Pedagogies of Reclaiming: Thinking With Children and Magic as a Response to Ecological Crisis

• In Event: 63.080 - Spirituality and Education SIG: Three-Paper Session

Abstract

Thinking with Isabelle Stengers (2008, 2011, 2012, 2017) this paper explores pedagogies of reclaiming in ethnographic research with young children. Pedagogies of reclaiming borrow from neo-pagan activists to reinvigorate immanent feminist spirituality as a mode to offer situated, innovate responses to climate-related issues. Naming children’s expressions of spiritual knowings of the natural world as magic, distinguishes this research from developmental discourses of childhood and responds to a growing call of climate-change scholars (Alexander, et al., 2011; Nunn, et al., 2016; Woiwode, 2012) to broaden climate change responses to ways of knowing other than scientific rationality. Providing pedagogical documentation in which magic is taken seriously, this paper offers a localized example of children creatively engaging with the natural world.

Author

• Meagan Montpetit, University of Western Ontario