Research Handbook on Childhoodnature

This handbook provides a compilation of research in Childhoodnature and brings together existing research themes and seminal authors in the field alongside new cutting-edge research authored by world-class researchers drawing on cross-cultural and international research data.

The underlying objectives of the handbook are two-fold:

• Opening up spaces for Childhoodnature researchers;

The use of the new concept ‘Childhoodnature’ reflects the editors’ and authors’ underpinning belief, and the latest innovative concepts in the field, that as children are nature this should be redefined in this integrating concept. The handbook will, therefore, critique and reject an anthropocentric view of nature. As such it will disrupt existing ways of considering children and nature and reject the view that humans are superior to nature.

The work will include a Childhoodnature Companion featuring works by children and young people which will effectively enable children and young people to not only undertake their own research, but also author and represent it alongside this Research Handbook on Childhoodnature. 

• ChildhoodNature Theoretical Perspectives
• ChildhoodNature Research Methodologies
• Cultural, Political and Ethical Perspectives of ChildhoodNature
• ChildhoodNature the Anthropocene & Crisis of Sustainability
• ChildhoodNature Significant Life Experience
• ChildhoodNature Ecological Systems
• ChildhoodNature Animal Relations
• ChildhoodNature Pedagogies & Place
• Ecological Aesthetics & the Learning Environment
• child-framed research

• School of Education, Sustainability Environment and the Arts in Education (SEAE) Research Cluster, Southern Cross University, Gold Coast Campus, Coolangatta, Australia

  Amy Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles

• Department of Education, Faculty of Health, Arts and Design, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia

  Karen Malone

• Department of Education, University of Bath, Bath, UK

  Elisabeth Barratt Hacking

Dr. Amy Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles (formerly Cutter-Mackenzie) is a Professor at Southern Cross University, School of Education, in Sustainability, Environment and Education.  She is the Deputy Dean Research & HDR Training for the School of Education, as well as the Research Leader of the ‘Sustainability, Environment, the Arts in Education’ (SEAE) Research Cluster.

Prof. Karen Malone is in the Department of Education, Faculty of Health, Arts and Design, at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia. She researches in science and environmental education, urban and animal ecologies, and childhood studies with a specific focus on children’s environmental encounters with the mone than human world of damaged urban landscapes. Her current research program is located under the overarching theme of Children in the Anthropocene. Within this program, she has five enmeshed research themes that entwine a series of research interests and activities: Children sensing ecologically; Children’s bodies on damaged landscapes; Children’s multi-species companions; Children’s watery lives and Children’s natural play.

Elisabeth Barratt Hacking is the Deputy Head of the Department of Education at the University of Bath and Director of Studies for the MA Education. Elisabeth is a founding member of the University’s Childhood, Wellbeing and Education Special Interest Group.

Policies and ethics