Children’s expressions of world-care through drawing

Background<br/>This presentation focuses on how we can study young children’s lived experiences and understandings through drawing-interviews. Involving and engaging young children in sustainability education in age-appropriate ways is difficult. We study gentle involvement of children and practitioners through the concept and practice of world-care as ethical educational stance (Winther-Lindqvist et al. 2025). In body phenomenology and culture psychology values, lifestyles, and worldviews must be studied and understood as situated in embodied practice including social encounters, like a drawing-interview setting.<br/>Aim of the study<br/>Children’s wellbeing is at risk because necessary societal changes to reduce the global climate crisis, despite growing political attention, are resisted by neoliberal capitalist consumerism and related lifestyles, values, and ideas about ‘the good life’ (The Care Collective, 2021). We therefore study how caring sustainability practices in pedagogical settings can enable practitioners and children to engage in the matter of sustainability in ways that sustain hope and change through world-caring experiences and practice (Verdensomsorg).<br/>Methods/design<br/>We applied an action research design and included drawing activities in group interviews with children enrolled in project institutions. 33 children aged 4-5 years participated in the first interview-round, and 37 children in the second interview-round, 1½ years into the action research interventions.<br/>Results<br/>Children in drawing-interviews engaged in inspiration from drawing implements, exchanging ideas, experiences and emerging figures in their drawings. Their sensory-and-art-based associations formed ideas and stories about their experiences and knowledge about important relationships (i.e. family) and other forms of life (favorite animals and places). Changes during project period shows growing discrete awareness of connectedness between forms of life, our world, and how we as humans act in our world.<br/>Conclusion<br/>Drawing-interviews give insights into young children’s lived experiences, including what matters to them and how it relates to caring domains relevant to early years education for sustainability.