ABSTRACT
The pedagogy at Bunyaville Environmental Education Centre evolved by listening to children intently as they chatted to each other and to the teachers about their experiences in the forest. The Earthwalk immersion and slow pedagogy instil different attitudes to learning. The sensations of the glass-smooth resin and its intense colour, of reaching up to feel the scratches or bending down and parting reeds to see the frogs provide great stimulus and make the learning process intrinsically rewarding. Like a natural forest system, knowledge is multifaceted and created by a multitude of parts interrelating – child learning from child, teacher from child, child from forest. Bunyaville's location as a forest reserve in the heart of suburban Brisbane enables students to experience slow time in a particularly salient manner. The collective representation is a tangible product that can prompt students to continue the reflection back in the classroom.
