ChildhoodNature Research Methodologies

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

Abstract

This presentation focuses on the framing of ChildhoodNature research, and its interpretations and applications, as well as trends and issues. Methodological inquiry in the social sciences normally rest upon certain epistemological interests, ontological assumptions and axiological commitments. This basic frame of research is complicated further in environmental education research when the formative context of ChildhoodNature is included. Additional demands are placed on the conceptualisation, contextualisation, representation and legitimation of the research problem, purposes, processes, values and, inevitably, usefulness. Methodological deliberations and debates in environmental education research have a four decade long history but are now subject to ‘new’ theoretical perspectives introduced in Presentation 1 while also drawing inspiration from the rise of the environmental arts, humanities, sciences, and related genres of emergent inquiry. Paradigmatic change for ChildhoodNature is a potential - exacerbated practically by the local-global consequences of the Anthropocene now being felt intergenerationally and lived cross culturally. Children and childhood are particularly vulnerable. How, and in what ways, does methodological inquiry about the researcher-researched (ChildhoodNatures) relationship access children’s lived experiences; historicised selves/subjectivities and identity formations including family and schooling ecologies; actions and interactions with (and against) nature; and ‘worldviews’?

Authors

• Paul Hart, University of Regina

• Phillip G. Payne, Monash University

• Amy N. Cutter-Mackenzie, Southern Cross University