Beyond the “Human Dimension”: Expanding Fink’s taxonomy of significant learning to include the more-than-human world

Abstract

We are in a particular moment in human history when climate change and environmental degradation, and the accompanying “eco-anxiety” many of us feel, are challenging predominant ways of living and educating. Just as educational developers have started turning a critical lens inward around other important social justice issues, we all have the opportunity, and indeed a responsibility, to examine the ways that our field may be contributing—albeit inadvertently—to much broader environmental injustices. In this article, we take as our starting point an influential taxonomy of learning, offered by L. Dee Fink, which is frequently utilized in U.S. centers for teaching and learning to guide faculty in the design of their courses. Our purpose is to explore the implications and potential growth areas of one particular area of Fink’s learning taxonomy, what he has called the “Human Dimension,” and then to propose an expanded understanding and application of this dimension to include attention to and relationships with the more-than-human world, which Indigenous peoples have long practiced. We hope, ultimately, for this piece to provoke critical reflection of an anthropocentric approach to education, inspire a broader ecological perspective-taking, and perhaps even result in concrete environmental actions.