KU PROFESSIONAL SERVICES AND LEARNING
Quarterly
KU Children’s Services
MAY 2017
NATURE PEDAGOGY… BEYOND THE CRAZE
BY CLAIRE WARDEN
“Few people in the world have given as much thought
to nature-based education for young children as Claire
Warden. Claire writes as she speaks: with clarity, strength
and humour. Her latest book, Learning with Nature –
Embedding Outdoor Practice, is a meadow of light.”
Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods
T
his article seeks to provide an insight into Nature
Pedagogy (Warden, 2015). Is it just a craze or isolated
pedagogical approach, or much more than that? I believe
it is a deeply rooted way of being with the natural world,
which encompasses what we say, what we do and how
we think about the planet.
Winston Churchill once said, ‘At first we build our
buildings and then the buildings build us.’ In the
developed world, we have established a model which
believes that education happens inside buildings, and we
have set up a series of tools to support and propagate
that belief. In order to bring about a paradigm shift in
thinking, from learning about or in nature, to learning
with nature, we need to create a new range of tools; skills
which support learning with nature, so we can create a
new concept of ‘buildings’ for education that embraces
nature itself. These tools and skills are embedded in the
practice of nature pedagogy.
In an ideal world, all children would have a wide variety
of rich experiences in their childhood, which encompass
the freedom, curiosity and harmony of playing and
learning with nature. Unfortunately, many children do
not experience this and one of the barriers to this is a
combination of a lack of value placed on the natural
IN THIS ISSUE :
world and the limited extent of its integration into play
and learning, whether this be inside, outside in play areas
or beyond into wilder, untamed nature.
When we look around the world, we can see a wide
variety of models of education, which have emerged
from melting pots of culture, climate, community and
often curricula. The uniqueness of these approaches or
models is their very joy and is at the heart of their effect
on children and families. We are not all the same, so
having one model which is perceived as being superior to
others suggests that there is a hierarchy of effectiveness
or quality, and this is clearly not the case.
Nature pedagogy is actually the meshwork (Ingold,
2011) that underpins many models of nature-based
practice and which links their values and principles. Many
of these models are the manifestation of the pedagogical
beliefs which emerge from the underlying meshwork,
each culturally unique, but also shaped and affected by a
whole range of other factors. These educational models
have become grouped together and known by many
different names: beach kindy, bush kindy, nature groups,
forest schools, outdoor play, barnehage, the list goes on.
There are many things that limit our relationship with the
natural world. If, as adults, we are going to make a real
difference for children and families, we need to recognise
our place in the natural world and our connection to it.
We must not overly subdivide nature, but embrace it in its
entirety through nature pedagogy, as a way of being with
nature, wherever you are with children.
NATURE PLAY PEDAGOGY AT KU WOMBARRA PRESCHOOL