Rewilding the curriculum: Narrative pedagogy and the English canon as catalysts for creative ecological thinking

ROSS BUCKINGHAM, HEAD OF ENGLISH, SHREWSBURY HOUSE SCHOOL, UK Abstract The imperative to address the climate emergency demands that education shifts beyond factual transmission and towards innovative and imaginative pedagogy. This research presents evidence that demonstrates how narrative pedagogy, anchored in children’s literature and the wider English canon, can cultivate ecological consciousness, creative thinking and ethical responsibility in students. Drawing on empirical classroom inquiry and the ecocritical analysis of four key texts, the study details a progression where multimodal literary engagement transforms passive reading into environmental creative agency. Crucially, the findings from this primary research provide a robust, transferable pedagogical framework for the strategic integration of ecological thinking into the Key Stages 3, 4 and 5 English curricula. This framework enables secondary teachers to seamlessly apply the ecocritical lens to set texts and transact