The Friction and Entanglements of Outdoor Education and Forest Pedagogies

Outdoor education is becoming increasingly common in early childhood classrooms. Teachers and early child educators take advantage of the time spent outside with students to explore around the perimeter of school, venture out into local parks and forests and teach the children all about the environment around them. Despite how enriching this experience is for students, there are underlying frictions that come with outdoor education, forest pedagogies and its connection to Indigenous peoples and settler colonialism.  

            According to the Kindergarten Program, connecting students to the natural world increases their physical, emotional, and spiritual health and wellness. Learning outdoors fosters children’s curiosity about the world around them (The Kindergarten Program, 2016). This demonstrates just how important it is for children to get outside, explore, question, wonder, inquire, experiment and enjoy what our environment has to offer. Although outdoor education provides many benefits for children, there is an underlying friction that frames outdoor education as being potentially problematic. Pacini-Ketchabaw (2013) states that we must create friction when looking at forest pedagogies and its connection to outdoor education. We need to acknowledge how Indigenous forest ontologies and epistemologies are never mentioned while engaging in outdoor education with children, and how this absence is linked to the effects of settler colonialism on Indigenous histories (Pacini-Ketchabaw, 2013). The fact that outdoor education is mentioned in the Kindergarten program, but indigenous forest ontologies and epistemologies are left out, confirms Pacini-Ketchabaw’s assertion that settler colonialism is deeply rooted within our education system. It also demonstrates just how far we need to go in acknowledging Indigenous histories and moving towards reconciliation by first including these important histories in our early childhood curriculums.

            Pacini-Ketchabaw discusses forest pedagogies and states that just as we shape forests when we interact within them, they interact with us and shape us as well. She gives the example of a moss-child interaction, where moss makes rocks slippery for little feet and poses a risk of slips and falls, and a little hand gripping the moss to avoid falling while they climb impacts future forests (Pacini-Ketchabaw, 2013). These are the kinds of interactions that create frictions as we freely move and interact within the forest without realizing the impacts we could be causing, and with little regard for the forest pedagogies created by Indigenous peoples. Our interactions with the forest, naming it, exploring it and making it our own, demonstrates the little knowledge and regard we hold for indigenous traditions and interactions within the forest throughout history, which was simply erased through the act of settler colonialism. The history of Indigenous peoples and their close ties to the forests, alongside the history of settlers and their complex entanglements within colonialism, illuminates these frictions and entanglements within outdoor education programs and forest pedagogies. It is this co-shaping of children and forests through outdoor education that encourages us to engage with past and present histories by asking questions, acknowledging problematic practices, and shaping our understandings of Indigenous/settler relationships (Pacini-Ketchabaw, 2013). I believe we must look at how settler colonialism gives us the freedom to roam, explore and learn in forests and outdoor areas with no regard for how and why we’re afforded these freedoms, and engage in discussions with ourselves, our peers and out students about who is impacted because of it.

            I agree with Pacini-Ketchabaw’s conclusion, which is that while engaging in outdoor education, we must have frank discussions with children about forest histories, forest pedagogies, and the friction that is created due to colonialism (Pacini-Ketchabaw, 2013). We need to teach children about interacting with the environment in respectful manner, acknowledge that we must treat our forests with respect and leave it just as we saw it when we entered it, and reflect on the history of the land in which we freely move upon. We must illuminate these complex frictions and histories for our students, have open discussions about these frictions, and teach children to interact within forests and the environment in respectful, honourable, manner.

These settler-Indigenous frictions must be acknowledged in order bring awareness to Canada’s complicated history with Indigenous peoples. With this awareness, our goal is to create a new generation of students who are aware of settler colonialism and its impacts on Indigenous peoples, their traditions and their deep connections to the land. We must acknowledge it consistently within outdoor education programs and work with Indigenous peoples towards true reconciliation, starting with Indigenous education embedded in outdoor education programs that teaches children about their traditions, history and deep, respectful, spiritual interactions with the land.

References

Ontario, Ministry of Education. (2016). The Kindergarten Program, 1-328.

Pacini-Ketchabaw, V. (2013). Frictions in forest pedagogies: Common worlds in settler colonial spaces. Global Studies of Childhood, 3(4), 355-365.