Challenging the adult centricity in learning on biodiversity: giving children a voice through a naturalistic explorations toolkit

Literature on biodiversity education shows that children are less involved in research compared to secondary students, as biodiversity seems to be an area in which they cannot significantly contribute. When involved, it is about didactical rather than exploratory experiences. Children should be involved in asking/answering questions meaningful to them and should be allowed to attribute personal meanings to experiences (Samuelsson, Park, 2017). If adults become learning facilitators and co-researchers, they allow children to freely explore (Kernan, 2014), exercise their agency and express their voices, being decision-makers and transformative learners. Results from a research implemented by an interdisciplinary team of educational scientists and biologist from the University of Milano-Bicocca and National Biodiversity Future Centre – Italy is here presented. The process of designing and implementing the Biodiversity Education and Awareness Toolkit (B.E.A.T.), based on naturalistic exploration is described here. Exploration (Guerra, 2023) is meant as a methodology that gives children the opportunity to take the lead and challenges a specialised notion of biodiversity. Proposals and tools for observation, collection, cataloguing and documentation were tested in the open-air site Vivaio Bicocca, with children aged 3-11. We observed that explorations enable children to play an active role in the hypotheses formulation and knowledge construction, starting with questions meaningful to them. Children act as primary agents, as they are encouraged to autonomously solve problems and shape experiences by negotiating meanings with the context. Children’s naturalistic inquiry seems to reposition them as learning experiences experts, no longer subordinate to adults, valuing their perspectives.