Postdigital ecopedagogies of attainment and progress

Abstract

Human attainment is based on a particular model of chronological achievements. People and society are assessed in terms of making progress towards ‘something better’. This approach through modernity sees technology treated as a resource to harness for gain regardless of environmental costs. In education, this linear progress model is mirrored: accessing learning, completing study in a timeframe, attaining an award and progress beyond education. Though Covid-19 has interrupted these components of ‘success’, a consensus that children, students, workers and the economy all need to ‘catch up’ after the pandemic exists, even when people are not catching up from an equal positionality. In this competitive, neoliberal progress model attempts to widen participation in education have only had limited success. Additionally, new convergences between digitalisation and biological sciences now provide a broader world view on relations between technologies, progress and humans (Peters, et. al. 2021). This chapter examines the possible ‘demise of a model of progress based on the old system of arranging living forms into a linear hierarchy’ (Bowler 2021: vii). It reviews related assumptions, and considers implications for ecopedagogies of attainment, when unpredictable developments in technology now begin to alter how we might understand progress itself.