This blog documents our ‘Weathering Collaboratory’ research project that we are undertaking with a group of preschool children in Canberra, Australia.
‘Collaboratory’ is a hybrid term bringing together collaboration and laboratory; emphasising an exploration that is shared, experimental and open to new ways of thinking and learning together.
The aim of our research is to notice ways children respond and learn with the environment, specifically weather. We do this through observing children’s interactions with the more-than-human world (for example with wind, sunshine, plants and animals) without explicitly teaching ‘about’ weather patterns or other aspects of our environment.
The purpose of this project is to advance our understanding of children’s relations with the environment in order to better understand the potential in children’s creative responses to climate change and related impacts on the weather. We are working with early childhood educators at the University of Preschool and Child Care Centre to develop new types of weathering pedagogies; ways of learning and teaching that are responsive to the climate change challenges of our times.