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ERIC Number: EJ1233642
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2019
Pages: 18
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: EISSN-2331-0464
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Sensing Ecologically through Kin and Stones
Malone, Karen; Moore, Sarah Jane
International Journal of Early Childhood Environmental Education, v7 n1 p8-25 Fall 2019
This paper draws on a research study that builds on a long and rich history of research in environmental education focusing on the value of learning through everyday experiences with the more than human. This study specially focused on very young children's experiences of ecologies and explored the unique opportunities sensorially rich bodily interactions with nonhuman entities provided. Drawing on postqualitative inquiry, using visual arts, narrative and walking methodologies, Karen and Sarah Jane are attentive in this work to the very subtle encounters and sensitivities of how child bodies move with and through places. By employing a number of nontraditional formats, the two researchers share sensorial ecological encounters as a form of child-worlding; bodies attune to the ongoing and the everyday presented as images, stories and prose. As an approach to diffractive analysis, they adopt a relational ontology as a means for thinking with the concepts of kin and stones. Sensing ecologically in this way becomes both a conceptual analytical tool and a pedagogical practice, allowing new imaginaries for children becoming and knowing the more-than-human-world prior to forming formal abstract 'language'. It seeks to disrupt the teaching and naming of objects as superior. They draw on the notion of ecomorphism to support a view of humans as interdependent with all ecological beings, objects and weathering of the earth. Ecomorphism also attributes qualities of a shared life through sensorial knowing with others and objects; whether they be human or nonhuman. Throughout the paper Karen and Sarah Jane have considered deeply how young children come to be with/encounter nonhuman animals, plants, weather, water and materials, and how do they respond and communicate with those entities through and with their animal bodies.
North American Association for Environmnental Education. 1725 DeSales Street NW, Washington, DC 20036. Tel: 202-419-0412; Web site: https://naturalstart.org/research
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A