Conference Agenda

In this paper presentation, I present results from a recently completed PhD project in science education, conducted between 2021 and 2026. The project investigates what child–nature relations are produced through early childhood science education (ECSE) in the time of the Anthropocene and how these relations materialise in everyday preschool practice.

This PhD project builds on a long tradition in Swedish early childhood education of supporting children’s connections to nature through everyday encounters with natural environments. This tradition is shared across the Nordic countries. The Nordic educational model places particular emphasis on outdoor practices, ecological awareness and children’s rights to engage with natural spaces. For this reason, the Swedish context provides an important site for studying how child–nature relations are shaped in ECSE. Since many Nordic countries have similar pedagogical approaches and welfare structures, the results are relevant not only for Sweden but also for neighbouring countries with comparable systems. Nordic early childhood education is also frequently discussed in wider European and international conversations about outdoor learning, sustainability education and relational perspectives on human–nature connections. The project therefore contributes to a broader understanding of how ECSE can influence children’s relations with nature in a European context.

The project also builds on research that shows how the increased focus on science education during the past decades has merged with early childhood education in ways that generate both tensions and new possibilities. Previous work has described ECSE as multidimensional because early childhood pedagogy and science education have different histories and aims. Posthuman methodologies further highlight how materials, technologies, bodies and environments take part in producing educational practices. With these perspectives, the project treats child–nature relations as something that is continually enacted in sociomaterial arrangements rather than something that exists beforehand.

The concept of the Anthropocene is used in the project to describe a historical moment that calls for new ways of living and learning in relation to the more-than-human world. In this context, children’s relations to nature become especially important. These relations involve responsibilities and dependencies and influence how coexistence with other beings is shaped and enacted.

Aim and reseacrh questions

The aim of this research project is to explore how child-nature relations are made possible through science education in Swedish preschool practice in the time of the Anthropocene.

Research questions (RQ)

1. How is early childhood science education (ECSE) enacted in Swedish preschool?
2. What child-nature relations does ECSE practice produce?
3. What relations become powerful and marginalized through ECSE?

Theoretical framework

To explore ECSE practice I methodologically approach ECSE through actor-network theory (ANT) (Latour, 2005; Law, 2004; Mol, 2010). By exploring ECSE enactments and the child–nature relations that emerge in practice, this project contributes to an understanding of what becomes influential in education during Anthropocene times. It also adds to knowledge about how early childhood education takes part in shaping and enacting our shared more-than-human futures. From an ANT perspective, education is both socially and materially produced. This means that responsibility does not lie with a single actor, such as a teacher, but is shared across the networks that make up practice. Mol’s work on the ethics of practice (Mol, 2021) underscores that ethical choices are often embedded in everyday routines and are not always possible to make consciously.

Responding meaningfully to the ecological crisis with children and young people is one of the central challenges facing environmental education today. A wide range of contemporary approaches seek to address climate change, biodiversity loss, and related issues by overcoming the perceived anthropocentrism embedded in educational theory and practice. A common thread among these approaches is the call to become more attentive to the nonhumans that populate our shared world. As van Dooren, Kirksey and Münster write, our era requires “detailed practices of attentiveness to the complex ways that we, all of us, become in consequential relationship with [more-than-human] others” (2016, p. 3).

While scholars disagree on how environmental education should be oriented, the importance of attention to nonhuman others is widely acknowledged (e.g., Taylor, 2017; Ylirisku et al., 2024). Researchers argue that “attentiveness towards multispecies worlds” opens new theoretical and practical possibilities (Kervinen et al., 2024) and urge educators to attend to the unfolding entanglements of human and more‑than‑human life (Harwood et al., 2018). Others suggest that rather than focusing exclusively on norms and cultural conceptions of human–animal relations, environmental education should engage with their emotional and embodied dimensions (Schuurman, 2018). Even when only implicitly invoked, attention underpins many contemporary arguments in the field (e.g. Kraftl et al., 2025; Ott, 2023). Attention has become a central concern in environmental education today.

This concern resonates with two key fields of scholarship. First, multispecies studies call for developing “arts of attentiveness” (van Dooren et al., 2016) to the ways human lives are intertwined with other species and with non-living materials, including energy, plastics, and microbes. These arts are understood as tools for countering anthropocentrism and cultivating new ecological and ethical orientations. Second, educational theorists argue that attention lies at the core of what education fundamentally is (Biesta, 2021; Masschelein, 2012). For Biesta (2021), the educational moment occurs when teaching enables a shift in the child’s attention—when they begin to attend differently to the world.

Our contribution is twofold. First, we articulate a specific concept of attention emerging from these scholarly conversations. We draw on Tim Ingold’s notion of attending (2017, 2023), which emphasises perceptual engagement that transforms how one relates to the world, especially to nonhuman beings and processes. Attending involves observing and noticing and extends beyond them to a relational shift in one’s way of perceiving and being.

Second, we explore what attending looks like in concrete educational situations. While the literature in multispecies studies and educational theory is rich conceptually, there is limited discussion of what attending means in practice and how educators might recognise it when it occurs. These questions are crucial for educators who must know what they are inviting children to share and how to recognise children’s engagement. By articulating attending’s concrete expressions, we aim to extend the concept’s usefulness in environmental education, particularly in early childhood settings.

We develop our argument theoretically and empirically. First, we bring together Ingold’s work with multispecies and educational theory. The remainder of the presentation draws on our research project conducted in a Finnish early childhood education and care (ECEC) centre, responding to calls to explore emerging understandings of human–microbe relations in childhood (Millei et al., 2025). Our project facilitated children’s and educators’ engagement with the particularly challenging multispecies relation between humans and microbes. After describing the project design, we present our results and conclusions.

Maintaining the quality of the environment and the stability of ecosystems requires a responsible approach based on science-based decision-making and the active involvement of citizens. Current environmental problems, including global biodiversity loss, highlight the need to develop environmental literacy, which encompasses not only knowledge but also skills, attitudes, and a willingness to act in favour of nature conservation (Hungerford & Volk, 2013). Education is therefore a key tool for developing the competencies that students need to understand complex natural systems and behave responsibly towards the environment.

In the context of environmental education and biodiversity conservation, the ability to observe living organisms and recognise their specific characteristics is essential. Biodiversity refers to the diversity of specific organisms, and understanding this diversity requires the ability to distinguish among organisms (Lindemann-Matthies & Bose, 2008). Distinguishing between species is important not only in terms of biological knowledge but also for the affective development of students, shaping their relationship with nature and strengthening their perception of the value of biological diversity (Kellert, 2002).

A key prerequisite for distinguishing between organism species is the skill of scientific observation, i.e., targeted and systematic observation aimed at identifying significant traits. Observation skills are among the basic components of scientific literacy and enable students to actively construct knowledge through empirical experience, comparison, and categorisation of observed phenomena (Eberbach & Crowley, 2009). Insufficient attention to differences among species can lead to a simplified, homogeneous perception of nature, which is associated with lower sensitivity to biodiversity loss and underestimation of the importance of local species specifics for ecosystem stability (Hooykaas et al., 2019).

For targeted development of educational interventions, it is necessary to know students' initial skill levels to identify specific problems and respond to the educational needs of different groups. Mapping observational skills in the area of species of organisms differentiation is therefore an important step for the effective development of biological and environmental education. The objective of the research was therefore to map the level of students' observational skills. This objective was specified by the following research question: What is the level of skill of Czech lower and upper secondary school students in distinguishing species of organisms through observation?