CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECTS:
MUST: Enabling Multispecies Transitions (2023-26)
MUST is a research project funded by the Finnish Strategic Research Council that explores sustainable multispecies transitions in which humans and other species can adapt to a new way of life that supports their mutual well-being. The project works across seven work packages and covers areas such as nature-based solutions in city and regional planning, governance and policy making, and education.
WP2 (Un)learning with other species (Co-leads Dr. Maria Helena Saari & Professor Pauliina Rautio) adopts a multidimensional research approach to explore just multispecies transitions in education. We focus on policy analysis, surveys and interviews with educational actors, carrying out pilot workshops in schools, development of multispecies justice-oriented pedagogies, as well as teacher education. Through educational workshops in different schools, we aim is to understand teachers’ and students’ experiences of multispecies justice-oriented pedagogies. Through the workshops we aim to better understand the versatility and adaptability of different methods and how just and sustainable multispecies coexistence can be a cross-curricular subject and adaptable to diverse age groups and subject areas,
PAST RESEARCH PROJECTS:
Co-designing teacher education through international partnerships (2021-24)
Funded by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, our Global Innovation Network for Teaching and Learning (2021-24) the project focused on strengthening teacher education through joint collaborative research between the University of Oulu and University of Namibia across three thematic groups: 1) early childhood education and care, 2) school-based studies, and 3) environmental education and sustainability worked. In the project I was co-leader of the Environmental Education Working Group together with Dr. Anna Vladimirova and Richardine Poulton-Busler. We worked on developing environmental sustainability education in teacher education through collaborations with environmental education experts, including award-winning NaDEET.
Read more about our work here: Saari, M. H., Poulton-Busler, R., & Vladimirova, A. (2024). Does sustainability really start with teachers? Reflections on integrating environmental education in pre-service teacher education in Namibia and Finland. The Journal of Environmental Education, 55(6), 494–508. https://doi.org/10.1080/00958964.2024.2375210
MULTISPECIES CLIMATE CHANGE EDUCATION (2022-23)
PI: Maria Helena Saari
Multispecies Climate Change Education is an interdisciplinary research project exploring how multispecies perspectives could be better integrated into different facets of environmental education, including in disaster risk reduction and climate change education. Through a multidimensional approach that includes policy mapping and development of animal-inclusive pedagogies, the project explores how education could better attend to including multispecies perspectives in our understandings and analysis of climate change and sustainability. The project works in collaboration with the Liminal Becomings: reframing human-animal relations in natural disasters project and was made possible with mobility funding granted by the Biodiverse Anthropocenes Research Program of the University of Oulu.
As part of the project, I carried out pilot multispecies climate change education workshop in collaboration with a public school in Lisbon, where students explored diverse climate change events in Portugal from multispecies perspectives. Using a humane education-inspired pedagogical approach, the workshop aims to explore the causes and effects of natural disasters and specific environmental events in Portugal and explores possible ways of sustainable coexistence between humans and animals in the aftermath of disasters. Other educational activities of the project include exploring human-animal relations from diverse perspectives, including in relation to cultural practices and food systems.
CITIZENS WITH RATS: From citizen science toward non-anthropocentric education with young people and difficult urban companions (2020-24)
CitiRats was funded by the Academy of Finland (2020-2024) and combines natural sciences and education in a project with young people. The main objective is to study and to develop arts of attentiveness towards multispecies communities and for imagining multispecies futures while rethinking exclusive human agency in society and in education. This is needed because the problems of sustainable co-living are part of young people’s everyday lives here and now. Education is, however, said to be among the slowest of disciplines to address these concerns.
CitiRats used a state-of-the-art three-tier approach, based on collaboration between researchers, young people (ages 13-15) and selected experts, comprising three progressive research stages with methods from natural sciences, human sciences and the arts. The aim was to explore urban communities as shared between many species, as well as how young people best come to learn about sustainable co-living. Listen to the CitiRats Podcast here!
Project members: Pauliina Rautio (PI), Tuure Tammi, Maria Helena Saari, Riikka Hohti, Tuomas Aivelo, Anttoni Kervinen, Mika Simonen, featuring Johanna Sinisalo
ANIMALS AS STAKEHOLDERS IN EDUCATION: TOWARDS AN EDUCATIONAL REFORM FOR INTERSPECIES SUSTAINABILITY (2018-2021)
My PhD research project Animals as stakeholders in education: towards an educational reform for interspecies sustainability was part of the broader AniMate: Multispecies Childhoods in the North (PI Pauliina Rautio) research project, funded by the University of Oulu Eudaimonia Institute.
Animals as Stakeholders in Education explored how we might move towards an educational reform for interspecies sustainability, grounded in the understanding that a just multispecies coexistence and sustainable futures require disrupting violence against other animals and attending to the creation of spaces of peace (within and beyond education). The overarching aim of the study was to explore through a multi-angle approach the occlusions and openings for attending to the ways in which (educational) violence(s) are (re)produced in formal education and how we might understand animals as stakeholders in education, sustainability and in our multispecies communities, and thus move towards an educational reform for interspecies sustainability. This overarching aim is elaborated by a set of sub questions and objectives.
The first objective was to examine the ways in which human-animal relations are socially constructed. The second objective was to assess how animals are addressed in (and affected by) educational policies related to sustainability, consumption and curriculum and the third objective was to explore the openings offered by animal-inclusive educational frameworks and how they might propel us forward in educating for interspecies sustainability. These objectives were examined by using cows and the dairy industry as a case example, given the stronghold the dairy industry continues to have in the (Finnish) education system. Finally, the fourth objective was to inquire how humane educators are facilitating the implementation of animal-inclusive pedagogies. Overall, this study seeks to explore how, with effective alliances, we might move beyond the current impasse of a politics of unsustainability, which is inherently a multidimensional, interdisciplinary, intergenerational and interspecies endeavour.
Who is your CLAN? An Educators Toolkit for Exploring Human-Animal Relations in Multisecies Homes and Communities (2021)
Funded by the Portuguese Scientific Foundation (PTDC/SOC 28415/2017), CLAN – Child-Animals Friendships: challenging boundaries between humans and non-humans in contemporary societies (PI Verónica Policarpo) aimed at understanding the relationships between children and companion animals, by analyzing their affective practices, and explored how these are intertwined with other practices, environments and contexts.
As part of my research visit to HAS-Hub in 2021 I worked with the CLAN project on an educator’s toolkit that explores the emotional lives of animals, communication and body language, habits and routines of companion animals, friendships and curious encounters with animals, and animal shelters. These themes are explored through storytelling, role-playing games and other creative activities. The toolkit was designed as a conversation starter and to stimulate our sensitivity to delve deeper into the complex and fascinating worlds we share with other animals. As we strive to see the world through the eyes of others, can we look at our neighborhoods and homes in different ways, and indeed see our furry, feathered, and finned friends in different ways?
Visit EXPOCLAN for project findings and to download the ‘Who is your CLAN?’ Educator’s Toolkit here. More information about CLAN and the Human-Animal Studies Hub (HAS-Hub) can be found here. The Portuguese Directorate General for Education invited CLAN to present the toolkit in their Citizenship Education Webinar Series.