Nestling into the World: The Importance of Place and Mutuality in the Early Years

Abstract

Introduction. Small children can have meaningful encounters with wildlife—typical might be: Daisy looks up at her dad to see how he reacts as she watches the worm wriggle on the surface of the garden soil where they have just been digging up carrots for a snack later. She reaches out to touch it and cover it with the damp earth, showing no sign of disgust or fear; her hands already mucky from ‘helping’ in the garden. It’s not her first encounter with other creatures sharing her space and already she has picked up on some the ecological needs of these creatures from observing her parents’ behaviour. However, as Huggins and Evans note in the Introduction to this book, for many children in the western developed world, wildlife encounters, even of this lowly worm variety, are increasingly rare. In this chapter we will consider what advantages reintroducing children to nature might have and what might be the role of place attachment in developing a sustainable approach towards the environment and its other inhabitants. We firstly look at concepts of place and sustainability in relation to young children’s responses and understanding of their world. We then consider whether developmental ideas of the relationship of children to the natural environment are helpful in supporting sustainable attitudes to develop through childhood. To help theorise how place and children’s attitudes and behaviours might intersect and support each other in coming to know their place in the world, we draw on concepts of bioregionality (McGinnis, 1999; Traina & Darley-Hill, 1995) and of cultural density (Waite, 2013, 2015), before suggesting how these might impact on appropriate pedagogical practices that take proper account of place. We conclude this chapter with some implications and suggestions for early childhood educators wishing to provide quality early childhood education and care for sustainability