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Forest schools: moving towards an alternative pedagogical response to the Anthropocene?

Abstract

In this paper I consider whether forest schools provide a space where we could rethink pedagogy in the Anthropocene. I explore the challenges and possibilities of thinking beyond the business-as-usual of human-centric pedagogies drawing upon an ethnographic study of two forest schools, located in the West Midlands of England conducted in 2014-2015. I take a more-than-social approach, which moves beyond narrow essentialist constructions of nature and childhood (see Kraftl, 2013). I use both Barad’s (2007) theory of agential realism, to explore children’s lively intra-actions with more-than-humans at forest school, and Haraway’s (2016) concept of worlding, to examine collective world making and remarking. Through this conceptual framing I explore whether forest schools are or could become a space for more-than-social pedagogies in which children might imagine and care for other worlds. If so, how might this kind of other-world imagining and caring gesture towards an alternative pedagogical response to the Anthropocene?

Acceptance Date Sep 23, 2019
Publication Date Sep 23, 2019
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education
Print ISSN 0159-6306
Publisher Taylor and Francis Group
Pages 1 - 14
DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2019.1670446
Keywords Anthropocene, children, forest school, pedagogy, more-than-human, more-than-social
Publisher URL https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01596306.2019.1670446

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