Re/Creating Worldviews with Children: Environment as an Integrating Context

Abstract

We are situated in experiences – many not of our own choosing, especially as children. These experiences have profound effects on our worldviews, our relationships, and our holistic learning and development. “Young children experience their world as an environment of relationships. These relationships affect every aspect of learning and development…If we believed that knowing requires a personal relationship between the knower and the known, our students [children] would be invited to learn by interacting with the world not by viewing it afar” (Palmer, 2007, p.8). It is, therefore, of prime importance for educators to consider the influences of the environment as an integrating context of children’s lives and learning. Furthermore, I argue that embedding the richness and diversity of the natural world in the classroom and implementing a nature-based pedagogy will lead to important benefits for children – benefits that include expanding children’s worldview development, strengthening their relationships with one another, supporting their holistic learning and development, and supporting their dispositions for learning. This research draws upon deep ecology as the theoretical framework and employs narrative inquiry as the methodological approach, along with ethnographic methods of data collection. Throughout the thesis, readers will be invited to explore a collection of photographic essays. These photographic essays will showcase an evolving relationship between children and the world of nature as experienced throughout a year in a Canadian preschool classroom.