Reclaiming Common Worlds: Early Childhood Care and Education Settings as Sites of Civic/Environmental Action in Aotearoa (New Zealand)

• In Event: Roundtable Session 23
  In Roundtable Session: Experimenting With Student Engagement, Responsibility, and Service to Place

Abstract

Research such as that of Chawla (1999, 2007) signals the importance of early years’ experiences in generating dispositions of care and concern for the environment, an urgent ‘matter of concern’ (Latour, 2004) in the face of the current era of Anthropogenic climate crisis. This paper offers examples from recent research in Aotearoa (New Zealand) in early childhood education settings where teachers proactively offer pedagogies that foster such dispositions. Central to these pedagogies are the inclusion of local Indigenous knowledges (Ritchie, 2013), and the recognition that young children are capable of thoughtfully and collectively responding to environmental concerns (Adair, 2014).

Author

• Jenny Ritchie, Victoria University of Wellington