animism in public schools?

My discussions with Jeff, the primary research participant in the opening stages of this project, (his voice appears throughout this hypertext behind the green buttons), opened some opportunities to identify the power associated with dominant discourse (see Barrett, 2006) vis-à-vis environmental education, outdoor experiences, and perhaps most significantly, the production and policing of particular identities/subjectivities (see Barrett, 2006).

My own researcher explorations (see study site 3) highlight some of the challenges in speaking insights obtained through an ontology of spiritual animism. What might change if I could be open about my ontological positioning in the context of teaching public school in Canada? In working with beginning teachers? In academe in general?

Perhaps the ongoing reinscription of the socially constructed human/nature dualism, so long labeled as the root cause of persistent human-generated environmental destruction, might have a change of being disrupted.