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Meeting 2: November 18, 2024
Meeting 2: November 18, 2024
Play!
Play!
Our playful prompt was:
Create (or find) an artwork (collage, poem, movement, word cloud, other!) that represents your current projects, questions, wonderings, or thoughts about children, the Anthropocene, and education.
We used Miro as our workspace platform. Here are some of the responses.
Play for PLAi
Play for PLAi
With play as the method and foundation of our group, we dove into describing play to work towards a co-constructed meaning for how we will think about it as a group moving forward. We also looked at two possible playful frameworks that could structure our group's meetings: playful participatory research and playing with ideas.
Playful Participatory Research (PPR)
“in order to promote playful learning for children and older learners, adults need a way to engage in playful learning too” (Mardell et. al, 2023, p.176)
Playing with ideas
"Play is a way of playing with ideas, experimenting with them, testing and developing them, finding out what they can and can’t do." (Sutton-Smith, 1997)
Playing with ideas: Provocation
Playing with ideas: Provocation
We ended our gathering by experimenting with the framework of "playing with ideas" inspired by the article, Should we connect children to nature in the Anthropocene? by Larson et al. (2021). (Link here)
The article asks us to consider whether working toward connecting children to the nature we love is harmful to them given that their nature could disappear, which could provoke feelings of ecological grief and "solastagia."
Some questions to consider:
Larson et al. discuss the idea of connecting children to an idealized version of nature versus the more degraded nature they may encounter. How should educational frameworks address the differences between these two realities in teaching children about the environment?
Can there be value in connecting children to urban, degraded nature, as opposed to pristine wilderness? How might this shift in perspective alter the way children perceive and relate to nature?
How might educators approach the issue of connecting children to nature in ways that are both realistic and beneficial in the context of the Anthropocene? What strategies could they use to help children navigate the emotional complexities of an environment in crisis?
What might shifting perspectives from how nature benefits us to how we are interconnected with nature do for children’s understanding of nature in the Anthropocene?
Some ideas that emerged:
"the extinction of experience"
"the importance of play -- I think back on my experiences of play, and they're all outside"
"play is child-led, adult-supported sometimes by our absence"
"thinking intentionally about [children's] daily environment"
"our community views nature as a resource, rather than as oneness"
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