What’s there, what if, what then, and what can we do? An immersive and embodied experience of environment and place through children’s literature

Abstract

We describe an immersive investigation of children’s contemporary picture books, which examines concepts of environment and place. The authors’ experience occurred through and alongside a community of learners, of preservice teachers and young children, in an urban coastal community, as part of an undergraduate, pre‐service teacher education unit. Participants were led through the experience utilizing techniques informed by immersive art pedagogy, to foreground the in‐between dispositions of their roles as artists, researchers, and teachers (A/r/tography), and their emerging roles as environmentalists (A/r/t‐e‐ography). Our investigation of the relationship between picture books and inquiry into their embodied experiences with the books awakened an awareness of environment and place, taking us from what’s there? to what if? to what then? to what can we do? This reflexive process provides an entry point into the second part of the article, a focused autoethnographic account of how environment and place might be treated pedagogically using Jeannie Baker’s 1991 book, Window.

Keywords:

• environment
• place
• eco‐literacy
• visual literacy
• immersive and embodied pedagogies
• a/r/tography
• autoethnography
• children’s literature

Acknowledgments

We would like to sincerely thank and acknowledge Mira Reisberg for her helpful feedback in the initial conceptualization of this paper. We would also like to thank Jeannie Baker and Walker Books for granting permission to utilize the images from Window.

Notes

1. The location of the Peninsula Campus is Frankston. Frankston is located on the fringes of the greater Melbourne metropolitan. It is situated on the eastern shores of Port Phillip Bay and is considered one of the Melbourne’s more sustainable suburbs. See http://www.frankston.vic.gov.au/index.aspx.

2. For the purpose of this article, we will refer to the initial stage as Phase 1, which only involved the teacher educators and pre‐service teachers. The phase involving the children will be referred to as Phase 2. We initially discuss the Phase 1 process. In Phase 2, though, we primarily focus on the children’s experiences and responses. We do not focus on the pre‐service teachers’ responses.

3. Autoethnography has many interpretations. We see the methodology as primarily interrogating our highly subjective, personal, and reflective experience. We are both the researchers and participants.

4. Selected books were sourced from Monash University’s Picture Book Collection; a Victorian State Primary School library; the authors’ personal collections (compiled as a consequence of their roles as primary school teachers, teacher educators, and parents). The selection of books reflects those that are generally accessible within Australian primary school contexts. A more comprehensive study from other locations is welcomed, so as to extend our understanding of environment and place as gleaned through picture books availability in other locations.

5. The authors facilitated a series of experiences centered on children’s literature and environment/place.

6. Although environmental education was at the core of our approach, we were significantly inspired by a/r/tography. In this instance, our reasoning for the inclusion of the ‐e‐ in a/r/tography was an attempt to contextualize and connect these two dynamic research fields. We acknowledge our playfulness and reimagining in how a/r/tography can enrich or embody environmental education. We equally acknowledge that much more work is needed with respect to theorizing a/r/t‐e‐ography.