ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a place-based participatory research project conducted in a primary school near Sydney, Australia. In this project, elementary-school aged children came to develop a strong sense of place attachment, place identity, and environmental knowing. Elementary-school aged children came to develop a strong sense of place attachment, place identity, and environmental knowing. The chapter argues that by allowing children opportunities to engage in place-based encounters with humans and the more-than-human world, children can begin to comprehend and have sensitivities to such concepts as interdependence and sustainability. It includes indigenous, socially critical, and new materialities, are embedded in multiple ecologies of place and knowing. These may well be critical attributes for young people to take on the role of environmental change agents in order to support a sustainable future. The chapter describes children's local environmental knowledge and competence by focusing on children's place-based encounters of their neighbourhood through everyday engagement and a school-based educational research project.
