ChildhoodNature Ecological Aesthetics and the Learning Environment

• In Event: ChildhoodNature Collective: An Assemblage of the Knots and Threads in Repositioning ChildhoodNature Research

Abstract

This presentation explores the ecological and aesthetic dimensions of learning environments in which ChildhoodNature encounters take place. While environmental education has traditionally placed children in contact with a relational and interconnected world, too often the aesthetic dimensions of these encounters have been overlooked (Ingold, 2000, 2013). Eco-aesthetics provides fertile grounds for interdisciplinary research and practice which attends to richly textured compositions of ChildhoodNature through a diverse range of material, social and conceptual practices. Such approaches have become increasingly relevant following the onset of the Anthropocene epoch, which has provoked new modes of thinking and practice which transgress established barriers between the arts, humanities, sciences and technology. In attending to the sensuous and affective qualities of ChildhoodNature encounters, multiple sites are opened up as vital spaces for children to respond to the changing material conditions of everyday life. These spaces are not limited to national parks, remote wilderness areas, nature schools or community gardens, but also include art galleries, online environments, museums, urban landscapes, everyday domestic spaces, among many other settings. Each of these sites of engagement can be considered inherently ecological and aesthetic spaces which afford and constrain the very possibilities for movement, learning and thought (Whitehead, 1978). This perspective supports methodological turns towards arts-based, creative and sensory practices in educational research with children.

Authors

• David Rousell, Manchester Metropolitan University

• Dilafruz R. Williams, Portland State University