Stories for living on a damaged planet: Environmental education in a preschool classroom

Abstract

This article examines children’s encounters with dead and dying bumble bees in their everyday entangled lives. Within the context of an early childhood classroom located in suburban British Columbia, Canada, the article stories situated and emergent bee–child worldings to illustrate possibilities for learning with other species in anthropogenically damaged worlds. I pay attention to some of the ways in which children’s and educators’ practices have shifted away from encountering bees predominantly as objects of scientific knowledge towards more relational, embodied, and affective immersion in the lives and deaths of bumble bees. Situating these practices within current bumble bee vulnerabilities, I consider how children’s and educators’ inquiries might be viewed as pedagogies that matter for learning to live less destructively with others in current times of anthropogenic change.

Keywords

Anthropocene curriculum environmental education pedagogy preschool children

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