Grabbing a “nutworm”

nature-cultures in an early-childhood education context in the forest

Abstract

Western urban societies have been separating nature from culture, children, education, and life for centuries, having established a dichotomy that persists even in the praxis and research that promote young children's contact with the “natural” world. By dialoguing with critical childhood studies, new materialisms, post-humanisms, and ecological epistemologies, we aim to reconsider “our” ways of being in/with the world beyond these bifurcating traditions and regard children also as nature, as beings entangled in various natures-cultures. Based on ethnographic research with children attending a private outdoor kindergarten in northern Portugal, we analyse and discuss how children interrelate with a forest and how the forest becomes entangled in their play. The engagement of children and more-than-human lives – birds, mushrooms, pine trees, chestnuts – in collective ways of being, provides clues to repositioning educational practices and research in a common, heterogeneous, and interdependent world, valuing a spirit of companionship and kinship.