Exploring Aesthoecology: Affective Anticipation, Liminality and Emergence as Features of Alternative Educational Futures

Aesthoecology is an onto-epistemology that interrogates the relationship between the aesthetic, ecological and ethical dimensions of education. This involves the exploration of notions such as liminality, emergence, and affective anticipation, all of which are features of dynamic systems. These elements of theory are discussed to support the concept of aesthoecology as a framework of ideas, and a creative vocabulary, which critically questions some of the established ways of being, doing and becoming in current educational practice. Theorising and philosophising provide the freedom to think differently, the space to be creative and the courage to provoke radical thinking and action. The theory of aesthoecology is exemplified by reference to the development of a gallery of the arts at an expanding, community oriented, outward-facing UK community college in which the new and unexpected was a significant element of the richness of provision. This chapter proposes that the theory of aesthoecology is particularly relevant at a time of significant change because it illustrates the importance of ethically creative education in which issues of emergence might be seen as particularly valuable. Education is enriched by inviting and embracing the unexpected and by exploring the ways in which the new arises spontaneously from our actions.