Reimagining the place of nature in edcuation: Photographic provocations for relational becoming

This photo essay advances a “nature relations” approach to climate change education. We reimagine nature’s place in education, here by decentring humans. This approach rejects anthropocentrism (which views humans as exceptional) instead adopting an ecocentric, relational view where human-nonhuman nature is inseparable. This aligns with a new concept “childhoodnature” (Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles et al., 2020), which disrupts understandings of childhood and nature, favouring a more entangled view of the child as nature.A nature relations approach involves becoming relational with ourselves, other humans and nonhumans and the material world (Barratt Hacking & Taylor, 2020). Engendering individual and collective shifts in human behaviour is urgent as we strive to live less destructively. This essay opens up the space for thinking differently about education, focusing on opportunities to promote social and environmental justice. This interdisciplinary essay combines biology, geography, ecology, ocean literacy, critical ecopedagogy, environmental education, school teaching and research expertise. Through the “relational becoming” lens (Barratt Hacking & Taylor, 2020), we present climate change education provocations from research and practice, using eight images (Figures 9–16).Provocations utilise emerging theory-in-practice, drawing on the posthuman concepts of childhoodnature and relational becoming and the growing evidence of effective climate change education (Barratt Hacking et al., 2010; Monroe et al., 2019; Rousell & Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, 2020). The images bridge the gaps between the current article’s theoretical underpinnings and its practical manifestations.