Homing in: Sensing, sense-making and sustainable place-making: Sensing, Feeling, Talking, Reflecting, Futuring

No abstract available

A climate change curriculum to empower the climate strike generation

By leading school children through the wonders of the natural world, teachers could help raise environmental stewards

A climate change curriculum to empower the climate strike generation

By leading school children through the wonders of the natural world, teachers could help raise environmental stewards

Space-timeScapes as ecopedagogy

This emergent field of ecopedagogy gives little conceptual, methodological, and empirical consideration to the significance of spatial and temporal elements of environmental learning. This article focuses on both spatial and temporal components of three ecopedagogic instances, examining experiences from participant's perspective. Specific (eco)pedagogic dimensions of each learning experience are compared and contrasted, and synthesized into an emergent concept/practice of ecopedagogy at a range of spatial scales and across life courses. The article concludes that regardless of the specific spatial context, space-time aware learning experiences offer tactile, embodied encounters with different natural settings. Such sensuous and affective dimensions of experience of scapes emerge as crucial to encouraging nature-culture interrelativity for participants. Space-time-based and alert encounters thus materialize as central to the development of ecopedagogy

Homing in: Sensing, sense-making and sustainable place-making: Sensing, Feeling, Talking, Reflecting, Futuring

No abstract available

Children's access to urban gardens in Norway, India and the United Kingdom

Background: This study investigates access to gardens for children in Norway, India and the United Kingdom and their respective potentials for sustainability learning. The focus is set upon the significant variations concerning garden access within these three countries, within the specific context of urban gardening at a city scale. The article explores three case study cities: Stavanger, Norway; Mumbai, India; and Cardiff, UK. Previous research has shown that nature and garden experiences can provide play opportunities, skills and sensuous perceptions that may lead to the permanent retention of knowledge, and may awaken and unfold the child’s interests. Material and methods: Conceptualized in theories of situated learning and place-based learning, each researcher - native and/or living in Norway, UK and India, respectively - has gathered qualitative data and focused on the phenomena she found to be appropriate for the study of each respective city. The findings, based on literature studies and the author’s own experiences and observations, are presented in form of narratives. A phenomenological and hermeneutical framework and critical inquiry is used to give relevance to the complex interrelations between the three researcher’s different backgrounds and perspectives. Results: The narratives elucidate rather different characteristics, practices, activities and values related to gardens in the three cities, where children interact in multiple ways with various kinds of garden spaces. Children are typically close to nature in Stavanger, while very small ‘windowsills’ characterize the many childhood interactions with gardens in Mumbai and in Cardiff, children may have access to both private and public gardens, depending upon their circumstances. Conclusions: The three perspectives give inspirations for promoting children’s ecology, sustainability, and intergenerational learning in urban garden spaces

Building bridges for education for sustainability: 2013 Report for the development of education for sustainability through the Monash-Warwick Alliance

This report presents findings from a research project that focused on the potential to expand Education for Sustainability (EfS) related activities at Monash and Warwick Universities, through the Monash-Warwick Alliance. It provides details of existing EfS programmes and activities at both universities. It also discusses the level of enthusiasm for and interest in a combined EfS initiative. Finally, it signposts the future development of EfS at Monash and Warwick, whilst acknowledging the challenges to innovation. The report is informed by interviews with university stakeholders, including academics, support staff, senior management and students. Findings are placed within a wider context through a review of the current EfS literature

By-standing memories of curious observations: Children's storied landscapes of ecological encounter.

Founded in contemporary concerns that children are increasingly disconnected from nature, this article explores how children re-imagine their memories of childhood experiences within the landscape of a National Park. The concept of ‘re-connecting’ children with ‘nature’ has recrystalised around conceptualisations of ‘slow ecopedagogy’ as a form of ecological conscientisation.Through creative mapping with children from the Brecon Beacons National Park, Wales, this article questions whether exposure to such environments predisposes young people to an environmental consciousness. Examining children’s creative representations of childhood memories from nonhuman encounters, and building on Philo’s discussion of ‘childhood reverie’, we develop the concept of by-standing memories to articulate how children re-story their own memories, the landscapes in which they take place and the nonhumans they include. Something of a ‘child panic’ currently surrounds the disconnect between children and ecology. While some are concerned by this ‘child panic’, which positions children as ‘by-standers’ to adult affairs, we argue that by-standing is critical for how children tell stories of their dwellings in, and curious observations of, place. The re-telling of childhood memories stretches the conceptualisation of slow ecopedagogy beyond the place of encounter, to the creative spaces of storying and re-telling, which are equally critical for memory itself

Ecological kin-making in the multispecies muddle: an analytical framework for understanding embodied environmental citizen science experiences

Despite the current proliferation of citizen science projects, the affordances of ecological citizen science to generate transformational thinking amongst project participants are seldom considered. This study investigated citizen science as an experiential ecopedagogic praxis that may provide a context for developing relational perspectives and sensorial engagements between human and non-human participants. A new humanist, phenomenological standpoint and narrative analysis framework were adopted. The narratives of five river monitoring citizen science participants are presented herein to illustrate an emergent Ecological kin-making through citizen science framework. Participants’ narratives demonstrate how individuals engaged in caring practices through six embodied stages of ecological kin-making through citizen science: encountering the river (1); recognising the non-human world (2); river-bank identification (3); developing a sense of response-ability (4); enacting responsibility (5); and enhanced ecological kinship (6). As characterised by the infinity-loop framework, citizen science emerges from this study as an attuned, ongoing, and caring praxis of ecological kin-making. New co-species kinship relationships are formed, maintained, and strengthened through participation. The study highlights that where citizen science projects are designed with a participant community focus, they can create the conditions for self-directed and lifelong ecopedagogy that could be transformational for humans and non-humans in times of ecological and climate crisis. The study implies the catalytic validity of citizen science to provide a space-time context for participants to enact a ‘response-ability’ toward local environments and human and non-human dwellers, vital to enabling participants to experience a sense of agency and to take local action on environmental issues