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Eco-aesthetics and childhoodnature: cartographies of nature play in early childhood education and care
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Eco-aesthetics and childhoodnature: cartographies of nature play in early childhood education and care

Alexandra Lasczik, Amy Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, Marie-Laurence Paquette, Maia Osborn, Karen Malone and Linda Knight
Children's geographies, Vol.First online
08/09/2025
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Eco-aesthetics and childhoodnatureView
Published (Version of record)CC BY-NC-ND V4.0 Open

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Abstract

nature play early childhood education and care chidhoodnature children's photography participatory research with children early childhood artmaking
This paper explores the agentic artmaking of young children, specifically their photographic making and associated stories, created through a project focused on nature play in early childhood education and care settings. Engaging a participatory, cartographic methodology, the rich and multifaceted data enabled us (the research team, the educators, the children) to expand current theoretical frames through a focus on the posthuman elements of nature play and the attendant concept of childhoodnature. The posthuman elements shift the focus of nature play pedagogies and curriculum design to consider a relational conceptualisation of ‘nature’ where the child is re-origined as childhoodnature. Importantly, in this project, the children are not positioned as objects under study but rather engage as researchers by inquiring, capturing and creating data alongside the educators in their settings and at home. The study enacts agential cuts in its analysis, but also importantly in the presentation and performance of this paper by including the agentic assemblages of children’s voices through stories and images as foregrounded texts of eco-aesthetics, childhoodnature and nature play

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