This paper presents an overview and findings of an ethnographic research project involving preschool- and elementary-aged children in the United Kingdom and their interactions with the more-than-human elements of the natural world. Ethnography, which generally involves the study of people in their own environment, “was used as a way to follow connections of objects, bodies, practices, animals, plants, mud, smoke, imaginations and ideas across the research sites.” While this report focuses primarily on children's interactions with mud, this theme was not chosen in advance of the research project. This theme emerged as the researcher conducted “go-along” observations at three different sites: two forest schools and a school garden.
The “go-along” research technique as used in this project involved following children (age 3-11) during their outdoor learning sessions at the three different sites. It also involved walking interviews with small groups of children at each of the sites. The interviews were audio-recorded. The observations and interviews were conducted without predefined themes or theories. The data was also analyzed in this way.
Each site was equipped with a “mud kitchen” which included such familiar “kitchen items” as pans, baking trays, kitchen utensils, and food containers. The mud across the sites contained twigs, grass, stones, water, leaves and rotting vegetation. This combination of materials allowed the children to experience mud as “all-at-once solid, flowing, watering, oozing and more.” The children's “intra-actions” with the mud included splattering, smearing, flicking, and mixing it. The concept of “intra-action” is based on the understanding that the more-than-humans have agency in shaping events. An additional idea presented in this paper is that cultural-related discourses also helped to shape events. In this case, discourses relating to both gender and class helped to shape children's experiences with mud and their identities in relation to mud.
Adults played a role in how, when, and where child-mud encounters occurred. Adults not only provided the materials and setting for the mud kitchens, they also established certain mud-related rules and routines. The adults in one site provided wellies (boots) and waterproofs for each child as a “cut” (barrier) between the children and dirt. “Cuts” allow “the Cartesian divide between human/nature to remain intact.” Once mud was constructed as dirt, it tended to override concerns about the disconnection between children and nature. Social constructs about cleanliness also influenced children's engagement with mud. “Staying clean,” for example, tends to be an expectation for girls more so than for boys; and “being clean is often considered to be a mark of social status.”
This research showed that muddy intra-actions shaped children's thoughts, emotions and actions. Cultural discourses relating to dirt and cleanliness also influenced the performance of gendered and class-based identities. While mud play opportunities were designed to strengthen the child-nature connection, discourses the children had already internalized about cleanliness proved to be stronger than the “mud is good” message intended by the forest school.
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