Carbon entanglements: For a science education in the space of the sensible

In the face of current socio-environmental challenges, the linear logic of cause and effect that has been the pillar of modern Western science has proved insufficient to account for the differential and multi-levelled impacts that techno-scientific developments themselves have had and continue to make on the Planet. Questions of sustainability and equity and how to ‘live well’ in the world are calling for new imaginaries, and a renovated ethical attention for how we are tangled as beings-in-relation to and with others – not only humans. Responding to such provocation, this paper draws upon Primo Levi’s story of Carbon as a conceptual and ethical frame for exploring the human condition, and through an empirical investigation, it illustrates the methodological shift that occurs when involving prospective secondary science student teachers in first-person, aesthetic-imaginative inquiries. Taking Carbon not as an object of study but as a wordly medium that comes to life, this paper concludes with a radical departure from cognitivist traditions in science education, to advance a science education in the space of the sensible: an open invitation is offered for teachers and students to venture together into the textured and sentient web of Carbon transformations, where knowledge is situated, embodied and mutually accountable.