Digital technology and environmental pedagogies in tertiary outdoor education: linking digital spaces to more-than-human places

ABSTRACT

Digital technologies are receiving increased attention in outdoor and environmental education (OEE). Historically, debates on digital technology in these fields have tended to focus on how technology might hinder authentic relationships with the outdoors or how it might be used instrumentally to meet educational aims or support pedagogy. More recent postdigital perspectives understand digital technology as something that is deeply embedded, entangled, throughout society and by extension the daily life of OEE participants. The idea that we are entangled with technology is congruent with the emerging theories of new materialism; theories that are increasingly influencing OEE research and pedagogy. In this paper, we argue that new materialism is a useful way to conceptualise the entangled nature of digital technology in OEE. We show some ways we have tried to embrace technology as entangled in our OEE practice, drawing upon theoretical insights and practice-based examples from tertiary outdoor education contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Posthumanism in education
• new materialism
• postdigital education
• digital pedagogies
• digital technology

Introduction

In this paper, we explore waysof understanding the use of digital technology in environmental pedagogies in outdoor education drawing upon some new materialist theoretical perspectives. We start with discussions around the role of digital technology in outdoor and environmental education (OEE) and how the theoretical terrain of new materialism helps to conceptualise ways digital technology performs pedagogically, linking to emerging postdigital discussions. We dive straight into new materialist discussions and ask you to bear with our approach as we introduce the ideas that have been generative and influential for us. What follows later are two practice-based examples of utilising digital technology within our work as tertiary educators.

To start, as researchers working with new materialist theoretical orientations, we are not outside of any phenomenon but always and already implicated in the co-extension of the world and what we might be researching. In other words, as Taylor and Ivinson (2013) note, ‘we have no bird’s-eye position from which to look back or down at our world, we have to take seriously our own messy, implicated, connected, embodied involvement in knowledge production’ (p. 668). Thus, we present our ideas in a way that we feel is congruent with a new materialist ontology, using the terms ‘lines’, and ‘knots’ to portray the interweaving and emergent perspectives we offer.

The use of the concepts ‘lines’ and ‘knots’ is borrowed from Ingold’s (2011, 2015, 2016) writing with Deleuzo-Guattarian thought in anthropology. Ingold (2015) uses the concept of lines to evoke life and its socio-material relations: ‘every living being is a line or, better, a bundle of lines’ (p. 3). As part of this, he understands knowledge creation as one of material engagement with the world. He uses the formation, movement and tangling of lines as way of understanding life and living in an immanent ontological situation—a process ontology without insides and outsides. These ideas have been put to work in OEE by Clarke and Mcphie (2014) to challenge binaried thinking (e.g. a perceived nature/culture divide), demonstrating that an ontology of becoming can offer a different way to conceptualise the world. Embracing a similar ontology, Jukes, Clarke and Mcphie (2022b) embody an immanent ontology, evoking ways that life is lived along lines, involving dynamic coexistence. Prins and Wattchow (2020) have also put some Ingoldian conceptions of enskilment and wayfinding to work in considering the way learners learn in OEE. In different ways, these authors have shown the generative potential of Ingold’s work for reconceiving elements of OEE.

In this paper, we also pick up some of Ingold’s ideas, using the term ‘line’ to denote our engagement with theoretical ideas that shape how we engage with and understand the world. We use the term ‘knot¹’ to denote where our understandings of theorical ideas and our OEE practice become entangled². Thus, our paper attempts to embody a format where the discursive and material are in a reciprocal affecting relationship (Feely, 2016). As Ingold (2021a) writes, ‘the scholar’s line is in among them, at least for a while, until it wanders off elsewhere, looking for other lines, issuing from other knots, to tangle with’ (p. 165). We use these terms in this discussion of our practice and hope our ideas act as lines for others to follow and make sense of new knots of OEE practice.

Line one: the role of digital technology in OEE

We see there is a growing interest in the theorising and use of digital technology in OEE literature. Within the literature, arguments for and against technology outdoors have been debated (e.g. Cuthbertson et al., 2004), with topics such as appropriate digital technology use a common conversation in everyday OEE practice. Central to some arguments, is the point that technology can interfere and interrupt authentic outdoor experiences and have a detrimental effect on the power of these experiences. Hills and Thomas (2020) provide a breakdown of these arguments in their paper on the integration of technology in outdoor and experiential learning. They describe how digital technology can be a distraction for learners as well as a barrier to direct experience with the natural world (Cuthbertson et al., 2004).

However, Jukes, Stewart and Morse (2023)—also see Jukes (in press)—question what counts as technology, arguing that various technologies have always been utilised within OEE practice to help shape learning. Drawing upon Ingold (2016), they note that etymologically the word technology held connotations of human skill, craftsmanship and the way something was put to work, suggesting an active engagement with the world. We find such a definition of technology useful for OEE, as it forefronts the active relational correspondence that comes with technology (whether we choose to pay attention to this or not). Which is to say, what a technology can do is just as important (if not more important) than what it ‘is’. For Jukes et al. (2023), they offer canoeing as one example of a technology often utilised in OEE, with such practices partially shaping the orientations and embodied interactions that students have with their environments³. Using this broad active view of technology, they argue that all technologies in outdoor programs shape the possible embodied experiences, events and learning orientations in innumerable ways. In this sense, applying some new materialist insights, it can be said that technologies act and always already influence the way students learn and engage with places (their environments) in OEE. Such a view sees that it is not active human students utilising technologies as inert tools, rather it acknowledges things (like a mobile phone) as actors in their own right, having a capacity to do something more when conjoined in technological action with a person. To put it simply, how someone uses technology shapes what technology does, just as technology (as a thing) shapes how it is used (e.g. a paint brush enables particular strokes while the painter enables the brush to produce art … and, these days, this might be done digitally through an iPad).

Van Kraalingen (2022), in looking to avoid moral conclusions on the right or wrong use of digital mobile technology in outdoor education, advocates for acknowledging and understanding the mediating role of various technologies in outdoor learning contexts, and how they engage users. Drawing upon postphenomenlogical theory, she argues that digital and mobile technology use still produces an embodied experience with the world. Drawing upon Malpas (2012), she highlights that handheld mobile technologies can become an extension of the self for the user. Thus, if we take a technology users view, the technology both demands and focuses attention in particular ways. This raises interesting questions for outdoor education practice. For example, how does paddling a canoe for the first-time demand attention? Or using binoculars and a new smart phone app to identify bird’s species? Or setting up a tarp as a group? Or checking the weather report on the smart phone app to see if it is going to rain? What do such actions demand? How does this shape orientations for students? Educationally, what are educators trying to achieve? What we are suggesting is that many technologies (not just digital) co-shape ‘direct experience’ with the world (raising the question if anything can be labelled direct experience), and from such a perspective it would be arbitrary to separate and demonise digital technologies when we already deploy many other technologies as part of our pedagogical enactments in OEE programs. The important question that remains for practitioners is to ask what a technology does and why we are choosing to use it.

Other recent discussion on digital technology use in outdoor education and outdoor learning have taken a postdigital perspective (Reed, 2022) that rejects the dualism of technology as enabler or inhibitor of (so called) authentic experience outdoors. Postdigital perspectives view all digital activity as socially and materially embedded in (and entangled through) rich and diverse contexts of peoples lives (Fawns, 2019, Jandrić et al. 2019, Knox, 2019). As Knox (2019) highlights, postdigital perspectives recognise ways that digital technology already exists through ‘social practices and economic and political systems’ (p. 358). Which is to say that digital technology is not ‘other’ or separate from everyday life, but (to varying degrees in differing global contexts) pervasive. Writing on technology in education, and informed by socio-materialism and posthumanism, Fawns (2022) argues for seeing pedagogy and digital technology via an ‘entangled model’ (p. 9). In their view, the individual actor or entity is replaced for a holistic view of entangled elements (Fawns, 2022). This relational and holistic view of technology integration sees technology, pedagogy and situation as non-hierarchical and mutually shaping. Fawns (2022) writes that ‘technologies and methods are always emergent assemblages of material, social and digital activity’ (p. 13). In other words, technology is not simply something we reject or use, but is understood as part of an already present entanglement.

Reed’s (2022) discussion on the way that postdigital thinking can offer nuanced ways to take the arguments for technology use in outdoor education beyond dualisms is helpful for seeing the contemporary technological landscape. His conceptual work argues for a postdigital perspective in outdoor education where we are entangled in a sociotechnical architecture. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) poststructuralist concept of an ‘assemblage’ —a non a priori and relational way of understanding combined entities—he asks to think how ‘postdigital assemblages may interact with the benefits of OEE [outdoor and environmental education] such as connection to place and personal growth and development’ (Reed, 2022, p. 5). In a sense, in this paper, we follow Reed by considering what new possibilities can emerge for OEE practice when we embed creative technological usage in OEE practice.

What we take from this brief look at some of the existing literature on the topic is that technology is always already shaping our engagements, orientations and embodied relations in OEE. Technology (not as a thing but a doing) might be seen as an active converting or diverting of attention, through specific material engagements with the world. This is worth exploring in specific ways, through specific practices (rather than taking a moral view from above stating technology is good or bad). Furthermore, postdigital perspectives are opening new possibilities for how we understand technology use in educational settings. We also notice a gap in the existing literature concerning practices of utilising digital technologies in tertiary OEE. Hence, later discussions grapple with some of our own theoretically entangled digital practices in tertiary OEE. But now, in line two, we will look at new materialist theory and how it can further provoke us to think differently about digital pedagogies.

Line two: new materialist theoretical perspectives

In this second line, we will first offer a brief insight into some new materialist theoretical perspectives. Secondly, we link new materialism to the idea of the posthuman (highlighting the technologically embedded and connected nature of contemporary life). Lastly, we will explore recent new materialist and posthumanist research within OEE and how this literature can also offer something to discussions about digital technology in OEE. This line provides a theoretical entryway for the two ‘knots’ that explore our practice-based discussions.

New materialism: a brief insight

New materialism has grown into and through various disciplinary and trans-disciplinary fields, including education (e.g. Ringrose, Warfield & Zarabadi, 2020) and environmental education (e.g. Clarke & McPhie, 2020) with some OEE research (e.g. N. Gough, 2016; Jukes, 2020; Lynch & Mannion, 2021; Mannion, 2020; Mcphie & Clarke, 2015; Mikaels & Asfeldt, 2017; Riley, 2020) drawing upon the theory. In an influential text on new materialisms, Coole and Frost (2010) highlight the ‘ineluctably material world’ (p. 1) that humans inhabit, explaining that humans often take materiality for granted (both in everyday life and in the history of philosophy). Coole and Frost advocate for the foregrounding of matter to account for the conditions of the twenty-first century and our inherent coexistence. Whilst involving a plurality of ideas and practices that give attention to matter and material processes, some general premises of new materialism include:

• A re-consideration of dualistic and hierarchical models of thinking

In new materialisms, dualisms such as humans—nature, nature—culture, nature—technology, mind—body, matter—meaning are rethought or explored to see how they emerge (van der Tuin, 2018). Hence, new materialisms can re-evaluate hierarchical relationships such as anthropocentrism, colonial perspectives and the separation and categorisation of things. Such re-evaluation involves troubling binaries and considering relationships as co-productive and mutually constitutive (Barad, 2007).

• A consideration of how matter matters (the agency of matter/how matter acts or makes a difference)

New materialists turn their attention to matter, relationships and how they matter (make a difference). Bennett (2010), for example, explores the idea of ‘thing power’ and distributed agency, where matter has the capacity to act and agency emerges through configurations of human and non-human material forces (such as technology). Such a view is post-anthropocentric, as it sees the actions and activities of multiple actants (human or otherwise) as playing a part in processes of materialisation. We might see the products of such processes as assemblages (drawing upon Deleuze & Guattari, 1987)—these involve material formations with multiple actors (not all human) influencing events.

The intent of bringing such theoretical lines into this conversation is to further explore how such ideas can help us see our field and our practices differently. And specifically for this essay and this special issue, how such theoretical perspectives can help inform new insights into the use of digital technologies in OEE. Thus, drawing upon some premises from new materialism that we have highlighted above, this paper considers some of the agentic capacities of digital technology (what they can do) for enabling and co-producing new practices in OEE. We explore possibilities for embedded technological practices that engage learners with places in different ways. However, before entering this discussion, we will briefly emphasise the idea of the posthuman, before using this figure in later discussions.

The posthuman

The essential humanist self as an autonomous and contained entity has been questioned by posthumanists (Gough & Gough, 2017). Haraway’s (1985) figuration of cyborgs broke down boundaries between animals, humans and machines, helping move beyond nature/culture dichotomies and leading to increased acknowledgment of human’s inherent co-existence. These movements contributed to birthing the figure of the posthuman:

Whether it is pacing the heartbeat, dispensing medication, catching the news on a podcast, elaborating an internet-based community, finding directions via the web or gps, or sending family love via wireless communications, digital technologies have become a part of our lives and of who we are. It is not merely the case that more people are becoming something akin to Donna Haraway’s cyborg (a fusion of human and technology). More radically, as N. Katherine Hayles argues, our saturation with networked and programmable media shunts us out of the realm of the human and into the realm of the post-human. (Coole & Frost, 2010, p. 17)

In short, posthumanism is partly about questioning who counts as human and what it means to be human in contemporary society (Braidotti, 2013). Braidotti (2019) uses the theoretical figure of the posthuman as a:

navigational tool that enables us to survey the material and discursive manifestations of the mutations that are engendered by advanced technological developments (am I a robot?), climate change (will I survive?), and capitalism (can I afford this?) … it is a working hypothesis about the kind of subjects we are becoming. (p. 2)

Which is to say, the figure of the posthuman and posthumanism helps us consider and re-consider the conditions of the present in critical yet creative ways.

The new materialist and posthumanist theoretical orientations and figurations mentioned above are increasingly trickling into educational (and OEE) research and theorising. We use this idea of the posthuman in our thinking to reconsider our embodied and embedded existence, which includes life that is constantly technologically entangled. By acknowledging this, we break free of pre-conceptions such as a bounded individual self, where humans hold agency in one sided (inequitable) power relations, to a world of relational co-existence and mutual imbrication. Such ontological considerations can have far reaching implications, but for us in this paper, we use them to see what it might do for the way we conceptualise engagement with places through technological means in OEE.

New materialism in outdoor environmental education

In OEE practice and research, place-responsive approaches have been identified as important (Mannion & Lynch, 2016, Stewart, 2020, Wattchow & Brown, 2011). The re-vitalisation of materialism, through new materialism, is informing alternatives to a human centric view of place in outdoor and environmental education (Duhn, 2012, Jukes & Reeves, 2020, Jukes, in press, Jukes, Stewart & Morse, 2019, Mannion & Lynch, 2016, Somerville, 2017)—what can be called a more-than-human⁴ vision of place, where place is not only constituted by humans. For example, drawing on Deleuzo-Guattarian concepts like assemblages, we can understand more-than-human places as vibrant worlds with a multiplicity of relations that coalesce temporarily, having particular capacities that produce affects. Affects, in Deleuzo-Guattarian thought, are more than just emotions, they can be understood as blocs of sensation that can create changes in a body (not just a human). By understanding the human as decentred through the concept of an assemblage, and not completely separate from relations with other entities, we are challenging anthropocentric views of place. For example, if assemblages are constituted by relations and affects, then places and more-than-human worlds are seen as something we are always and forever in relation with. Malins (2004) explains how the concept of an assemblage makes us focus on relations over discrete entities and actions over explanations:

The body conceived of as a machinic assemblage becomes a body that is multiple. Its function or meaning no longer depends on an interior truth or identity, but on the particular assemblages it forms with other bodies … a body should, ultimately, be valued for what it can do (rather than what it essentially ‘is’), and that assemblages should be assessed in relation to their enabling, or blocking, of a body’s potential to become other. (p. 84)

These relational ways of understanding humans, places and the material world are useful in contemporary OEE because they encourage us to see how we might undertake research when we cannot be separated from the material world. As a result, researching with materiality becomes necessary. A similar argument can be made for pedagogical orientations within OEE. Rather than a dichotomous positioning of humans and nature, a relational (materialist) understanding sees humans as part of more-than-human worlds, where relationships are co-productive and mutually constitutive (Jukes & Reeves, 2020). Such ontological positions have implications for how we consider the role of digital technology in OEE.

The potential role of digital technology in tertiary OEE

Next, we share two examples from our tertiary education practice of using digital technology and new materialist orientations. We see these examples of entangled theory and practice as ‘knots’. In the formation of ‘knots’, lines of theory are weaved together with practice. Moving beyond dualisms, the knots portray the entanglements of theorypractice and the technology. Through sharing these knots, we suggest possibilities for practice, and how new materialist theory can aid critical and creative orientations.

Knot 1 – Affordances of technology: Jonny’s practice of digital wayfaring

In this knot, I share an educational activity devised to encourage tertiary level OEE students to critically engage with place and human exceptionalism through a video-making task. It is called digital wayfaring after Ingold’s (2011) anthropological writing on knowledge making with the world through our material engagement and movement through it; ‘wayfaring’ (p. 148). As Prins and Wattchow (2020) explain, wayfaring (also called wayfinding) ‘is best described as an experiential and narrative way of moving through a landscape as one continues to learn it,’ adding ‘it is an approach to travel that involves moving within a landscape, rather than the Western view of navigating between specific locations’ (p. 88). The digital wayfaring activity embraces this mentality, asking students to attune with and story a particular environment, whilst recording with their smartphone. As Prins and Wattchow further state:

To learn how to wayfind is to learn about a landscape intimately. It involves taking careful note of one’s surroundings. It is a process of ever-increasing familiarity. Consequently, the learner slowly acquires knowledge and skill, which includes local history, geology, weather conditions, physical features, cultural rules, social happenings and so on. (p. 89)

Drawing upon these ideas, the digital wayfaring facilitates engagement with more-than-human worlds, partly in situ and partly through the smart phones capacity to record video and sound.

Ingold (2011, 2016) contrasts modern knowledge (developed through institutional and state apparatus) with local knowledge; developed from ongoing, material interactions with places. With these views, I understood learners’ knowledge creation as something that develops through a reciprocal relationship with the more-than-human aspects of places. Learners then can be thought of as wayfarers, who know about the world through their movement through it. The Digital Wayfaring task was designed to be transdisciplinary and to encourage students to consider their developing relationship with the more-than-human through the creation of a video.

The digital wayfaring activity is described in depth in Lynch (2023), but I explain it briefly here (also see Table 1). Following an introductory discussion around elements of place and posthumanist thought, the students walked through a particular environment and were given a one-hour challenge to create a video with their mobile smartphone. Students were urged to allow events to emerge, attuning attention towards the more-than-human aspects of this place (the non-human rhythms of weather, rock, animal, plant etc.). Students were also encouraged to link these more-than-human aspects back to anthropogenic impacts and influences, underscoring the ever-present ontological entanglement of human and more-than-human worlds. As Snaza et al. (2016) argue, new materialist thought helps to put humans back into the web of life and is a key aim of the digital wayfaring task.

Table 1. The digital wayfaring activity briefing sheet.

The Digital Wayfaring Activity Working in pairs or three’s, make a short video (min 20 secs and max 1 min) about how places might be pedagogical? Bring together the concepts of wayfaring AND the posthumanist aspects of place you have noticed. Your video needs to: 1. Involve the views/opinions of everyone. 2. Include the more-than-human features of the place. 3. Share some aspects of how this place might be harnessed for learning.

The learners responded to this task in very different ways. Some created a silent video of walking on a gravel riverbed, letting the video portray the place without any dialogue or interpretation. Another pair of learners filmed themselves having a discussion about how the place could be pedagogical. Thinking with new materialist concepts, where agency is distributed, we can appreciate how the material agencies played a role in the co-production of knowledge in this digital wayfaring task. What was striking was the open ended and creative nature of the videos the learners made. It was interpreted and done in very different ways. In some videos, the material features were audio-visually highlighted; in others, matter and more-than-human worlds were more of a transcendent ‘topic’ to be discussed. The digital wayfaring activity provided ways for technology to become an interface with the world and entangled as part of place-responsive practice.

From my doctoral study—I found that ‘More-than-human pedagogies are in part derived from educators’ ongoing attunement to socio-material, human, and more-than-human practises and processes found in places’ (Lynch, 2018, p. 176). These findings relate to the posthumanist ways of teaching Braidotti (2019) acknowledges as a collaborative process. She argues that collaborative and non-hierarchical teaching allows other entities (human, non-human, technological etc) to ‘intervene as heterogenous forces that connect the educational practice to the wider world’ (2019, p. 142). This is potentially how we see these findings as being useful—that they map out ways we might understand how the more-than-human could intervene in the educational encounters and connect to the wider world. Technology offers us ways to do this that are responsive in-the-moment but also in ways that could go on to affect others if the videos get shared online. The never-ending relational and connecting nature of the internet means that if we were to share the digital wayfaring videos, they have potential to shape and affect education and learning into the future as they get watched.

We might understand the educational potential around posting such videos online through the work of Eaton (2016), who theorises with new materialisms in research with social media and identity-subjectification. He argues that social media spaces are boundaryless and can be thought of as intra-acting (Barad, 2007) with other media networks, onwardly becoming in a chaotic, emergent and unfolding way. From Eaton (2016) we can see that the possible use of such videos is emergent and always ongoing. This emergent and open nature of video-making pedagogy is something we as outdoor and environmental educators could better understand. With educators and technology an assembling component in OEE, we should remember that video-making has educational potential in the moment they are created but also beyond that. Any videos made could then go on to affect relations or someone’s understanding at any time in the future. I argue that the sharing of such digital wayfaring videos is potentially as affecting as the making of them.

A further entanglement in this knot is co-author Scott’s work deploying a similar process as a research practice (Jukes, Stewart & Morse, 2022a). Scott recorded video of various events during river journeys with tertiary OEE students. He later iteratively rewatched and edited the videos as part of his research into the way the more-than-human shaped learning possibilities. Drawing upon posthumanist ways of thinking, he conducted more-than-human audio-visual analysis into the various agencies and entanglements with the more-than-human. Each time he watched and edited the videos he noticed new things, with the theory providing a lens for thinking beyond the human and humanist conceptions of education. Through this process, the videos helped him read (and re-read) the landscape in less anthropocentric ways. We think that such practices could be deployed as part of digital wayfaring activities.

In summary, this knot poses some possibilities for video-making in OEE, using new materialism as a conceptual tool:

• Video-making, used creatively, can allow educators to work with the emergent and unfolding educational potential of places—it can be another tool to harness in place-responsive practice. Attunements to the more-than-human in places are still necessary.

• Video-making creates an audio-visual and affective product. The affects these videos produce can impact learners as they are made and through any onward use or sharing of them. As educators, we should consider how we harness the affective potential for education in both of these processes.

Knot two: Scott’s practice of aiding place-knowledge through mobile mapping applications

Van Kraalingen (2021), in her systematised review into the use of mobile technology in outdoor education, explains that ‘to avoid uncritical implementation of mobile technology … educators need to better evaluate what underlying messages the use of equipment will convey to the participants and what the implications are for the learning process’ (p. 9). In short, she highlights that educators need to be intentional with their use of mobile technologies in their practice. Reiterating what we mentioned earlier in this paper, the key here is what a technology does, how it is put to work and performs, rather than what it is. Van Kraalingen’s review shows that digital or mobile technologies have been little explored in tertiary outdoor education settings. In this section, I will highlight my work with undergraduate OEE students utilising mobile technology in ways that align with place-responsive pedagogies and intended learning outcomes in emergent ways.

Broadly speaking, understanding place-responsive approaches is a key intended learning outcome within the tertiary outdoor education programs I have worked. The turn to place-responsive approaches is evident in the outdoor education literature over the last 20 years and has since been made a threshold concept for tertiary outdoor education in Australia (Thomas et al., 2019). In my practice, drawing upon Wattchow and Brown’s (2011) notion of ‘apprenticing ourselves to outdoor places’, I have enacted pedagogical strategies that aim to enhance place-responsive learning. But getting to know places can happen in multiple ways (such as experiential/embodied knowledge, studying ecology/geography/history (Wattchow & Brown, 2011) and learning more-than-human stories/histories through creative methods (Jukes & Reeves, 2020)). Importantly, as N. Gough (2008) highlights, places are not inherently pedagogical—they become pedagogical via the ways that we engage with them, by the ways they are ‘envisioned, named, traversed and transformed’ (p. 72). Furthermore, as Lynch and Mannion (2021) highlight, it also takes time and practice for educators to learn to attune to places and their more-than-human elements. With the increased accessibility to and adaptability of mobile technologies, I have sought ways to bring them into my practice with tertiary students to enhance their place-specific learning.

In the tertiary OEE programs I have worked, we aim to return multiple times to the same location. Sometimes this involves reconnaissance visits before peer-teaching, near-peer teaching or work integrated learning placements later in the program. The purpose of reconnaissance trips is to experience and attune to the place before leading and teaching there and is an element of practice I actively promote with students. This helps develop place-specific knowledge and understanding of the dynamic environment for teaching, along with learning spatial/geographical elements for logistics (e.g. campsites, evacuation routes etc.). Also, following Brookes (2015, Brookes, 2018), I see place-specific knowledge of the environment as crucially important for safety and fatality prevention.

To enhance the value of our reconnaissance trips, I utilise mapping applications on smart phones to record place-specific material details. Students download digital versions of their hard copy maps (which they also take) through an app called Avenza. The mapping application enables them to drop pins at various sites and on various features (see Figure 1, image on the left), where we can add notes, stories and photos. This practice is emergent, unfolding throughout the trip and coincides with interpreting or evaluating different features for teaching, safety or practical planning. Through this practice, students grow their own place specific knowledge and link digital space to more-than-human places. As Morton (2016) asserts, ‘place doesn’t stay still’ and ‘nearness does not mean obviousness’ (p. 11), thus our practices involve making places intelligible in multiple forms (whilst never becoming fully known of knowable). I encourage the students to be creative, with the empirical recordings on the app later used for the development of teaching and educational program plans. The app and the teaching plans are used when students return, helping them collaboratively teach with the place and its more-than-human features, whilst also referring to them for logistical and safety elements specific to the location.

Figure 1. Examples of using mapping apps as part of developing place-responsive practice.

In Figure 1, there are three images depicting the use of the mapping app. The left image involves a screen shot from within the app. Clicking on the pins in the app will reveal images, notes, teaching activity ideas, stories, past experiences and other recorded information. The app also allows for easy navigation back to these points. The middle image shows a student recording information regarding the dried-up wetland for teaching floodplain river ecology. The far-right image includes a student photographing a possible scar tree for recording in their app and developing lessons. This feature may provide an opening for conversations around traditional owner heritage (Yorta Yorta heritage in this case), histories and the (ongoing) impacts of colonisation. The reconnaissance trips involve reading the landscape to explore the socio-ecological stories of these places and develop pedagogical strategies (for further discussions on this practice, see Stewart, Jukes, Mikaels & Mangelsdorf, 2021; Jukes et al., 2022a; Jukes, in press).

The use of mobile technology in this example is intentional and used as part of pre-service educators’ apprenticeship to these places. The technology is co-constituting the educational assemblage, along with the physical landscape, fellow students, guiding staff, reading material, intended learning outcomes etc. All these things constitute an assemblage which helps orient learners to become place-responsive outdoor educators. The mobile technology is not the focus, but it acts, both purposefully and creatively in the development of practices that align with intended learning outcomes in emergent non-deterministic ways—it is a tool for making connections.

Infusing new materialist orientations in educational practice

van der Tuin (2018) offers a simple description of neo/new materialism:

So, the new materialisms are mainly a research methodology for the non-dualistic study of the world within, beside and among us, the world that precedes, includes and exceeds us … At the end of the day ‘conclusions’ are a dualism of before and after, whereas life itself is – in the terms of French philosopher Henri Bergson ([1907] 1998) – an unstoppable creative evolution. (p. 277)

It is this creative and evolving mode of inquiring into the world that both interests me and infuses my practice. As noted above, I have enacted new materialist ideas in my research practices deploying mobile technologies. However, it is such a philosophy that also informs my pedagogical approaches and educational philosophy.

Hence, if a place-responsive pedagogy looks to enquire into the world—the present material world in a specific outdoor context—a new materialist take would not draw boundaries on what is nature and not-nature, what is technology and not-technology and what is culture and not-culture. Rather, a new materialist inspired place-responsive pedagogy learns with and from the world and its processes, asking what has happened here in this place, what is going on here and what could go on. Such an inquiry doesn’t draw boundaries between the human and more-than-human histories and ongoing stories but embraces innumerable relations.

As mobile technology and mapping apps come into the fold, they are not something ‘outside’ of nature and separate from the outdoor learning domain. As Van Kraalingen (2022) suggests, mobile technology can offer an affordance that requires a level of intentionality. New materialist orientations can help us see that places—our particular learning contexts—are really a mosaic of material relations. Matter may be anything from a river, a tree, a leather-bound journal, a person, global climate, a canoe paddle or also a digital mobile device. What matters (is important) from a new materialist perspective is how any delineated piece of matter joins and acts within the broader network (or assemblage) of relations, ideas, and materials. For N. Gough (2016), this is a post-anthropocentric vision of education, where learners are emergent in relational fields (a bundle of lines), with multiple actants having influence. And what matters for pedagogues such as myself is how we may utilise what we have, to produce rich and affirmative learning experiences that enhance our powers of acting (whilst aligning with intended learning outcomes in creative open-ended ways).

An afterword on technology and outdoor education

As we have suggested earlier in this paper, it is valuable to look at what technology might do (how it performs) within an OEE setting—to consider what part can it play in guiding attention and fostering learning in outdoor places. We have offered some examples from our practice in the form of digital wayfaring and developing place-knowledge for future educators through mapping applications. However, we think it important to note that not all elements and performances of technology are congruent with aims and orientations of OEE. Often there are limitations and even detrimental facets inherent in the systems by which technology functions. For example, Bridle (2022) explains how Facebook began as a way for privileged white American college students to interact yet has become a whole world model of social interaction, with a by-product being ‘gossip, spite, trolls, fake news and worse’ (p. 154). Another example involves the inescapable advertising, cookies and analytics steeped through websites, applications and other technological platforms. With this comes the pervasive creep of capitalism, arguably one of the key culprits of our precarious planetary predicament. We could continue, but it is beyond the scope of this paper to delve further in such arguments. The point of raising these limitations and detrimental facets is to acknowledge that with technology comes social and environmental costs—both in the making and in the use—which may counter some of the educational aims and purposes of OEE. Thus, we believe that we need to use technology with intentionality and think carefully about its performance.

Summary and future knots and lines

In this paper, we have explained how we see digital technologies (and any technology) as something we are never separated from, but something we can and do put to work in learning the world around us. We have argued the flat ontology of new materialism is congruent with some of the emerging debates around the entangled view of technology in society and education at large. The use of new materialism to challenge dichotomies and hierarchies such as human exceptionalism in OEE research is growing, and we have aimed to highlight and contribute to these important discussions. Our examples (our knots) show that we benefit from taking a relational and co-productive view of pedagogy. This is especially so when we seek to be place-responsive and attend to more-than-human dimensions in OEE. Yet we conclude this paper knowing more work needs to be done in this space.

In this paper, one of our key arguments is that we are not separate from technology and they can be used in creative and open-ended ways to enhance how we engage with the world. Accepting digital technologies as part of our entangled existence and some of the associated theoretical concepts we have discussed, requires us to rethink our existing practices and rethink possibly entrenched habits. New materialisms and other related theory can help in such reconceptualisations. Hayles (2012) points to some further possibilities that intrigue us, and might provide new lines and future knots on these topics:

The more one works with digital technologies, the more one comes to appreciate the capacity of networked and programmable machines to carry out sophisticated cognitive tasks, and the more the keyboard comes to seem an extension of one’s thoughts rather than an external device on which one types. Embodiment then takes the form of extended cognition, in which human agency and thought are enmeshed within larger networks that extend beyond the desktop computer into the environment. (p. 3)

How might a mapping application and its stored images and pedagogical notes be a form of extended cognition? How might teaching and learning be knotted with technological and more-than-human meshworks? How might teachers and learners, as posthuman wayfarers, navigate the complexity of posthuman times? These questions and more might open further lines of inquiry that rethinks practice in posthuman times.

Thinking of the coalescence of technology and the more-than-human as an assemblage means that we are required to consider the affective forces at work. These affects being produced have potential to shape and influence learning in place-responsive OEE. The ways that technology have an always ongoing impact on learning through the networked nature of the internet is not well understood. How we might harness these features in our ongoing entanglements with technology and OEE needs to be further researched. The knots we share in this paper show that paying attention to the more-than-human relations in the landscapes we move through is pedagogically important. They also show that where these more-than-human and technological relations intertwine, new ways of reading the landscape or responding to the landscape can occur. Working deliberately with these technological forces in OEE means we need to understand what such assembling practices can do to our teaching and learning.

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Additional information

Notes on contributors

Scott Jukes

Dr Scott Jukes is a lecturer in Outdoor Environmental Education at Federation University, Australia. His research explores pedagogical development and experimentation in outdoor environmental education, inspired by posthumanist and new materialist theories. He is particularly interested in ways we may grapple with place-specific environmental problems and engage with more-than-human worlds. He has a passion for the river, mountain and coastal environments of south-eastern Australia and enjoys teaching and spending time in these places. Scott is a Deputy Editor for the Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education and Media Editor for the Australian Journal of Environmental Education.

Jonathan Lynch

Dr Jonathan Lynch is co-head of the Professional Practice (transdisciplinary) programmes at Te Pūkenga, based in Dunedin, New Zealand. From 2016-2021 he was Postgraduate Director with The Mind Lab in New Zealand where he taught on their postgraduate courses in digital technology and education. Previously an outdoor educator across primary, secondary and tertiary education in the UK, he is enthusiastic about education beyond the classroom and improving human-environment relations. Informed by posthumanist and New Materialist thinking, his research contributes to the fields of place-responsive pedagogy, environmental education, and technology enhanced education.

Notes

1. Importantly, a ‘knot is not a building block’ (Ingold, 2015, p. 15)—or some other constructivist term—but a tying together, involving movement, tension and the joining of forces.

2. Note that we are also wary of presenting a dichotomy and gap between theory and practice. Instead, such knots are theorypractice (Pleasants & Stewart, 2019), where we think with and enact theory and practice together (practicing theory and theorising practice in iterative loopings). In other words, this paper and its knots are iterations of theorypractice, where we attempt to describe practices-of-theory.

3. They also highlight many other technologies, such as technical clothing, bicycles, walking boots, drink bottles and so on are all common and all alter the ways people engage with environments and places, making particular interactions possible or not possible.

4. We use the term more-than-human in this paper as a semiotic strategy to both decentre and look beyond humans. The ontological emphasis is the more-than (an excess), with the human still embedded with, rather than a dichotomous separation of humans and an ‘other(ed)’ nature. See Jukes (in press) for an in-depth discussion of the use of the phrasing ‘more-than-human’ and ontological implications for OEE. We also note that Abram (1996) first used the phrasing more-than-human. More recently, Ingold (2021b) has adopted the phrasing ‘more-than-human,’ stating:

The truth is that in a more-than-human world, nothing exists in isolation. Humans may share this world with non-humans, but by the same token, stones share it with non-stones, trees with non-trees and mountains with non-mountains. Yet where the stone ends and its contrary begins cannot be ascertained with any finality. The same goes for the tree and the mountain, even for the human. It is a condition of life that everything leaks, and nothing is locked in. (p. 6–7)