Description

The International Conference on Learning is for any person with an interest in, and concern for, education at any of its levels – from early childhood, to schools, to higher education – and lifelong learning in any of its sites, from home to school to university to the workplace.

We are inviting proposals for paper presentations, workshops/interactive sessions, posters/exhibits, or colloquia addressing learning through one of the following themes:

Pedagogy and Curriculum	Assessment and Evaluation
Early Childhood Learning	Educational Organization and Leadership
Literacies Learning	Learning in Higher Education
Learner Diversity and Identities	Technologies in Learning
Adult, Community, and Professional Learning	Science, Mathematics and Technology Learning
2016 Special Focus: Education in the Age of the Anthropocene

Proposal ideas that extend beyond these thematic areas will also be considered. For more information about the ideas and themes underlying this community, see Our Focus.

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2016 Special Focus: Education in the Age of the Anthropocene

‘The Anthropocene’ is the term that has been proposed to describe an epoch in which human activity begins to have a noticeable impact on the ecosystems of the earth. Among these impacts, one of the most noted and discussed is climate change.

In addition to its usual range of themes, this year’s International Conference on Learning will address the area that has traditionally been called ‘environmental education’. This is necessarily a cross-disciplinary endeavor, not only using the methods of natural science to explore the workings of natural environments, but also exploring the relations between humans and the environment in history, social studies and the humanities. In addressing this special theme, the conference also wishes to raise broad questions about cross-disciplinary practices of critical thinking, citizenship education, environmental ethics, and social/scientific reasoning. In the era of the Anthropocene, we have come to realize that such questions may become life-and-death matters, not only in the face of ecosystemic trauma and more frequent natural disasters, but eventually for the very sustainability of human life on earth. These have become fundamental questions which today’s educators and their students must address.