ReTurning Learning: exploring childhoodnature through posthumanism ...

• Main Author: Blom, Simone
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: Southern Cross University 2022
• Subjects: Education; Posthuman; Transqualitative; Childhoodnature; Environmental education; First Nations
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.25918/thesis.250; https://researchportal.scu.edu.au/esploro/outputs/doctoral/991013093313202368

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. ...