Abstract
This article contributes to research on practice in socially inclusive early childhood nature and science education by discussing the concept of curiosity. Based on ethnographic research and research dialogues with early childhood educators, we call for attention to educational ways of approaching curiosity, a key value within nature and science education, that go beyond focusing on individual motivations for learning. Exploring curiosity with inspiration from perspectives on the concept of atmosphere, we highlight relational sensations of wonder and inquisitiveness, and collective exploratory practices arising situationally, in encounters between children, adults, and non-human nature. Our study suggests that atmospheres of curiosity are supported by socially and ecologically inclusive pedagogies that allow place and weather to be important agents in children's engagements with the living world, offer time and space for sensuous and embodied experiences, involve a common ground of shared tasks or attentions, and give children access to simple, open-ended tools and tactile materials. The article has its empirical starting point in a municipal project aimed at building socially inclusive cultures of science and nature education in urban early childhood institutions in Denmark, located in neighborhoods with high numbers of children in vulnerable positions. With a dialogical and formative research design involving ethnographic observations, qualitative interviews, and dialogues with project stakeholders, the study aimed to generate knowledge about the challenges and opportunities for social inclusion of children in vulnerable positions in early childhood nature and science education.
Pedagogical employees
1
from two institutions are gathered at an introductory meeting about the project “Early Scientific Curiosity: Intervention Addressing Children in Vulnerable Positions.” The meeting is facilitated by municipal staff. Tables and chairs are organized in a horseshoe formation, and the atmosphere is relaxed, with talk and laughter. During a presentation about science and curiosity, the facilitator asks the participants: “Are children born curious?” The participants answer collectively: “Yes!” The facilitator continues: “Have you ever experienced children who don’t show curiosity or are insecure about their curiosity?” Several participants answer with a collective “Yes!” The facilitator would like to know whether these children are in a vulnerable position; there is no clear response to this question. Later, during a joint recap of smaller group talks, participants highlight that pedagogical work with children's curiosity in relation to nature and science does not necessitate a strong natural science expertise but is rather about “following in the tracks of children” [følge børnenes spor], supporting their ways of showing curiosity and being curious about the children's curiosity. (Edited field note, March 2022)
Children's curiosity is generally considered an important value in Danish early childhood nature and science education. This is expressed in policies, among educators, and within academia (Broström, 2015; Mariegaard, 2023; Ministry of Children and Education, 2018). The introductory field note from a meeting at a Danish daycare institution highlights common perceptions of curiosity as an innate psychological trait which can and should be nurtured by adults in the home and daycare environments. In this article, through an empirical exploration of methods for working pedagogically with curiosity in early childhood nature and science education, we wish to highlight the existence of broader empirical approaches to curiosity than those related to individual psychology. Suggesting that these approaches may be illuminated and reflected upon through the theoretical concept of atmosphere, our ambition is to contribute to pedagogical conceptualizations of curiosity with a stronger attention to relations. With this focus, the aim of the analysis is to qualify discussions about socially and ecologically inclusive educational practice in regard to nature and science.
In Denmark, early childhood education and care (ECEC) is almost universal between the age of three and until the beginning of school at six; and 94% of all three-year-olds attend kindergarten (Ottosen et al., 2022; Schmidt and Togsverd, 2024). The pedagogical work in early childhood institutions (hosting children of 0–6 years of age) is framed by a relatively open pedagogical curriculum guide, which sets up a “common pedagogical foundation” and six curriculum themes. Curiosity is highlighted in the curriculum guide in a general way, linked to the transition to school (Ministry of Children and Education, 2018: 27), and specifically in regard to the curriculum theme of “Nature, outdoor life, and natural phenomena”.
In this article, we explore curiosity with an empirical starting point in a municipal project focusing on children's “natural science curiosity” aimed at building socially inclusive cultures of science and nature education in Danish early childhood institutions in urban neighborhoods with high numbers of children in vulnerable positions. While nature pedagogies have a long history in Danish early childhood education, building on the educational ideas of Fröbel, Rosseau, Montessori, and Pestalozzi (Schmidt and Togsverd, 2024), science was introduced into the early childhood curriculum guide only in 2018. Rather than the Danish equivalent, the English term science was used in an attempt to refer to a broad thematic field related to explorations of natural phenomena. The 2018 curriculum highlights children's curiosity and questions as the entry point for inquiry-based educational activities that build on children's experiences and support the exploration of their own hypotheses (Ahrenkiel et al., 2023.; Broström, 2015; Mariegaard, 2023). The educational activities of the project “Early Scientific Curiosity: Intervention Addressing Children in Vulnerable Positions” were based on this general approach to children's curiosity.
As researchers inolved in the project, we studied the educational intervention to generate knowledge about the challenges and opportunities for social inclusion of children in vulnerable positions into early childhood nature and science education. The project addressed children in vulnerable positions through existing general pedagogical approaches to social inclusion in ECEC. In the Danish ECEC context, social inclusion is most often understood as ensuring opportunities for all children's participation in different communities and activities within the daycare institution, and thus involves a focus on participation, commonality, and mechanisms of exclusion. This means that inclusion is primarily addressed within and through the general pedagogical practice (Jørgensen et al., 2020).
In the initial phases of the project, we explored challenges to social inclusion and noticed that the concept of curiosity was used to categorize children with reference to their family backgrounds. Some project staff and pedagogical employees suggested that children from families in vulnerable positions possess less “natural curiosity” and, in some cases, they related this to children's ethnic minority familial backgrounds and to the assumption that nature was “foreign” to these families (Husted et al., 2024). The findings align with those of other Nordic studies suggesting colored inequality and exclusionary practices in Nordic early childhood nature education (Ekman Ladru et al., 2024; Harju et al., 2021; Jørgensen et al., 2020; Jørgensen and Martiny-Bruun, 2019), and with studies of inequality in early childhood educational practice more generally (Millei et al., 2023; Thingstrup et al., 2023). However, when observing nature and science educational practice in the project’s institutions and discussing examples with pedagogical employees, we noticed situations and ways of framing pedagogical activities suggesting that curiosity may be conceptualized differently. In these cases, children engaged—and were encouraged to engage—with the surrounding world in a variety of ways, and curiosity became noticeable as less driven by individual motivations and more by collective sensations and practices involving children and adults, as well as place, weather, materials, and tools. Based on these observations, we propose exploring curiosity with inspiration from perspectives on the concept of atmosphere (e.g. Böhme, 2016; Ingold, 2015; Mason, 2018), paying attention to relational sensations of wonder and inquisitiveness, and to collective exploratory practices arising situationally in encounters between children, adults, and non-human nature. Such a perspective, we suggest, could be central to developing socially inclusive nature and science education practices.
In the following, we situate our study in research discussions on children's curiosity and on inclusive nature and science education. We then outline the methodological path guiding our learning process, leading us to theoretical inspirations from conceptualizations of atmospheres. Following this, we unfold empirical examples which serve to unpack the notion of atmospheres of curiosity; and, finally, we discuss the inclusionary potentials of pedagogical attention to this concept.
Research perspectives on children's curiosity and inclusive science education
Our interest in conceptualizations of curiosity and their implication for social inclusion in early childhood nature and science education is situated within critical educational research on inequalities and inclusion in early childhood nature and science education. Childhood research inspired by post-human, new materialist, and post-colonial strands of thought has pointed to classed, colored, and gendered underpinnings of nature and science education (e.g. Günther-Hanssen et al., 2025; Nxumalo and Cedillo, 2017; Taylor, 2013). In the Scandinavian context, several studies have explored racialized inequalities in relation to early childhood nature education, highlighting how cultural assumptions about childhood and nature work to exclude or sideline certain groups of children (Ekman Ladru et al., 2024; Harju et al., 2021; Jørgensen et al., 2020).
In a recent colloquium in Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, Günther-Hanssen et al. (2025) called for interrogating and rethinking buzzwords in STEM and STEAM education, problematizing inherent inequalities in their conceptualization, and exploring more relational perspectives. Encouraged by such calls, we explore research literature on curiosity in early childhood nature and science education in the following.
Research on curiosity in early childhood often discusses curiosity as a driving force for attention, a factor motivating early natural science learning. In a recent review on curiosity and wonder in natural science and early childhood education research, Bjerknes et al. (2024) note that most research on curiosity has been carried out within biology or psychology, mainly centering on how to nurture curiosity to motivate science learning. With reference to Silvia (2012), the authors point to three main directions in motivational research on curiosity. The first direction explains curiosity as driven by a wish to fill a knowledge gap, and as such, it is motivated by deficit or partial knowledge. Children, according to this line of research, need to know something to be curious, and parents and pedagogues might support this development depending on their own knowledge of the phenomenon and their ability to scaffold or support the child's explorations. The second direction underlines curiosity as motivation in its own right and as an intrinsic drive for exploration, learning, and inquiry. The third direction in research literature on motivation focuses on individual differences in curiosity. Here, curiosity is considered a personality trait and something that could be manipulated in environments, by parents and pedagogues, and stimulated in the present and future. While different in their perspective, all these directions of research approach curiosity as an individual phenomenon and often see children's verbal questions as an important indicator of curiosity and a driver of science learning (cf. Skalstad and Munkebye, 2021; Thulin, 2010).
Other studies, however, underline that curiosity is also expressed through sensory explorations and bodily orientations. Murcia et al. (2020), in a study on children's creative inquiry in STEM education, describe how young children's curiosity has both verbal and embodied expressions, as children use their senses to pose and answer questions. Heggen and Lynngård (2021), reporting on a pilot study on children's experiences in nature, find that children ask very few verbal questions while exploring nature, yet engage in sensory, active, and embodied searches for answers. Gurholt and Sanderud suggest that children's embodied and sensory play in nature is an expression of investigation and curiosity (Gurholt and Sanderud, 2016). Furthermore, Dewey-inspired research on nature and science education in early childhood emphasizes how children's curiosity and wonder is grounded in practical, embodied, and aesthetic experiences as a starting point for learning (e.g. Lindholm, 2018).
The attention to embodied aspects of curiosity in this literature offers an opening towards approaching curiosity as a practice, a way of doing, which also links to collectivity and socio-material entanglements. Zurn and Shankar, in their introduction to the book Curiosity Studies, highlight that curiosity is “something that is done, expressed in behaviors, habits, architectures and movements” (Zurn and Shankar, 2020: xiii). Along these lines, Gobby et al. (2021), inspired by Donna Haraway (2016), explore curiosity as a relational practice shared among children and adults.
Attempting to rethink or expand approaches to curiosity in early childhood nature and science education (cf. Günter-Hanssen et al., 2025), we draw inspiration from research strands that explore curiosity as embodied and as linked socio-material practices.
The methodological and analytical path to a different conceptualization of curiosity
The project “Early Scientific Curiosity: Intervention Addressing Children in Vulnerable Positions” (2021–2024), funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation, was carried out by a municipal team working under the auspices of the Children and Youth Administration of the Municipality of Copenhagen. It involved 10 ECEC institutions, which, over a period of two years, participated in three learning loops facilitated by municipal staff and engaging all pedagogical employees and children at the institutions (around 200 employees and 850 children from the age of 10 months to six years). The institutions were recruited by the municipal team and selected with reference to their specialized pedagogical work with children in vulnerable situations. Five institutions were located in areas with high numbers of families of low socioeconomic status, including families with ethnic minority backgrounds. Five institutions hosted children with special needs, referred there by an interdisciplinary municipal team.
The intervention was followed by a research team from University College Copenhagen, which conducted research in three phases: (a) a baseline consisting of interviews and observations, (b) observations of activities during the three learning loops of the project’s implementation, and (c) a final round of interviews at the end of the project period. Altogether, the data consist of 38 semi-structured group interviews (Fontana and Frey, 2000) with managers and educators, 41 focused observations (Pink and Morgan, 2013) of activities in early childhood institutions or on field trips, six observations of meetings in the institutions, participation and observation in four courses and five seminars, 36 short semi-structured interviews with parents across eight institutions, and eight group interviews with children. Interviews and observations were conducted with inspiration from short-term ethnographic methods (Pink and Morgan, 2013), and field notes were written during and after ethnographic observations, made with attention to embodied, sensuous, and affective experiences in everyday life in early childhood institutions (Dannesboe and Rasmussen, 2021; Pink, 2009). The research team encompassed five researchers with five different disciplinary backgrounds, and reflections on similarities and differences between the field notes during project meetings helped refine the observation methods.
Data collection adhered to ethical guidelines for early childhood researchers (Bertram et al., 2025). Pedagogical employees and management gave consent to participate in the project, and parents consented on behalf of their children. When observing, conversing with, and interviewing the children, we asked for permission to observe and write notes, and employed ongoing assent, attempting to account for children's non-verbal communication. All data were anonymized and stored securely.
The study was based on a dialogical and formative design (Læssøe, 1992; Pink and Morgan, 2013) directed at strengthening the project approach during implementation while also supporting the relevance of the research to pedagogical practice. Hence, preliminary analyses of the empirical material were continuously shared and discussed with project participants and project owners during the study.
The research group carried out collective analysis (inspired by Eggebø, 2020) of the empirical material in two phases during the project period. In the first phase, we individually read through baseline interviews and observations from the first learning loop, and in a collective discussion, we brought up themes and created a mind map to explore connections between them, inspired by inductive thematic analysis (Clarke and Braun, 2017). Based on this, we established a set of codes and initiated a coding process in NVivo. Codes included “educational approaches” with the sub-codes “following children's curiosity,” “inclusion,” and “exclusion”; “cultural categorizations” with the sub-codes “educators’ view on children,” “educators’ view on parents,” and “educators’ view on curiosity”; and “children's engagements/participation” with the sub-codes “participation in adult-led activities,” “children's own initiatives,” and “children's resistance.” Coding was carried out by a research assistant in close dialogue with the project lead, involving ongoing discussions of code content.
We presented an initial analysis of the coded data to project participants midway into the project. The analysis was informed by critical literature on social inclusion in nature education (e.g. Harju et al. 2021; Nxumalo and Cedillo, 2017), highlighting how, in interviews, children from families in vulnerable positions were described as possessing less “natural curiosity,” and how educational approaches focusing on responding to and exploring children's verbal questions and adult-led school-like activities tended to challenge possibilities for participation, for instance, in relation to children with relatively low Danish language competences. The presentation of the analysis created discussion among participants about children's diverse expressions of curiosity and on the conditions underlying the possibilities of practicing curiosity. Pedagogical employees reflected critically on categorizations of children and families, proposed other ways of identifying curiosity based on children's embodied engagements, and told us that they experienced the outdoors as a more comfortable and inclusive environment for children's different expressions of curiosity.
These discussions motivated a second phase of collective analysis in the research team. Reflecting on the first phase of analysis and dialogue, and with reference to traditions of change-oriented scholarship (e.g. Husted and Tofteng, 2014; Nielsen and Jørgensen, 2018), the research team noted that the initial analysis had mostly emphasized the aspects of pedagogical work challenging children's possibilities for participation in nature and science education, and had not sufficiently explored empirical material relating to the aspects that may support their participation. Hence, the codes on children's engagement/participation were revisited with attention to situations that appeared to be characterized by varied possibilities for curious practice. Reading across these situations, we observed that curiosity seemed to be noticeable as a general atmosphere. This led to a collective reading of literature on the concept of atmosphere, which came to inform the analysis presented in this article. This analytical attention further came to influence the last phase of data collection, in which the research team increased their attention to the characteristics and atmospheres of situations that appeared to support children's possibilities for participation.
Theoretical perspectives: Atmospheres of curiosity
The concept of atmosphere has been discussed widely in research attending to the phenomenological experience of physical space. Atmosphere is often referred to as an in-between phenomenon, an affective relation emerging between sensing human subjects and a socio-ecological environment (e.g. Bille and Simonsen, 2021; Böhme, 2016; Ingold, 2015; Mason, 2018). Summarizing research on atmosphere, philosopher Dylan Trigg suggests that atmospheres are conceived of as “affective phenomena, which are grasped pre-reflectively, manifest spatially, felt corporeally, and conceived as semi-autonomous and indeterminate entities” (Trigg, 2020: 1).
The conceptualization of atmosphere is indebted to phenomenological philosophy, one important inspiration being Maurice Merleau-Ponty's reflections on sentient being in the world. Merleau-Ponty describes human perception as embodied and, given this embodiment, situated in a social and material world: “[T]he body is the vehicle of being in the world and, for a living being, having a body means being united with a definite milieu, merging with certain projects and being perpetually engaged therein” (Merleau-Ponty, 1968: 84). All forms of human experience, including remembering, thinking, imagining, feeling, and anticipating, are thus grounded in and shaped by our bodily immersion and orientations in an environment (Carman, 2008: 14). Merleau-Ponty writes about atmosphere in relation to emotions or emotionality, the emotional atmosphere being an essential part of our relation to the world (Thøgersen, 2014: 20–21). In his late (and unfinished) work The Visible and the Invisible, Merleau-Ponty introduces an understanding of human existence as corporeally interwoven into the material and social world, with body and world being part of a common flesh (Carman 2008: 126; Merleau-Ponty, 1968). He highlights the simultaneously sentient and sensible capabilities of the human body—that is, capable of sensing the world and being sensed by it (Merleau-Ponty, 1968).
Another key inspiration comes from German philosopher Gernot Böhme, who, in 1993, published his book Aesthetics of Atmospheres, describing atmosphere as the “indeterminate spatially extended quality of feeling” (Böhme, 2016: 113). Böhme is inspired by Hermann Schmitz, whose “new phenomenology” centers around the concept of the “felt body” (Böhme, 2016; Frølund, 2018). According to Böhme (2016: 1), an atmosphere is an intermediate phenomenon arising in the encounter between objective factors of the environment and subjective aesthetic feelings of human beings. We sense the atmosphere of a place before we identify objects or people, Böhme suggests (Frølund, 2018).
Ecological anthropologist Tim Ingold combines phenomenological philosophy with ecological psychology (Gibson, 1979) in an approach highlighting the ways in which human experience, learning, action, and thinking are embedded in people's engagements with their social and ecological environment (Ingold, 2000: 171). The world we inhabit, Ingold suggests, is a “meshwork of entangled lines of life, growth and movement” (Ingold, 2011: 63). To perceive the environment, according to Ingold (2011: 85, 87, 95), is to participate in the flows and movements of the world and to let these movements and flows be part of us. Discussing the concept of atmosphere, Ingold points to its double meaning as a meteorological notion as well as a concept referring to a space of affects. With this entry, he underlines the importance of ecological phenomena such as weather for affective atmospheres (Ingold, 2015).
While highlights that the concept of atmosphere is particularly suited to capture the experience of the environment, other scholars have paid stronger attention to the social dimensions of atmospheres. Sociologist Jenifer Mason (2018: 179) underlines that social life, history, and culture are indivisible parts of atmospheres. Inspired by Tim Ingold and Merleau-Ponty, Mason (2018: 177–180) suggests that atmospheres are about “the connecting,” “the betweenness,” or “the entangling” of people, places, non-humans, things, etc., but also adduces the importance of memory and social history for atmospheres. Geographer Ben Andersson explores atmospheres as “collective affects,” suggesting they emerge from, but also exceed, human bodies and social practices (Anderson, 2009). Anthropologist Mikkel Bille and geographer Kirsten Simonsen (2021: 304) similarly emphasize the socio-material character of atmospheres, proposing that atmospheres are “the relation constituted in the affective duality between materiality and somatic and social practice.” Embodied social practices form part of atmospheres, Bille and Simonsen (2021) note, hence emphasizing that an atmosphere is not just felt; a felt atmosphere is also related to what humans do.
In this article, we employ the concept of atmosphere with attention to social as well as ecological dimensions to explore senses and practices of curiosity in different educational situations related to nature and science in early childhood. Practices of curiosity, with reference to Donna Haraway, can be seen as a way of being in or visiting the world, characterized by a radical openness towards new encounters, forms of knowledges, and relations (Gobby et al., 2021; Haraway, 2016: 171). An atmosphere of curiosity, we suggest, could be seen as an atmosphere that creates, supports, or sustains relational senses and practices of curiosity. This approach to curiosity resonates with calls for relational and land-based education emphasizing reciprocal relationships with the natural world within the fields of indigenous scholarship (e.g. Battiste, 2013; Johnson, 2024) and place-based environmental education research (e.g. Jickling et al., 2018).
Reading through the descriptions of atmospheres of curiosity that we had identified in our field notes, we noted several cross-cutting qualities. In particular, place and weather; embodied, sensuous, and aesthetic engagements; collective explorations; and the open use of tools and materials appeared to be important qualities of atmospheres of curiosity. Below, we describe four situations, each exemplifying an atmosphere of curiosity as well as illuminating the different qualities of these atmospheres.
Place and weather: Playing with wind
A pedagogue, Anna, and a small group of children have left the kindergarten and moved to a green area between the social housing blocks. Anna has brought some plastic bags and a cord; she tells the children that they are going to make bag-kites and shows them how to bind a cord to the bag. The children start running around, their plastic bags catching the air. The sun is shining; there is not much wind. The children run and laugh, the plastic bags flying after them. Daisies and dandelions are growing in the lawn, some children start picking flowers and putting them into their bags. Owour picks and picks, the bag gets very heavy, but running really fast, he makes it fly again. His fingers get caught in the cord, he twists it around his hand and runs again, fast, fast, jumping and making a somersault in the air. He turns around a cherry tree, the string gets caught in the bark, he stops, looking up into the white cherry flowers. Several other children join him, looking at the branches, leaves, and flowers. Ina looks at the tree trunk and twists her cord around it to attach her bag; now the wind is blowing, the bag catching air. Other children also want to attach their bags to a tree. Anna helps them find another tree. A bag comes loose and flies away, everybody is running and jumping. Two boys laugh and talk about a superhero flying in the air. (Edited field note, June 2023)
Touching ice cubes: Embodied, sensuous, and aesthetic engagements
A nursery group of toddlers, one to two years of age, and two adults are sitting in a circle, welcoming Mette, a nature guide from the municipality visiting the day care institution. “Look what I brought,” Mette says, showing the toddlers a big pile of ice cubes in a bucket and a pile of plastic cups. The children look into the bucket, some respond: “Ice cubes!” “Eat it,” “Feel it.” Both children and adults direct their attention to Mette, who starts passing around bags of ice cubes in the circle, encouraging the children to sense the ice. A boy cautiously puts his bare toes on the ice cube bag. “Is cold,” he notes. Each child gets a cup and an ice cube. A girl puts an ice cube in her mouth, and the others follow suit. “It tastes like strawberry,” a child says. A little boy gets up to fetch a cup and some ice for an adult who hasn’t got any. The children sit for a while, feeling and tasting the ice cubes, they appear calm and concentrated. Some children sit on the laps of adults. A couple of the children move to another part of the room to play. (Edited field note, January 2023)
As researchers observing the situation, we also slow down and turn our attention to our own embodied and sensuous experiences of, for instance, the ice that we touch and by which we are simultaneously touched. Merleau-Ponty describes this relationship as a “chiasm”—a figure or metaphor that describes the interlaced relations between humans and the world, accounting for the paradox of the human body being at once sentient and sensible, that is, capable of sensing the world and being sensed by it (Merleau-Ponty, 1968). In situations characterized by atmospheres of curiosity, we suggest, embodied and sensuous experiences of being with and being interwoven in the world come to the forefront. Adults participate in embodied practices of curiosity involving different senses alongside children, and the emphasis on collective embodied immersion often involves a process of slowing down (Palmer, 2016).
Collective explorations: Emptying the aquarium
At a day care institution hosting 3–6-year-olds, there is a large aquarium in the garden, which over the summer has hosted extensive numbers of pond animals collected by the children and educators. Today, the pedagogues Jesper and Claus have decided that the aquarium is to be emptied into a small, newly dug pond, and they now invite the children to help. Three children immediately start gathering buckets and watering cans, while Claus calls out across the playground, “Come and see what's happening in the aquarium,” and more children appear. Jesper suggests that they find a cart to transport the water to the pond, but Claus says it's better to use more buckets so that all the children who want to can join in. Some children, armed with small fishing nets, look for frogs, snails, and pond creatures, lifting them out of the water and carefully placing them in a tub to be transported to the pond. Other children are more focused on carrying water in buckets and watering cans to the pond. Some children struggle to carry the buckets; as some of the water spills out onto the ground, the weight of the buckets become manageable. More water is spilled. More children join in. Five-year-old Sebastian comes over with six buckets he has collected. “Good work, Sebastian,” says Jesper. “Good work, Jesper,” replies Sebastian. The adults laugh out loud. (Edited field note, October 2022)
The concept of atmosphere underlines how emotions, feelings, and sensations arise in the relations between a subject and the ecological world, but also how such emotions, feelings, and sensations are something more than personal (Anderson, 2009; Mason, 2018; Trigg, 2020). Anderson (2009: 78) describes atmospheres as a “shared ground,” belonging to collective situations even if they may be experienced as personal. In the situation above, emptying the aquarium becomes a shared ground for exploring water and pond animals while working together.
Water, hose, and buckets
Six children, between 1.5 and 2 years of age, are gathered at the playground. The sky is blue and the weather is mild, but the children are all wearing rainsuits. Today, they are to make a mud-kitchen in the corner of the playground, and there is a huge sack of soil placed on a wooden deck. A pedagogue tells the children that “It's okay to make mud here,” and she places buckets and shovels at the grass near the sack of soil. However, the children are engaged in filling two large plastic boxes with water from a hose. The hose moves from hand to hand without a sound. A child sprinkles down the neck of another child as he grabs the hose. None of them seems to notice. The pedagogue digs out some soil from the sack, places it on the ground, and asks the children to come and water it. The children are staying around the boxes, filling water in buckets, shoveling the water. They grab, lift, shovel, and shift objects, and they follow the stream with eyes, hands, and objects. Buckets are filled and emptied, and water puddles form on the ground, which some children attempt to shovel up. (Edited field note, May 2023)
In line with Syarif et al. (2024), who point to the importance of tools and materials in fostering curiosity in early childhood education, and Pacini-Ketchabaw et al. (2016), who underline the ways in which materials and objects relate to experimentation, we have noticed the role of tools and materials in children's curious practices. Curious practices involve using, for instance, spoons to dig; materials like water, sand, soil, mud, sticks, stones, etc.; and containers (cups, buckets) to hold and transport these materials. Tools and materials shape practices of curiosity and encounters with the world, framing collective experiences of exploration or tasks, thus appearing as important participants in atmospheres of curiosity.
During a final seminar during the project, the pedagogue Anna made a presentation about her experiences. She talked about the situation where she suggested the children to catch wind in plastic bags, and about her fascination with the ways in which the bags became tools for other explorative activities. Since then, she often brings bags or containers with her when venturing outside the daycare institution. As multifunctional and open tools, they support a variation of curious practices, often completely unpredictable for adults.
Noticing atmospheres of curiosity
Building on existing academic attention to children's curiosity and embodied experiences in early childhood nature and science education, we suggest that the understanding of curiosity in educational situations is further broadened when seen through the prism of the atmosphere concept. Paying attention to atmospheres in educational situations, we come to notice sensations and practices of curiosity and inquisitiveness, as well as common, embodied, explorative practices arising in encounters between children, adults, place, weather, material, and tools. This approach asks something different from the pedagogue than following the curiosity of the (individual) child. Apart from entering into responsive dialogues with children, a key aspect of pedagogical work with curiosity could be noticing and valuing atmospheres of curiosity arising in educational situations, in dialogue with the material and ecological surroundings.
The atmospheres of curiosity that we noticed in our study are framed by pedagogies that allow place and weather to be important agents in children's engagements with the living world, offer time and space for sensuous and embodied experiences, involve a common ground of shared tasks or attentions, and give children access to simple, open-ended tools and tactile materials. The atmospheres are supported by pedagogical employees who work with pedagogical aims and ambitions but are also willing to let go of (some) control, allowing for movements and spontaneity in relations between children, place, weather, and materials. This pedagogical position, our observations suggest, requires openness in regard to learning objectives and allowing time for presence and slowness. It also requires organizational support, that is, pedagogical employees’ processes of planning and reflecting (Madsen et al., 2023).
The research discussed in this article is based on approaches to educational research that seek to perform critical analysis of educational interventions while also engaging in change-oriented processes in dialogue with research participants. Research rigor within these traditions is based on transparency in methodological descriptions, dialogue with other research work, as well as qualifying discussions with research participants. As described in the section describing the methodological and analytical path to a different conceptualization of curiosity, analytical findings were presented to participants during the research period, in discussions that influenced the direction of further analysis. At the end of the project period, the analytical findings and empirical examples described in this article were presented and discussed in workshop sessions and seminars for project participants and a wider group of early childhood nature and science educators and students. The reflections incited by the presentations suggest, first, that pedagogical employees and educators found the critical reflections on the concept of curiosity and implicit categorizations of children and their families valuable for their educational efforts to ensure inclusion and participation of all children in nature and science education. Second, the descriptions of the characteristics of atmospheres of curiosity and their pedagogical framings, in combination with the presentation of empirical examples, inspired pedagogical employees and educators to look more carefully at existing educational practices and identify situations in which they had experienced atmospheres of curiosity. Thus, in line with studies pointing to the change potential of reflections on unnoticed, invisible pedagogical practices (Ahrenkiel, 2015), the practical value of attention to atmospheres of curiosity and their characteristics lies not so much in creating new pedagogies but, rather, in noticing and further developing existing practices.
Concluding remarks
The findings of our first analysis of data generated in the project suggested that understandings of curiosity as an individual trait linked to family background could result in exclusionary educational practices (Husted et al., 2024). In this article, based on the unfolding of four empirical situations, we have suggested that the concept of atmospheres of curiosity has the potential to inspire more inclusive pedagogical stances. By shifting the focus on children's individual curiosity “competences” to instead giving space and time for their varied and different explorations, and assigning value to common experiences, sensations, and tasks, attention to atmospheres of curiosity could be a step towards more socially inclusive approaches to curiosity in nature and science education in early childhood. Furthermore, by directing pedagogical work towards a stronger valuation and inclusion of the non-human world, attention to the atmospheres of pedagogical situations could be an approach to inclusion in ecological terms, too. As such, by paying more attention to relations with non-human nature, collective practices, common moods and sensations, and the diversity of children's participation and ways of being, educational efforts to create possibilities for atmospheres of curiosity constitute a stronger socially and ecologically inclusive approach to early childhood nature and science education.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
We thank the municipal team Children, Nature and Environment of the Municipality of Copenhagen and the 10 daycare facilities that participated in the project, including children, pedagogical employees, and managers. We also acknowledge Amanda Ray Johnsen, Birke Jessing Friedländer, Edith Steffensen and Liva Petræus, who contributed to the project as student assistants and interns.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Ethical declarations
The Institutional Review Board (IRB) at University College Copenhagen assessed that the ethical reflections in the project were adequate. It was determined that the research was conducted in an ethically sound manner, and that the project was carried out in accordance with current national and international regulations and generally recognized standards for research ethics.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Novo Nordisk Foundation.
