Nick Stanger

Biography

Dr. Nick Stanger specializes in Human Society in its Environment with a particular focus around reconciliation among Indigenous and non-Indigenous educators.  He has had the privilege of working with Indigenous educators around the world for more than 20 years examining the interaction among environmental and Indigenous ways of knowing.   Nick recently joined SCU from Canada and the United States where he worked as an associate professor of environmental education at the College of the Environment at Western Washington University.

Research

His research uses an educationalist lens and participatory techniques to understand environmental sociology, ecological identity, transformative places, and Indigenous responses to climate change. He pursues projects that utilize his unique background as an ecologist, conservationist, educator, and knowledge mobilizer, and look for ways to support participants and provide nuance and complexity to pressing issues. He aims to understand, mobilize, and help create space for Indigenous communities to tell their stories of resurgence, cultural adaptation, and sovereignty all while helping find d pathways, protocol, and critical understandings amongst settler-colonial communities.

Teaching Philosophy

His teaching philosophy is rooted in place-based, Indigenous pedagogy that revolves around three main areas, environmental studies (including ecological identity, experiential education, protected areas, ecology, and environmental citizenship education), ecological sociology (behavioural and emotional connections to nature, Indigenous knowledge, eco-sociological methodology), and ecological curriculum theory (authentic, project-based inquiry, and place-based education). He believes in engaging students in the tenets of positive psychology (pleasure, meaning, and engagement) within his courses and work with student-focused and student-empowerment techniques such as Socratic circles, Transformative Inquiry, and Open Space Technology that asks them to identify their interests, voices, and communications practices as a way to co-create curriculum.