STE/ECS Joint Symposium: Participatory Climate Justice Education with Young Children

A Joint Symposium hosted by Social Transformations and Education and Early Childhood Studies Academic Groups

Participatory Climate Justice Education with Young Children
Dr Fikile Nxumalo (University of Toronto)

Wednesday, 15 March 2023, 4-5pm, KLD372 or Zoom

Set within the context of a rural community in eSwatini, this paper responds to the marginalization of Global South childhoods in climate change education research. In this research, a group of young children in an elementary school, were invited to visually and orally story their perspectives on the impacts of climate change before and during walks in their community with teachers and families, and in response to participation in a school garden project. I discuss children’s ecological caring, curiosities, and complex sense-making of place. The findings also illustrate the ways in which young children enact relationality and reciprocity in sharing knowledge about environmental precarity. I discuss the significance of this ongoing work in relation to contributions to knowledge on how interdisciplinary climate justice education can foreground the creative activisms of children from marginalized communities.

Dr Fikile Nxumalo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching & Learning at the University of Toronto where she is also affiliated faculty in the School of the Environment and the School of Cities. Her work seeks to make conceptual, methodological, curricular and pedagogical contributions in disrupting colonial erasures, anti-Blackness and human-centeredness in environmental education with and for young children.