Forest schools: moving towards an alternative pedagogical response to the Anthropocene?

ABSTRACT

In this paper I consider whether forest schools provide a space where we could rethink pedagogy in the Anthropocene. I explore the challenges and possibilities of thinking beyond the business-as-usual of human-centric pedagogies drawing upon an ethnographic study of two forest schools, located in the West Midlands of England conducted in 2014–2015. I take a more-than-social approach, which moves beyond narrow essentialist constructions of nature and childhood. I use both Barad’s theory of agential realism, to explore children’s lively intra-actions with more-than-humans at forest school, and Haraway’s concept of worlding, to examine collective world making and remarking. Through this conceptual framing I explore whether forest schools are or could become a space for more-than-social pedagogies in which children might imagine and care for other worlds. If so, how might this kind of other-world imagining and caring gesture towards an alternative pedagogical response to the Anthropocene?

KEYWORDS:

• Anthropocene
• children
• forest school
• pedagogy
• more-than-human
• more-than-social

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the children, forest school practitioners and staff at Woodlands and Meadows Schools for their openness and willingness for me to become part of their forest schools. I would also like to thank Professor Clare Holdsworth for helping me to structure my ideas and to Professor Affrica Taylor for encouraging me think more carefully and deeply about the Anthropocene and the works of Donna Haraway.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by a Keele University Studentship.