Abstract
Aldo Leopold’s (1949/1966) A Sand County Almanac offers its readers a glimpse into the natural history and ecology of the natural communities of his lived experiences. Along with the works of other nature writers, its essays helped to guide and motivate the environmental movement in the mid-twentieth century and confirmed ecology’s place within science. Leopold invites readers to review and expand on their understanding of community to one that is inclusive of all elements – soils, waters, plants, and animals – that comprise our natural world, collectively identified as the land. Leopold extends his thinking of the land and our place within it in his outlining of a land ethic in which he calls for a change in our role as “Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it” (1949/1966, p. 240). The land ethic embodies a respect of all community members and of the inherent relationships between those community members. This chapter grows from Leopold’s notion of the land, and how the land and a land ethic are understood and embraced by elementary school children as we explore how children engage with and think about the land.
This project was funded by a TMU Faculty of Community Services Seed Grant.
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Notes
- 1.
In the literature and in practice, knowledge keepers, scholars, and practitioners use land, Land [e.g., Styres & Zinga, 2013], and Land [e.g., Zinga & Styres, 2012; Styres et al., 2013]. In some cases, these choices may be editorial while others are very much intentional. For example, Zinga and Styres [2012] and Styres et al.’s [2013] use of Land highlights its inclusion of animate and spiritual realms and their complex entanglements. In sharing our research in this chapter, we use Land to respect its inherent interconnections which may or may not explicitly include spirituality.
- 2.
All names of participating people, organizations, and specific places have been changed and faces in photographs have been pixelated to protect the confidentiality of participants. Most children chose their own pseudonyms; for those children who did not, we selected pseudonyms for them. Our names, Susan and Meghan, have not been changed in the text.
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Acknowledgments
This research has been supported by an SRC Seed Grant, Faculty of Community Services, TMU.
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Jagger, S., Hayward, M. (2024). Children’s Embodiment of a Land Ethic. In: Trifonas, P.P., Jagger, S. (eds) Handbook of Curriculum Theory and Research. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82976-6_32-2
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Children’s Embodiment of a Land Ethic- Published:
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82976-6_32-2
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Children’s Embodiment of a Land Ethic- Published:
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82976-6_32-1