ReTurning Learning: exploring childhoodnature through posthumanism

Simone Blom

doi:10.25918/thesis.250

This PhD research aimed to explore early school years teachers’ perceptions of nature and how this informs pedagogy through a posthuman theoretical framework that is informed by, and an entanglement of, three theories: Barad’s (2007) concept of material-discursive practices, a concept borrowed from geography of affective atmospheres and, childhoodnature. In addition, the thinking in this thesis was guided by an ethico-onto-epistemology, a theoretical offering from Barad (2007) which espouses that practices of knowing and being cannot be isolated as they are mutually implicated. Moreover, this theoretical entanglement purposefully disrupts dichotomies and rejects abuse to marginalised others such as children, First Nations peoples, and nonhuman nature. Such disruptions challenge traditional ways of knowing and being where ageist practices may be unintentionally and discretely perpetuated. This may offer opportunities for the reconceptualisation of learning in environmental education and education more broadly. To explore these aims, this research adopted a diffractive ethnographic approach which is situated within a transqualitative inquiry: an emergent research methodology that has emerged from this PhD research. Transqualitative inquiry extends beyond traditional qualitative research that is human-centric, to enable posthuman thinking and non-traditional diffractive ethnographic methods to be practised. The entanglement of data collection and analysis as diffractive data entanglements troubles the perceived distinctions between the two actions. Drawing on ethnographic methods, the study utilised the posthuman concept of diffraction to situate the research in theory. The findings indicate that the way teachers perceive nature does not always inform their pedagogy. Teachers’ relationships ‘with’ nature were demonstrated to exist in myriad ways, from perceptions of nature (denoting separatist thinking), to perceptions as nature (denoting posthuman thinking). However, these perceptions did not translate clearly into practice, but rather demonstrated a complex entanglement of ideas that at times aligned with, but were not explicitly informed by, the Australian Sustainability Cross-Curriculum Priority (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA], 2015b). Through a deep exploration into the intricacies of everyday classroom practices and happenings, this thesis adopts posthuman thinking grounded in quantum theorising to privilege the voice of the teachers and the nonhuman, thus emphasising the importance and significance of micro-enactments that are all, in turn, contributing to the equally grand macro-narrative of the global situation to invite change in environmental education and beyond. In doing so, the response-ability of teachers to their students and the planet, is re-turned.

ReTurning Learning: exploring childhoodnature through posthumanism

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ReTurning Learning: exploring childhoodnature through posthumanism

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