ABSTRACT
In this chapter we report on an early childhood education center research study focussed on valuing children’s voices within a curriculum project approach (Helm & Katz, 2011). The center offers education and care programs for children from birth to 5 years and is located on a university campus. The children regularly visit the local environs where campus maps, flora and fauna offer many opportunities for co-constructed learning. The study aligned with the center’s philosophy promoting child-directed learning, sustainability advocacy and action, outdoor learning and community engagement and was also inspired by the work of Ji and Stuhmcke (2014), reported in the first volume of this publication. As an academic researcher and researcher/practitioner (R/P) team, we envisaged the creation of project artefacts to document children’s learning with a focus on frogs as iconic to a coastal region in New South Wales, Australia (NSW). Theoretically, the research was initially informed by social constructionism and an interpretive paradigm (Crotty, 1998), however a contemporary post-humanist lens was later applied as the children’s learning unfolded (Taylor, 2013). Further, a narrative inquiry methodology invited the telling of a story about children’s learning experiences aligned with the project approach phases (Helm & Katz, 2011). The explicit intent was to hear children’s voices both within and beyond the center and potentially employ artefacts as vehicles for broader environmental advocacy, communication and partnership building with the center community, university and local government. Throughout the project the children explored a multiplicity of interrelationships both human and more-than-human in their natural environs; however, the specific interrelationship between the introduced Gambusia fish and native tadpoles in campus pond ecosystems captured their attention. The children’s investigations promoted process skills such as observation, negotiation and problem-solving, but also their expression of key conceptual understandings about “balance and belonging” through various artefacts and media. As researchers, we were inspired by these key ecological concepts as relevant both locally and globally, and fundamental to 206sustainability. Further studies about outdoor early childhood education programs are shared in Chapters 11 and 12 of this volume.
