Erwin2023) or decolonial engaged research (Lotz-Sisitka et al., Reference Lotz-Sisitka, Le Grange and Mphepo2024).

In India the T-learning research team brought together local systems of learning in communities with digital approaches to learning, crowdsourcing and data science, and experiential participatory approaches, with a number of different types of organisations being part of the process. Here the role of the youth and students were central as they identified issues, proposed actions, shared their ideas of what the tool should look like, what they would want to learn, know. This informed the development of the technology by using it and testing its assumptions and suggesting ways to improve it (Kuany et al. Reference Kuany, Ramaswamy, Pathak, Vajpayee, Mulchandani and Weir2018; Mohanty et al., Reference Mohanty, Ramaswamy and Duraiappah2019). Similar T-learning research involving the democratisation of digital tool use was catalysed by Durr in South Africa (Reference Durr2018; Shetye et al. Reference Shetye, Lotz-Sisitka, Albrecht, Durr, Marx, Chirambo and van Zyl-Bulitta2022) who worked on developing a digital application for market transformation in support of small scale farmers who were locked out of the formal market. Other researchers also turned to using digital tools transgressively, e.g. Francis and McGarry (Reference Francis and McGarry2023), Mphepo (Reference Mphepo2020), Pereira (Reference Pereira2024); Pesanayi (Reference Pesanayi2019) who launched WhatsApp networks as foundation for inclusive learning network communications in South Africa. Through this they were able to involve those most marginalised in ongoing T-learning practices associated with agro-ecology and small scale fishers participation in resolving food insecurity and exclusion challenges (cf. Shetye et al., Reference Shetye, Lotz-Sisitka, Albrecht, Durr, Marx, Chirambo and van Zyl-Bulitta2022; Pereira & Erwin, Reference Pereira and Erwin2022; Pereira, Reference Pereira2024).

All case study teams also spent a considerable amount of effort and time reflecting on, and consolidating the insights relating to their research practices around T-learning research from a process and methodology, theoretical, as well as practical outcome point of view. In all cases, there were examples of new research practices and processes and methodologies established and developed. For example in Vietnam, “scientific farmers” (being a coalition of farmers and scientists) established a new approach to T-learning that enabled farmers to respond to flooding of the Mekong (Phuong et al., Reference Phuong, Tuan and Phuc2019), while in Colombia the use of an online course using co-defined intentions, video’s and shared dialogical resources offered a new methodology for expanding T-learning beyond the immediate environment (Macintyre, Reference Macintyre2019). In Ethiopia a diversity of counter-hegemonic participatory mapping and dialogical methodologies were used to map and surface Indigenous knowledge of SNS conservation, contributing to legalising these previously ignored sites, as vital sites for bio-cultural diversity and resilience (Belay, Reference Belay Ali2015; Belay & Kassaye, Reference Belay Ali and Kassaye2018). In Zimbabwe, cross site / boundary crossing and solidarity building methodologies for expansive learning and co-engaged solution building were developed amongst agro-ecological farming associations (Mukute et al., Reference Mukute, Mudokwani, McAllister and Nyikahadzoi2018; Mudokwani & Mukute, Reference Mudokwani and Mukute2019); while in South Africa learning networks (Pesanayi, Reference Pesanayi2019), podcasts (Van Borek & James, Reference Van Borek and James2019), empatheatre (Erwin et al., Reference Erwin, Pereira, McGarry and Coppen2022), citizen science LABs (Vallabh, Reference Vallabh2022), mobile phone applications (Durr, Reference Durr2018), film (Van Borek, Reference Van Borek2021) and song (Kulundu-Bolus, Reference Kulundu-Bolus2023) provided tools for generating both dialectically and immanently inspired processes of T-learning. I emphasise both with an understanding that a critical realist inspired socio-material onto-epistemic dialectics and a socio-material onto-epistemic immanence of new materialisms have different ways of understanding and explaining emergence, and thus also agency for transformative change. A critical realist theory of emergence emphasises embodied socio-materiality and axiological motive for onto-epistemic dialectical emergence (Bhaskar, Reference Bhaskar2008), and new materialism emphasises relations of entangled immanence as driver of emergence (Barad, Reference Barad2010). Interestingly, embodied in practices of transgressive politics as movement in environmental education research the different theoretical orientations, worked with as “low theory” as noted above, did not have dissimilar outcomes in the T-learning processes, since both foreground onto-epistemic emergence, and learning “what is not yet there” in open socio-material relations. This might point to the need for more subtle engagement with questions of emergenceFootnote ⁶ in transgressive environmental education research, especially when considered in the context of a emergence in and as a transgressive learning process.

Methodologies were also co-developed, some took the form of change, T- or challenge labs (forms of living labs/studios) (Macintyre et al., Reference Macintyre, Tassone and Wals2020; Mukute et al., Reference Mukute, Mudokwani, McAllister and Nyikahadzoi2018; Pesanayi, Reference Pesanayi2019) meaning that people agreed to co-learn while trying out how to co-develop new activities together in a real life settings that included productive demonstration site development, surfacing silent knowledges, and exchanging knowledge, ethical stories and relations, eco-village and agro-ecology activity development etc. across sites. It also included mobilising creativity and re-imagining the present with arts-based approaches, using film, song (e.g. Van Borek, Reference Van Borek2021; Kulundu-Bolus, Reference Kulundu-Bolus2023; James, Reference James2019), social media tools such as WhatsApp, and participatory courses (combining online and off-line) learning modalities as mentioned above (e.g. Durr, Reference Durr2018; Macintyre, Reference Macintyre2019; Shetye et al., Reference Shetye, Lotz-Sisitka, Albrecht, Durr, Marx, Chirambo and van Zyl-Bulitta2022). Importantly, the research practices and methodologies themselves were not reduced to “techniques” but were constituted as deeply embedded socio-material sustainability learning processes that emerged via reflexive and ongoing transgressive learning co-engagements over time. A feature of these practices and methodologies was their capability for network building and relationality, as well as critique, embracing the decolonial and human/more-than-human relations that lie at the heart of environmental education political transgressions. Through this, each T-learning group challenged structural and normalised features of the status quo in different ways, while also enabling emergence of “transgressive moves” to address various status quo set ups and systemic dysfunctions as shown in Appendix A.

We found that ethics clearance procedures in university settings were inadequately aligned with the tenets and orientation of co-engaged research in open systems, especially as they fail to account for people’s agency in co-defining the research, and thus also the ongoing, reflexive co-monitoring of ethics praxis, which in itself is an ethical issue. This required us to do substantive intellectual work to re-define the meaning of ethics praxis in and for T-learning research, leading to a reframing of ethics protocol criteria, which were later accepted by the university ethics committee to guide similar studies (see Appendix B). Many ethics practices are quite colonially constituted, and are based on a positivist logic that the social world can be objectively managed, pre-defined and controlled by researchers who then “go out” to communities to do research with their permission (often using alienating instruments such as gatekeeper letters), and thus lack adequate orientation for inter-subjectivity, and lack reflexive, open and co-engaged co-defining and monitoring procedures for ethics praxis in open-ended learning-centred research designs (cf. also Kara, Reference Kara2018). This work to articulate ethics praxis for co-engaged and open-ended T-learning processes (see Appendix B) was since taken forward by T-learning researchers in other research programmes (cf. TESF Collective, Reference Collective2023; One Ocean Hub, Reference Hub2022; Lotz-Sisitka et al., Reference Lotz-Sisitka, Thifulufhelwi, Chikunda, Mponwana, Hopwood and Sannino2023a, Reference Lotz-Sisitka, Chakona, Rosenberg and Kulundu-Bolus2023b) and remains an ongoing subject of research in the extended TKN (cf. Pereira, Reference Pereira2024).

In all cases, researchers have recognised that a transgressive politics of environmental education as movement, requires deep levels of engagement and critique, recognition of diversity, ethics and empathy, and willingness to co-engage in ongoing processes of reflexivity and transgressive change (spiraling reflexivity). This involves deconstruction of the status quo, and a relational being-in-the-world being as foundation for transformations and emergence, with emphasis on the relational and political processes that enable the latter to emerge.

Knowledges co-produced

The first form of knowledges co-produced centred around knowledge of the specific sustainability concerns that were in focus for T-learning co-engaged expansions, and included the following: 1) developing local food systems including alternative economies (The Netherlands: Macintyre & Temmink, Reference Macintyre and Temmink2018; Macintyre et al., Reference Macintyre, Tassone and Wals2020); 2) expanding solidarity and networked relationships amongst organic food production associations, contributing to new organic food production practices (Zimbabwe: Mudokwani & Mukute, Reference Mudokwani and Mukute2019; Mukute et al., Reference Mukute, Mudokwani, McAllister and Nyikahadzoi2018); 3) dealing with water crisis issues in rural and urban contexts (Pesanayi, Reference Pesanayi2019; Burt, Reference Burt2019; James, Reference James2019); youth mobilisation for transformative change (Kuludu-Bolus, 2020); food surplus management and transformation of markets for local pro-poor economies (Durr, Reference Durr2018; Lotz-Sisitka, Reference Lotz-Sisitka2019); citizen monitoring of water quality and biodiversity (Vallabh, Reference Vallabh2017, Reference Vallabh2022); and environmental and social justice activism in a range of contexts related to mine pollution, pollution of river systems (Burt, Reference Burt2019; Reference Burt2020), water scarcity issues and water relations (Pesanayi, Reference Pesanayi2019; Van Borek, Reference Van Borek2021; Van Borek & James, Reference Van Borek and James2019), and food sovereignty and food systems development (Lotz-Sisitka et al., Reference Lotz-Sisitka, Mukute, Chikunda, Baloi and Pesanayi2017; Lotz-Sisitka & Pesanayl, Reference Lotz-Sisitka and Pesanayi2019; Pesanayi, Reference Pesanayi2019) in South Africa; 4) legalising and promoting the conservation of SNSs and bio-cultural diversity and food system development (Ethiopia: Belay Ali & Kassaye, Reference Belay Ali and Kassaye2018); 5) resolving food insecurity associated with severe climatic drought events in Lake Chilwa basin (Malawi: Mphepo, Reference Mphepo2020); 6) dealing with climate change impacts and agricultural system development for adaptation in the Mekong Delta (Vietnam: Phuong et al., Reference Phuong, Tuan and Phuc2019); 7) urban development, water systems, pollution and educational quality (India: Kuany et al., Reference Kuany, Ramaswamy, Pathak, Vajpayee, Mulchandani and Weir2018); 8) decolonial biosphere and eco-village development (Colombia: Chaves et al., Reference Chaves, Macintyre, Verschoor and Wals2016; Macintyre et al., Reference Macintyre, Monroy, Coral, Zethelius, Tassone and Wals2019); and 9) eco-schools praxis development (Sweden: Hellquist & Westin, Reference Hellquist and Westin2019). Since then, studies have expanded to include transgressive hydrofeminist praxis in ocean governance (Francis & McGarry, Reference Francis and McGarry2023; Martin, Reference Martin2023; Pereira & Erwin, Reference Pereira and Erwin2023; Pereira, Reference Pereira2024) with ongoing work in many of the areas identified above (e.g. Lotz-Sisitka et al. Reference Lotz-Sisitka, Schudel, Wilmot, Songqwaru, O’Donoghue, Chikunda, Eberth, Goller, Gunter, Hanke, Holz, Krug and Singer-Brodowski2022; Mukwambo et al., Reference Mukwambo, Lotz-Sisitka, Mukute, Kachilonda, Jalasi, Lindley and Kuse2022; Lotz-Sisitka et al., Reference Lotz-Sisitka, Le Grange and Mphepo2024).

These knowledge co-construction processes involved a diversity of knowledges coming together around shared matters of concern. In all cases, knowledges co-produced in T-learning processes explicitly included partners from different types of organisations (e.g. social movements; regional networked NGO organisations; academia, policy institute; farmers, youth groups etc.). This constituted a widening TKN that was strongly sensitive to diversity of context and plural knowledge(s), especially the social-material contexts of practice, knowledges and lives of communities and how these are affected by sustainability concerns (e.g. artists perspectives on water were not the same as perspectives offered by monitoring groups, but both were valuable; or a scientists knowledge of farming under drought (e.g. Malawi) or flooding (e.g. Vietnam) conditions was not the same as that of the farmers, but both were valuable). We found the combination of a shared and evolving research interest in T-learning, practiced with low theory orientation, combined with a wider range of disciplinary and contextual knowledges to be crucial for establishing and co-developing T-learning research knowledge. This produced a richer “ecologies of knowledge” (De Sousa Santos, Reference de Sousa Santos2015) on sustainability concerns relevant to T-learning in all local contexts.

A second important form of knowledge co-produced was knowledge of T-learning. The type of research undertaken (described above) in the TKN allowed for the emergence of grounded and co-engaged perspectives on T-learning, and raised unique perspectives on the possibilities for co-engaged T-learning, and the difficulties (e.g. how to develop a T-learning podcast where 11 official languages co-exist cf. Van Borek and James (Reference Van Borek and James2019); how to overcome inherited oppressive cognitive injustices cf Burt (Reference Burt2019); Kulundu-Bolus, (Reference Kulundu-Bolus2023) or social-material exclusions cf. Pesanayi (Reference Pesanayi2019) or an absence of solidarity relations cf. Mudokwani and Mukute (Reference Mudokwani and Mukute2019)). In all cases, we were also able to reflect on, and articulate qualities of T-learning which allowed us to develop differentiated insights into T-learning, and we were able to develop tools for reviewing understandings of T-learning not only at niche level (via localised interactions), but also in multi-levelled perspective where activity systems at different levels are inter-connected (see Figure 1 below).

Figure 1.

Synthesis framing of T-learning as elaborated through iterations of engagement with the T-learning ‘archive’ and ongoing definitional and praxis engagements, that may yet be incompleteFootnote ⁷ (Source: Author).

More refined understanding of the qualities and processes of T-learning in Times of Climate Change were produced. In terms of the processes of T-learning, these are broadly captured above in the section above on research practices, but we also learned that the way in which practices and methodologies are constituted, leads to particular qualities of T-learning, i.e. the process and politics of research and forms of T-learning and associated outcomes are politically intertwined (e.g. counter-hegemonic mapping T-learning praxis to identify and validate SNSs with communities in Ethiopia led to policy change). Thus, in general situated, co-engaged and critically constituted methodologies that confront colonial, exclusionary, unsustainable and master-slave type relations, and inadequate human-more-than-human relations produce qualities of T-learning that foreground cognitive and epistemic justice, environmental justice, solidarity (with the human and more-than-human), acknowledgement of silent and previously hidden or marginalised knowledges, empathy, emotion, relationality, anger and other qualities of learning that are often ignored in mainstream learning sciences that tend to focus on cognition only. The TKNs research therefore draws attention to this wider range of qualities of T-learning, which equally recognises the importance of new knowledge, but also the importance of how this relates to and emerges from or “moves with or against” other forms of knowledge such as tacit knowledge, spiritual knowledge(s), Indigenous knowledge, experiential knowledge and learning and more. It therefore offers a more complex politically constituted “ecologies of knowledge” (De Sousa Santos, Reference de Sousa Santos2015) configuration for qualities of learning than are recognised in the mainstream learning sciences, and in the contemporary sustainability sciences which tend to focus more instrumentally on first, second and third loop learning as main descriptor and analytical tool for learning (e.g. Pahl Wostl, Reference Pahl-Wostl2009; Reynolds, Reference Reynolds2014). Subsequently we have found researchers engaging with the scope of qualities of T-learning, adding to richness to the concept. For example, Ott (Reference Ott2023) has added insight into the importance of imagination framed from open process engagement with utopia’s; while Ojala (Reference Ojala2016) argues for centreing emotion in T-learning research. McGarry articulates engaging with the “suitably strange” (Reference McGarry2022); intergenerational knowledge (Francis & McGarry, Reference Francis and McGarry2023) and ancestral knowledge (McGarry, Reference McGarry2023) as a qualities of T-learning. This indicates that surfacing qualities of T-learning remains an open process of elaboration, as yet incomplete.

Overall, with considerable iterative reflection on the ‘archive’ over a long period of time, I put forward the above definitional framing of T-learning (Figure 1) as tool for ongoing iterative reflexive engagement by the TKN and an expanding network of T-learning researchers. Here I recognise various iterations of this Figure worked with since 2018, with this helping us over time to consider the relationship of transgressive learning to revised framings of transformative learning, transdisciplinary learning and collective (together) learning. I, together with other researchers have been applying this emerging framing to different contexts of practice e.g. teacher education (Lotz-Sisitka et al., Reference Lotz-Sisitka, Schudel, Wilmot, Songqwaru, O’Donoghue, Chikunda, Eberth, Goller, Gunter, Hanke, Holz, Krug and Singer-Brodowski2022; O’Donoghue et al., Reference O’Donoghue, Sandoval Rivera, O’Donoghue, Rivera, Eberth, Goller, Gunter, Hanke, Holz, Krug and Singer-Brodowski2022; Manni & Knekta, Reference Manni and Knekta2020), Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) curriculum settings (O’Donoghue et al., Reference O’Donoghue, van Staden, Bhurekeni, Snow-Macleod and Ndlamlenze2024), Masters education curriculum re-design (Kulundu-Bolus, Reference Kulundu-Bolus2023) and Eco-Arts Education (Preston, Reference Preston2022) amongst others. This too remains an open process of elaboration, as yet incomplete, but one that is vital for the politics of transgressive learning research to make its way into formal education settings, and thus wider processes of educational transformation.