by Alexandra Berry, BCcampus Research Fellow, 2024-2025
BCcampus Research Fellow, Alexandra Berry, teaches early childhood education in the School of Education and Childhood Studies at Capilano University. She was recently awarded a SSHRC post-doctoral fellowship at UBC Okanagan in the Faculty of Critical and Creative Studies, where she will study creative pedagogical approaches for young children’s climate dilemmas in the Okanagan.
Last month, she shared some of her research through a conversation featured on the BCcampus blog: Uncommoning Sense: Feeling a Changed Climate in Early Childhood Education. As an additional component to her research, Activating Early Childhood Teacher Education for Sustainability in B.C., she developed a podcast episode about her online course EDUC 472: Sensing a Changed Climate in Early Childhood.
Listen to the full podcast episode:
This research is supported by the BCcampus Research Fellows Program, which provides B.C. post-secondary educators and students with funding to conduct small-scale research on teaching and learning as well as to explore evidence-based teaching practices that focus on student success and learning.
Podcast Excerpt
taste (n.) from the modern French t.t “a small portion given” / “faculty or sense by which the flavour of a thing is discerned” / “aesthetic judgment, of discerning and appreciating”
taste as an active noun / deciding, choosing, changing, arranging
Hello, my name is Alex Berry. I will be your host in this short podcast titled, Tasting climate change in early childhood teacher education. This episode was recorded on Treaty 7 Territory, on the lands of the Blackfoot Confederacy, the Tsuut’ina First Nation, and the Stoney Nakoda. These lands are also home to the Métis Nation of Alberta (Districts 5 and 6).
Today’s episode offers snapshot into an online place-based course called EDUC 472: Sensing a Changed Climate in Early Childhood. This course is committed to re-imagining colonial projections of the five senses in early childhood education, but more on that in a minute.
I’ll offer listeners a quick introduction to this experimental arts-based course, its aims, desires, and pedagogical orientations, and then ill invite you into one of the experiments that students took up in the course: an experiment for tasting climate change.
This episode is accompanied by a bundle of readings, videos, links, and the instructions for the experiment. These materials are intended as companions for this short talk. I invite you to take a look, and perhaps try out the experiment yourself! All you’ll need is a pen and paper, a toaster, and a piece of bread.
Thanks for joining me today. Let’s get into it!