'Everything has to die one day:' children’s explorations of the meanings of death in human-animal-nature relationships

Abstract

Children’s experiences of death are a potentially vital component of their developing sense of relatedness to non-human others and nature. Environmental education theory and practice would benefit from a broader understanding of how children view death and loss within ecological systems as well as within human–animal–nature relationships, but such research is currently lacking. This paper focuses on children’s own descriptions of the deaths of companion animals – a largely ignored category of non-human others in environmental education – and explores three emergent, ecological themes. These themes indicate that death experiences within the home space are significant in ecological learning.

Keywords:

• ecoliteracy
• children
• animals
• animal death
• environmental education