Date of Award
August 2026
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Educational Foundations & Research
First Advisor
Joshua Hunter
Abstract
This autoethnographic study examines what it is like to raise children amid climate change, ecological loss, and uncertainty, with particular attention to how parents navigate children’s encounters with death in the natural world. Drawing on three vignette-based experiences within one family, the study explores how a parent interprets, responds to, and guides children’s meaning-making when they encounter the death of an animal. Findings suggest that parents mediate children’s understandings of death through a dynamic interplay of social modeling, cultural transmission, experiential engagement, and guided reflection. Learning emerges as relational, emotionally mediated, and place-based, grounded in everyday interactions and shaped through parental interpretation and response. While children’s understandings of death appear uneven and non-linear, consistent with developmental literature, this study extends prior research by illustrating how parents experience and navigate these moments as sites of ecological and moral learning. These findings position informal, family-based interactions not only as contexts in which children learn, but as spaces in which parents actively construct, negotiate, and reflect upon care-oriented relationships with the natural world in conditions of ecological uncertainty.
Recommended Citation
Anderson, Lacey, "Learning Through Loss: An Autoethnographic Exploration Of Ecological Ethics In Parent-Child Encounters With Death In Nature" (2026). Theses and Dissertations. 13864.
https://commons.und.edu/theses/13864