Children’s literature as a springboard to place‐based embodied learning

Abstract

Globalization makes living in the world more complex. Many children live as social cyborgs attached to the digital spaces of the virtual play worlds of television, video and computer games rather than connected to their own local places. The impact of this change may well be that children lack acquaintance with their local places and may never develop the ecological literacy or the positive attitudes toward place that is so crucial to its sustainability. This paper presents an autoethnographic study of a third grade class engaged in reading picture story books that featured place‐based settings in partnership with embodied learning textually and visually through art, photography, poetry, story writing and environmental journals of class field experiences along their local river valley. Combining place‐based education with social constructivist pedagogy fostered places for learning for children to create a knowing that they, too, can take action for places where they live throughout their lives.

Keywords:

• children’s literature
• place‐based pedagogy
• social constructivism
• illustrations

Notes

1. Cyborg refers to a rejection of the rigid boundaries that divides ‘human’ from ‘animal’ and ‘human’ from ‘machine’. Cyborg theory thus asserts that technology merely comprises material extensions of the human body as in the work of Donna Haraway.

2. In this paper, landscape is used for images and illustrations as interpreted through book illustrations or other visual representation. In contrast, place represents environment as a specific reality.

3. Autoethnography is a form of personal narrative that explores the researcher/writer’s experience of life. The overarching goal of autoethnographic writing is to bring about an understanding of oneself and one’s culture through the detour of other, as well as the inverse; understanding others through the increased awareness of self (Ellis and Bochner 1996).

4. Photovoice promotes critical dialogue about important issues through group discussion of photographs. This relates to Freire’s principals of collective consciousness.

5. Once important as a fur‐trading route, the river basin provides hydro‐electric power and contains Canada’s largest irrigation district.

6. The habitat variety includes riverbanks and channels, oxbow wetlands, boulder‐strewn slopes, cliffs, slump blocs, fluvial terraces, permanent wetland basins and seeps, riparian forests and scrublands.

7. Aboriginal refers to the Indigenous peoples who were the original inhabitants of Canada.

8. Language experience stories are collaborative writings that are about children’s own shared experiences. They become the reading stories for the class based upon the children’s own language, thoughts and experiences.

9. Bakhtin (1986) calls these moments addressivity, which is the act of turning to someone to share ideas or perceptions.

10. Traditionally, in the local Cree culture there are six distinct seasons that being spring, summer, fall, freeze‐up, winter and break‐up.