Caring In-Between: Events of Engagement of Preschool Children and Forests

Abstract

This paper draws on process philosophy to imagine “care” as a collective practice of children and the forest in the context of Finnish early childhood education. By locating care in movement rather than an individual, the author challenges the notion of caring subjectivity and employs postqualitative inquiry to conceptually focus on an impersonal production of care. The author shows how care emerges in the between of children and forest in an outdoor learning environment and highlights what it continually produces. She concludes by discussing the need for a conceptual evolution of “care” in the philosophies of environmental and outdoor education.