Reviewed by Dr. Sue L. T. McGregor
I highly recommend this book, which I reviewed wearing an educator’s hat. But anyone with an abiding love of nature will enjoy it as well. As noted on the back cover “this book will be equally at home in lecture theatres and schools as on coffee tables.”
In 2019, I published a paper describing David’s radical approaches to sustainability education (McGregor, 2019). Radical means a departure from tradition or mainstream thinking. He frequently expresses his outside-the-box, mind-opening, and mind-bending ideas using parables, puns, metaphors, folklore, poetry, and allegories. This book did not disappoint. As with all David’s work, “there is some shaking of foundations of sustainability education in these pages, some deep-rooted questioning of givens and of the taken-for-granted” (Selby, 2024, p. 2).
In this book, David employes the metaphor of a journey involving walks down the combe to a meadow by the sea. A combe is “a steep-sided, narrow and often wooded valley or hollow flanked on all but one side by high ground” (Selby, 2024, p. 1). David lives in Weston, a tiny hamlet in the southwest of England facing northern France. His narrative arose from enjoying the Weston Combe leading down to the shingle beach at Weston Mouth surrounded by rocky clifftops (he sometimes went further afield).
David uses a diary approach (with resplendent photographs and two maps) (one chapter per month of the year with daily entries spread over 2018–2022). He literally and metaphorically shares his “ruminations” and reflections about his immersive experiences in nature as they translated into and inspired implications for education and learning about sustainability. David calls this “nature learning,” which he defines as a “self-reflective processing of immersive experience that is likely to stretch what is generally held to be the learning norm” (Selby, 2024, p. 2). An immersive learning experience arises from deep involvement in an activity such as experiencing nature and all manner of fauna and flora indigenous to an area (birds, animals, insects, fish, plants); weather elements; and landscapes, seascapes, and airscapes (my word).
Although David emphasizes that his new book is not intended to be a teacher handbook, I think it can become one with determined sleuthing. His ruminations are threaded throughout the entire collection. For each daily entry, he shares pedagogical, conceptual, philosophical, or theoretical insights, queries, quandaries, and so on. These usually come on the heels of his description of some part of his day’s journey into nature. Sometimes the nature-learning nugget is not self-evident. While caught up in the narrative about his literal experience in nature, you will have to dig out some of these learning gems, but patience is worth it.
On a related topic, I noted the absence in the index of entries about his leading-edge constructs entrenched in his diary narratives: sustainable contraction, deep-time thinking, sustainable retreat, sustainable moderation, denizenship, place attachment, global heating (instead of global warming), three types of futures, imaginal cells, metamorphic learning, and so on. Educators especially could have benefited from their inclusion, so they were easier to find, ponder, and employ.
As an example of nature learning, in July 2018, David walked down the combe toward the meadow hoping to find glow-worms. He encountered moths along the way and morphed (pun intended) his nature-inspired insights into a new construct he calls “metamorphic learning” (p. 170) to augment longstanding, and well-respected, transformative learning. Metamorphic learning values formlessness, pivotal turning points, and imaginal cells (they understand that in the future, metamorphosis will occur despite inherent resistance). Graduates would leave school “ready and able to fly” (p. 170) (an intended pun — butterflies and moths emerge and fly).
In another example, while recounting several experiences of sitting amongst rock pools on the shingle beach and floating in the ocean while looking up at the rock cliffs (August entry), he makes a link between geological forces and deep-time thinking. The latter challenges the shallow, short-time thinking that is so prevalent in today’s schooling and learning. He recommends that educators interface with geological time (the slow, longitudinal, cyclical, and deep connections of time), so they can bring humility to learning and relating to the world. Lessons can be learned from interpreting potent geological forces (how the Earth changes over time). We are so focused on instant gratification that the “sweep of time is overlooked — often with dire consequences” (p. 200). He creatively recommends “inventing the future backward” (p. 201).
Inspired by vacillating weather patterns on the grey cusp of winter (November entry) David employs his earlier groundbreaking contribution of sustainable contraction in Chapter 11 (see Selby, 2007). This concerns eco-anxiety, eco-grief, eco-shame, and eco-rage. These powerful emotions manifest in fear, denial, guilt, anger, despair, hopelessness, helplessness, despondency, inadequacy, and inefficacy. In 2007, David framed and advocated for, what I later called, fearlessness (McGregor, 2012), which can be gained by intentionally disruptive transformative learning experiences designed to disorient learners and make them face their hidden assumptions and beliefs.
David said that a key nature-learning tip is to heed the questions that arise during or after immersion in nature. He advises taking the time to “mull over” questions that either pop up or later emerge from the depths of your mind. For example, while marvelling at the teeming ocean life unseen under the water’s surface, David ponders “how do we go about achieving connective emotional attachment to life on the seabed [that we cannot see], an attachment that will translate into sturdy individual and community commitment to reversing the continuing degradation, exploitation and poisoning of the oceans” (p. 196)? If people cannot directly connect with nature, they will not feel compelled to value, protect, and learn from nature. He metaphorically and literally queries how do we bring “learners into intimate contact with life on the seabed” (p. 198)?
In a David-move, he creatively frames traditional chapter-by-chapter endnotes as Influences and Waymarks. Endnotes are accumulated footnotes printed at the end of a document. Waymarks are objects that serve as a guide to someone travelling. Given that the book’s title conveys journeys down the combe to the meadow meeting the sea, the noun waymarks (instead of endnotes) is a joyous literary innovation. I highly recommend reading these comments (pp. 301–331) because they take you deeper into his beautiful mind and sharp intellect and uniquely highlight myriad influences on his vanguard thinking and out-of-the-box conceptualizations. Others may be so inspired to also recount waymarks instead of endnotes.
David’s approach feels like a rich exercise in biomimicry, which focuses on mimicking and learning from nature and natural processes to find inspiration for innovative solutions to complex problems (Benyus, 2002; McGregor, 2013). A not-so-subtle takeaway from David’s book (and its most valuable contribution) is that anyone can foray into nature, immerse themselves in it, connect with their insights and questions, and formulate novel, nature-inspired takeaways like learning constructs, conceptualizations, and pedagogical innovations. He provides a convincing and engaging demonstration of the power of nature learning, of immersing oneself in nature and then extracting pedagogical and social change ideas to future proof the world.
References
Benyus, J. M. (2002). Biomimicry: Innovation inspired by nature (3rd ed.). Williams and Morrow & Co.
McGregor, S. L. T. (2013). Transdisciplinarity and biomimicry. Transdisciplinary Journal of Engineering & Science, 4, 57–65. https://www.atlas-tjes.org/index.php/tjes/article/view/41
McGregor, S. L. T. (2019). David Selby’s radical approach to sustainability education. Journal of Sustainability Education, 21. http://www.susted.com/wordpress/content/david-selbys-radical-approach-to-sustainability-education_2020_01/
Selby, D. (2007). As the heating happens: Education for sustainable development or education for sustainable contraction? International Journal of Innovation and Sustainable Development, 2(3-4), 249–267. https://doi.org/10.1504/IJISD.2007.017938
Selby, D. (2024). Down the combe and into the meadow: Reflections on nature and learning. Blue Poppy Publishing.
Reviewed by Dr. Sue L. T. McGregor
Not eye opening but mid and soul refreshing review, giving a “radical” insight into the phenomenon. Got me interested in reading not just the book but further exploring the whole ideas of “metamorphic learning” and “sustainable contraction”.