Assembled in a forest in the hinterlands of the Gold Coast, Australia, in 2015, 20 scholars gathered for a colloquium on childhood nature. The concept of “childhoodnature” evolved during conversations by Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, Malone, and Barratt Hacking on the intent of the handbook. The concept reflected their own underpinning beliefs, current innovative approaches in the field of childhood and nature, that includeddichtonmous views and the critique and decentering of dominant anthropocentric and of nature and humans. Once the ideas and imaginaries of the concept had been nurtured and then flourished in eight sections a children’s companion amounting to 81 chapters, the International Research Handbook on Childhoodnature came into being.
Introduction
This handbook provides a compilation of research in Childhoodnature and brings together existing research themes and seminal authors in the field alongside new cutting-edge research authored by world-class researchers drawing on cross-cultural and international research data.
The underlying objectives of the handbook are two-fold:
- Opening up spaces for Childhoodnature researchers;
- Consolidating Childhoodnature research into one collection that informs education.
The use of the new concept ‘Childhoodnature’ reflects the editors’ and authors’ underpinning belief, and the latest innovative concepts in the field, that as children are nature this should be redefined in this integrating concept. The handbook will, therefore, critique and reject an anthropocentric view of nature. As such it will disrupt existing ways of considering children and nature and reject the view that humans are superior to nature.
The work will include a Childhoodnature Companion featuring works by children and young people which will effectively enable children and young people to not only undertake their own research, but also author and represent it alongside this Research Handbook on Childhoodnature.
For more information about the handbook, and abstracts for each chapter, click here.