Children's Environmental Identity Development ― Negotiating Inner and Outer Tensions in Natural World Socialization

Children’s Environmental Identity Development: Negotiating Inner and Outer Tensions in Natural World Socialization draws inspiration from environmental education, education for sustainability, environmental psychology, sociology, and child development to propose a theoretical framework for considering how children’s identity in/with/for nature evolves through formative experiences. The natural world socialization of young children considers not only how the natural environment affects the growth and development of young children but also how children shape and influence natural settings. Such childhood relations with the environment are explicitly linked to familial, sociocultural, geographical, and educational contexts. While the book is theoretical and will be of interest to academics and students, the use of accessible language, vignettes, and figures will make it useful to teachers, policy-makers, parents, and others genuinely concerned with children’s relationships with other humans and the natural world.

Carie Green earned her Ph.D. in education (2011) from the University of Wyoming. She is Associate Professor of People, Place, and Pedagogy in the School of Education at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She studies the sociocultural influences of children’s environmental identity development in diverse contexts.