"Dapto dreaming" : a place-based environmental education project supporting children to be agents of change

This chapter describes a place-based participatory research project conducted in a primary school near Sydney, Australia. In this project, elementary-school aged children came to develop a strong sense of place attachment, place identity, and environmental knowing. I will argue that by allowing children opportunities to engage in place-based encounters with humans and the more-than-human world, children can begin to comprehend and have sensitivities to such concepts as interdependence and sustainability. These new ways of knowing, including indigenous, socially critical, and new materialities, are embedded in 'multiple ecologies of place and knowing.' These may well be critical attributes for young people to take on the role of environmental change agents in order to support a sustainable future.