Today we have a very, very, very special guest on our Blooming Curious podcast.
It is Dr. Claire Warden.
She is an educational consultant who has developed her approach to nature
pedagogy and child led inquiry through working in a variety of settings,
including her own multi award winning nature kindergarten, Auchlone.
She does advisory work and lecturing in further education.
Claire is based in Scotland, but has traveled around the world.
Claire is entrepreneurial leader in the field of nature pedagogy, a prolific
author with her most recent titles being Green Teaching and Beyond the Gate.
Her innovative work in planning with and for children, as well as nature pedagogy
has led the field for over 35 years, which has improved the lives of countless
children and families all over the world.
Her advisory work to many training groups and as a university lecture
is building a legacy of pedagogical skills that place the rights of children
and the rest of the natural world at the very heart of her practice.
So welcome Dr. Claire Warden to Blooming Curious.
It's an honor and a pleasure to have you here.
Well, I'm delighted to be here.
Absolutely delighted.
I'm looking forward to our conversation, Edwina.
Great.
Let's start off For those people who don't know, because
often when I talk about nature pedagogy, they say, what is that?
So perhaps you as the expert in nature pedagogy could tell the listeners
what nature pedagogy actually is.
Sure.
Um, so it's the art of being with nature inside, outside, and beyond.
So, so to unpack that a little bit.
So, really I think it is an art form.
I think pedagogy is an art form.
I think it's, there's an intangibility about the way we work with
children that is almost intuitive.
And it's , about relationship
between ourselves as humans, but also about our relationship with
the rest of the natural world.
Um, and then the idea and concept around inside, outside and beyond
has two meanings, actually.
The most common one is where I talk about location for learning.
So I talk about inside a building.
Um, I talk about outside, which is often a landscape space just on your doorstep.
And then beyond is become known as beyond the gate, which is going out
into a place or an area where there's a sense of wildness, a sense of, um,
disentanglement, a little bit of, of unpredictability, if you like.
Um, and then the second meaning of those two words is that inside is
yourself, who we are, your soul, your beliefs, everything that drives you as
a teacher, a practioner And then outside is your relationship with colleagues.
About how do we create relationships, communities that wrap around children that
are so centered on their needs that they really start to help children flourish.
And then the third aspect of that is beyond, which is all my advocacy work,
which is beyond as a global community.
Meaning that if we work together as a global community of educators, teachers,
um, everybody really, multi professional groups, um, we might make a difference
for both ourselves as humanity, but also for the rest of the natural world.
, that's, really, really powerful.
And I think maybe that beyond is the part that I think a lot
of people struggle with, right?
Because If you just think about the natural world itself, it's that wildness.
And I think now certainly parenting as well as education, there's so much fear
around beyond the gate, the wildness.
So we wrap kids up and we protect them and we don't want them to
experience that or to take risks.
And I guess, schools are also afraid of, you know, beyond the gate.
I mean, , you've got to have so many adults per however many kids,
you've got to get the ratios right, just to go somewhere and leave the
school premises, you know, has forms to fill in and all sorts of things.
So I guess that's something that we really have to work on as a community
to give those, experiences to children.
I think we've become indoor dwellers.
And I think if you become an indoor dweller, it means that
you see security in walls.
It means that you, you dress appropriately for being inside.
And, and so when I'm working with schools and settings, you have got
to change that practice to really shift to be comfortable outside.
And that's why it's a pedagogical approach.
It can't be something that you want to choose the afternoon.
It has to more be something about the way that we change our understandings
of the place of risk in education.
It has to be something around the place of empowerment and agency.
And, and in the book, actually, uh, that I wrote with Doug Farga.
edited, a beautiful book called Beyond the Gate, which is all
about the Australian context with a few colleagues internationally.
One of the things we were really keen in that book to do was to
show and, and uplift, if you like, voices of First Nation peoples.
Um, so Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, um, and to really
acknowledge this, I suppose, history and tradition that many peoples
have had around the world that we really, some of us have lost.
And so, Um, the idea and concept of the beyond the gate as being more dangerous
is a very Western idea, actually, because we've just become indoors and we, we
think, you know, that everything out there is going to hurt us and don't get me
wrong, fully aware of all of the spiders and all the snakes and all your crocodile.
So I've got all of that.
But, um, you know, if we don't start allowing children to, to come to
love the natural world, and if we don't start allowing children to
take risks, whether that's physical risks, which is like being up there
climbing the tree, or even emotional risks about pushing your boundaries
um, or intellectual risk taking, which is all about curiosity.
It's all about problem solving and failure and things like that.
If we don't embrace risk, then I do worry about where we're going
to be as a society in the future.
I
guess without risk you also don't have resilience, right?
Which is a massive, massive thing because a lot of kids lack resilience.
They lack the grit because I think everything's now so fearful, you know,
I think risk taking is, is a huge component of outdoor learning, and
as you say, just being in nature and having those risks is really important.
So I hope that people who listen really rather invite risk, because
it doesn't mean that you're going to go play in the traffic.
It just means it's small amount of managed risks so that you can give
children those little mini experiences so that they can build their schema in
terms of what risk really is and you know, if you fall and you hurt yourself,
oh, well, you know, you just get up, dust yourself off and off you go.
Yeah, totally.
And, you know, we do have an overbias on physical risk here and, you know,
within many education programs around the world, it's, it's the physical
risk taking that, that takes up all our attention, and, but now, as we've
just said, I'm seeing children who are emotionally fearful, who won't
even really engage in problem solving.
They find curiosity really difficult because they're worried about failure.
And if you're curious, it means you might not know the answer.
Um, and so, you know, it's not just going to impact the physicality of children.
It's going to impact everything around their development, I would suggest.
Yes, and really what I'm trying to do is create this awareness of how important
it is for children to be curious.
And I don't think there is a better place for children to be
curious than the natural world.
That is where they are most curious because they love being actually outdoors.
So I was wondering how does And you probably the world's renowned expert in
this, how does fostering curiosity and fascination, because I know you talk
a lot about fascination in children, really contribute, you've touched on it
already a little bit, but how does that contribute to their development and the
learning experiences that they have, particularly outside in the natural world?
How do those two being outside, how does that, how does that influence
their development and their curiosity and their fascination?
I think one of the things that I've come to understand through the research is,
you know, the physical research that, you know, when you're in a setting
and you're being critical and you're really starting to analyze, I think.
The indoor space is, is very much more about adult intent.
I mean, we've got beautiful examples of provocations being set up and,
and they will inspire curiosity, but they have been an adult offering.
Yep.
When you go outside, there's an unpredictability of the natural world.
You can't control when a butterfly is going to appear or
when the wind is going to blow.
And so I think sometimes that unpredictability of the natural world.
is the one thing that it's got above all else.
You know, you can't control when it's going to rain, you know,
all of those different things make it a place of difference.
And I think when you can work on a system like Nature Pedagogy, which links together
inside and outside and hopefully beyond, through your documentation, through
your intentionality, then I think you help children nurture themselves and
that sense of curiosity within them.
I also think that the outside is the place where we encounter other living things.
I mean, we can have in, you know, indoors, you can have a lovely plant and you
might have a tank with some fish in it.
But outside, you know, a beetle that comes around the corner or, you know, you might
see a slug or a snail or those encounters with other living things, I think, are
fairly monumental in children's lives.
And I think they then actually help them switch on that curiosity button.
And then once that, passion is ignited then I think they start to
then transfer that skill from the snail to might be something indoors
about how a tower is and why is it stable and why doesn't it fall over?
But, but if you don't have the understanding of the unknown of the
possibilities of the questioning, then your brain isn't really enveloping
the idea of curiosity , because for some children, sadly, I think the
indoor environment has flattened it.
It's, it's killed what curiosity they're born with because adults, maybe with
the best intention, have taken away some of that agency and empowerment and,
um, really true choice from children.
I think we're better now.
I think the ideas of Nicholson and play affordances and loose parts and, and all
of these other things that are really in people's vocabulary at the moment.
really help.
I've been talking to some other guests that I've had recently, a
lot of them on loose parts and also outdoor learning in terms of outdoor
spaces where children can learn.
So,, that is something that I think is moving in that direction,
but, you know, slowly, slowly, and hopefully we'll make some changes in
some inroads as someone said to me yesterday, it's a grassroots movement.
You've now, you've mentioned how the indoors is really, I guess even though
we're putting out all those beautiful provocations, it's the outdoors that
really holds fascination for children.
Do you think that there's some practical strategies?
Because we're seeing a lot of things, I think it's not just, because
we've also got this homeschooling boom going on as well around the
world, especially over COVID, right?
Do you think you've got some practical strategies or activities that educators
and parents can use to implement curiosity in children in their day
to day goings on and their day to day dealings and their day to day activities?
Yeah, I think that the first thing is to look to yourself and one of the things
if we believe in relationship, then children will seek relationship with
you as the practitioner, the educator.
And so if you model curiosity, I think that's one of the most powerful things.
So, of course, you know, the answer to things, you know, you're older,
you've been on the planet much longer.
But if you can then model that not in a false way, but say, well, I
really don't know how that beetle got its name or I really don't know
you know, why the grass is flowing like that and moving like that.
And, and so, you know, you're modeling your own curiosity.
And sadly, again, for some adults, they, they maybe have missed
that process in their own lives.
So they themselves don't feel, um, curious about the world around them.
So, so I think modeling is the first thing I would say.
The second is, is that whole process of documentation is the noticing of it.
So when, um, I talk a lot about fascinations, that's really what
I'm getting to is that we need to notice those fascinations and they
may not be ones that, that link or identify with with an adult agenda.
So I remember working, um, with my daughter, actually, and when she
was outside playing with a beetle and she loved the beetle, absolutely
adored the beetle and she wanted the beetle to go down her slide
cause it was very important to her.
So she picked up the beetle and put him on the slide and he went all the way down.
Now in my brain, I was like, Oh, not good for the beetle.
Um, I wonder what the beetle's thinking he's going to max down a plastic slide
and wonder feels, you know, so I was saying, Oh, I wonder if that's comfortable
for the beetle, you know, I wonder maybe we should put him under a leaf
now, I think he's had enough of playing, you know, it's all
of those semantics, isn't it?
And then because they have that mimicry gene, it's all about them hearing that in
an environment that embraces curiosity.
I would say that the thing that my daughter Emily taught me when she
was two was that curiosity, a sense of wildness, a sense of fascination
can happen in the smallest of things.
It can, you know, when people say to me, I don't have a big outside area, right?
You know, I don't know, I've got nowhere for children to be fascinated.
I was like, well, you could literally have a planting tray, you know, like
a seed tray and you fill it with a piece of turf and bring that inside.
If you are someone, I will put it in a window box or, you know,
have it in an outside area.
You're talking about a very small amount of grass that then children
can have the time and the freedom to investigate in the way that they want.
And I pretty much guarantee there will be something in that grass, even just
a square foot of grass that will make them curious, that will fascinate them.
But it might be just the fact that the end of a stem of grass is a tube.
And off we go on a line of inquiry about tubes, but it's come from
that initial fascination of the stem of a piece of grass, you know,
so it's about the strategies when people ask me about strategies.
I said, well, you know, some of it is you know, this observation, but
then for me, of course, it's the enrichment through the talking tub.
And the point of my talking tubs is that they, they really stem from
these fascinations that children see.
So let's take the idea of the tube.
All right.
So other people might say, well, I'm going to teach about cylinders.
I'm going to teach about tubes because it's on my, my mathematical curriculum.
And I'm like, well, yeah, but there's an awful lot over here that we could explore
that's more linked to the idea of tubes and the concept of being
cylindrical, um, that stemmed from this child looking at the piece of grass.
So what do you put in the talking tub?
Well, you can put any kind of tubes in there.
it might be photographs of a tunnel that a mole is made or a mouse
or it could be, um, the, the tube that's part of a termite mound and
you've just got photographs of that.
It might be lengths of tubing, flexible and rigid.
So your inquiry line has gone from, ooh, children are interested in tubes, to
all of these different possibilities.
So planning for me is, is important part of the work I do.
So that's for you to think about the abstract nature of a concept.
And that's where it comes down to your brain.
Yeah.
It's not like, Oh, we're all going to make a tube out of toilet roll, it's
okay, what is the concept of a tube?
And what other examples of that can I find in nature that
would really inspire children?
You know, um, and then my own tornado.
Oh, there you go.
See, we've all got such different things.
And, you know, the tornado experience, could see water going down a
toilet, all that kind of stuff.
But, but if we embrace that, and we document that, which is what the
floor books do, if you embrace all of that, then what you're doing is
elevating the children's concepts.
You're giving them a voice and you're allowing the creativity to
be more visible, which, you know, um, I think is a really important
part of the work that we all do.
Yeah.
You know, I am just so happy that you said two things, because I've been
banging on about it, like there's no tomorrow over the last, I don't know how
many blog posts and podcast episodes.
One is that it all starts and ends with us.
And two, the power of observation, because if we aren't curious as you
said, you can't expect kids to be curious.
If that kid, and I have actually seen this happen, comes to you with
a snail on their hand, and you go, yuck, that's disgusting, put it down.
That is it.
It is.
Done.
It's over.
You know, and I've always said it doesn't matter how you feel.
It's not about you, it's about the children and our whole purpose
is to stimulate and nurture that curiosity and fascination in children.
I really feel that as educators, and that includes parents
and that's another thing I keep banging on about you know, the
fact that parents are their child's first educator starts with us.
And I'm so pleased that you said that just to make sure.
Thank you, Claire.
Yep.
No, it's okay.
And I think, you know, it does, you know, there's all sorts of big questions,
aren't there, around how do we support our colleagues to become curious?
And I think, you know, I've done courses now for many years and, and I think that
there's almost, um, an undoing of some of the messages they've been given, you
know, so the ones I've loved have been the joint courses and courses that have
lasted for maybe a week, you know, and it's an indulgent, I know with current
budgets, but, you know, in those, what you do is you start off and people
say to me, well, what's the activity?
And say, well, I don't know what you think the activity is here.
You know, you've got stones or you've got wool or you've got these natural fibers.
What do you think we could do with them?
And there's a real push to give me the activity, tell me what to do.
And I think for sometimes in training, what you then have to do is allow people
to go through that discomfort almost of going, but I don't know what to do.
Okay, well, let's think because my mum used to say boredom is
the stimulus for creativity.
And I think sometimes we worry about giving both ourselves and children
time to be bored, time to get a bit frustrated and, and, and, you know,
unpick what's this knotty problem?
I don't know what to do.
And we give them the answer too quickly.
And so.
I think you're absolutely right.
We as adults need to unpick our own agenda and say, why am I so
bothered by the idea of curiosity?
Why am I so bothered by the fact that I feel it's my job to provide activities
rather than going, actually, it's my job to step back, step in when I'm needed,
but step back and to think then about what I'm seeing and how can I take
their inquiry line further forward?
Um, so I think it's, I think for some people it's almost they have a
growth mindset in their philosophy anyway and in their pedagogy and
that's very easy therefore to embrace inquiry based learning.
Um, and other people don't and, and they struggle a little bit with that
freedom that curiosity demands of us.
I
think as well, where a lot of practitioners, struggle is that
inquiry can be quite chaotic.
And, as an educator, you don't want someone walking in, you've got, you know,
25 kids in all directions and, you know, you're sort of herding cats a little bit.
And I think they feel like, Oh no, this is, it's, it's not a good look, you know?
But for some of us, it's just, yeah, it's okay.
Uh, you know, it doesn't matter.
And you know what all the children are doing and they're
all working at their own things.
And there's a, there's this hum, it's just this beautiful hum that,
that takes place and you know, okay.
They're, they're absolutely engaged, but getting there can be quite chaotic.
I think it's just about trust and being brave and just pushing through that
little bit of pain in the beginning and it, it all comes together beautifully.
As you've said, um, Claire, you touched on One of the most important things,
I think, part of your work, which is really the concept of the whole
talking tubs and floor books really.
And as you said, your talking tubs if you were talking about tubes,
you'd have all those elements in it.
So you've always used talking tubs really as a provocation, right?
So you're, that's your provocation is your talking tub to, to start
off the whole thinking process.
And then of course the floor books really is how you make your learning visible
and how you capture children's curiosity.
Is that my, I'm saying the right thing, right?
Absolutely.
Just to make sure.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, you're, yeah.
There's also
Now people also having, there's a lot of work in that field, which
is amazing as well, is making that learning visible through learning walls.
But I think learning walls and floor books ultimately are one and the same thing,
they're doing the same thing.
Would you agree?
Or would floor books be really much better for those kids because it's
sort of that whole tummy time thing as well and where they can really
document where you can really document their wonderings their fascinations
going forward and use it of course most importantly as a planning tool.
I think it's the difference I mean Lillian Katz in the States.
She did a lot of work around learning walls because what she felt for their
context in America was that something on display would be more effective.
And so the Learning Walls idea is indeed it's about a journey.
You're doing a starting point.
It was, she'd seen some work done by Loris Malaguzzi Reggio Emilia,
and so she'd embraced that but put it into the American context.
And so the Learning Wall indeed shows the journey, shows some of the, that learning.
Often when I've seen Learning Walls, they are adult created display.
Oh yeah, there's a difference.
Making them.
Yeah.
The floor book is about planning with and for children.
So children have a higher level of agency and empowerment.
They're meant to write into the books.
They could cut the photographs out themselves and the adult,
what the adult's doing is really monitoring flow and direction.
They're monitoring things like challenge.
They're monitoring engagement from children.
So they're used almost as an aspect of quality assurance, because there's got
to be a system, if you're going to do an inquiry based approach, which is all
about curiosity, learning, and things like that, then the, the floor book is the
talk and thinking floor book is all about guiding that without overly directing it.
So I've always done the analogy of, of a bit of a river.
And so if you imagine you have a spring at the top.
That's that initial fascination.
And then we, you know, we come down and it's a little bit turbulent in
the first stages of a, of a river.
Streams burbling and there's lots of things.
All children's voices quite fascinated by lots of different things.
And then the flow starts to really emerge and the flow.
Flow is the thing you talked about, which is you go from a sense of,
of, um, lots of different things all happening into this more solid,
smoother line of inquiry, if you like.
And in that big river, then that's the direction you're changing the
direction of the river slightly by the use of the talking tub.
So if I was, for example, to observe that, so we'll take
the analogy of the tubes again.
One of the children became fascinated by building tunnels and they've been
showing it in the block play area.
They've been making tubes out of cardboard.
They've been really fascinated by the speed of the way that the water moves
down the guttering tunnels outside.
You're seeing this repeated fascination.
What I would then do is adjust the contents of the talking tub to
have more stuff in it that will go deeper into the idea of tunnels and
structures and how we could make them of different sizes and things like that.
So the talking tub isn't just used once, it's used
and adapts all the way down that river, and then the boulders in your
big river are you, you're the adult.
I mean, you, you affects the learning process, whether you like it or not.
You're bound to, whether you're a teacher in a primary school or
you're a practitioner in an early years environment, you are there and
your interactions will be adjusting
the learning.
So we meander down this river, yeah, and we get to a point in the
river where there's maybe a dam.
And the dam for me is quite interesting in planning because I often think people plan
for six weeks or they plan to the half or they say, well, I'm planning for a term.
So we have these quite artificial blocks in our learning planning or planning
for learning, um, which I call a dam.
Yeah.
Now, if you're a child with special educational rights, You may only just
have switched on to the concept of tunnels about two weeks before the end of term and
so you're, but you're enthused and you're curious about tunnels now, but if you
think about it as an adult thing, you're about to stop your inquiry around funnels
and tubes and go on to something else.
Well, if you put it in the talking tub, if you put it in the, sorry, in the floor
book, floor books are in your book corner.
They're meant to be read, revisited a lot by children.
That means that if that child with special educational rights comes in
after the holiday and says, you know, I went to to France and I went through
a tunnel in my car and my mum said it was the longest tunnel ever, whatever.
You then take that child back to the original floor book and date it and
say, actually Johnny's come in with it.
So, so in every dam system on a river, there's always the outflow.
There's always these little trickles of water.
That keep on going and that's children who sustain, um, a
fascination for longer than others.
It's for children who have special rights, who just need longer to maybe to get
to the depth that they want to explore.
So, so the difference for me is that the, in summary, really, I suppose,
is that the floor books have this long flow of learning that might
take a year, might be six months, it might be just that it's three weeks.
So they are differing timeframes.
They are held in the place of children, which is on the floor, usually
presented very easily to parents.
They're kept almost as a quality assurance process.
So what I encourage settings to do is to keep the first floor book they did and
keep maybe the one from the third term.
And then as they do it, they can then show anybody coming to visit very easily.
Look, this is our improvement journey.
This is what we've been doing.
And at the back of the floor books, don't forget.
That's where you're getting your curriculum outcomes.
So, you're always tracking back to curriculum and being held accountable to
curriculum, which I think eases teachers and practitioners a little because some
of the very open ended inquiries can take you off in so many different directions.
So, the banks of your river, if you like, are a little bit more defined by your
talking tub, and you have evidence of that that is accountable to a curriculum.
So, it just helps people relax a little bit more.
Now, I just want to touch on one thing there.
I'm just thinking in terms of teachers in classrooms, you know, they're
so accountable to the curriculum.
They're so held accountable to the curriculum the whole time.
And I think a lot of educators are are afraid to diverge from that
because the curriculum now is I don't know about in England and Scotland,
but I guess it's very similar.
It is so overcrowded for children now.
And so teachers, I think are always just thinking, Oh my gosh,
I've got to get through this curriculum and all the content.
How do I fit in the science and the social studies?
How do I, how do I fit all this in?
And I've always thought, well, you know, inquiry inquiry.
You know, Kath Murdoch said that so beautifully, it's not a separate subject,
it's a mindset, it's a stance that we take, but I think a lot of teachers
still need that reassurance that, yes, we can do this, but we can still
meet curriculum outcomes, even though we're going down this floor book and
we're going down this provocation and we're going down this inquiry path.
What would you say to educators to sort of ease their anxiety and stress around that?
I think you're absolutely right.
I mean, inquiry is, is a pedagogical approach to the way
that you work with children.
I think that, you know, you can't say, I'm going to do inquiry on Tuesday afternoon.
It has to be the philosophy of your classroom or the, of your setting.
I think, you know, there's no reason, for example, I'm working
with a group right now and they are looking at mathematics teaching.
And the research says that we can do direct teaching of core
skills in maths, Absolutely.
We can do that and we'll do it fast.
But what we're finding is the retention, the passion, the
understanding of the applied status of the maths has been overlooked
because people are going too fast.
So what we're now doing is saying, okay, you teach the mathematical
concept or any concept in any subject, to be honest with you.
And then what the floor book does is document the application of that.
So say, for example, I don't know, you were looking at measure.
Alright, and a classic one for us was that the children had decided
that, you know, we taught them about the measure, we taught them about
centimetres, half metres, all that.
And then they had to make their own measuring sticks to go out to,
because we were going for a walk and the puddles were on the way, so
we wanted to make puddle measurers.
So that part of it is the bit that I want to document.
Children's understanding of a concept or a skill or a piece of knowledge in context.
And it's only really then we can see whether or not they truly have learnt it.
Now you can't do that all the time because that's when we end up, we run out of time.
So what you do is you, as a teacher in a classroom, you might say,
right, well, my lens this term is going to be on the inquiry and
the child's theories around maths.
or I might be looking at some interesting stuff coming out of science.
So let me have a little look at that.
And so you develop in, in the primary school, you might develop more of a lens
where you're really focusing on an aspect.
So it could be an overt curriculum area, or it could be
the interdisciplinary themes.
It could be something that crosses across the whole of your curriculum, which of
course is in the Australian curriculum.
Um, I mean, it's lovely to see that the EYLF now has actually written
in Talking Thinking For All books.
So I'm very excited to see the work in there.
So there's obviously, people are embracing this idea of inquiry, I
think a little bit more now than, than I've seen, you know, 30 years ago.
They are, but you're also seeing on the other side of the coin, everybody's going,
Oh, but what about explicit instruction?
What about explicit instruction?
So that's a massive thing as well, because if they think that if they're
going to embrace inquiry, they have to lose explicit instruction.
So they're not quite seeing that the two actually dovetail.
Mm hmm.
Absolutely.
And that's the key thing, isn't it?
It's like in the early 70s, there was the whole idea that children
just could float in and they would absorb what they needed to know.
And the researchers actually said, no, that's not true.
So there was a really good piece of work done by Imran Blatchford.
And, um, she looked at the idea of the significant adult, the EPI project
and, and the adults make a difference.
As you've already said, Edwina, you know, the adults are there.
We're not there just to supervise.
Um, we are there to interact, to plan, to talk about, how
we can scaffold that learning.
Making sure there is obviously still time for children initiated to work.
But, um, it's that pedagogical dance.
It's the two things coming together that I think make the difference.
That's really powerful.
And I think , as you've said in the beginning, we as communities, and
even as a school community, from leadership down, I think there has to
be a cultural shift, a cultural shift in, within schools, within communities,
within society, to actually place more of an emphasis on curiosity.
Claire, most people really aren't as lucky as Auchlone to be in a
beautiful outdoor setting, what if they're in an urban environment?
Is it just bringing in that pot plant or is there, more that they can do.
I think, um, I think what you have to do is to look at the, um, the natural world,
I suppose, in an elemental kind of way.
So, if you took the four elements of fire, earth, air, and water and say
to yourself, all right, how are those four elements displayed at Auchlone?
Well, you know, we are lucky we have dappled light from the forest
and we have a stream You have water flowing, you have lots of rain.
So it's very easy in that space.
It can also be very hard because, you know, in February it's
freezing cold and we get wet rain.
Um, so if you take that then and say, okay, what does that look like inside?
Well, the fire, the light becomes the fireplace maybe, or it might be a candle.
Um, it could just be the, the light table that you've got and the water.
Well, that becomes maybe a, you know, I've seen people who've put trickle fountains
in, I've seen other people who've just literally done a beautiful soundscape
around birdsong and water inside.
So.
I think there's huge amounts that we can do.
But again, it comes back to creativity.
It comes back to, um, the idea that it's okay to do that.
Whereas, you know, when I say to people, why can't you put a recorder
device by your bird table and pipe it directly into your playroom?
Why can't you do that?
And they're like, well, 'cause we didn't think we could.
Well, yeah, you can.
Why not?
You know?
So putting sand on the floor, putting, well, there's, there's
huge amounts and I do think.
You know, there's been a big uptake in things like the, you know, a lot
of the Nordic philosophies around Bushkinder and philosophical, that
are ancient first nation thinkings.
And then you've got, you know, even down to shops like Ikea, who are like
always advocating natural materials.
So We've got the idea of this kind of biophilic design, which is what we
see in Reggio Emilia as well, which is these, these very earthy shades and
we use baskets and we bring in stone.
So we've got the aesthetic.
It's then using that environment effectively, which is really what
the nature pedagogy is about.
So you need to do the two things together.
I think the pedagogical belief structure and the beautiful environment.
And when you get those two right.
Then you get a lovely synergy there happening, which I
think is a wonderful thing.
You mentioned, Beyond the Gate, but I also, received this little guy in the
mail Your book, actually it arrived today, I haven't had a chance to read
it, I've read a few little synopsis on line Green Teaching, Nature Pedagogies
for Climate Change and Sustainability.
What was your inspiration for that?
And tell us a little bit about the book.
Sure.
It's actually, um, a lot of it was based around the research from my
doctorate studies, my PhD. And, um, what I was looking at was, was the
theorization, if you like, and the creation of nature pedagogy, um, within
the context of the work I was doing.
And, it, it became very apparent that I aligned very closely with
First Nation theories and ideas.
Um, and one of the things that links them very closely is the idea of
climate change and sustainability.
So, nature kindergartens and forest schools and bush kindies and things
like that are sustainable models because they place the rights of the
natural world and humans, obviously, which is part of the natural world,
in the middle of all of that.
So if you can then, um, sort of take the ideas, I suppose, around that and live
in that way and be in that way, then it means that your carbon footprint is low.
It means that you're really thinking about your purchasing powers.
And so there are quite a lot of graphics in the book that help people see why
nature pedagogy is going to be the way that we're going to need to work if we're
going to have an impact on climate change.
, And sustainability has been on people's agendas a long time, but it's almost
been well, I do a worm farm and, um, you know, I collect the litter and
I recycle that and that's fabulous.
But again, if we embrace a way of being, a way of teaching, a way of
educating that places the rights of nature and humans in the middle of it,
then, then it's going to be good for us and then we'll have a planet to live on.
So the more I started to research and the more I started to write, the more
I thought actually, nature pedagogies, um, are the way forward for us.
And so it's something that every teacher can do, every educator
can do, because it is a ground up.
You said that earlier on in the podcast.
It's like, it's a ground up movement.
And so if we all make little changes to the way we teach, if we all think
about the natural world in the, the work that we're doing with children, then,
then it spreads across into the next generations, so that's, that's what
the book was around, green teaching.
Right.
I think I'll link it all in the show notes for everybody.
Claire, I think just to finish off, is there anything else that you
feel is really important, a real important message to leave with people?
I think to trust in yourself, I think, um, I think we're incredibly talented
and skilled profession, actually, but it's sometimes undervalued,
but that sense of, um, Allowing yourself some freedom to think about
what if, what if I was to do this?
What if this happened?
And allowing that divergent thinking to come into your practice a little bit more.
Um, I think we could allow our own creativity and curiosity to flourish
and that would make us perhaps a happier profession, um, but certainly make it
much more engaging for young children.
I will put everything in the show notes, but would you like to just tell
people where they can get hold of you?
And I know you have on your website, beautiful courses people can sign up
to do, you've still got, , amazing books and loads of resources.
So tell people where they can get hold of you.
Sure the, obviously Google Meister is the one, find me on Google,
just Google my name, but the main website is Mind Stretches Academy.
And on Mind Stretches Academy, there are lots and lots of online courses
about all aspects of practice, but it's, it's core belief structure
really is around nature pedagogy and documenting through floor books.
Dr. Clare Warden, it has been an absolute pleasure having you on the
podcast today, an honor and a privilege.
So thank you very much for being here and for just your inspiration.
And you really are an inspiration, certainly to me, because it was through
you that my whole pedagogy changed and I'm forever grateful for that.
So thank you very much for being on Blooming Curious today.
And I hope everybody listening really has benefited from your absolute awesomeness.
Thank you so much for having me, Edwina.
Let's keep in touch.