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Responsive Environmental Education: Kaleidoscope of Places in the Anthropocene

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Research Handbook on Childhoodnature

Part of the book series: Springer International Handbooks of Education ((SIHE))

Abstract

Since the 1970s, when international emphasis on environmental education increased in response to a growing awareness of industrialization’s environmental impact, the field has often cast children in the role of future stewards of the “natural world.” Environmental education’s iterations have maintained an anthropocentric, binary view of nature and have failed to constrain the complex phenomena of the Anthropocene epoch. Now, the environmental theories and predictions of the 1970s are reaching distressing, ongoing fruition, in a froth of climate change-induced natural disasters which displace communities and raze or drown vegetation. An individual’s sense of place can no longer be understood as rooted in a static locale: landscapes change overnight, and countless people lack the luxury to conceive of themselves as inhabitants of clearly definable, locally situated ecological and human communities. Place is ever-changing, layered, and linked across time and space through economic transactions, and it interacts with human identity in ways that are difficult to grasp. Therefore, we posit that people now live with a Kaleidoscope of Places which expand and contract from the local bioregion to unseen locations across the biosphere. This chapter contributes to an evolving environmental education model for the Anthropocene, integrating a dynamic place theory into a place-based pedagogy intended to encourage children’s agency as co-constructors with and for our interdependent planet. We assert that the ability to create innovative solutions for mutual survival requires cultivating specific skill sets of adaptability, feeling, and agency, as we explore our socioecological contexts from a transdisciplinary perspective.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Salem State University, Salem, MA, USA

    Anneliese Mueller Worster

  2. Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS), Portsmouth, NH, USA

    Jennifer Whitten

Authors
  1. Anneliese Mueller Worster
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  2. Jennifer Whitten
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Anneliese Mueller Worster .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Education, Sustainability Environment and the Arts in Education (SEAE) Research Cluster, Southern Cross University, Gold Coast Campus, Coolangatta, QLD, Australia

    Amy Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles

  2. Department of Education, Faculty of Health, Arts and Design, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Karen Malone

  3. Department of Education, University of Bath, Bath, UK

    Elisabeth Barratt Hacking

Section Editor information

  1. School of Education, Gold Coast Campus, Southern Cross University, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia

    Amy Cutter-Mackenzie

  2. Centre for Educational Research, Western Sydney University, Sydney, Australia

    Karen Malone

  3. Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA

    Marianne Krasny

  4. James Cook University, Cairns, Australia

    Hilary Whitehouse

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Worster, A.M., Whitten, J. (2020). Responsive Environmental Education: Kaleidoscope of Places in the Anthropocene. In: Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, A., Malone, K., Barratt Hacking, E. (eds) Research Handbook on Childhoodnature . Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67286-1_128

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