Abstract

This paper explores Australian primary 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 posthuman concepts: material-discursive practices (Barad, 2007), affective atmospheres (Ash & Anderson, 2015) and childhoodnature (Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles et al., 2020). This theoretical entanglement purposefully disrupts dichotomies and rejects abuse to marginalised others such as First Nations Peoples, children and nonhuman nature. Such disruptions challenge conventional ways of knowing and being and offer opportunities and possibilities for the reconceptualisation of future learning in environmental education and education more broadly. Moreover, this study adopted a creative methodological approach; a diffractive-ethnographic approach to transqualitative inquiry, that is generative and not reductive, to extend thinking and knowledge in innovative and transformative ways.

Research question

What are Australian primary school classroom teachers’ perceptions of nature and how do they inform pedagogy?

Objectives or purposes

• To investigate teachers’ perceptions of nature and how this informs their pedagogical practice from a posthuman perspective.
• To implement creative and innovative approaches to methodological practices.
• To explore the possibilities for environmental education inclusion in the primary classroom

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework

Doing theory requires being open to the world’s aliveness, allowing oneself to be lured by curiosity, surprise, and wonder. Theories are not mere metaphysical pronouncements on the world from some presumed position of exteriority. Theories are living and breathing reconfigurings of the world. The world theorizes as well as experiments with itself. Figuring, reconfiguring. (Barad, 2012, p.2)

The posthuman theoretical perspective underpinning this research is inspired by the work of quantum physicist and feminist theorist, Karen Barad (2007). As Barad (2012) states in the opening vignette, theories are alive, dynamic and invite people and the world to be involved. Barad puts this to practice in their rich and complex theories; one of which – material-discursive practices (Barad, 2007) – is adopted in the theoretical framework of this study. The other two concepts that inform the overarching posthuman theoretical framework are affective atmospheres (Ash & Anderson, 2015) and childhoodnature (Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles et al., 2020). Together, these three concepts enable future thinking of human/nonhuman relationality, which moves beyond conventional separatist notions and dualistic paradigms of nature/culture, teacher/student, adult/child, black/white.

In line with Sustainable Development Goals (number 4: quality education), this paper is founded on thinking that accepts inclusivity as a natural state despite the tendency of social and cultural systems to perpetuate binary thinking and practice. This framing encourages educators and educational researchers to detach from developmental theories in understanding the child and embrace perspectives that may best inform, challenge and position children and young people for their future lives (Murris, 2016; Taylor et al., 2013). The future scape has never been more uncertain and providing children and young people with authentic opportunities to voice their concerns in messy and non-judgemental ways has never been more critical, or urgent.

Each one of the concepts are theoretically robust each in their own right in disrupting traditional binary-making practices, questioning human exceptionalism, and bringing attention to the mattering of every-thing particularly the agency of human/nonhuman nature, equally so. Together, their conceptual alignment in these matters, provides a fierce theoretical frame to materialise the presentation of the findings as a series of data entanglements.

Methodology To align with the posthuman theory underpinning this paper, a transqualitative methodology has been proposed, utilising a diffractive ethnographic approach. A transqualitative inquiry (TI) as methodology is here proposed to enable the diffraction of traditional humanistic qualitative approaches (such as ethnography) with/in/through posthuman approaches to intra-act and generate ‘new’ and different ways of doing data. TI offers a methodology that accepts these tensions to explore the possibilities when qualitative ethnographic methodologies are pushed through posthuman theoretical thinking. TI promotes creative and innovative research to be undertaken without the limitations of conventional qualitative approaches to research. Diffractive ethnography, as proposed by Gullion (2018), aligns with posthuman thinking in expanding on conventional thought-experiments that silence the material. In a move away from human-centred approaches to research that dismiss the material and nonhuman other as insignificant and not active players in a research setting, diffractive ethnography challenges researchers to think with the nonhuman and be open to exploring the voice and agency of matter. Materiality makes itself known in myriad ways and creates new possibilities for understanding classroom happenings beyond yet including only the human. In further justification of diffractive methodologies, Murris (2020) stresses how this methodology could offer an education revolution since, diffraction helps materialize important new insights for posthuman schooling. It disrupts the idea of humanist schooling that knowledge acquisition is mediated by the more expert and knowledgeable other; schooling as a linear journey from child to the more “fully-human” adult. Importantly, the diffractive teacher can be human, nonhuman or more-than-human, contributing to a reconfiguration of the world in all its materiality – a process of “worlding.” Importantly, this process is always relational, not individual. (p. 21) Here, Murris (2020) decentres the human and enacts the agency of matter including the role of the nonhuman, for example, the role of nonhuman nature in being an educator and teacher for children and students. Methods The research design proposes ethnographic methods through posthuman thinking to arrive at three diffractive ethnographic methods of: i) lesson participations, ii) video-stimulated recall conversations with teachers and iii) visual-journaling. These methods are informed by and deeply rooted in posthuman theory applied to educational contexts to ensure they are robust and create data that is rich, authentic and valid; in ‘new’ and different ways of understanding what these terms mean for research.

Results The findings from this study suggest that teachers’ perceptions of nature come from a human-centric position despite leaning in to some posthuman ideas. It was evident that while teachers thinking aligned with posthuman notions of humans as nature, this was not communicated in practice. Nature is perceived as something external, ‘out-there’ and as a resource: not in a destructive way, but as a place to appreciate and recharge. From this perception, teachers demonstrated education about, for, and in the environment with little to no explicit education with/as nature. In this paper presentation, the creative works of the teacher-researcher collaboration are shared through the diffractive data entanglement findings. The findings provide an interesting and necessary contribution to understanding how teachers’ perceive nature and how this informs their pedagogy to inform environmental education practices, policies, and future research. Scholarly significance of the study The significance of this study crosses three key domains where there are critical gaps in the existing research. Firstly, this study makes a unique contribution to knowledge in environmental education through investigating primary school classroom teachers’ perceptions of nature and how this informs their pedagogy. Secondly, the study introduces transqualitative inquiry as methodology using a diffractive ethnographic approach, that aligns with a conceptually-informed, robust, posthumanist framework proposed for this study. Finally, this research is significant because there is currently limited research that explores primary school classroom teachers’ perceptions of nature using posthuman theory that asserts the human body is nature, and not apart from it (Author, 2020; Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles et al., 2021). There is dire need for research which addresses these current shortfalls; both the field of education and the planet are dependent on it.

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