1st Edition
Posthuman research playspaces Climate child imaginaries
Posthuman research playspaces: Climate child imaginaries addresses the need for new forms of climate change education that are responsive to the rapidly changing material conditions of children’s socioecological worlds.
The book provides a comprehensive understanding of how posthumanist concepts and methods can be creatively developed and deployed in collaboration with children and young people. It connects climate change education with posthumanist studies of childhood in the social sciences and environmental humanities. It also offers opportunities for readers to encounter new theoretical and methodological approaches for collaborative art, inquiry, and learning with children. Drawing on three years of participatory research undertaken with 135 children in the Climate Change and Me (CC+Me) project, it takes children’s creative and affective responses to climate change as the starting point for the co-production of knowledge, community engagement, and the transformation of pedagogy and curriculum in schools. Thinking through process philosophy, and in particular, the works of Whitehead and Deleuze, the book develops new concepts and methods of creative inquiry which situate children’s learning, aesthetic production, and theory-building within a more-than-human ecology of experience.
The book presents a series of generative openings and propositions for future research in the field of climate change education, while also offering wide-ranging applications for graduate students and researchers in childhood and youth studies, the environmental arts and humanities, cultural studies of science and technology, educational philosophy, and environmental education.
Biography
David Rousell is Senior Lecturer in Creative Education at RMIT University, Australia, where he co-leads the Creative Agency Research Lab for ecological studies of creativity. His book Immersive Cartography and Post-Qualitative Inquiry was published with Routledge in 2021.
Amy Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles is Professor of Sustainability, Environment and Education at Southern Cross University, Australia. She is the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Education, as well as the Research Leader of the "Sustainability, Environment and the Arts in Education" (SEAE) Research Cluster.
"Posthuman research playspaces is a creative, future facing, and politically engaged work that takes the reader on a journey into a different relationship with our environment. If we want to stop climate change, then how would we need to think? What would we need to do? Taking cues from children, the environment and philosophy, Rousell and Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles offer responses to these questions that carry their reader into play spaces where the materiality of nature is a teacher. This book will be essential reading for those in environmental education, sustainability studies, childhood studies, arts education, and the posthumanities." -- Professor Anna Hickey-Moody, School of Media and Communication, RMIT University, Australia
"Posthuman research playspaces is a unique book that is engaging, challenging and ultimately hopeful in addressing climate change and its implications for children’s lives. The book leaves no stone unturned, calling our attention to issues of colonisation that are intimately entangled with the destruction of planet Earth. Putting posthumanist theories into conversation with children’s art, media, and writing, the authors offer detailed analyses of creative methods which extend children’s capacities to inquire and express insights into climate change. I love this book and imagine all readers concerned with childhood and climate change will love it too." -- Professor Margaret Somerville, School of Education, Western Sydney University, Australia
"For researchers and educators wishing to engage with these and other pressing environmental questions, Posthuman Research Playspaces offers tools, ideas, propositions, and openings. It is particularly useful as an example of how to combine conceptual and artistic work across the dimensions of philosophy, empirical research, educational practice and societal outreach. It presents a well-justified open-ended alternative to the more clear-cut solution-driven approaches within environmental education and pedagogies." -- Riikka Hohti, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland and Tampere University, Tampere, Finland
