Abstract

This article explores the relations between nation, nature and childhood in five early childhood education curricula in the Nordic, post-socialist and settler-colonial states with the focus on the role education plays in the face of the climate crisis. The authors identify three interconnecting themes in which nation, nature and childhood are entangled in these curricula: 1) national nature as an object of learning; 2) nature and home/birth land and Country; and 3) stewardship for national nature. Exploring these themes from the perspective of alternative pedagogies developed to address the child–nature relations during the Anthropocene, the authors argue that these notions in the curricula are no longer tenable. They call for new ways of conceptualising nation, nature and child relations with attentiveness to the Earth as the living ecosystem sustaining life.

RAS ID

78301

Document Type

Journal Article

Date of Publication

1-1-2025

School

Centre for People, Place and Planet

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Identifier

Lucy Hopkins: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0392-5186

Comments

Millei, Z., Gawlicz, K., Hopkins, L., Andersen, C. E., & Ekman Ladru, D. (2025). Nation, nature and childhood in five curricula: Towards earthly education. Critical Studies in Education. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2025.2467939

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Link to publisher version (DOI)

10.1080/17508487.2025.2467939