In this paper Vygotsky’s notion of perezhivanie (Vygotsky, 1934/1994) has been deployed to research students’ learning during an environmental education excursion called Hoodwinked (Tooth & Renshaw, 2012). The interpretation of perezhivanie is contested, but most scholars accept “an emotional experience in a social situation” as a starting definition (Blunden, 2014; Gonzalez Rey, 2011; Smagorinsky, 2011; Vadeboncoeur & Collie, 2013). Perezhivanie is an emotionally engaging event that is experienced and reflected upon. It is not the external situation or event per se that is crucial but the sense that individuals make of their experience. Renshaw and Tooth (2016) found that environmental education excursions, such as Hoodwinked, were highly emotional and transformative events for many students who reported a new sense of their possible futures and new resolutions about advocating for the environment. To research this type of learning, we describe an analytical method based on visualising the perezhivanie of particular children during the excursion.

Hoodwinked (Tooth & Renshaw, 2012) is an environmental excursion that engages students in a dramatic story through the role of “19^th century bush kids” whose challenge is to stop the illegal smuggling of bird species at a local creek. It is designed to raise students’ awareness of the ecology of the creek and the impact of human agency on local bird species and the natural environment more generally. The excursion begins at the creek where students imagine being “bush kids”, and reflect on the variety of birds that inhabited this place in the 19^th century; then they move into a story-room where the narrative is developed and the challenges they need to overcome as “bush kids” are clarified. The next site within the excursion is a realistic bird smugglers’ camp-site where the students discover clues about the illegal activity of the smugglers.  The final site within the drama is a school-room from the 19^th century where the drama culminates as the students work together to prevent the activity of the smugglers.

Our visualisation method draws upon Vygotsky’s own attempts to graphically represent cathartic experiences during artistic performances(Vygotsky, 1925/1971). Key events in the performance were displayed by Vygotsky chronologically (left to right) and linked by arcs above the line that represent foreshadowing future experiences or arcs below the line that represent remembering events in hindsight. Our adaptation of the visualisation method links students’ experiences at four sites in Hoodwinked (creek, story-room, camp-site, school-room), using arcs (foreshadowing and hindsight) to link students’ reflections on their experiences at each site. Students were interviewed on three occasions (after one week, three weeks and three months) to determine which site was most memorable for them. Photographic evidence of their participation at each site was collated with the interviews, students’ drawing and personal reflections to provide a multifaceted representation of their sense-making and emotional responses. For example, one case-study student, Minnie Stevens (pseudonym), was so absorbed in the events at the school-room that she stole and hid the pretend contract that authorised access for the smugglers to the creek. Her emotionally charged improvisation was spontaneous and revealed to us a likely moment of perezhivanie. Photographs of her face reveal her heightened emotion while interviews after one week and three months revealed that this event in the school-room was something she’d never forget. She reported that, “I will always remember the school-room. I was excited and scared and didn’t know what was going to happen”. The foreshadowing and hindsight arcs denote the contours of her perezhivanie as centred particularly on the school-room and concerned with what she learned there and how she might act differently in the future.

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