A Child's Place in Nature : Toward a New Pedagogy for the Anthropocene

Outlining a transformational pedagogical philosophy that seeks to foster strong and meaningful bonds to the natural environment forged in childhood, this book targets some of the central social challenges entailed by planetary climate disturbance. In recent decades, social scientists have been studying and drawing attention to what has been labelled “nature-deficit disorder,” a psychological condition in which the young child is deprived of meaningful contact with the natural environment and suffers a diminution of well-being.Brian Elliott brings together the ideas of love of place (topophilia) and love of living nature (biophilia) to propose a radically transformed approach to pedagogical theory and practice that would counter the widespread nature deficit typically experienced by children in more affluent countries.The need for this transformation is especially pressing in the age of the Anthropocene, in which it is confidently predicted that systematic climatic disturbance will begi