Children and Mother Nature: Storytelling for a Glocalized Environmental Pedagogy

It is an old, yet relevant, argument that education needs to focus more on real-world issues in students’ lives and communities. Nevertheless, conventional school curricula in many countries create superficial boundaries to separate natural and social worlds. A call for science learning approaches that acknowledge societal standpoints accumulate that human activities are driving environmental and evolutionary change which has lead scholars to investigate how different societies respond to environmental change. Children and Mother Nature is a multilingual volume that represents indigenous knowledges from various ethnic, linguistic, geographical, and national groups of educators and students through storytelling. Authors have identified indigenous stories, fables, and folk tales with a theme of human-nature interaction and facilitated storytelling sessions with groups of students in K–8 grade (5–14 years old) in Turkey, Greece, US, Jamaica, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and Chinese and Korean language speaking communities in the US. Students have discussed and rewritten/retold the stories collaboratively and illustrated their own stories. All student-told stories are presented in the original language along with an English translation. This volume provides authentic materials for teachers to use in their classrooms and could also be of interest to educational, literary, and environmental researchers to conduct comparative and international studies.

Table of Contents:
Foreword  Ajay Sharma Acknowledgements List of Figures Notes on Contributors Introduction  Rouhollah Aghasaleh 1 "Nasreddin Hodja and Walnut Tree": A Turkish Indigenous Story about Human-Nature Interaction  Zeynep Temiz, Guliz Karaarslan Semiz and Simge Yilmaz 2 From So Real to Sorrel: Anancy Storytelling, Jamaican Folk Tales, and the Grand Market  Natalie S. King, Nadine Ebri and Ulett Williams 3 Yu the Great Managed the Flood  Xiaoli Gong, Martina D. Booker, Janiya A. Brown, Gabrielle C. Mann and Alexander M. Gastfield 4 Retelling of the Magic Spring: A Preschool Perspective on Water, Greed, and the Human-Nature Relationship  MinSoo Kim-Bossard, Lauren Madden, Louise Ammentorp and Tabitha Dell¡¯Angelo 5 Representing Cultural Values through Children¡¯s Stories: A Perspective from Saudi Arabia  Amani K. H. Alghamdi and Ibtesam Hussain 6 "Yannis and the Forty Dragons": A Traditional Greek Folktale to Teach Environmental Awareness  Nausica Kapsala, Apostolia Karagianni and Evangelia Mavrikaki 7 "The Theft of the Fire": Fostering Awareness about Indigenous Culture through a Gurani Myth  Philipe Pereira Borba de Araujo and Marco Antonio Margarido Costa 8 Notes for Living on Planet Earth: Science, Self, and Society in Second Grade  Dawnene D. Hassett, Steffenie Williams, Scott Enger, Marilee Cronin and John Porco Glossary of Terms: Historical and Folklore Characters, Natural Phenomena, Geographical Locations, and Natural Resources