http://www.erudit.org/en/Volume 18, Number 1, 2023enThu, 03 Sep 2026 03:11:47 +0000https://assets.erudit.tech/static/img/logo-erudit.daebca8dc4fc.pnghttps://erudit.orghttp://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113188ar/Pascal Galvani and Dominique Cottereauhttp://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113188ar/http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113189ar/Gaston Pineau<br />The article focuses on a historical overview of the written productions of the Eco-learning Research Group (“Groupe de recherche en écoformation”, GREF) over the past thirty years. The first part presents the four works with the four aerial, aquatic, terrestrial and fire environments experienced. They gradually imposed themselves almost naturally as a cosmic matrix to learn to live, in the extension of the great traditions of the first cultures. Anachronistic return or relearning of a repressed ecological unconscious? But the GREF also coordinate a series. The second part explores the latest works in this ecology and learning series, founded in the early 2000s. They cover eco-learning innovations in initial school education, vocational training, agricultural training and even continuing training for retirees. But eco-learning still remains on the very periphery of dominant educational theories and practices. Part 3 presents the advantages of this frontier position. It exposes more directly to the effervescence of transdisciplinary and eco-citizen movements campaigning for a redefinition of relationships with local and global environments, as well as North/South, East/West.http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113189ar/http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113190ar/Orane Bischoff<br />This article presents the theoretical framework of a doctoral research on the concept of ecoformation. It is based on the biological and systemic paradigm of existential self-formation. The work on life histories has revealed the oikos part present in existential formation. The work of the Ecoformation Research Group has opened up a path for research into experiential and existential relationships with the world. We bring ecoformation closer to other concepts in the field of environmental psychology and ecophilosophy. This enriches our theoretical and methodological reflections in order to unfold a framework for environmental education research concerned with first-person ecology and vital relationships with the world, based on the process of environmental autobiography.http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113190ar/http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113191ar/Dominique Cottereau<br />Since 1992, I have been exploring ecoformation both as a research concept and as an interventional educational model in the field of environmental education. This issue of the journal allows me to revisit this path through first as a physical education teacher leading nature classes (1), then through three action-research projects carried out as part of the work of the Groupe de Recherche en EcoFormation (GREF) : sea classes (2) ; gardens (3) ; and the use of electricity in everyday household life (4). The final section (5) shows that environmental education that incorporates ecoformation into its aims and pedagogy is possible, whatever the context in which it takes place, and whoever you are as an educator (teacher, organizer, even parent). But it requires us to push back or break down walls, work around constraints and remain humble in the influence we can have. Ecoformation was also, for me, a life project : that of participating in the eco-social transformation of relationships with the world, moving from dualistic and aggressive relations of domination with an objectified living being, to sensitive, attentive and pacified relations of kinship, erasing the dualism of object and subject between co-inhabitants of the planet.http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113191ar/http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113192ar/Pascal Galvani<br />This article presents a research trajectory that demonstrates the particular relevance of research and practice in the field of ecoformation facing the current global ecological crises. Three main avenues of exploration are presented in this article. The first is dialogue with Amerindian cultures. I will analyze how my experiences in Amerindian contexts in the United States and Quebec have transformed my relationship to the world and led me to develop an intercultural coformation approach. The second avenue is an action-research project to experiment transdisciplinarity and the epistemology of complexity in university practices. This experience has helped to introduce an ecological dimension in university programs by linking knowledge and life. The third avenue is that of reflection on new auto-eco-formation practices. Numerous practices are becoming ways of connecting with the living world: itinerant walking, tracking, forest schooling, open-air painting, and so on. These different approaches demonstrate the heuristic potential of the ecoformation concept to support the vital transformations taking place at personal, social and cultural levels.http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113192ar/http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113193ar/Christian Bellehumeur<br />Ecopsychology and eco-training are conceptual frameworks that promote the theme of re-enchanting human relationships with the natural world. This article presents these two fields in turn, as well as points of convergence between them, and highlights the theory of anthropological structures of the imaginary developed by Gilbert Durand (2016). Already integrated into eco-training, Durand’s framework proposes the existence of two major regimes of the imaginary (diurnal and nocturnal) grounding opposing worldviews. However, a third "systemic" structure fosters the co-habitation of these two opposing worldviews. By outlining the triangulation of ecopsychology, eco-training and Durand’s framework of the imaginary, this article discusses the relevance of appealing to the heuristic potential of the imaginary, and proposes examples of eco-training practices (forest bathing and the symbolic approach, named AT.9).http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113193ar/http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113194ar/Paulo Freire Vieira<br />This essay offers some guidelines to approach the ethical and political dimensions of the transdisciplinary concept of ecoformation. This focal point is justified taking into account the current debates about the evidences of increasing social and ecological disasters at the global level. The ecocentric approach in the field of contemporary political thinking is highlighted and related to advances in complex, self-organizing systems research. The autopoietic-enactive model of cognition drawn up by Francisco Varela, including his dialogue with the Buddhist philosophy of the “middle way”, is connected to the quest of a paradigmatic rupture with the industrialist worldview. From this perspective, the concept of ecoformation is considered as an inescapable lever to unveil the strategic options we still dispose to avoid reaching the point of no-return.http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113194ar/http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113195ar/Michel Vidal<br />Contemplative approaches are developing in the field of teaching and education, particularly in ecoformation practices. The comparison of the epistemological and methodological backgrounds of approaches in the litterature or that have been observed allows us to question the potentialities of contemplation participating to a resonance with the living other than human. These approaches rely on embodied pre-reflective consciousness to illuminate experiences or to overcome the tensions of potentially alienating situations. They are based on (1) a change in state of consciousness allowing a quality of presence and attention to the experience of the body in original modes of expression, feeling, posture, movement and the feeling ; (2) an imaginary mediator between the sensitivity and the rational. They aim for an encounter with our own otherness and the construction of a link to a world-subject.http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113195ar/http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113196ar/Clément Barniaudy<br />The originality of the ecoformation concept comes from the fact that it allows us to enrich the usual point of view on our ways of learning as cohabitants of the earth's home: our relationships with biophysical forces, other living beings and the Earth contribute to our (self)formation, and not only social interactions. Ecoformation practices thus open a way to activate a quality of attention and consideration towards one's own experience as well as other earthly phenomena, in a process of continuous, retroactive and dialogical transformative learning. Following this perspective, we are interested in the “Work That Reconnects (WTR)” workshops, a theoretical and practical approach developed by eco-philosopher Joanna Macy to support the "Great Turning". Based on a qualitative research methodology, this article questions the ecoformation dimension of WTR through the analysis of participants' experiences during an immersive and itinerant workshop.http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113196ar/http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113197ar/Aurélie Javelle<br />A model of agriculture developed during the second half of the 20th century led to the consideration of natural elements and biophysical processes as limiting factors in achieving optimum production. Conversely, today, political injunctions value the role of biodiversity in the production process, through the development of agroecology in particular. This raises challenges in the productive systems, particularly about the knowledge to be mobilized. We present how the ecoknowledge meets the requirements raised by the implementation of agroecology. We will first study the specificities of ecoknowledge as well as the reasons of its relevance to meet the challenges of greening practices. We will then explore the huge paradigmatic changes that their use requires and the difficulties that this induces, between questioning relationships with nature, the need to unlearn one’s certainties and mobilizing the body.http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113197ar/http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113198ar/Véronique Boy<br />In our more than ever divided, fragmented, devastated world, going so far as to attack the earth, its vital base, could ecosophy help human beings to return to what unites them, their common belonging to the land that welcomes them and that they inhabit ? Trying to answer this question, I suggest to rely on Michel Maffesoli's postulate stipulating that the ecosophical values ​​that he sees emerging in the new post-modern era are found in traditional cultures ; and to experience this bond by exploring the values ​​of a traditional community whose culture is still alive, Buryatia (Siberia). We will be accompanied, implicitly, by the thought of Edgar Morin, a researcher who has crossed the century without anything interrupting his research, seeking, like Maffesoli, to see in what emerges signs of hope for the future world.http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113198ar/http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113199ar/Aurélie Zwang, Alexiane Spanu and Gaëlle Le Ster<br />This article presents the results of one of the research fields of the participative action-research project "Growing up with nature". It focuses on the point of view of pupils at the end of their French primary education (CM1 and CM2) who had experienced the 'outdoor classroom' for several years in the same rural area, with teaching practices incorporating autonomous activities. The analysis of what they had to say, collected using a method similar to the commented itineraries, reveals the diversity of their experiences by the recalling of cognitive, affective and physical dimensions. The outdoor educational context opened up opportunities for interaction with the environment, which seemed to contribute to the eco-formation of the pupil shttp://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113199ar/http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113200ar/Marie-Laure Girault<br />The national participatory research-action project Growing up with nature aims to experiment and analyse the outdoor school from the educational practices and the types of nature considered , as well as their effects. In Lozère, teachers and educators involved in this process give shape to the concept of ecoformation in their practices. Whether they are convinced, guided by their intuition or without any preconceived ideas on the subject, their positions have evolved from teaching/education in nature to teaching/education in nature to teaching/educating with nature. New practices are emerging and their effects on pupils are related to the self, to the others, to the world, as well as to knowledge and pedagogue relationships, which are changed. Between self-education gestures, reflexivity and collective support, methodological way was based on a comprehensive approach of the lived experience by mobilising the kaïros workshop and dialogic, a formative process itself.http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113200ar/http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113201ar/Marc Boutet, Marie-Hélène Massie and Marie-Claude Gilbert<br />School-based teachers need training in order to be able to integrate sustainable future concerns into their practices. From an ecoformation perspective, it should aim both at developing their sensitivity to the natural environment (relationship with the beauty of the world) and their ability to understand and act in the face of environmental issues (relationship with the complexity of the world). The Education for a Sustainable Future (ESF) course, which we have been offering online for the past few years, to continuing education teachers, pursues these aims. In this article, the didactic and pedagogical frameworks of the course as well as the main means proposed, including the use of children's literature, will first be presented. Then, we will describe the corpus of data collected during the course and the content analysis we made to identify avenues for the evolution and improvement of the training offered.http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113201ar/http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113202ar/Virginie Boelen<br />A thesis is never done by chance. It is the result of a life journey beyond an academic one. This article outlines a thesis in education that mobilizes and puts into dialogue ecosophy, indigenous knowledge and ecolearning around a holistic educational proposal that aims at the self-determination of young people in their reconnection to Land for the development of an ecological identity at the foundation of an ethics of the Earth. First, will be exposed the genesis of such a thesis built on the paradigm of transdisciplinarity. Then will be underlined the relevance of an eco-learning pedagogy in the context of the current planetary ecological crisis, putting in exergue this adage of Edgar Morin: true novelty is always born through the return to sources.http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113202ar/http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113203ar/Eva Lemaire<br />In this article, we explain how a research-action-learning project, oriented towards the valorization of Métis languages and cultures in French-language elementary schools in Western Canada, allowed us to explore the interconnections between Indigenous languages and traditional knowledge on the one hand and relationships to the land on the other. Through a series of examples drawn from the approach we have developed around Métis people’s traditional languages, we indicate how land-based pedagogy, as we interpret it in relation to the knowledge transmitted by the Elders collaborating in the project, allows us to revisit our relationship with nature and people.http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113203ar/http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113204ar/Éric Beaudout<br />This article applies the life story approach to explore the methodologic path of a doctoral research in environmental education, taking into account the three movements of the process of self-eco-hetero-formation, and its diurnal and nocturnal regimes, as identified by Gaston Pineau. This approach allows to put in evidence the initial implicit role of the diurnal regime, the involvement of the researcher in his object of research, the development of the main idea of the thesis, and to explain the process I adopted to produce an environmental life story.http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113204ar/http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113205ar/Laura Nicolas<br />This article aims at linking the conceptual model of “ecoformation” with the practices of nature-based education that are currently emerging in the field of educational sciences. The field of ecoformation strongly emphasizes the way existential individual (trans)formation arises through holistic practices in an outdoor environment. By doing so, it can be used to further analyze how individual ecoformation emerges trough nature-based education practices. We will then stress out several ways by which ecoformation helps understand the transformation processes that take place, at the three levels of psychological, social and ecological spheres, for children as much as for the practionners, during nature-based education practices.http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113205ar/http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113206ar/Philippe Nicolas<br />Philippe Nicolas, a school teacher and researcher in educational sciences, reflects on his professional career as a teacher in a Parisian suburb, classified as a priority education zone. At the heart of his classroom work, he notes the separation of the child from nature, of man from the living world, but also of the child and his sensitivity. At the time of the Anthropocene, the current period of geological time when human activities have strong repercussions on the planet's ecosystems and transform them at all levels, Philippe Nicolas shows us the two great forgotten aspects of education - nature and inner life - which, when they are made aware like the Cap au Nord project, are also the levers of a pedagogy that can be summed up as follows: make sure that something happens between the student and nature, so that this student, now an adult, feels in charge of life.http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113206ar/http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113207ar/Adeline Loodts<br />How could picturebook play a role in children’s eco-education ? In this article, we firstly recall the memories we have of our own reading experiences and then examine this particular medium. The example of the picturebook Mon arbre à secrets  [My Tree of Secrets] will show the evocative power of this literature, concluding with an account of how sharing this reading –  outdoors  – allowed young Lucie to consider a tree as a potential confidant. Far from being a trivial issue, this form of literary expression attracts our interest. It seems to us that it is in the very nature of picturebook, namely in its different forms of artistic expression, that the possibility of an aesthetic encounter with the natural world is present. The experience of nature that today’s children have is greatly diminished, compared to previous generations. Perhaps the need for stories that can powerfully assist children’s eco-education has never before been as great.http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113207ar/http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113208ar/Samuel Lopes Pinheiro and Florent Pasquier<br />This text presents a paradigm of transdisciplinarity linked to the foundations of an environmental education based on the notion of "self-knowledge". We thus present a complex pedagogy based on the recognition of the multidimensionality of the human being, according to a training approach considered in an integral way. To do this, we mobilize certain approaches to self-training based on self-knowledge, which allow, through the exercise involving hetero and placed-based learning, awareness and action research. It is thus a question of sharing reflexive elements on the mobilization of self-awareness in formative practices in Environmental Education and to study how this exercise generates a pedagogical commitment which aims at facing various growing barbarities in our time of the Anthropocene, with a particular accent concerning panterrorism and transhumanism.http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113208ar/http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113209ar/Gaston Pineauhttp://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113209ar/http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113210ar/Alban Roblezhttp://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113210ar/http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113211ar/Philippe Mahuzieshttp://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113211ar/http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113212ar/Chiara Gasperoni and Kylyan Marc Bisquert i Pérezhttp://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113212ar/http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113213ar/<br />Nonehttp://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113213ar/http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113214ar/<br />Nonehttp://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113214ar/http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113215ar/<br />Nonehttp://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113215ar/http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113216ar/<br />Nonehttp://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113216ar/http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113217ar/<br />Nonehttp://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113217ar/http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113218ar/<br />Nonehttp://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113218ar/http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113219ar/Gaston Pineauhttp://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113219ar/http://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113220ar/Marina Gruslinhttp://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ere/2023-v18-n1-ere09523/1113220ar/