#323: Writing (Righting) “Should-We” Questions: Tracing Young Children's Ethical Uncertainty and More-than-Human Sensemaking Across an Integrative Unit

This paper explores how young children navigated ethical uncertainty in an integrative unit that involved more-than-human entities such as plants and earthworms. Using sensemaking theory, the study examines children's negotiations of ethical dilemmas during multispecies encounters, analyzing group conversations, instructional materials, and children's work. Findings reveal that students' ideas about "living things" and their ethical responsibilities emerged from shared debates and hands-on experiences. Moments of disagreement, such as whether plants deserve care like animals, exposed both the cognitive and emotional dimensions shaping their understanding of care in the classroom. By focusing on multispecies vulnerability and relationality, the paper critiques Western humanist perspectives. It introduces an "environmental ethics of vulnerability" into elementary science, suggesting that early years classrooms can serve as rehearsal spaces for developing children's ethical and epistemic agency to nurture interspecies care amid growing ecological uncertainty.