Unearthing Forest Pedagogies: Autoethnographic Encounters within Critical Forest Studies

Abstract This article establishes forests as sentient pedagogical communities through four autoethnographic vignettes drawn from parent-child forest school encounters. Rather than presenting forest as co-teacher as a conceptual claim, this work animates these ideas through lived stories in which acorns, fungi, winds and fire participate in teaching alongside children, parents and educators. Grounded in Indigenous epistemologies that recognise land as first teacher, posthumanist notions of intra-action and ecofeminist ethics of care, this study develops Situated Forest Inquiry as a methodology of relational accountability between human and more-than-human worlds. The findings illustrate how forest pedagogies can redefine care, enact species interdependence, nurture multispecies kinship and deepen engagement with Indigenous knowledge, offering educators clear examples of how environmental education might be practiced differently.