The early years are a foundational time for the establishment of dispositions for learning. This paper draws on a recent study in Aotearoa (New Zealand) to illustrate ways educators have been implementing programs, within mainstream early childhood care and education settings, that inclusively offer Maori perspectives on caring for ourselves,…

In exploring ways to respectfully include Indigenous Knowledges and pedagogies within environmental education programs, the challenge is to ensure strategies used will meaningfully support learning while reflecting local cultural traditions, languages, beliefs, and perspectives. In this paper, key components for science-based environmental…

Indigenous worldviews and Western worldviews stand in stark contrast to each other in many ways, including their perspectives regarding the Earth and her resources. Typically the differences between these two philosophies of life are highlighted and placed into an antagonistic relationship that seems irreconcilable. This paper upholds that within…

Young children's media regularly features animals as its central characters. Potentially reflecting children's well-documented affinity for/with animals, this media--books, toys, songs, clothing, electronic media, and so on--carries with it many explicit and implicit messages about animals and human-animal relationships. This article focuses on…

This paper begins by suggesting that issues of social and ecological justice are not mutually exclusive. They are tied together through the logic of domination which is, in turn, sustained by oppositional value dualisms such man/woman, human/nature, and white/non-white. As such, we suggest that environmental education must deal with the shared…

Martin Buber's philosophy of dialogue offers an epistemic and ontological orientation upon which an ecological identity can be established as part of an integrated, environmental education. I consider here the significance of a relational self in establishing this ecological identity, as well as the benefits from doing so. This relational,…

Educating for sustainable development (ESD) is generally found within existing disciplinary frameworks. In this paper, our intent is to compare the views and practices of environmental educators who pursue ESD from a perspective different from what is occurring in our own constituency. We collected data on curriculum, teaching perspectives and…

This paper sets out to explore the role of story in education. Through the employment of story itself as medium the discussion examines how story is currently used in educational settings. The next step is to posit story as a learning tool and curricular heavy-lifter through introduction to the theory of Imaginative Education as proposed by Kieran…

This article provides an overview of the context, methodology, and theoretical framework of a research project conducted with coastal Newfoundland children living in communities deeply affected by the collapse of the marine ecosystem. Through a participatory engagement with bioregional poetry, the author investigates how children grow in their…

A "slow pedagogy of place" in (environmental/outdoor) education has been enacted by the two authors over the past three years in a third year undergraduate semester-long unit named Experiencing the Australian Landscape. An integrated practical and theoretical, de- and reconstruction of fast pedagogies is now needed, we believe, if education is to…

This article reports on a recent study about Outward Bound Canada's Giwaykiwin program for Aboriginal youth. A key finding that emerged from the study was the need to design contemporary Aboriginal education programs based on a recognition of the evolution of Indigenous cultures and languages in close relationship with specific geographical areas.…

This paper describes the evolution of an environmental learning program for Indigenous, urban youth called Bridging the Gap. A critical pedagogy of place provides a theoretical framework to engage in practitioner-reflection, exploring the decisions made while revising the original program to make it both culturally and ecologically relevant. Using…

This contribution investigates a recent research project involving in-service teacher learning as experienced through an online/offline art studio in which common experiences of relationships to particular local landforms generate imaginative and collaborative processes and practices of teaching and learning. EarthShapes Studio is both a…

This paper argues that the current ecological crisis arises from our dualistic consciousness which separates mind from body and self from world. This dualistic consciousness prevents us from experiencing the value in nature, and therefore leads to instrumentalist treatment of nature. We explore the Buddhist practice of mindfulness to help…

Children's gardening programs have enjoyed increasing popularity in recent years. An Australian environmental education non-profit organization implemented a program, entitled Multicultural Schools Gardens, in disadvantaged (low-income) schools that used food gardening as a focus for implementing a culturally-focused environmental education…