“Children and Mother Nature is a groundbreaking volume that centers storytelling as a way of teaching and learning about our relationship with nature. It reminds many of us to revisit the stories, folktales, and proverbs that our elders told and reflect on the powerful and contextual lessons that they offered us about living well and relating to all beings on our planet. The international authors share folk stories in the original languages and text and offer English translations as a demonstration of valuing multiple languages and perspectives in science teaching and learning. Throughout the book the stories are complemented with descriptions of student engagements that include examples of children’s retellings, art and narratives of their lived experiences with the phenomena. This provides useful ideas for educators who wish to enact these stories with students in their own contexts. I was particularly thrilled to read ‘Anancy and Sorrel’ in the original patois (Creole English). It reconnected me to my heritage, my own experiences of making sorrel and was validating to see my mother’s language in a science text. This book provides a much-needed resource in science, environmental education, and children’s literature that disrupts the dominant narrative of the human/nature dualism and offers all of us different ways of knowing, being and relating to our planet. The Indigenous and ecological perspectives offered in this volume allow all of us, children and adults alike, to reimagine different ways of being on the planet and living well with All Our Relations.”
– Jennifer D. Adams, Ph.D., University of Calgary, Canada, Urban Place-based and Environmental Educator and Canada Research Chair of Creativity and STEM
“Rouhollah has done an excellent job at persuading scholars and teachers from different parts of the world to share beautifully delineated portraits of traditional story telling in science classrooms. Here we see a brief but perceptive glimpse of the enormous wealth of indigenous knowledge that is housed in stories from different parts of the world and how this knowledge can be made available to the students. Further, given the fact that many of these stories and the chapters in this book come from parts that were till recently colonized by the West, we can also value this book as a worthy and rare example in science education world in which ‘the Empire writes back.’ That is, in this book we see postcolonial subjects writing back to their erstwhile colonial masters to challenge the traditional scientific discourse that has long been complicit in the colonization of the indigenous people all over the world. As I moved from one chapter to the next, I could hear the different voices from far corners of the earth telling the children and their teachers in the West how we can see reimagine the world in ways that can engender more hope for our collective future. Hearing this mellifluous polyphony rekindled hope in me. I hope this beautiful book does the same for you.”
– Ajay Sharma, Ph.D., The University of Georgia, Author of The Natural World and Science Education in the United States
“These powerful stories reveal what many indigenous people have known all along. Our relations with other-than-human beings can have a profoundly positive impact on our health and out sense of belonging in the in the world.”
– Richard Louv, Author of Last Child in the Woods, The Nature Principle and Vitamin N
“Science is an ever-growing library of stories we tell about our world and its interrelationships. Are stories science? In the grand spirit of Ursula Le Guin, who proudly declared that art gives people the words to know their own experience, this collections of case studies – adults and children reading and drawing together – is a trans-lingual, multi-cultural opens many universes of investigation into environmental pedagogy, children’s understanding of how the physical and social world mutual act upon one another, the origins of knowledge, and the wonders of being human in a post-human world. Eight stories in the original language and in English, along with children’s illustrations of those stories, provoke ideas for teachers and children to try this themselves, with these and other stories and life experiences.”
– Peter Appelbaum, Ph.D., Arcadia University, USA, Author of Children’s Books for Grown-up Teachers: Reading and Writing Curriculum Theory
“This timely collection disrupts Western dominated view of science and provides stories from ‘other’/indigenous perspectives that will help teachers and their students reimagine human relationships with the world, and counter the Western worldview of human dominion over ‘nature.’ It should be essential reading for all science teachers concerned with developing a glocalized perspective in their pedagogy – their students from many cultures will benefit as they will finally feel that their local knowledge is being valued.”
– Annette Gough, Ph.D., RMIT University, Australia, Professor Emerita, Science and Environmental Education
“The power and attraction of children’s literature for me has always been its ability to provide adults and children with an opening to share beautiful and accessible stories, characters and settings while also discussing deeper lessons, morals and explanations. No lesson today is more important than fostering a socioecological worldview that recognizes the increasing influence that humans now play on all aspects of the world around us. The wonderful stories and reflections presented in Children and Mother Nature will provide educators and families with new ideas for conceptualizing and discussing humankind’s place in the world as we navigate the perilous environmental challenges of the Anthropocene Epoch. Aghasaleh and the chapter authors have done us a great service by pulling together stories of human-nature interactions from around the world.”
– Cory Buxton - Oregon State University, USA, Author of The Natural World and Science Education in the United States
“This book provides exciting narratives for engaging students in the environment in powerful ways. It will inspire a new generation of youth focused on ecojustice and environmental decision-making!”
– Mike Mueller, Ph.D., University of Alaska Anchorage, USA, Editor of EcoJustice, Citizen Science and Youth Activism: Situated Tensions for Science Education
“This book, Children and Mother Nature: Storytelling for a Glocalized Environmental Pedagogy, edited by Rouhollah Aghasaleh fulfills a perennial gap in science education research and teaching by exploring linkages between local/indigenous folk stories and environment knowledge that these stories share and preserve. The authors included in this book representing western and non-western cultures and languages have masterfully weaved the popular folk stories of their respective countries, broad sociocultural theories, and children’s connections to culture, science, and the environment to make the case for the value of folk-stories in promoting science education in children’s lives. Any science educator, researcher, and teacher, who is interested in sociocultural and global-local nature of science education, should read this book. This book could be an invaluable resource for science education researchers and teachers whose works are about children’s understanding and engagement with science from transnational perspectives.”
– Bhaskar Upadhyay, Ph.D., University of Minnesota, USA, Author of My Environment
“In our current world, it seems clear that few financiers and corporations have orchestrated myriad living and nonliving things, ‘natural’ and human-generated, and symbolic phenomena into networks that, generally, funnel wealth and wellbeing towards themselves – greatly compromising wellbeing of most humans, other life forms and nonliving environments. A core ideology of this ontology is a kind of ‘selective anthropocentrism’ – exploitation of available resources for elitist gain, including treating ‘nature’ as a bottomless and disconnected mine. This edited book of environmentally-centred stories for children, drawn from experiences in numerous geo-cultural contexts, offers educators and others opportunities to enlighten young people about global diversity and, yet, connectedness that could engender life-long communitarian values and shifts towards greater social and ecological justice.
– J. Lawrence Bencze, Ph.D., OISE, University of Toronto, Canada, Emeritus Associate Professor of Science Education
[…] Through the storytelling, and as look back, I now realize how much wisdom I learned about symbiosis in human relationships and in relationships with nature and its non-human occupants; and the need to treat all, flora and fauna and inanimate objects as co-inhabitants and co-participants with humans than I ever learned from formal schooling. This was why I was so thrilled when Rouhollah asked me to write something about this book. I am particularly gratified that these stories come from marginalized traditional ecological knowledge of indigenous communities, worldwide; a knowledge system that was suppose not to have been legitimized within westernized discourses and a method of teaching and learning that did not emerge from nor perpetuated by westernized paradigm. But, here it is. It is my hope that readers of the stories in this edited book leave after reading these stories, as Iya Alake usually leaves us every night, wondering what if this or that did or did not happen; and do as students in this works did in making efforts to interrogate these stories and make their own meaning from each story and then extended each story further, improving it. I am delighted that these stories generated activities, discussions and thoughts beyond the stories for children from various cultural backgrounds wherever this book is used. It is important that teachers and students from all parts of the world appreciate and embrace the wisdom embodied and espoused in each story and make all children feel welcome in their classrooms through inter/intra/multi-cultural storytelling.
– Femi S. Otulaja, Ph.D., University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
“Rouhollah Aghasaleh has crafted a stunning edited volume, Children and Mother Nature: Storytelling for a Glocalized Environmental Pedagogy (Brill Sense, 2019). He and his contributors have woven together folktales and indigenous stories from different parts of the world – in multiple languages and including samples of children’s artwork and writing – along with deft, pertinent analyses of environmental issues, feminism, and pedagogy. What’s more, the skillful writing absolutely drew me into the universe of each story … This slim, thoughtfully constructed, to-the-point volume, which also includes a useful glossary of terms, is, indeed, an extraordinary accomplishment. I recommend it highly.”
– Nina Asher, Ed.D., University of Minnesota, USA, Postcolonial Feminist Theorist
“This accessible resource is a refreshingly novel and valuable contribution to the urgent project of merging science and science education with different ways of knowing and engaging the world. If education is to engage real twenty-first century problems like extinctions, growing inequalities, and environmental destruction it will have to build connections between story, ethics, culture, spirituality and knowledge. This captivating book highlights ‘glocal examples’ of such connections in culturally diverse ways that are useful for future teachers and educational researchers.”
– Jesse Bazzul, Ph.D., University of Regina, Canada, Science Educator
“As a child, I loved stories where science and nature intersected. I remember reading as story about Marie Curie’s childhood in my 8th grade Hindi book and it has stayed with me. The story started my journey of being explicitly interested in science, pursuing a science major, and a career in science education. The book, Children and Mother Nature by Rouhollah Aghasaleh captures the intersection of science and the natural world beautifully. It mindfully disrupts the dichotomy of science (and science education) and nature. Each chapter opens with a story that represents various cultural and linguistic traditions. What a precious resource for parents, community members, and formal and informal science educators. I highly recommend this book to not only read these stories but to understand how stories could be integrated in science education.”
– Geeta Verma, Ph.D., University of Colorado Denver, USA, Science Educator
“This compilation of global wisdoms is a gift for educators, parents, and anyone interested in the world beyond their front door. Aghasaleh succeeds in presenting perspectives which pull into relief notions of survival, play, harmony with nature, and love. From tricksters to magical spring waters, we are provided insights into local contexts while learning universal messages that have endured for millennia, resisting conquest and colonization. Discussions of application in real school contexts, including student reflections and art, is especially useful to inspire sharing of these stories in broader contexts.”
– Sue Kasun, Ph.D., Georgia State University, USA, Director of the Center for Transnational & Multilingual Education
“As a collection of ‘stories,’ this volume shares the distinction of looking at the past while exploring current issues through a multicultural lens. The reader is encouraged to question, to ‘hear,’ and to take heed the voices which combine to offer an alternative approach to science education pedagogy as well as research. Stories within this volume are rich in ecological information and indicate examples of how this type of instruction could be used in diverse classrooms. The presence of fables and folktales is common practice in the classroom, however the origin of the story is vaguely understood and diverse cultures are often overlooked or misrepresented. Educators will find tales from other cultures that enable them to teach concepts of meaning-making, illustration, and components of writing and literature that are inclusive of the rich diversity that exists in today’s classroom. The personal narratives encourage connections that facilitate an awareness for and appreciation of diversity that allow for education to be approached in ways that emphasize traditional, culturally-specific stories.”
– Stacey Britton, Ph.D., University of West Georgia, USA, Environmental Teacher Educator
“We live in an era where, each day, the future of our planet is becoming increasingly uncertain due to the environmental challenges. There is no doubt that addressing these challenges takes far more than mere technological solutions and, in fact, requires a fundamental shift in the people’s consideration of, and interaction with, the environment. As such, early childhood education plays a vital role by shaping the environmental attitudes of the future generation precisely at the time when children start to interact with nature. Drawing on indigenous stories from around the world, this book is an immensely inspiring source for early childhood teachers broadly, and environmental educators in particular. Educators can use Rouhollah’s book to design and articulate their class materials to prepare a foundation for the future environmental education of students – which, in turn, will affect the decisions made by them in their adulthood.”
– Pooya Azadi, Ph.D., Stanford University
“Rouhollah Aghasaleh has curated a tapestry of folk stories that speak deeply to their own particularity, including their language, dialect, and place of origin. At the very same time, they collectively reveal general and universal harmonies and dissonances between the human and nature. These stories are not only collected and archived from their varied authors, they are also pedagogically transformed by children and students in words, drawings, and colours, making this collection a living testament to something that transcends the human and nature, the adult and child, fiction and non-fiction, place and time. This is a book that should be read by those who recognize the profound value of stories and the fundamental education they contain and offer.”
– Sam Rocha, University of British Columbia, Canada, Author of Folk Phenomenology: Education, Study, and the Human Person
“This volume of stories from rich traditions around the world is both a creative and disruptive (anti-colonial) approach to re-imagining our place(s) within nature. I commend Rouhollah and the authors for taking on such a bold and necessary (re)worlding project! I look forward to integrating this beautifully written collection in science education, sustainability education, and teacher preparation courses.”
– Sara Tolbert, Ph.D., University of Canterbury, New Zealand, Science Educator
“Following Tewa scholar Gregory Cajete, if every science is a story of the world, the stories we tell, where they hail from, how we tell them, and how we carry them forward in these precarious times matter. Aghasaleh’s edited collection Children and Mother Nature invites rich consideration of under-represented stories within formal science education spaces; specifically, traditional, situated, and placed stories from across the globe and in their original languages. Generatively sidestepping over-represented ways-of-knowing-nature, this collection explores much needed lessons for sustainably living with nature and asks the reader to consider what might emerge when children are trusted and invited to story alongside teachers and researchers. This collection offers rich and innovative forms of storying back that are imaginative and hope-full.”
– Marc Higgins, Ph.D., University of Alberta, Canada, Science Educator
“We have been polluting our environment with industrial waste and our scientific endeavours with political ambitions. We desperately need more fresh air for breathing, more clean water for living, but above all, we need children with their pure minds and fresh eyes to raise human consciousness. The stories of this book are what our world needs a lot more of.”
– Majid Fekri, Ph.D., Atmospheric Scientist/Data Scientist
“Children and Mother Nature: Storytelling for a Glocalized Environmental Pedagogy offers a beautiful multilingual experience that invites readers to re/turn a child-like awe of nature, culture, and storytelling. Aghasaleh alongside the other contributing authors remind ALL educators of our inherently close relationship within and responsibility for all forms of life. Each story has the potential to ignite rich conversations for school and non-school settings. In many ways, this book offers a shared entry point for parents, families, children, and teachers to explore nature-culture relationships.”
– Maria F. G. Wallace, Ph.D., Millsaps College, USA, Science Teacher Educator
“Hooray for this excellent educational resource that is ecologically conscious in its acknowledgement and honoring of multicultural perspectives through storytelling! The stories and educational activities provide educators and students with an opportunity to utilize critical thinking skills that will transform a lesson into an interactive activity connecting people across cultures and socioeconomic boundaries with nature and science and should be part of every child’s educational journey!”
– Christina Hylton, The University of Georgia, USA, Environmental Activist and Science Educator