Children and Nature: Psychological, Sociocultural, and Evolutionary Investigations

Portada
Peter H. Kahn, Jr., Stephen R. Kellert
MIT Press, 2002 M05 3 - 370 páginas
For much of human evolution, the natural world was one of the most important contexts of children's maturation. Indeed, the experience of nature was, and still may be, a critical component of human physical, emotional, intellectual, and even moral development. Yet scientific knowledge of the significance of nature during the different stages of childhood is sparse. This book provides scientific investigations and thought-provoking essays on children and nature.

Children and Nature incorporates research from cognitive science, developmental psychology, ecology, education, environmental studies, evolutionary psychology, political science, primatology, psychiatry, and social psychology. The authors examine the evolutionary significance of nature during childhood; the formation of children's conceptions, values, and sympathies toward the natural world; how contact with nature affects children's physical and mental development; and the educational and political consequences of the weakened childhood experience of nature in modern society.

Dentro del libro

Páginas seleccionadas

Contenido

The Primate Relationship with Nature Biophilia as a General Pattern
1
The Ecological World of Children
29
The Development of Folkbiology A Cognitive Science Perspective on Childrens Understanding of the Biological World
65
Childrens Affiliations with Nature Structure Development and the Problem of Environmental Generational Amnesia
93
Experiencing Nature Affective Cognitive and Evaluative Development in Children
117
Animals as Links toward Developing Caring Relationships with the Natural World
153
Animals in Therapeutic Education Guides into the Liminal State
179
Spots of Time Manifold Ways of Being in Nature in Childhood
199
Adolescents and the Natural Environment A Time Out?
220
Adolescents and Ecological Identity Attending to Wild Nature
245
Political Economy and the Ecology of Childhood
265
Eden in a Vacant Lot Special Places Species and Kids in the Neighborhood of Life
291
Contributors
315
Name Index
317
Subject Index
327
Derechos de autor

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Acerca del autor (2002)

Peter H. Kahn, Jr., is a Professor in the Department of Psychology and School of Environmental and Forest Sciences at the University of Washington, author of Technological Nature (MIT Press), and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal Ecopsychology. He is coauthor (Patricial H. Hasbach) of The Rediscovery of the Wild (MIT Press).

Stephen R. Kellert was Tweedy Ordway Professor Emeritus of Social Ecology at Yale University's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. He was the author of a number of books, including Building for Life: Designing and Understanding the Human-Nature Connection, and the coeditor of Children and Nature: Psychological, Sociocultural, and Evolutionary Foundations (MIT Press).

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