Urban Nature and Childhoods

This book challenges the notion that nature is a city’s opposite and addresses the often-overlooked concept of urban nature and how it relates to children’s experiences of environmental education. The idea of nature-deficit, as well as concerns that children in cities lack for experiences of nature, speaks to the anxieties that underpin urban living and a lack of natural experiences. The contributors to this volume provide insights into a more complex understanding of urban nature and of children’s experiences of urban nature. What is learned if nature is not somewhere else but right here, wherever we are? What does it mean for children’s environmental learning if nature is a relationship and not an entity? How can such a relational understanding of urban nature and childhood support more sustainable and more inclusive urban living? In raising challenging questions about childhoods and urban nature, this book will stimulate much needed discussion to provoke new imaginings for researchers in environmental education, childhood studies, and urban studies. This book was originally published as a special issue of Environmental Education Research.

Introduction: Troubling the intersections of urban/nature/childhood in environmental educationIris Duhn, Karen Malone and Marek Tesar 1. Beyond stewardship: common world pedagogies for the AnthropoceneAffrica Taylor2. Reconfiguring urban environmental education with ‘shitgull’ and a ‘shop’Pauliina Rautio, Riikka Hohti, Riitta-Marja Leinonen and Tuure Tammi3. Thinking with broken glass: making pedagogical spaces of enchantment in the cityNoora Pyyry4. ‘I saw a magical garden with flowers that people could not damage!’: children’s visions of nature and of learning about nature in and out of schoolClementina Rios and Isabel Menezes 5. ‘Staying with the trouble’ in child-insect-educator common worldsFikile Nxumalo and Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw 6. Between indigenous and non-indigenous: urban/nature/child pedagogiesMargaret Somerville and Sandra Hickey 7. Going back and beyond: children’s learning through placesClaudia Díaz-Díaz8. Learning from cities: a cautionary note about urban/childhood/nature entanglementsJohn Morgan

Iris Duhn is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. She has a longstanding interest in critical childhood studies, environmental education, and sociology. Karen Malone is a Professor of Education and Research Director at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia. She writes extensively about childhoods in the Anthropocene and has published extensively in environmental education research. Marek Tesar is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. His published writing focuses on childhood studies and philosophy.