such as these as well as how to respond to the need for making teaching ‘what the law is’ relevant, whilst at the same time facilitating skills to engage with ‘what the law ought to be’ or ‘what the law will be in the future’. Ecopedagogical reasoning was adopted to reconceptualise approaches to the module. Ecopedagogy emerged as a response to the principles set out in the Earth Charter 1992 and is an alternative way of approaching education, flowing from Paulo Freire’s work, still largely centred in the global South (Warlenius, 2022, 143). existing law and to critically question whether ‘what is’ ‘should be’ by introducing dialogue on interconnected and contextual factors such as global North and South discourses and the principles of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities. The latter is frequently supported by the use of media, including documentaries involving personal stories, to add contextual dimension to the discussions. The second component is a seminar-type session, typically given by a guest lecturer with specific expertise or experience, where a contentious area of law is discussed. These sessions are intended to expose students to the social and environmental consequences of diverse legal views or regulatory approaches and to consider their position concerning the debate. The seminar approach is supported by additional activities that encourage participation, self-reflection, and the cocreation of meaning, which range from introducing students to communities to personal development opportunities and assessment practices. The assessment practices have been expanded to include a component that requires students to complete five post-first discussion thread activities in which they express their personal views and experiences in response to problem-posed, open-ended questions that arise from the seminars and prescribed readings. They are then required to read and interact with peer posts to stimulate peer exploration of perspectives and the construction of meaning. In ecopedagogy, teaching is aimed at being transformative and future-orientated, with the goal of raising a planetary consciousness through questioning connections between socio-economic and environmental issues, the systems that underpin them and critiquing the disconnect between human activities and planetary well-being (Misiaszek, 2020; Hossain, 2024; Kahn, 2010). Perhaps because of the dialectal problem-posing nature which underpins ecopedagogical thinking, scholarly works do not propose a ‘how to’ toolkit that can be applied in a tertiary setting, let alone in law teaching. There are nevertheless, signposts that indicate necessary shifts in underlying approaches and the modalities that flow from making those shifts. Key shifts are that teaching moves from a purely anthropocentric standpoint to one that emphasises intersectionality between social, political, environmental, and Earth systems and that it focuses on enabling praxis. Central to this is facilitating students’ contemplation of how and where they are located in the dynamics of the triple planetary crisis. Achieving these aims requires academics to establish a democratic and participatory learning space underpinned by a problem-posing/ solution-seeking approach which recognises the value in students’ prior knowledge and life experience. In doing so, teaching is approached not from the perspective of telling students ‘what to think’ but rather how to “critically question who benefits (from the environmentally damaging human actions), who does not, and why socio-environmental disparities exist” (Misiaszek, 2015, pp. 280–281). Students are also encouraged to reflect on their own identity in the ecological context and intersectional relationships underpinning the planetary crisis to promote “personal transformation through selfknowledge and collaborative work” (Norat et al., 2016, p. 186). The delivery of the international environmental law module responds to this with a mix of modalities. The curriculum was redesigned to include specific units with the intention of introducing students to the concept that international environmental law is a product of underlying interests, issues, and contexts and is not developed in isolation of these. The ‘teaching’ of most units in the module follows a two-pronged approach. The first component involves working through ‘what the law is’. In this component, emphasis is placed on facilitating students’ ability to decode the Perhaps because of the dialectal problem-posing nature which underpins ecopedagogical thinking, scholarly works do not propose a ‘how to’ toolkit that can be applied in a tertiary setting, let alone in law teaching. Teaching Innovation for the 21st Century | Showcasing UJ Teaching Innovation Projects 2024 34
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