Abstract

MOTTA, Renata  and  FERREIRA, Manuela. Grabbing a “nutworm” – nature-cultures in an early-childhood education context in the forest. Rev. Educ. Questão [online]. 2022, vol.60, n.65, e-30266.  Epub Feb 24, 2023. ISSN 1981-1802.  https://doi.org/10.21680/1981-1802.2022v60n65id30266.

Western urban societies have been separating nature from culture, children, education, and life for centuries, having established a dichotomy that persists even in the praxis and research that promote young children's contact with the “natural” world. By dialoguing with critical childhood studies, new materialisms, post-humanisms, and ecological epistemologies, we aim to reconsider “our” ways of being in/with the world beyond these bifurcating traditions and regard children also as nature, as beings entangled in various natures-cultures. Based on ethnographic research with children attending a private outdoor kindergarten in northern Portugal, we analyse and discuss how children interrelate with a forest and how the forest becomes entangled in their play. The engagement of children and more-than-human lives – birds, mushrooms, pine trees, chestnuts – in collective ways of being, provides clues to repositioning educational practices and research in a common, heterogeneous, and interdependent world, valuing a spirit of companionship and kinship.

Keywords : Children-nature; Nature-cultures; Critical childhood studies; New materialisms.

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