Encouraging Finnish early childhood education student teachers to sense their everyday environments through photo-walks

Abstract

This article addresses the persistent challenge in early childhood teacher education of moving beyond nature–human dualisms toward more relational, posthumanistic understandings of the environment. To examine how such thinking can be fostered, the study investigates a photo‑walk assignment completed by 104 Finnish early childhood education student teachers, who produced 55 essays and accompanying photographs reflecting on their immediate surroundings. Using reflexive thematic analysis, the study explores how the student teachers interpreted their photo‑walk experiences, which environmental education themes they drew upon and what conceptual or practical difficulties emerged. The findings show that when student teachers meaningfully engaged with the task, they identified nonhuman traces, material and sensory invitations and metaphoric re‑worldings that decentred human agency. The essays also highlighted inquiry‑based exploration, multispecies relations, sensory and seasonal awareness and the pedagogical potential of everyday urban environments. However, the analysis also revealed conceptual misunderstandings of posthumanism, a tendency toward aestheticised landscape photography and challenges in operationalising relational noticing. The study concludes that photo‑walks can support the development of environmental sensitivity and more‑than‑human awareness, but explicit pedagogical scaffolding is needed. These insights offer practical implications for designing learning activities that strengthen relational, multisensory and place‑based approaches in early childhood education.