Abstract: Change demands systematic and critical interrogation of ′dearly held truths′. This paper will contend that experiential education devoid of epistemological and ontological pluralism will be vacant and ineffective. Our research suggests that multiple ways of knowing drawn from diverse sociocultural and ecological contexts contributes to conservation values which ultimately must inform effective sustainability practices. Using interviews with fifth and sixth grade students (N= 84) from two rural schools in upstate New York and photodocumentation by these children, we illustrate that connectivity to habitat is central to a sense of place and conservation values. These students, when describing science and engineering in their community, i llustrate a complex connectivity with their environment. Their sense of being emerges from their engagement with their environment revealing an understanding of complex, diverse, and co-existing relationships to their habitat. This suggests that the starting point for experiential education should be situated and valued in the idea of oikos. If children get it, why don′t we?
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↑ http://www.jsedimensions.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Karim-AlyJSE-Oikos_of_Children_2013_05_13_RevisedPDFReady.pdf