Abstract
Nature-based experiences have gained increasing attention for their capacity to foster children’s connectedness with nature, referred to here as childhoodnature. This chapter explores childhoodnature from a pedagogical perspective of place, beginning with an overview of the conceptual foundations of and distinctions between place-based education and place-responsive and place-conscious pedagogy. We then examine recently emergent post-human and new materialist ontologies and pedagogies for their contributions to new understandings of and approaches to childhoodnature connections. Besides providing a map of the childhoodnature pedagogies and place section of this handbook, we assess the extent to which the theoretical and empirical contributions of the section chapters lay the groundwork for developing the pedagogies of place literature. Despite marked differences in cultural contexts, a number of common themes emerged across the chapters, particularly in relation to the intent and focus of the pedagogies of place. All chapters expand and/or challenge current understandings and/or preconceptions of place, nature, childhoodnature relationships, and pedagogy. A number of chapters highlight the role of agency, embodied learning, and place relations in enabling children to build connectedness with nature. Finally, in considering the chapters as a whole, some implications are offered for future research.
References
Ballantyne, R., & Packer, J. (2008). Learning for sustainability: The role and impact of outdoor and environmental education centres. St. Lucia, Australia: School of Tourism, University of Queensland.
Ballantyne, R., & Packer, J. (2009). Introducing a fifth pedagogy: Experience-based strategies for facilitating learning in natural environments. Environmental Education Research, 15(2), 243–262.
Barad, K. (2003). Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Signs, 28(3), 801–831.
Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe half way: Quantum physics and the entanglements of matter and meaning. London: Duke University Press.
Bonnett, M. (2013). Sustainable development, environmental education, and the significance of being in place. The Curriculum Journal, 24(2), 250–271.
Bowden, S. (2015). Human and non-human agency in Deleuze. In J. Rolfe & H. Stark (Eds.), Deleuze and the non/human (pp. 60–80). London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Cele, S. (2006). Communicating Place: Methods for Understanding Children’s Experience of Place (Doctoral dissertation, Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis).
Chawla, L., & Derr, V. (2012). The development of conservation behaviors in childhood and youth. In S. Clayton (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of environmental and conservation psychology (pp. 527–555). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Corraliza, J. A., Collado, S., & Bethelmy, L. (2012). Nature as a moderator of stress in urban children. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 38, 253–263.
Cutter-Mackenzie, A., Edwards, S., Moore, D., & Boyd, W. (2014). Young children’s play and environmental education in early childhood education. Geneva, Switzerland: Springer.
Duhn, I. (2012). Places for pedagogies, pedagogies for places. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 13(2), 99–107. https://doi.org/10.2304/ciec.2012.13.2.99
Elliott, J. (2007). From ‘human capital’ theory to ‘capability theory’ as a driver of curriculum reform. In B. Somekh & T. Schwandt (Eds.), Knowledge production: Research work in interesting times (pp. 142–165). London, UK: Routledge.
Fesmire, S. (2010). Ecological imagination. Environmental Ethics, 32(2), 183–203. https://doi.org/10.5840/enviroethics201032219.
Fesmire, S. (2012). Ecological imagination in moral education, East and West. Contemporary Pragmatism, 9(1), 205–222.
Greenwood, D. (2013). A critical theory of place-conscious education. In R. Stevenson, M. Brody, J. Dillon, & A. Wals (Eds.), International handbook of research in environmental education (pp. 93–100). New York, NY: AERA/Routledge.
Gruenewald, D. (2003a). Foundations of place: A multidisciplinary framework for place-conscious education. American Educational Research Journal, 40(3), 619–654.
Gruenewald, D. A. (2003b). The best of both worlds: A critical pedagogy of place. Educational Researcher, 32(4), 3–12.
Gruenewald, D., & Smith, G. (2008). Place-based education in the global age. Abingdon: Taylor and Francis.
Hekman, S. (2010). The material of knowledge: Feminist disclosures. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
James, P. (2017). Alternative paradigms for sustainability: Decentring the human without becoming posthuman. In K. Malone, S. Truong, & T. Gray (Eds.), Reimagining sustainability in precarious times (pp. 29–44). Singapore, Singapore: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-2550-1_3
Knapp, C. (1996). Just beyond the Classroom: Community Adventures for Interdisciplinary Learning. ERIC/CRESS, PO Box 1348, Charleston, WV 25325–1348.
Louv, R. (2006). Last child in the woods: Saving our children from nature-deficit disorder. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books.
Mannion, G., Fenwick, A., & Lynch, J. (2013). Place responsive pedagogy: Learning from teachers’ experiences of excursions in nature. Environmental Education Research, 19(6), 792–809. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2012.749980
Martin, P. (2004). Outdoor adventure in promoting relationships with nature. Australian Journal of Outdoor Education, 8(1), 20–28.
Massey, D. (1994). A global sense of place space, place and gender. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Massey, D. (2005). For Space. London: Palgrave.
McGregor, C. (2012). Art-informed pedagogy: Tools for social transformation. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 31(3), 309–324.
Mulcahy, D. (2012). Affective assemblages: Body matters in the pedagogic practices of contemporary school classrooms. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 20(1), 9–27.
Nxumalo, F. (2015). Forest stories: Restorying encounters with ‘natural’ places in early childhood education. In V. Pacini-Ketchabaw & A. Taylor (Eds.), Unsettling the colonial places and spaces of early childhood education (pp. 21–42). New York, NY: Routledge.
Nxumalo, F., & Pacini-Ketchabaw, V. (2017). ‘Staying with the trouble’ in child-insect-educator common worlds. Environmental Education Research, 23(10), 1414–1426.
Pederson, H. (2010). Is the Posthuman educable? Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 31(2), 327–347.
Quinn, J. (2013). Theorizing learning and nature: Posthuman possibilities and problems. Gender and Education, 25(6), 738–753.
Renshaw, P., & Tooth, R. (Eds.). (2018). Diverse pedagogies of place. London, UK: Routledge.
Ross, H., & Mannion, G. (2012). Curriculum making as the enactment of dwelling in places. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 31(3), 303–313.
Ruitenberg, C. (2005). Deconstructing the experience of the local: Toward a radical pedagogy of place. Philosophy of education, 212–220.
Smith, G. A. (2002). Place-based education: Learning to be where we are. Phi Delta Kappan, 83(8), 584–594.
Sobel, D. (2004). Place-based education: Connecting classroom and community. Nature and Listening, 4, 1–7 Available from kohalacenter.org [Downloaded 14 January, 2018]
Soga, M., & Gaston, K. J. (2016). Extinction of experience: The loss of human–nature interactions. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 14(2), 94–101. https://doi.org/10.1002/fee.1225
Somerville, M. (2010). A place pedagogy for ‘global contemporaneity. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 42(3), 326–344.
Somerville, M., & Green, M. (2015). Children, place and sustainability. London, UK: Routledge.
Stevenson, R., Nichols, J., & Whitehouse, H. (2016). What is climate change education? Curriculum Perspectives, 37(1), 67–71.
Stevenson, R., & Smith, G. (2018). Environmental educators learning and theorizing place-responsive pedagogies. In P. Renshaw & R. Tooth (Eds.), Diverse pedagogies of place (pp. 190–210). London, UK: Routledge.
Taylor, A. (2017). Beyond stewardship: Common world pedagogies for the Anthropocene. Environmental Education Research, 23(10), 1448–1461.
Taylor, A. (2018). Engaging with the conceptual tools and challenges of poststructural theories. In M. Fleer & B. van Oers (Eds.), International handbook of early childhood education (pp. 91–115). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer.
Taylor, A., & Pacini-Ketchabaw, V. (2015). Learning with children, ants, and worms in the Anthropocene: Towards a common world pedagogy of multispecies vulnerability. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 23(4), 507–529.
Van Matre, S. W. (1990). Earth education: A new beginning. Warrenville, IL: Institute of Earth Education.
Wattchow, B., & Brown, M. (2011). A pedagogy of place: Outdoor education for a changing world. Melbourne, Australia: Monash University Publishing.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this entry
Cite this entry
Stevenson, R.B., Mannion, G., Evans, N.(. (2018). Childhoodnature Pedagogies and Place: An Overview and Analysis. In: Cutter-Mackenzie, A., Malone, K., Barratt Hacking, E. (eds) Research Handbook on Childhoodnature . Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51949-4_76-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51949-4_76-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-51949-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-51949-4
eBook Packages: Springer Reference EducationReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Education