Research project Children’s explorations of their own and other’s life worlds in meetings with more-than-humans
The overall goal of the research project is to contribute to a possible shift in preschool work on ecological sustainability by emphasizing the social and relational aspects of sustainability in children's interactions with other species.
The purpose of the research is to produce knowledge about children's sensory, emotional and physical experiences and ideas in, of and about the life worlds of other species in partnership with the children.
Many preschools around Sweden today work with sustainability issues in teaching. All three dimensions; economic, social and ecological sustainability, are included in the work, but the focus is often on ecological sustainability. This focus is often combined with an exploratory approach where the children's own interests are expected to guide the work. Within this framework, the project aims to explore children's sensory, physical and emotional experiences of life worlds in encounters with other species and people. This will take place in staged, but also in spontaneous, encounters with other species and people. A working hypothesis is that the joint exploration of children's own thoughts and ideas about the life worlds of others can contribute to a shift in sustainability work where the social dimension is allowed to take a greater place in the work with ecological sustainability. By taking children's ideas and thoughts about the sensory, physical and emotional lifeworlds of other species seriously, children's relationships to other species can change and develop. Having the chance to develop knowledge about themselves, their sensory experiences, feelings and relationships to other species and people can lead to a different social and relational understanding of these actors. That they are important and significant in themselves, not for what they contribute and help us humans with.
Project description
To make this visible and produce knowledge about this, the children, together with me and the educators, will explore and experiment with different forms of expression and ways of articulating their thoughts and perceptions about their own, different species' and their peers' lifeworlds. This exploration and experimentation will be documented with video observations, audio recordings, photographs, notes, sketches, drawings and other aesthetic forms of expression. Examples of such expressions and articulations could be drawings where the children depict ants exploring an old log, or a drawing where the children mourn an insect that has been stepped on. It could also be games where the children take on the roles of other species where they express behaviors or feelings that can describe other types of lifeworlds. By characterizing the expressions and articulations as emerging in encounters, the researcher can, together with the children, produce knowledge about what it means to be, or almost be, an ant, a snail, a grain beetle or a child.
Project members
Project managers
Erik Andersson Tahlén
Doktorand
