Learning to Confront Ecological Precarity: Engaging with More-than-human Worlds (International Explorations in Outdoor and Environmental Education, 13) 3031341996, 9783031341991

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International Explorations in Outdoor and Environmental Education 13

Scott Jukes

Learning to Confront Ecological Precarity Engaging with More-than-human Worlds

International Explorations in Outdoor and Environmental Education Volume 13

Series Editors Annette Gough, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia Noel Gough, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia Editorial Board Members Niklas Gericke, Karlstad University, Karlstad, Sweden Susanna Ho, Ministry of Education, Singapore, Singapore Kathleen Kesson, Long Island University, Brooklyn, USA John Chi-Kin Lee, The Education University of Hong Kong, Tai Po, Hong Kong Justin Lupele, Academy for Education Development, Lusaka, Zambia Greg Mannion, University of Stirling, Stirling, UK Pat O’Riley, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada Chris Reddy, University of Stellenbosch, Stellenbosch, South Africa Hilary Whitehouse, James Cook University, Cairns, Australia

This series focuses on contemporary trends and issues in outdoor and environmental education, two key fields that are strongly associated with education for sustainability and its associated environmental, social and economic dimensions. It also has an international focus to encourage dialogue across cultures and perspectives. The scope of the series includes formal, non-formal and informal education and the need for different approaches to educational policy and action in the twenty-first century. Research is a particular focus of the volumes, reflecting a diversity of approaches to outdoor and environmental education research and their underlying epistemological and ontological positions through leading edge scholarship. The scope is also both global and local, with various volumes exploring the issues arising in different cultural, geographical and political contexts. As such, the series aims to counter the predominantly “white” Western character of current research in both fields and enable cross-cultural and transnational comparisons of educational policy, practice, project development and research. The purpose of the series is to give voice to leading researchers (and emerging leaders) in these fields from different cultural contexts to stimulate discussion and further research and scholarship to advance the fields through influencing policy and practices in educational settings. The volumes in the series are directed at active and potential researchers and policy makers in the fields. Book proposals for this series may be submitted to the Publishing Editor: Claudia Acuna ([email protected]).

Scott Jukes

Learning to Confront Ecological Precarity Engaging with More-than-human Worlds

Scott Jukes Federation University Berwick, VIC, Australia

ISSN 2214-4218     ISSN 2214-4226 (electronic) International Explorations in Outdoor and Environmental Education ISBN 978-3-031-34199-1    ISBN 978-3-031-34200-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34200-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Series Editors’ Foreword

The art and literature of our time is pregnant with catastrophe, with weather and water, wildness, and weirdness. (Mark Bould 2021, p. 3, The Anthropocene Unconscious) …if the urgency of a subject were indeed a criterion of its seriousness, then, considering what climate change actually portends for the future of the earth, it should surely follow that this would be the principal preoccupation of writers the world over—and this, I think, is very far from being the case. But why? Are the currents of global warming too wild to be navigated in the accustomed barques of narration? But the truth, as is now widely acknowledged, is that we have entered a time when the wild has become the norm: if certain literary forms are unable to negotiate these torrents, then they will have failed—and their failures will have to be counted as an aspect of the broader imaginative and cultural failure that lies at the heart of the climate crisis. (Amitav Ghosh, 2016, pp. 7–8, The Great Derangement)

Bould and Ghosh are among an increasing number of cultural critics who identify a pervasive form of expressive aphasia: the inability of the contemporary novel, cinema, and other narrative forms to convincingly articulate the nature of humanity’s impact on the planet, including the dire consequences of human complicity in the biosphere’s destruction that can now at best be managed, but not prevented. In his call for action, Bould (2021, p.14) argues: “We cannot allow the scale of the crises we are already living through, and of those to come, to trump their urgency”. Ghosh (2016, p.  7) begins The Great Derangement by sampling a range of “highly regarded literary journals and book reviews” and observes that “when the subject of climate change occurs, it is almost always in relation to nonfiction.” The book you are now reading is clearly cast in the genre of nonfiction, but we see no reason for it to be exempt from any criteria by which other literary works might be judged. We are thus pleased to affirm that there are no signs of expressive aphasia in Learning to Confront Ecological Precarity. In this book, outdoor environmental educator Scott Jukes clearly and convincingly articulates his reasons for, and experiences of, taking the action for which Bould calls. Scott does this by confronting the scale of the crises he is living through and trumping their urgency through his professional practice. Scott’s stories describe and demonstrate how the place-­ responsive pedagogies he privileges and performs sensitize learners to human impacts on the planet and, more importantly, alerts them to ways in which its v

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Series Editors’ Foreword

destruction might best be ameliorated. In these stories, you will certainly find passages that, recalling Bould’s words, are “pregnant with catastrophe, with weather and water, wildness and [perhaps] weirdness.”1 Donna Haraway (1991, p. 196), asserts that “[t]he only way to find a larger vision is to be somewhere in particular,” a disposition that Scott clearly shares, given that he begins this volume by affirming that it “unfolds from a series of situated yet nomadic positions, moved by the conditions I find myself in… a foray—an experiment—with writing from where I am (or where I was), affected by ecological events and global precarity.” The generativity of this disposition is exemplified by a previous volume in this series, Alistair Stewart’s (2020) Developing Place-Responsive Pedagogy in Outdoor Environmental Education. It is no coincidence that, as one of Scott’s acknowledged mentors, some of Stewart’s experiences are echoed in this volume. For example, a memorable passage in Stewart’s (2020, p. 60) book explains how timber canoe paddles became symbolic for his “deliberate change of direction in developing outdoor environmental education pedagogy.” In Chap. 8 of this volume, Scott extends and amplifies Stewart’s rationale by examining waste education literature before exploring further possibilities for remake activities, using the example of paddle making as a pedagogical practice in outdoor, environmental and sustainability education. In so doing, he performs a new materialist praxis for paddle making: a diffractive investigation into a piece of timber as a way of framing paddle making activities. Scott’s investigation includes the “life history” of the particular pieces of timber used, and the broader ecological history of the material, which charts ethical and environmental problems relating to particular forests while posing different ways of conceptualizing timber. Scott thereby demonstrates how new materialist theorizing can be deployed in divergent ways to open up educational possibilities arising from remake activities. Although climate change is not the only symptom of ecological precarity that Scott confronts in this book, he foregrounds it immediately in Chap. 1, observing that outdoor environmental educators “are (unfortunately) well placed to feel the effects of climate change”, noting his own experiences of needing to cancel fieldwork programs due to catastrophic bushfires, floods and other extreme weather events. These have been specific enactments of climate change that have affected fieldwork programs in significant ways. Outdoor educators in Australia and elsewhere now need to reconsider the suitability of locations and times of year that outdoor education programs can be run due to changing climate and resultant heat, flood, fire, snowfall, and other extreme weather risks. In Chap. 11, Scott returns to considering pedagogies for confronting climate change in specific places, such as the Australian Alps and rivers in the Murray Darling Basin. However, as John Quay et al. (2020, p. 110) observe, climate change has been the “elephant in the room” for outdoor educators for some time, alleging that despite the increasing impacts of climate change, outdoor environmental  Whether or not you find “weirdness” will depend on how you understand this term, but we note that many examples of Australian wildlife are often described as “weird”; see, e.g., The Nature Conservancy Australia (2023). 1

Series Editors’ Foreword

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educators have been slow to respond in any significant manner. Elaborating on this position, Robyn Fox and Glyn Thomas (2022, p. 3) add: Given Australia’s increased concerns regarding the real and present threats and impacts of climate change, combined with the pedagogical intent of outdoor learning and tertiary OEE programs, it is not clear if outdoor environmental education in Australia is leveraging or fulfilling its moral imperative to enact its curriculum, educate students about climate change, equip them with climate adaption [sic] and resilience skills, and instil in them the motivation to advocate for climate action.

If climate change is the material “elephant in the room” for outdoor educators, we suspect that the Anthropocene might be its conceptual counterpart. Although we respect Scott’s decision to situate his understanding of contemporary ecological precarity in the Anthropocene epoch, we prefer Capitalocene—the age of capital— because, as T. J. Demos (2016, n.p.) writes, “it names the culprit, locating climate change not merely in fossil fuels, but within the complex and interrelated processes of global-scale economic-political organization.” We also like some of the more playful variations on the concept, such as Giovanna Di Chiro’s (2017) “white (m)Anthropocene” and Raj Patel’s (2013) “misanthropocene.” In Bould’s (2021, p.  12) words, we seem to have settled on “Anthropocene” because it “makes for an easy story. Easy, because it does not challenge the naturalized inequalities, alienation, and violence inscribed in modernity’s strategic relations of power and production.” He adds: Assigning responsibility for the destruction of the biosphere to humanity as a whole means there is plenty of blame to go around, but there is also no need to blame any one individual, corporation, industry, race, nation-state, or institution more than any other. It is just as difficult to pin down what is responsible for climate change as it is to put our collective finger on who is responsible: capitalism or communism? Fossil fuels in general or oil in particular? …It is also easy to get lost in the where: acidifying oceans or melting icecaps? Beaches in Pulau or bayous in Louisiana? The problem with the global climate crisis is one of scale: it matters all over, and it matters in very specific places in very specific ways, and that makes it very easy to get lost.

We believe that this book powerfully demonstrates that addressing problems of ecological precarity in very specific places in very specific ways, does not make it “very easy to get lost” but, rather, exemplifies and reinforces Haraway’s view that the way to “find a larger vision is to be somewhere in particular.” RMIT University  Annette Gough Melbourne, VIC, Australia La Trobe University  Noel Gough Melbourne, VIC, Australia

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Series Editors’ Foreword

References Bould, M. (2021). The anthropocene unconscious: Climate ctastrophe culture. Verso. Demos, T. J. (2016, September 11). Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Gynocene: The many names of resistance. Frontiers of Solitude. http://frontiers-of-solitude.org/blog/442. Di Chiro, G. (2017). Welcome to the white (m)Anthropocene? A feminist-­environmentalist critique. In M. Sherilyn (Ed.), Routledge Handbook of Gender and Environment (pp. 487–505). Routledge. Fox, R., & Thomas, G.. (2022). Is climate change the “elephant in the room’” for outdoor environmental education? Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s42322-­022-­00119-­9 Ghosh, A. (2016). The great derangement: Climate change and the unthinkable. University of Chicago Press. Haraway, D. J. (1991). Situated knowledges: the science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. In Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of nature (pp. 183–201). Routledge. Patel, R. (2013, Spring). Misanthropocene? Earth Island Journal, n.p. https://www.earthisland. org/journal/index.php/magazine/entry/misanthropocene Quay, J., Gray, T., Thomas, G., Allen-Craig, S., Asfeldt, M., Andkjaer, S., Beames, S., Cosgriff, M., Dyment, J., Higgins, P., Ho, S., Leather, M., Mitten, D., Morse, M., Neill, J., North, C., Passy, R., Pedersen-Gurholt, K., Polley, S., Stewart, A., Takano, T., Waite, S., & Foley, D. (2020). What future/s for outdoor and environmental education in a world that has contended with COVID-19? Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education, 23(2), 119–120. https://doi. org/10.1007/s42322-­020-­00062-­7 Stewart, A. (2020). Developing place-responsive pedagogy in outdoor environmental education: A rhizomatic curriculum autobiography. Springer. https://link.springer.com/ book/10.1007/978-­3-­030-­40320-­1 The Nature Conservancy Australia. (2023). 10 weird and wonderful wildlife of Australia. https:// www.natureaustralia.org.au/what-­we-­do/our-­priorities/wildlife/wildlife-­stories/10-­weird-­and-­ wonderful-­wildlife-­of-­australia/

Preface: Precarious Times

Paul Crutzen, a Nobel Prize winning atmospheric chemist, at a conference discussing the Holocene, made an on-the-spot statement that seems to have endured. At that moment, he thought the world had changed too much and we need a new name for our current geological epoch—the Anthropocene. A year later, Crutzen, with Eugene Stoermer, wrote an article discussing the many diverse impacts that humans have had on global environments in recent times (Crutzen & Stoermer, 2000). They stated that: Considering these and many other major and still growing impacts of human activities on earth and atmosphere, and at all, including global, scales, it seems to us more than appropriate to emphasize the central role of mankind [sic] in geology and ecology by proposing to use the term “Anthropocene” for the current geological epoch. (Crutzen & Stoermer, 2000, p. 17)

The name has stuck, grown beyond scientific discourse, and is used as a signifier for our precarious times in a range of fields. When discussing the Anthropocene, Macfarlane (2019) exclaims: “What signature our species will leave on the strata! … We have become titanic world-makers, our legacy legible for epochs to come” (p. 76). Plastic, nuclear waste, smog, climate change, topsoil erosion, ocean acidification, melting glaciers, extinction, altered fire regimes, mass explosion in livestock numbers, and a list of resource exploitation that could go on. The Anthropocene is a time of rapid change, destruction and human-induced impacts that will be visible in the strata of the planet for a very long time. The term Anthropocene has its critics. Not all humans created the conditions of mass extinction and death—it was only some. Macfarlane (2019) notes that “the rhetorical ‘we’ of Anthropocene discourse smooths over severe inequalities, and universalizes the site-specific consequences of environmental damage” (p.  77). Furthermore, as Haraway (2016) alludes, there is something quite anthropocentric about naming a geological epoch full of multifarious actors after man (Anthropos). Yet, maybe, hubristic anthropocentrism is a trademark of our precarious times. Nonetheless, the name “Anthropocene” does something for me—it starts me questioning my place in the world, the place of humans and the broadness of time. ix

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To think in deep time—either into the past or ahead into the future—my perspective starts to shift. Thinking in such expansive time scales slightly dizzies and displaces me. To think in deep time prompts me to think that change is a constant ever-occurring phenomenon—a condition of all our existence. Some things will endure and, as always, others become extinct. Rhetoric of the Anthropocene states we are entering the sixth mass extinction. Mass extinctions are world breakers, but new world makers—“our” world comes off the back of five previous extinctions. As I settle back into the embodied embedded present, I consider that this precarious moment involves loss, extinction and, inequalities that I feel and am concerned with. If I totally de-anthropocentrize myself, I may fall into apathy where I don’t care. Our times—the current precarious moment, whatever we choose to call it— provoke me to consider what I, an outdoor environmental educator, may do with them. The result, at least over the last few years, is the book that follows. Berwick, VIC, Australia  Scott Jukes

References Crutzen, P., & Stoermer, E. (2000). The “Anthropocene”. The International Geosphere– Biosphere Programme (IGBP): A Study of Global Change of the International Council for Science (ICSU), 41, 17–18. Retrieved from http://www.igbp.net/download/1 8.316f18321323470177580001401/1376383088452/NL41.pdf Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press. Macfarlane, R. (2019). Underland: A deep time journey. Penguin.

About the Author

Scott Jukes is a Lecturer of Outdoor Environmental Education at Federation University, Australia. He has a love of the rivers, mountains and coastal environments of south-eastern Australia and enjoys spending time and teaching in these places. His research explores pedagogical development and experimentation, where he looks to put posthumanist and new materialist theories to work in his practice. He is particularly interested in ways to challenge human exceptionalism and rethink ontological assumptions as a response to our ecological predicament. Currently, Scott is the Media Editor for the Australian Journal of Environmental Education, Deputy Editor for the Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education and a member of the Climate Change Education Network. Email: [email protected]

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Acknowledgments

I have many to thank for their generous help and support throughout this project. Without them, this project would not have been possible. Firstly, to my wife Tiffany. I would not have even started without your encouragement. Your belief in me and your motivation has kept me going throughout. You know when to be supportive, when to be critical and are always there for me. Our little Mavi came along during this project too. He has helped me keep perspective but also provided the best distraction I could ask for. To Alistair Stewart, Marcus Morse and Noel Gough, I owe you all a debt of gratitude. You all provided encouragement, guidance and extremely helpful feedback throughout the various stages of this project. Specifically, thank you Alistair, for challenging me to think differently, your generosity and always offering excellent advice. Your input prompted me to be both experimental and more ethically minded in my approaches to research and outdoor environmental education. Marcus, you agreed to supervise me back in 2015 and have been a support ever since. Thank you for always being constructive, encouraging and helping me become a better writer and communicator. Noel, thank you; your expert advice has helped me refine this project and given me confidence in my writing and thinking practices. I must also thank Sue Grieshaber and Jo Ferreira for providing encouragement and advice during my doctoral studies, which led to this book. Thank you to my friends and colleagues for your conversations, interest, insights and laughs. Specifically, Ya Reeves, Sandy Allen-Craig, Kathleen Pleasants, Chris Townsend, Josh Ambrosy, Alex Prins, Ant Mangelsdorf and Peta White. You have all helped me through this project in some way. I must also thank the students I have been lucky enough to teach over the last few years. Your enthusiasm, curiosity and care for our planet have been continually motivating, and you have been a crucial part of this project. Thank you to my collaborators that I have co-authored with for different chapters in or relating to this project. I have already mentioned Alistair, Marcus, Ya and Ant. Thanks also goes to Jamie Mcphie, Dave Clarke and Jonas Mikaels for the different projects we worked on together. I have learnt so much from all of you.

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Acknowledgments

Lastly, thank you to my parents for all the family holidays exploring the vast Australian landscape. Those early adventures introduced me to this unique island I call home. Reworked versions of the following material are integrated throughout the chapters of this book with permission of the respective publishers and coauthors: Chapter 2 includes the following previously published work: Jukes, S. (2020). Review of developing place-responsive pedagogy in outdoor environmental education: A rhizomatic curriculum autobiography by Alistair Stewart. Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education, 23(3), 323–327. Jukes, S. (2020). Posthuman insights for environmental education. A review of mental health and wellbeing in the anthropocene: A posthuman inquiry, by Jamie Mcphie. 2019, Singapore: Springer Nature. €69.99, ISBN 978-981-13-3326-2. The Journal of Environmental Education, 51(5), 395–398. Chapter 4 includes the following previously published article: Jukes, S., & Reeves, Y. (2020). More-than-human stories: Experimental co-­ productions in outdoor environmental education pedagogy. Environmental Education Research, 26(9–10), 1294–1312. Chapter 6 includes the following previously published article: Jukes, S. (2021). Thinking with a landscape: The Australian Alps, horses and pedagogical considerations. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 37(2), 89–107. Chapter 7 includes the following previously published article: Jukes, S., Stewart, A., & Morse, M. (2022). Following lines in the landscape: Playing with a posthuman pedagogy in outdoor environmental education. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 38(3–4), 345–360. Chapter 8 includes the following previously published article: Jukes, S. (2020). Thinking through making: Junk paddles, distant forests and pedagogical possibilities. Environmental Education Research, 26(12), 1746–1763. Chapter 9 includes the following previously published article: Jukes, S., Stewart, A., & Morse, M. (2023). Learning landscapes through technology and movement: Blurring boundaries for a more-than-human pedagogy. Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Learning. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 14729679.2023.2166543. Chapter 10 includes the following previously published article: Jukes, S., Clarke, D., Mcphie, J. (2022). The wisp of an outline ≈ Storying ontology as environmental inquiry↔education: –). Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 38(3–4), 328–344.

Acknowledgments

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Acknowledgment of Country This book has been written on unceded Bunurong Country. The fieldwork aspects of this research were conducted on Yorta Yorta, Jaithmathang, Monero/Ngarigo and Dja Dja Wurrung lands. I acknowledge the traditional custodians of these lands and pay my respects to the elders past, present and emerging.

Contents

1

 Introduction: Provocations and Intent��������������������������������������������������    1 Scott Jukes 1.1 Setting Off����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    1 1.2 Staying with the Trouble in Uncertain Times ����������������������������������    3 1.3 Provocations and Intent��������������������������������������������������������������������    7 1.4 Another Backstory����������������������������������������������������������������������������    9 1.5 More-Than-Human Pedagogies: A Touchstone and Guiding Heuristic ����������������������������������������������������������������������   11 1.5.1 A Brief Sidenote on the Signifier������������������������������������������   13 1.6 Overview of Chapters ����������������������������������������������������������������������   14 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   17

2

 Connecting with Lines of Flight: Reviewing Texts of Influence����������   21 Scott Jukes 2.1 Overview of the Chapter ������������������������������������������������������������������   21 2.2 Part One: Stewart’s Developing Place-Responsive Pedagogy����������   22 2.2.1 Deleuzo-Guattarian Ideas for OEE ��������������������������������������   23 2.2.2 The Importance of Place-Responsive Pedagogy������������������   24 2.3 Part Two: Mcphie’s Mental Health and Wellbeing in the Anthropocene and Posthumanist Provocations ��������������������������   26 2.3.1 Key Concepts: Beyond Dualisms, Towards Immanence������   26 2.3.2 Post Qualitative Empirical Inquiry ��������������������������������������   27 2.3.3 Questioning the ‘Healing Power’ of Nature ������������������������   28 2.3.4 What Does a Book Do?��������������������������������������������������������   29 2.3.5 Afterword������������������������������������������������������������������������������   30 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   30

3

 Philosophical~Methodological Processes: Immanent Praxiography��   33 Scott Jukes 3.1 Challenging Human Exceptionalism: Working Within the Post-­anthropocentric Material Turn��������������������������������������������   33 3.2 Voice and the Posthuman Subject: Nothing Acts Alone ������������������   35 xvii

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3.3 Methodologies Without Methodology? Experimentation and Play��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   36 3.4 Immanent Praxiography: A Fluid Methodology ������������������������������   38 3.5 Mapping Multiple Experiments in More-­Than-Human Pedagogies��������������������������������������������������������   42 3.6 Empirical Materials, Post Qualitative Inquiry and Transgressive Analysis ��������������������������������������������������������������   46 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   49 4

Assembling More-Than-Human Stories: Outdoor Environmental Education as a Co-production��������������������������������������   51 Scott Jukes and Ya Reeves 4.1 Introduction��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   51 4.2 Place-Responsive Pedagogies ����������������������������������������������������������   53 4.2.1 From Places to (New Materialist Inspired) Assemblages ������������������������������������������������������������������������   54 4.3 Philosophical~Methodological Disposition: A Post-­anthropocentric Material Turn����������������������������������������������   55 4.3.1 Material Agencies ����������������������������������������������������������������   56 4.3.2 Mutual Entangled Relationships: Assemblages��������������������   57 4.3.3 Becoming of a More-Than-Human World����������������������������   58 4.4 Assembling a Concept: More-Than-Human Stories������������������������   61 4.5 Empirical Materials: An Emergent More-­Than-Human Story ��������   63 4.5.1 One Single Moment: By Ya Reeves��������������������������������������   64 4.5.2 A Postscript: Conditions of Creation/Possibility (Mapping a Becoming) ��������������������������������������������������������   67 4.6 Complexity, Productivity and Offerings ������������������������������������������   70 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   71

5

Listening for More-Than-Human Voices: The Expressive Power of Landscapes ������������������������������������������������������������������������������   75 Scott Jukes 5.1 Reading Landscapes��������������������������������������������������������������������������   75 5.2 Landscapes Shape ����������������������������������������������������������������������������   76 5.3 Listening for More-Than-Human Stories in the Australian Alps����������������������������������������������������������������������������������   77 5.3.1 Feldmark Foray’s������������������������������������������������������������������   78 5.3.2 Stoney Perspectives��������������������������������������������������������������   79 5.3.3 Introduced Inhabitants����������������������������������������������������������   81 5.4 Provoking Thought���������������������������������������������������������������������������   82 5.5 Towards Granular Stories for Confronting Environmental Problems������������������������������������������������������������������   83 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   83

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6

Thinking with a Landscape: Engaging with Environmental Issues Through Outdoor Education ������������������������������������������������������   85 Scott Jukes 6.1 Surveying the Linguistic Terrain������������������������������������������������������   85 6.2 Posthuman Sensibilities: Methodological Considerations����������������   88 6.3 Thinking with a Landscape: A Pedagogical Concept ����������������������   89 6.4 Pedagogical Concept as Method: Thinking with the Australian Alps����������������������������������������������������������������������������������   91 6.4.1 Empirical Events: Sketches of the Australian Alps��������������   92 6.4.2 Sketch One: Horses of the Alps��������������������������������������������   92 6.4.3 Sketch Two: Multispecies Communities������������������������������   95 6.4.4 Sketch Three: Colonial Heritage������������������������������������������   98 6.4.5 Sketch Four: Necropolitics and Ethical Paradoxes ��������������  101 6.5 Thinking Beyond Horses: Fostering Sustainable Relations��������������  105 6.6 Afterword: Do We Construct Knowledge, or Does Learning Flow and Emerge?����������������������������������������������������������������������������  106 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  107

7

Emergent Pedagogical Pathways: Learning from the Fluxes and Flows of a Riverscape ����������������������������������������������������������������������  113 Scott Jukes, Alistair Stewart, and Marcus Morse 7.1 Foreword to the Chapter: Acknowledgments������������������������������������  113 7.2 Setting the Scene: Starting in the Middle ����������������������������������������  114 7.3 Embodied and Embedded Practices: Situating Learning on a Journey through a Riverscape ��������������������������������������������������  115 7.4 Embracing a New Empiricism for Environmental Education Research��������������������������������������������������������������������������  120 7.5 Postparadigmatic Inquiry, Video as a Method and More-­than-human Audio-Visual Analysis����������������������������������  122 7.6 Journey Events: Empirical Encounters ��������������������������������������������  124 7.6.1 Footprints Tell the Stories ����������������������������������������������������  124 7.6.2 Flows: Imagining Wala (Water)��������������������������������������������  128 7.7 Provoking Possibilities for Practice��������������������������������������������������  129 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  131

8

Fostering Response-Abilities: Exploring More-Than-Human Histories Through Remake Activities����������������������������������������������������  135 Scott Jukes 8.1 Considering Praxis����������������������������������������������������������������������������  135 8.2 Waste and Remake Pedagogies��������������������������������������������������������  137 8.2.1 ‘Junk’ Paddles����������������������������������������������������������������������  140 8.3 Enacting New Materialisms: A Diffractive Approach����������������������  141 8.3.1 Thinking Through Making����������������������������������������������������  144

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Contents

8.4 Diffraction Patterns: Narrating a Material Metamorphosis��������������  145 8.4.1 A Door Frame ����������������������������������������������������������������������  147 8.4.2 A Tree ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������  147 8.4.3 A Life������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  150 8.4.4 A Home��������������������������������������������������������������������������������  151 8.5 Praxis as a Line of Flight������������������������������������������������������������������  152 8.6 Ongoing Narratives ��������������������������������������������������������������������������  153 8.7 Remaking Pedagogy: Opening Thought ������������������������������������������  154 8.8 Transitioning into the Next Chapter��������������������������������������������������  156 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  156 9

Environmental Learning Through Relations: The Mediating Influence of Technology and Movement����������������������  159 Scott Jukes, Alistair Stewart, and Marcus Morse 9.1 Framing: Technology and the Posthuman����������������������������������������  159 9.1.1 Technology and OEE������������������������������������������������������������  161 9.1.2 Movement, Process-Relational Ontology and OEE��������������  162 9.2 Empirical Context of the Chapter ����������������������������������������������������  162 9.3 Methodological Processes����������������������������������������������������������������  163 9.4 Entangling Technology, Modes of Travel and Landscape: What Worlds Are Opened?��������������������������������������  165 9.5 A Pause: More-Than-Human Approaches to Education������������������  171 9.6 Learning Through Technology and Machinic Assemblages������������  171 9.6.1 The Agency of Technology ��������������������������������������������������  172 9.6.2 Machinic Assemblages and Messy Connections������������������  173 9.7 Discussions on Technology, Movement and Blurred Boundaries��������������������������������������������������������������������  177 9.8 Implications for Practice, Limitations and Future Directions������������������������������������������������������������������������  178 9.9 Inconclusion: Looping Back ������������������������������������������������������������  179 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  180

10 Storying  Shared Worlds: Collaborative Writing as Ecological Inquiry������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  183 Scott Jukes, David A. G. Clarke, and Jamie Mcphie 10.1 Prelude: Relational Writing Experiments ��������������������������������������  183 10.2 Venturing into the Hinterland����������������������������������������������������������  184 10.3 Smoothing Some Striations to Open (Our) Inquiry������������������������  185 10.4 A Climate, a Summer����������������������������������������������������������������������  187 10.5 Hopes����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  188 10.6 Doubts ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  189 10.7 Fires, Identity and Subjectivity Beyond the Self: A Tangle of Life 190 10.8 Virus: Stream of Conscious������������������������������������������������������������  193 10.9 The Coronacene������������������������������������������������������������������������������  194

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10.10 An It-Narrative (of Sorts)����������������������������������������������������������������  195 10.11 Intermede����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  197 10.12 Writing with Scott’s Lines and Jamie’s Viruses: Practising Political Ecologies ��������������������������������������������������������  199 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  202 11 Responding  to Climate Change Through Outdoor Environmental Education: Pedagogy for Confronting a Crisis ������������������������������������  205 Scott Jukes 11.1 Outdoor Education and Climate Change����������������������������������������  205 11.2 Methodological Considerations: Praxiography and Thinking with Theory��������������������������������������������������������������  207 11.3 Climate Change Education ������������������������������������������������������������  207 11.4 Conceptualising OEE Climate Change Education Pedagogy: Examples in Practice����������������������������������������������������������������������  209 11.4.1 Bearing Witness: Conceptualising Climate Change Through Embodied Encounters with Flooding����������������  210 11.4.2 Becoming Affected: Sculpting Climate Learning Through Arts-Based Practices������������������������������������������  212 11.4.3 Analysing Relations and Fostering Response-ability: Mapping Assemblages and Agency with Students ����������  215 11.4.4 Efforts at Developing Climate Change Curriculum Within Tertiary OEE��������������������������������������  217 11.5 Limitations and Future Possibilities for Research��������������������������  219 11.6 Education as Activism��������������������������������������������������������������������  220 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  221 12 Bookend:  Outdoor Environmental Education in Precarious Times��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  223 Scott Jukes 12.1 Attending to Problems��������������������������������������������������������������������  223 12.2 Contributions: What Does This Book Offer OEE?������������������������  224 12.2.1 More-than-Human Pedagogies as a Contribution for OEE in Precarious Times����������������������  225 12.2.2 Doing Educational Research Differently: Immanent Praxiography as a Contribution ����������������������  229 12.3 Coda������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  230 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  231 Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  233

List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 A sketch of a mobius strip, depicting theory and practice on the same plane. Here, in a process ontology, they continually feed into and through one another����������������������   41 Fig. 3.2 Throwing stones into a dam, making diffraction patterns. (Photos by Scott Jukes)�����������������������������������������������������������������   48 Fig. 4.1 Becoming skiers—A student-snow-ski assemblage. (Photo by Scott Jukes)�������������������������������������������������������������������   61 Fig. 5.1 An Alpine sunray in feldmark of the main range, KNP. (Photo by Scott Jukes)�������������������������������������������������������������������   79 Fig. 5.2 An ancient landscape, where stone shapes footfall. (Photo by the Scott Jukes)�������������������������������������������������������������   80 Fig. 5.3 Altered vegetation, pugging and erosion of the streambank, caused by introduced horses, headwaters of the Ingeegoodbee River, KNP. (Photo by Graeme L. Worboys)���������������������������������   81 Fig. 6.1 Encountering horses on the Bogong High Plains. (Photo by the Scott Jukes)�������������������������������������������������������������   93 Fig. 6.2 Near the headwaters of the Murray River. (Photo by Scott Jukes, 11th of February 2019)�����������������������������   95 Fig. 6.3 Horses encountered in the snow near Dead Horse Gap on an OEE ski tour. (Photo by Scott Jukes)�����������������������������������   98 Fig. 6.4 Horse next to the Snowy River, near Paupong Creek. (Photo by Kane Harris)������������������������������������������������������������������  101 Fig. 7.1

Considering possibilities for practice��������������������������������������������  130

Fig. 8.1 Ingold (2013) describes making as a reciprocal correspondence between the maker and materials—a process along a path of co-operation and variation for both crafter and timber��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  139

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List of Figures

Fig. 8.2 Students working with their future paddles: an active response to the materials and an act towards sustainability —or, becoming response-able. (Photo by Scott Jukes)�����������������  142 Fig. 8.3 A paddle emerging from scrap timber. (Photo by Scott Jukes)�����  146 Fig. 8.4 A rotting plank of wood… or something more? (Photo by Scott Jukes)�������������������������������������������������������������������  148 Fig. 8.5 A collection of storied matter in the form of student paddles. (Photos (and paddles) compliments of river environments students)�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  155 Fig. 9.1 A dawn paddle on Barmah Lake. (Photo by Maggie Williams)����  167 Fig. 9.2 Paddling through giant rush (Juncus ignens) in a flooded tributary to Barmah Lake. (Image by Scott Jukes)������������������������  169 Fig. 9.3 Flooded Budgee Creek, a tributary to Barmah Lake. (Image by Scott Jukes)������������������������������������������������������������������  175 Fig. 10.1 A screen shot from Victorian emergency services app on the 1st of January 2020�������������������������������������������������������������  188 Fig. 10.2 SARS-CoV-2. (Image from Goldsmith & Tamin, 2020)���������������  197 Fig. 11.1 A students sculpture showing the precarious position of skiing in a changing climate������������������������������������������������������  214 Fig. 11.2 Shorter winters with greater weather extremes are becoming the new norm in the Australian Alps, as depicted in the above mural�������������������������������������������������������������������������  215 Fig. 11.3 Anlaysing relations through a collaborative mapping activity������  216

List of Table

Table 3.1

Tabulated map of chapters linking ideas�����������������������������������������  43

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Chapter 1

Introduction: Provocations and Intent Scott Jukes

Abstract  This initial chapter frames the purpose and intent of the book. I introduce the provocations that led to the project, discussing some of the precarious conditions our planet and its inhabitants currently face. These leads to the key question that I pursue throughout; what might I do, as an outdoor environmental educator, in response to ecological precarity? The chapter also presents the idea of more-than-­ human pedagogies, which acts as a touchstone and guiding heuristic for the book. The chapter finishes with a short overview for the rest of the book.

1.1 Setting Off Writing this book stems from two things: firstly, from my fascination with more-­ than-­human worlds, and secondly, from my concern for more-than-human worlds. Inspired by others before me (e.g., Clarke, 2019; Haraway, 1988), I think of this writing—this inquiry—as situated and partial. As Haraway (1988) states, ‘I am arguing for the view from a body, always a complex, contradictory, structuring, and structured body, versus the view from above, from nowhere, from simplicity. Only the god trick is forbidden’ (p.  589). Haraway’s argument is for a view that lives within ‘limits and contradictions—of views from somewhere’ (p.  590). A partial view from somewhere might be a minoritarian, yet powerful form of writing academic literature, affected and moved by conditions of the present. Thus, for me, the writing of this book unfolds from a series of situated yet nomadic positions, moved by the conditions I find myself in. The beginning of this introduction is a foray—an experiment—with writing from where I am (or where I was), affected by ecological events and global precarity. The below italicised text is taken from my research journal, written in the initial stages of conceiving this book. It expresses some of my early thoughts whilst commenting on news reports at the time: S. Jukes (*) Federation University, Berwick, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Jukes, Learning to Confront Ecological Precarity, International Explorations in Outdoor and Environmental Education 13, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34200-4_1

1

2

1  Introduction: Provocations and Intent

Research journal entry, eighth of March 2019: We live in precarious times, faced with environmental crises including climate change and mass extinction of species, fueled by a host of unsustainable beliefs and practices (Malone & Truong, 2017). This is more than a statement made by academics in research literature, but something emerging as more and more prevalent across various forms of media. In the weeks surrounding the writing of these words (the 8/3/2019), from my location in the world, I have come across the following news: News of students from across the planet planning on striking from school because they want the world’s leaders to act on climate change (Carrington, 2019), concerns about drilling for oil in the great Australian bight (Patagonia. com.au, 2019), news from the past summers [2018/2019] unprecedented bushfires in Tasmania (Flanagan, 2019), concerns over the management of the Murray-Darling basin (Carbonell et  al., 2019; Williams & Grafton, 2019) and the ‘fish kills’ that occurred at Menindee, floods in Queensland, continued debate over Adani’s planned coal mine in far north Queensland with environmentalists concerned (among many things) about its impacts on the great artesian basin (#StopAdani, 2019), concerns over coral bleaching in the great barrier reef, concerns over alarming deforestation, concerns over continued extinction of species, concerns over a large gas terminus being built in Western Port Bay (my back yard) and how it will impact the bay and fragile RAMSAR listed wetlands (@SaveWesternPort, 2018), concerns over feral horses being protected in the highest mountains of Australia by government legislation even though scientists are clearly telling us they are severely damaging the ecosystems that provide us with water in our dry country (ReclaimKosci, 2019). Compound this with social justice issues such as gender inequality and the varied impacts of colonisation. I could continue, but the point is that these precarious times are being felt by many, and concern for our planet and human impacts have led us to this moment and epoch being called the Anthropocene. It seems to me, as a generalisation,1 that so many decisions are being driven by economic rationalisation, without consideration for broader social and environmental consequences. There are more ecologies than purely economic (Guattari, 2000) and rationality is only one way of thinking, which we may need to branch out from (Braidotti, 2013)… I am concerned about the planet, I am concerned about what the world is becoming, and hence, in my position, want to do something about it. What I hope this research project becomes is an array of ideas that rethink humans’ place in the world and help myself, my students and those that read this to be more mindful of our place as people of the planet.

Writing the words above, I was concerned with the ‘politics of location’—my location. My thoughts, who I was, was being moved by the politics, violence and precarity of these times we are in. Strom et  al. (2018), in the course of implementing posthuman pedagogies, asked their EdD students to create politics of location cartographies ‘to begin to map how their own backgrounds, identity markers, theoretical orientations, scholarly/practical interests, and contextual affordances/constraints  Note that I don’t intend to develop this book from generalizations and suppositions, and that I will and have been delving into the complexity of some of these issues. However, I cannot ignore my assumptions, biases and posthuman subjectivity (Braidotti, 2013) that motivates me at the outset of this project. I don’t enter this research value free with a blank slate and empty history that will enable me to create objective knowledge—my worldview influences my intentions. This introduction is an insight into my world view and subjectivity at this point in time, as influenced by communications from media, how media affects me, how emotions influence my consciousness and my materialist tendencies (Braidotti, 2013). As Braidotti (2013) writes, ‘Posthuman subjectivity is as rich as it is complex, but it is grounded in real-life, world-historical conditions that are confronting us with pressing urgency’ (p. 83). 1

1.2  Staying with the Trouble in Uncertain Times

3

might shape their research and by extension, the knowledge and practices that come from it’ (p. 265). Such a task helped Strom et al.’s EdD students to locate themselves within and part of the research process whilst decentering themselves. What this shows is that there is a range of forces that shape a research project, the researcher being among an agentic assemblage of forces. In a sense, looking back at the influences and concerns I voiced in my early reflections (in the italicised text) is the beginning of mapping the politics of my location that shape this book.

1.2 Staying with the Trouble in Uncertain Times Entry in research journal 20th December 2019: Today is hot, to say the least. I am by the coast and it is over 40 degrees Celsius. The news is reporting it is ‘disturbingly hot’ all over the country—I feel that. An extreme heatwave extends over much of Australia—the hottest ever recorded maximum temperature across the country… as a whole. There are ‘unprecedented’ bushfires burning across the country (the same was said last summer in Tasmania). To be honest, it is a scary day. Smoke haze thick in the air. Is this all part of climate change? The Australian Prime Minister struggles to admit the fires are influenced by climate change, but he is the one who brought a lump of coal into parliament and, whilst laughing, said it will not hurt us. Many experts are commenting otherwise—that the weather, climate and bushfires Australian’s are experiencing at present are unprecedented and therefore is an indicator of climate change. Evidence suggests the climate is changing, at rapid rates, and having consequences on the landscape. The politics on this topic are rife… …It is too hot to be outside. Even too hot to be at the beach. So, I will sit inside, researching-­ thinking-­writing about global precarity and our uncertain times...

Our current times, our environmental predicament and our ways of conceptualizing and relating to the world are concerning and influence me undertaking this project. I find it hard not to worry about our times and the problems the earth faces. But what are these times? It is worth delving further into the facts of some of the widely reported current environmental predicaments—a molar composition of some enumerated conditions. On a global scale, the WWF (2018) states that rates of species extinction are ‘100 to 1,000 times higher than the background rate’ (p. 7)—which means higher than the standard extinction rate for the history of the planet before human-induced impacts became a factor. The WWF (2018) Living Planet Index ‘recorded an overall decline of 60% in species population sizes between 1970 and 2014’ (p. 10). IUCN Red List (2020) states there is upwards of 30,000 species threatened with extinction. The Red List is a ‘critical indicator of the health of the worlds biodiversity’ and this number equates to 27% of all the 112,432 species they have assessed (n.p). These numbers are staggering, and I find they quickly become a blur. However, these are not meaningless statistics—they are real-world changes that have consequences. As Haraway (2016) explains, ‘change on earth is not the problem; rates and distributions of change are very much the problem’ (p. 73). Still, I find these figures hard to digest.

4

1  Introduction: Provocations and Intent

In Australia, current Red List totals (December 2019) state that 40 species on the list have become extinct, with a further 935 species vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered. Woinarski et al. (2015) explain how Australia’s land mammals are suffering extreme rates of extinction, with over 10% of endemic terrestrial species being lost since European settlement. They compare this to the larger landmass of continental North America, where only one native land mammal has become extinct since European settlement (the sea mink—Neovison macrodon). Their research shows a further 21% of these Australian endemic terrestrial mammals are now being assessed as threatened, noting that losses in Australia are primarily due to predation from introduced species and changed fire regimes. These conditions are different from other threatened species around the world and the surviving species are in rapid decline. For me, the rates of change and loss in the Australian landscape is extraordinarily concerning. As Woinarski et  al. (2015) allude, threat is not universal—some environmental communities and species face greater threats than others. Even threats within Australia are not universal—threats are specific and multiple. For example, in a recent report, the World Wildlife Fund of Australia (WWF, 2019) states that 44% of Australia’s original forest cover has been removed, impacting species such as the iconic koala. Yet it is important to remember that it is not just the cute, cuddly and widely known species that are under threat. The broad-toothed rat, for example, faces its own challenges for survival. Global issues can be focused into local and specific problems. This does not reduce the complexity of problems but highlights issues, and the effects of issues, at the local scale—places humans and non-­humans live. Climate change is part of the messy conditions of the present. There is a flood of discourse on this topic, so I will keep my commentary relatively brief. A report published by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (Allen et al., 2018) states that in 2017, human-induced warming reached roughly 1 °C higher than pre-­ industrial (around 1850–1900) levels. They confidently declare that increases in temperature occurred around 0.2  °C per decade. According to the IPCC report, global warming is likely to increase to 1.5 °C between 2030 and 2052. The report warns of the impacts of global warming above 1.5 °C, intending to strengthen global response and action. Other modelling, such as the Climate Action Tracker (CAT, 2019) also has alarming projections, where a business-as-usual approach could lead to warming of 4.1–4.8 °C above pre-industrial levels by 2100. In short, such continued changes in climate are likely to cause an array of extreme weather conditions (in fact, it already has), among many other consequences. If we take the example of the 2019/2020 bushfires that burnt across Eastern Australia, despite an argumentative discourse on the causes, extreme and unprecedented weather conditions were a key influencer in the fire’s severity. As the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), Australia’s national weather, climate and water agency, explain in their Annual Climate Statement for 2019 overview (BOM, 2020): • 2019 was Australia’s warmest year on record, with the annual national mean temperature 1.52 °C above average • Both mean annual maximum and minimum temperatures above average for all States and the Northern Territory

1.2  Staying with the Trouble in Uncertain Times

5

• Annual national mean maximum temperature warmest on record (2.09 °C above average) • Australia’s driest year on record • Widespread severe fire weather throughout the year; national annual accumulated Forest Fire Danger Index highest since 1950, when national records began The BOM acknowledges that a combination of factors influenced Australia’s weather conditions, noting ‘persistent warmth during 2019 was driven by a combination of the long-term warming trend and natural climate drivers including a very strong and long-lived positive Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD)’ (Influences, para. 1). The IOD2 was also ‘positive’ in 2018 accompanied by unfavourable conditions for rain in 2017. BOM explains that although not unprecedented, this is unusual: ‘While the IOD is a natural mode of variability, its behavior is changing in response to climate change’ (BOM, 2020, influences para. 4) and we are likely to see more of these changes as global temperatures rise. I am describing such reports and statements because there is a multitude of complexities influencing rapid change across the planet. Sometimes the complexity can be overlooked,3 however, it is important to note that I live and work in this context as an outdoor environmental educator. Outdoor environmental education (OEE) is not separate from these conditions. If anything, as a mode of education, OEE is in a position to feel the fluxes and flows of environmental precarity more than other modes, as we are enfolded within and more exposed to ecological forces. Thus, I feel a compulsion to respond to, or at least bear witness to, the trajectory of species extinction and warming climate—trajectories rarely confronted in OEE research and practice. Do I have a duty of care to at least acknowledge what is going on? In May 2021, the Australian Federal Court conveyed an urgency to act when passing judgement on a case relating to climate change. Without getting into the details of the case, the following was written by the court: It is difficult to characterise in a single phrase the devastation that the plausible evidence presented in this proceeding forecasts for the children. As Australian adults know their country, Australia will be lost and the world as we know it gone as well. The physical environment will be harsher, far more extreme and devastatingly brutal when angry. As for the human experience—quality of life, opportunities to partake in nature’s treasures, the capacity to grow and prosper—all will be greatly diminished. Lives will be cut short. Trauma will be far more common and good health harder to hold and maintain.

 For an explanation of the IOD, this link will take you to an informative video: https://youtu.be/J6h OVatamYs?list=PLbKuJrA7Vp7naJL31deES8QAV5E0q6U_H 3  As the 2019/2020 fires in Eastern Australia have shown, climate is wrapped up with animal deaths in certain contexts, with it estimated that more than a billion animals have died (see https://www. t h eg u a r d i a n . c o m / a u s t r a l i a - n ew s / 2 0 2 0 / j a n / 1 4 / a - b i l l i o n - a n i m a l s - t h e - a u s t r a l i a n species-most-at-risk-from-the-bushfire-crisis). Climate, fires, animal deaths, ‘natural’ disasters, extinction are complex, but hardly separable. Climate and those fires have impacted me and this book in other ways. For example, I should be spending 20 days in the mountains in SE Aus, leading a group of students. Instead, because of the fires, I am at home writing this. 2

6

1  Introduction: Provocations and Intent None of this will be the fault of nature itself. It will largely be inflicted by the inaction of this generation of adults, in what might fairly be described as the greatest inter-generational injustice ever inflicted by one generation of humans upon the next. To say that the children are vulnerable is to understate their predicament. (Australian Federal Court, quoted in Schuijers, 2021)

Thus, these are the precarious times I find myself situated within whilst writing this book. Plenty more could be said (and will be throughout), however, I will leave it for later chapters to look at local contextual situations. Nonetheless, this is not a scientific report of the state of the environment, but a posthumanist exploration into OEE pedagogy. As Orr (1991) notes, environmental damage is not the work of ignorant people, it is ‘rather, largely the result of work by people with Bas, BSs, LLBs, MBAs, and PhDs’ (para. 3). Education is not necessarily the problem, it’s the kind of education. Therefore, such questions that emerge for me include; how might4 we educate within such a changing environment? The ‘outdoors’, the environment, can no longer be thought as a romantic wilderness out there separate from humanity, it enfolds us and is changing rapidly. Talk of the environment is also increasingly changing (and political). Human experience outdoors is mediated by changing climate and various other environmental disturbances and losses (e.g., as I write this sentence in early January 2020, Melbourne has had continuous days of ‘hazardous’ air quality due to bushfire smoke and authorities are advising the public not to go outside). Reframing my question from the last paragraph; how might we perform outdoor environmental education in such precarious times? The natural world is spiraling out of human control and our attempts at dominance seem to be making the situation worse. And too much of this talk can lead to despair. As ecologist and nature writer Aldo Leopold (1953) explained, the penalty of an ecological education is that we live in a world of wounds (p. 197). Terms for such wounds and despair are proliferating, including (but not limited to) ‘ecological grief’ (Vince, 2020), ‘eco-­ anxiety’ (Charlson, 2019), ‘eco-nostalgia,’ ‘post-anthropocentric nausea’, ‘global obscenities overload’ (Braidotti, 2019, p.  80) and ‘ecocide’ (Higgins, 2010, as quoted in Mcphie, 2019, p. 1).5 Albrecht (2012) also coined the term solastalgia for the emotional stress and mental health phenomena triggered by devastated environments. I have an ethical imperative to confront such issues in my teaching and in  The reader may anticipate more decisive language than ‘might’, however, I have deliberately tended towards using less certain language such as might, may, could etc. versus should, ought or must. This is because my experimental approach does not have a certainty of outcome (especially a universal outcome). Furthermore, ‘should’ might impose a transcendent order, but ‘might’ leaves things more open (possibly). I have taken this tactic from Mcphie (2019), who writes: ‘Deleuze posited that [immanent] ethics need not be about what ought or must we do (questions of morality and the implementation of socially accepted rules and regulations) but rather what might, can or could we do, what are we capable of doing?’ (p. 25). 5  I will return to some these ideas later in Chap. 2 which includes a review of Mcphie’s (2019) posthuman inquiry into Mental health and wellbeing in the Anthropocene. In short, Mcphie argues for a conception of environ(mental) health, where mental health is not contained within a subject’s head but is also includes embodied physical health and extends reciprocally into our environment. 4

1.3  Provocations and Intent

7

this research, whilst being very wary of the wounds they may cause and that an affirmative approach must be taken. I am also not naïve enough to think that neither myself, nor OEE, will fix the problem or come up with the solution (as if there is a singular problem or solution). Thus, motivated by Haraway (2016), I’ll attempt to ‘stay with the trouble6 in real and particular places and times’ (p. 3) and create abilities to respond through affirmative pedagogies.

1.3 Provocations and Intent Run lines, never plot a point! (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 26)

How might I, an outdoor environmental educator, address these precarious times in my field and through my work? This question keeps spurring me on. Malone and Truong (2017) posit the need for educators to address the many issues of environmental crises. However, as Jickling et al. (2018) explain, ‘education, as it is often currently enacted, is unable to shoulder the challenge of this [environmental] work. Often, either explicitly or implicitly, it aids and abets the problem. It bends toward the status quo’ (p.  160). Malone and Truong suggest it is through education for sustainability (EfS) that educators may address issues of environmental precarity. Sustainability is a cross curricular priority in the Australian Curriculum (ACARA, 2018), but as Malone and Truong (2017) elaborate, the curriculum has ‘little space for considering alternative ways of relating to the planet’ and uncertainty remains as to whether EfS will continue to be supported and how it can be integrated effectively into our educational systems (p. 7). There is an urgency to the environmental crisis that Malone and Truong (2017) believe ‘necessitates a re-thinking of how we engage with education and sustainability’ and suggest researchers take up alternative methodologies and explore new creative pedagogical approaches that may assist development and integration of EfS (p. 7). Furthermore, Jickling et al. (2018) advocate for new possibilities to be explored in education, which challenge taken-­ for-­ granted assumptions whilst looking for alternative educational approaches (p. 160). My practice as an outdoor environmental educator currently involves working with higher education students, and the education I enact isn’t necessarily initial teacher education with a focus on the Australian Curriculum. Hence, I take up this challenge of staying with the trouble and rethinking pedagogy in the particular place-times I live and work. My intent through my research is to respond, in whatever ways I can, to environmental problems. Or rather, I have

 Haraway (2016, p. 1) writes that:

6

Trouble is an interesting word. It derives from thirteenth-century French verb meaning ‘to stir up.’ ‘to make cloudy,’ ‘to disturb.’ We—all of us on Terra—live in disturbing times, mixed-up times, troubling and turbid times. The task is to become capable, with each other in all of our bumptious kinds, of response.

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1  Introduction: Provocations and Intent

been moved to respond. Following in the footsteps of others such as Stewart (2020), I believe that I have an ethical imperative as an outdoor environmental educator and researcher to do something in response to the precarity of our times. This has not been a sudden idea, but a desire and obligation I have felt for many years. Importantly, in this work, I haven’t set out with a complete preconceived image of what this book should become, with a fixed solution in mind. In truth, there is still more to come as I sit here today and write these words. This project unfolds as an academic excursion, responding to situated problems, questions and provocations. I don’t see knowledge as fixed and out there, ready for me to collect (Law, 2004). Knowledge is created and knowledge creation is both a practice and a process—it emerges. This is the basis of my epistemological foundations (although I’m starting to not rely on foundations either). For me, guided by others such as Gough (2014), writing is part of my research process. The following passage, as quoted in Gough (2014), nods towards the generative capacity of emergent processes of creation: In a 1950 interview, the abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock was asked: ‘Then you don’t actually have a preconceived image of a canvas in your mind?’ He replied: ‘Well, not exactly—no—because it hasn’t been created, you see. Something new—it’s quite different from working, say, from a still life where you set up objects and work directly from them’” (quoted in Pinar, 1994, 7). Richardson (2001) makes a parallel point about writing as research: “I was taught . . . not to write until I knew what I wanted to say, until my points were organized and outlined. No surprise, this static writing model coheres with mechanistic scientism, quantitative research, and entombed scholarship” (35). (p. 163)

I am by no means an artist nor a great writer, however, the above quotations resonate. Like any adventure, I set out with a level of uncertainty. It is not about what could be included, but about what might be needed, in response to our times. Writing is one of the processes that help me figure these things out. I uncover things in my writing, form ideas and make connections I had not thought of before. I am not following a strict method or recipe, but things unfold through my practice. I call this approach immanent praxiography and I see it as one of the main contributions of this book. I will discuss this methodological orientation in depth in Chap. 3. However, in short, I offer immanent praxiography as an emergent mode of inquiry that does not separate theory and practice, ontology and epistemology or human and more-than-human worlds. Through this approach, I think with theory in OEE to respond to problems of practice critically and creatively. What makes this process worthwhile is it demonstrates how researchers-practitioners can trouble taken for granted ideas in OEE and develop capacities to respond to the ecological conditions of our times through creative modes of scholarship. To put it simply, this is a book that explores practice: the practicing of theory, the theorisation of practice and how both are entangled in the work I do (as Davies (2021) argues, ‘thinking and doing are intimately entangled’ (p. 5)). Moreover, this book is an attempt at creating something—creating pedagogies and opening possibilities. Travelling new pathways for my thought, that hopefully leads to new pathways for teaching, learning and relating within educational contexts. I am

1.4  Another Backstory

9

attempting to diffract (using Barad’s (2007) figuration of the term) my thoughts as an educator, interrupt some of the practices in my field and look for differences that are productive. Through this, I aim to attend to details that may be overlooked or taken for granted. Many of the chapters that follow are connected to and through my life as an outdoor environmental educator. Together, this body of work is a grouping of experiments in thinking and teaching practice. When I say experiment, I’m attempting to play with theory and practice, to see what happens. And I acknowledge that theory and thinking is itself a practice (Clarke, 2019; Pleasants & Stewart, 2019). In some senses, it is thinking in the field (van Dooren, 2018). Field, being both my discipline and my physical outdoor learning contexts. The chapters are set in particular places and times, where I work with students, with landscapes and different conceptual and pedagogical orientations. This book is a multiplicity and with a series of micro-explorations—excursions in thought. As such, I aim to think in many ways, not just one. Each chapter explores or responds to situated problems, gaps in the research literature, new possibilities or disturbances in particular ways. Each chapter may be read alone, yet the intention is that collectively they do something different, something more—the development of more-than-human pedagogies, which offers an educational perspective of humans as part of more-than-human worlds. Thus, more-than-human pedagogies, along with immanent praxiography, become the main contributions of this book. Soon in this chapter I will introduce the notion of more-than-human pedagogies in further depth. However, for now, I will continue to frame what has provoked this body of work.

1.4 Another Backstory In addition to this book stemming from a fascination and concern for more-than-­ human worlds, it is also motivated by a desire to open/free the possibilities for research methodologies and OEE practice. Some of my earlier research (Jukes, 2018; Jukes et al., 2019) set me on this path, empirically examining secondary outdoor education with insights from relational/new materialist theoretical orientations. However, it did not intervene, and it did not experiment with pedagogy within the program I examined. In this sense, all the research happened after the fact. To put it bluntly, in hindsight I did not do anything radically unconventional in the research and I could push the bounds of thinking and doing research differently. Later that year, as I was about to present at a conference, I came to the realisation that thinking differently for me was not necessarily thinking differently (or thinking thinking differently). Is there anything new with my attempts at new materialist and related approaches? How do I know the work I am doing is new? I am still early in a research career and have much to learn (and unlearn!). Maybe I had opened my eyes to new worlds of possibility through my early research, yet for others that have been in the game longer there might still be layers of normativity.

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However, I am wary of relativism and negative difference. And besides, there is nothing more one can do but forge on. My feelings resonate with Monforte’s (2018) words on the ‘new’: ‘The “new” both attracts and repels me; it seduces me with the promise of the unexplored and the evasive and obscure prose irritates me. In short, I feel simultaneously disenchanted and enthused towards it’ (p.  381). Ultimately, I am lured by the thought of the ‘new’, with a demonstration of creative approaches to research being part of the contributions I offer through this body of work. I am encouraged by St. Pierre (1997)—inspired by Deleuze and Guattari—who sought ‘to produce different knowledge and produce knowledge differently’ (p. 175). But, I must keep asking myself, what could different knowledge be? And how to produce it differently? Maybe my attempts at difference can border on some socio-­ecological activism? These are contemplations I sit with throughout the research process. When reflecting upon my early research (Jukes, 2018; Jukes et al., 2019) I had another realisation. The theory and ideas from that work—posthumanist and new materialist thought—enabled me to see and conceive my OEE contexts differently, but it was all retrospective. It did not influence the events I was researching. The analysis through concepts was applied after the fact. I wondered, can I put this theory to work in different ways? Furthermore, if I reflect upon broader OEE literature, there does seem to be a sizable gap when looking for empirical inquiry that thinks differently and enacts new materialist and posthumanist theories in practice. There has of course been some work in this realm,7 both conceptual (e.g., Gough, 2016; Mcphie & Clarke, 2015; Clarke & Mcphie, 2014) and empirical (Mannion, 2020; Lynch & Mannion, 2021), however there is much more scope for thinking with such theory in OEE. In particular, how new materialist and posthumanist ideas can infuse research and teaching practices and make a difference in developing situated and responsive pedagogies is a direction I traverse in this book. In traversing this path, I have asked how can I create posthumanist pedagogies that use innovative modes of thought with my students and with the places in which I practice OEE? Can this help my students engage with the world in different ways? Can I develop more-­than-­ human pedagogies that decenter humans, or blur the boundary between humans and the world, and enable us to enact modes of relating and modes of thought, where we humans are (messily) of this wild becoming world? Can this enable ways of responding to ecological precarity through OEE that does not romanticise nature and nature connections? I have pondered this, I have ruminated, experimented, conversed with my students, paid attention to the places I work, read and read some more, leading to this body of work.  I whole heartedly acknowledge that the references mentioned here in this sentence are a limited and partial snapshot of the literature, even within OEE. That aside, I stand by the statement that OEE has much further scope new materialist and posthumanist inquiry, especially from scholars of diverse backgrounds. 7

1.5  More-Than-Human Pedagogies: A Touchstone and Guiding Heuristic

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1.5 More-Than-Human Pedagogies: A Touchstone and Guiding Heuristic The more-than-human is a touchstone throughout this book. As far as I am aware, Abram (1996) was the first to develop and utilise such phrasing (note, I also discuss this in Chap. 4). His book, The spell of the sensuous: Perception and language in a more-than-human world, is a work of ecological philosophy that draws upon phenomenological thinkers such as Merleau-Ponty and Husserl, but also animistic and indigenous epistemologies. For Abram (1996), the planets ecological predicament is created by human hubris and self-referentiality: Caught up in a mass of abstractions, our attention hypnotized by a host of human-made technologies that only reflect us back on ourselves, it is all too easy for us to forget our carnal inherence in a more-than-human matrix of sensations and sensibilities. (p. 22)

He argues that humans have evolved in reciprocity with a more-than-human world. In short, to address environmental problems and heal the planet, Abram believes we need to develop our sensuous capacities and attend to the more-than-human world. I will not delve further into Abram’s thesis here, and I do not adhere to his phenomenological orientation. However, the language of more-than-human, and the ontological orientation that considers us living with/in/of a more-than-human world acts as a touchstone—a key feature and heuristic—through my project. Being of a more-than-human world works as a heuristic in this book for multiple reasons. It signals that humans are not separate or distinct from the world, but embodied and embedded within and of a more-than-human world. As Davies (2021) articulates, ‘more-than-human refers to the world that we are of—of a world that includes the emergent, permeable human and all its animal and earth intra-active others’ (p.  1). This helps break the habit of dualistic depictions of humans and nature (with the rhetoric around human-nature connection proving to be an oxymoron for Fletcher (2017)). Furthermore, it helps flatten the hierarchical structuring of human exceptionalism. The fact that we are of a more-than-human world signals life and agency beyond the human. It places bodies (messily) within/of the world (not that the world is a container), in relation to many more-than-human lives and agencies beyond our control. However, it is important to note the more-than-human is not just outside the human body. The human body is made up of bacteria and microorganisms that make up a microbiome, a microbiome that survives off us and that we rely upon to survive. Furthermore, the food we eat, the oxygen we consume and the water we drink is needed for us to function. The skin is not a border, but a porous surface that is constantly infused by more-than-human agencies—the human and more-than-­ human are irreducibly contingent and entangled, and I am cautious not to semiotically depict this as another dualism. All this might be quite obvious to some, in the lived reality of our lives, but in a society rife with bounded individualism it is worth spelling this out.

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Koro-Ljungberg (2015) writes that ‘labels and concepts carry diverse and possibly continuously changing meanings, and they guide practice in particular and specific ways’ (p.  11). More-than-human acts as such a label through this book, signifying an intent to counteract human exceptionalism and bounded individualism, where ‘the world does not actually revolve around human beings’ (Ingold, 2021, p. 5). To borrow a few more lines from Ingold (2021): …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 the 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. (pp. 6–7)

It is in this sense that the world is becoming together and never apart. But of course, we often tell things apart, name things and segregate them. The key, for me at least, is to ensure habits do not become too striated or sedimented, and the politics are attended to. Where does pedagogy come into this? What might more-than-human pedagogies signify? I first conjured the label ‘more-than-human pedagogies’ when I was conceptualising this project in mid-2018 as way to acknowledge the power of various material forces and actors beyond conventionally perceived human educators. Since, I have noticed Mannion (2020) also use the label8 in his discussions on assemblage theory/pedagogies and a project called ‘Stories in the land.’ In describing his project, he writes: We sought to devise ‘more-than-human’ pedagogies which would evoke and provide opportunities for catalytic witnessing of the significance of the landscape, story, material practices and the movements of animals in past times with a view of informing new life today. We sought to maximise affective intensity for learning with, through, and in relation. (pp. 1357–1358).

My perspectives and intentions align here with Mannion’s, and I acknowledge the overlap with his work, having found his work informative for my own. It has encouraged me to continue working with the notion of more-than-human pedagogies as a heuristic in this project and find different articulations of what this might be/mean/ do. In this sense, I use Mannion’s work as one of the many springboards to help further empirical research drawing upon new materialist orientations for developing nuanced and responsive post-anthropocentric curricula and pedagogy in OEE. Affifi’s (2015) Educating in a multispecies world offers another waypoint for my pedagogical intentions. He argues that education is not just a human affair—education occurs across species and beyond formal educational settings. He enquires into ways that humans can learn from other species and other species might learn from us, noting his work is partial, situated and contextual. I have a similar curiosity, wanting to explore how the more-than-human world may be attended to and ­shape/

 Furthermore, Lynch (2018) has used some similar phrasing and orientations in his doctoral research exploring more-than-human curriculum making. 8

1.5  More-Than-Human Pedagogies: A Touchstone and Guiding Heuristic

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affects my educational contexts in situated ways. Furthermore, I want to explore how I might enact pedagogy differently to allow more-than-human agencies to emerge, be attended or attuned to. Thus, more-than-human pedagogies are not a singular goal or outcome of this project, but a heuristic that guides it—it is a heuristic that might help OEE decentre humans whilst confronting and responding to ecological precarity and damaged colonial landscapes in the contexts in which it is performed. My hope with more-than-human pedagogies is that such an orientation might leave bodies open to more-than-human affects, where ‘no one knows ahead of time the affects one is capable of; it is a long affair of experimentation, requiring a lasting prudence’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 362, as quoted in Halsey, 2007, p. 146).

1.5.1 A Brief Sidenote on the Signifier In highlighting the more-than-human as a touchstone and heuristic, I also need to point out some potential difficulties and limitations of the term, limitations I sometimes struggle with. More-than-human refers to ‘other’ than and beyond human, whilst acknowledging the human as part of/not separated from. Yet, morethan-­human still involves ‘human’ as an essential signifier. The sense I get is paralleled well by de Bouviour and her comments regarding identifying woman in terms of man: ...humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being...she is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute, she is the Other. (de Beauvoir, 1965, as quoted in Plumwood, 2003, p. 58).

Clarke (2019) also notes some of his own difficulties with ‘more than human’: Decentering does not mean ignoring our practice. Rather, it means focusing on ourselves as different (as other than Western human subjects) as well as (or with) other things. I’m not particularly keen on the term ‘more than human’ as it seems to accept ‘human’ as a conceptual category and retain a sedimented dualism. Perhaps the term ‘all beyond humanism’ is more appropriate, with its focus on the conceptual. It means acknowledging that we are not necessarily human, as the term ‘human’ holds too much baggage for us. Instead we are unhuman. A subject undone (St. Pierre, 2004). (Clarke, 2019, p. 171)

Maybe more-than-human(ist) pedagogies is a tweak I could make to the signifier? It is not just ontologically moving beyond humans, but the idea of humanism— rethinking the bounded individual self along with the hierarchies that have come with it. Despite these musings and limitations of the term ‘more-than-human pedagogies’, I still find value in it and choose to use it as a semiotic tool. I also find other alternatives can be (even more) esoteric or ambiguous, leading to confusion and reducing generative potentials. In short, for me, the value of more-than-human as a semiotic tool outweighs its problems and limitations.

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1.6 Overview of Chapters There seems to be a habit emerging from authors in the ‘posts’ to signal to the reader that they can read the text in any order. The turn against linearity and sequenced ordering is part of avoiding a formulaic normative convention in the production of a text. I think it stems from Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) author note in A thousand plateaus, explaining it is not composed of chapters, but instead a series of plateaus that can be read independently. In part, I agree that a text doesn’t have to be presented linearly. I am sure that readers will read this in whatever order they choose and do not need my invitation to do so. I have written many of the chapters in this book so that they stand alone and may be read independently in any order. However, one thing I will affirm is that this has been a project that has grown—my writing, thinking and practice have developed in various ways through the project. In the end I went with a more conventional structure, to build the multiplicitous story and potentially make it flow best for the reader. Following this chapter, there is a review chapter (Chap. 2), focusing on two key texts that have influenced me and my approach to both pedagogy and research. This feeds into a methodology chapter (Chap. 3), before heading into further lines of exploration. If you do not like this order, then please read it in whatever sequence you prefer (which you were surely going to do anyway). Below is a brief description of what is to come: Chapter 2, part 1 explores Stewart’s (2020) book, Developing place-responsive pedagogy in outdoor environmental education: A rhizomatic curriculum autobiography as a point of departure in my own rethinking of pedagogy and curriculum. The book travels his 20+ year journey of practicing/researching place-responsive OEE within south-eastern Australian, drawing upon Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy. Throughout he offers pedagogies that attend to the bio-geographical and cultural locations he practices, and curriculum that draws upon natural and cultural history. I open discussions on his book as it is one that has been influential for me, and shaped what follows in this book. Chapter 2, part 2 emerges from my experiences in the 2019/2020 Australian summer. Two things of note happened, bushfires ravaged the east coast of Australia and I read Jamie Mcphie’s (2019) Mental health and wellbeing in the Anthropocene: A posthuman inquiry. This part of the book is a situated essay focusing on Mcphie’s book as a tool to think with. I found it offered me generative ways of thinking differently about the environment and climate induced events such as the fires. I discuss Mcphie’s book and its relevance for environmental education researchers, including the many conceptual and methodological possibilities it provides (which I put to work myself later). Chapter 3 offers some philosophical framing for the book and introduces the methodological concept of immanent praxiography. I discuss some of the posthumanist theory that influences the project and I discuss some of my ontological assumptions. Furthermore, I frame how experimentation and play come into my methodological processes. A table that summarises some of the different aspects and offerings of the chapters that follow is also included.

1.6  Overview of Chapters

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Chapter 4 draws upon pedagogical experimentation on a ski-touring journey in the Australian Alps. The aim of the chapter is to build upon place-responsive pedagogies in OEE with insight from new materialist and posthumanist theory. This chapter focusses on the generative potential of considering co-productions and assemblages that include the materiality of a more-than-human world. Combining place-responsive and new materialist ideas, the concept of more-than-human stories is offered as a pedagogical strategy that may challenge anthropocentrism and develop different ways of thinking about and with more-than-human places. An example of these ideas in practice is offered, where Ya, an undergraduate student, presents her more-thanhuman story—One Single Moment—a picture-story book created on the ski-touring journey. Following her picture-story book, she maps the conditions of possibility, the various pedagogical influences that led to the creation of One Single Moment. The aim through this chapter is to offer methodological and pedagogical insight into using new materialist theories in creative and productive ways. Chapter 5 is introducing the idea of reading landscapes in relation to more-­than-­ human worlds. I explore the practice of reading more-than-human stories in the landscape through examples from extended bushwalks in the Australian Alps. The aim of this chapter is to engage with the expressive power of landscape, offering some pedagogical strategies for attuning to more-than-human worlds. The chapter argues that by paying close attention, we may see that different features can tell us something about our shared worlds—a movement away from colonialist practices. In Chap. 6, I propose the possibility of thinking with a landscape as a pedagogical concept, inspired by posthumanist theory. I enact this concept in the Australian Alps, concentrating on the contentious environmental dilemma involving introduced horses and their management in this bio-geographical location. The topic of horses is of pedagogical relevance for place-responsive outdoor environmental educators as both a location-specific problem and an example of a troubling issue. The chapter has two objectives for employing posthumanist thinking. Firstly, it experiments with the alternative methodological possibilities that posthumanist theory affords for OEE, including new ways of conducting educational research. Secondly, it explores how thinking with a landscape as a pedagogical concept may help open ways of considering the dilemma that horses pose. The pedagogical concept is enacted through some empirical events which sketch human-horse encounters from the Australian Alps. These sketches depict some of the pedagogical conversations and discursive pathways that encounters can provoke. Such encounters and conversations are ways of constructing knowledge of the landscape, covering multiple species, perspectives and discursive opportunities. Chapter 7 considers the role of landscape in shaping learning possibilities and explores practices of reading landscapes diffractively, situated within a series of river journeys. Co-authored with Alistair Stewart and Marcus Morse, we consider ways we might pay attention to the ever-changing flux of places whilst experimenting with posthumanist praxis. Methodologically we embrace the post qualitative provocation to do research differently by enacting an empiricism that does not ground the inquiry in a paradigmatic structure. In doing so, we rethink conventional notions of method and data as we create a series of short videos from footage

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1  Introduction: Provocations and Intent

recorded during canoeing journeys with tertiary OEE students. These videos, along with a student poem, form the empirical materials in this project. Video allows us to closely analyse more-than-human entanglements, contemplating the diverse ways we can participate with and read landscapes in these contexts. We aim to provoke diffractive thought and elicit affective dimensions of material encounters, rather than offer representational findings. This chapter intends to open possibilities for post qualitative research practice, inspired by posthumanist and new materialist orientations. Chapter 8 looks at remake activities. Remake activities reuse and recycle waste materials, working them into something useful. The experiential activity seems to be prevalent, yet limited literature covers creative ways of thinking about pedagogical approaches. The chapter examines some of the emerging waste education literature before exploring further possibilities for remake activities, using the example of paddle making as a pedagogical practice in outdoor, environmental and sustainability education. I perform a new materialist praxis for paddle making, enacting a diffractive investigation into a piece of timber as a way of framing paddle making activities. I present the investigation as a narrative that considers the life of the timber and the broader ecological history of the material. This charts ethical and environmental problems relating to particular forests whilst posing different ways of conceptualising timber. Through this, I offer an example of the pedagogical diffractions that can be made during remake activities. In summary, the chapter attends to materiality in divergent ways, through the use of new materialist ideas, to open up educational possibilities. Chapter 9 explores some unexamined assumptions involving both technology and movement for outdoor learners. Also, co-authored with Alistair Stewart and Marcus Morse, this chapter explores ways of learning landscapes through non-­ digital technology and movement within a tertiary education context involving canoe journeys in south-eastern Australia. We examine the ways that both non-­ digital technology and movement come together to help shape orientations through situated examples from OEE fieldwork. Our investigations utilise posthumanist and process-relational theories for exploring onto-epistemological dimensions of outdoor learning. We bring such theory into conversation with photos, videos and student essays to analyse our OEE fieldwork contexts. In this way we highlight that types of technology (such as a canoe) and movement cannot be taken for granted; rather, they help constitute the ways we come to know places, whilst also acknowledging some of the cultural and conceptual orientations that also influence learning. This chapter offers alternative insights for learning landscapes and the mediating influence of technologies. Chapter 10 is co-authored with Dave Clarke and Jamie Mcphie and is an experiment in collaborative writing as a form of inquiry. We write with and through the events of our lives, to see how ontology manifests itself within our processes of collaborative inquiry in environmental education. Fires, viruses, lines and cosmopolitics infuse this chapter as we strive to think and enact inquiry in alternative ways. The chapter also offers insights into some of the further backstories and considerations that furrowed along underneath some of the other chapters in this project.

References

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Chapter 11 looks to address the fact that OEE has not responded in any significant way to the climate crises. Thus, this chapter confronts the issue of climate change by exploring some of the climate change education literature that may provide useful insights for OEE pedagogy. I then offer four examples of practice where climate change education is delivered through OEE. These examples include taking advantage of pedagogic moments, planning activities and experiences with climate change education in mind along with an example of tertiary curriculum development for climate change education within OEE. The chapter highlights that conceptualizing and bearing witness to climate change are steps towards collective action and fostering response-ability. Chapter 12 brings an inevitable end to the book, but not necessarily the project. I tie together the many of the ideas touched upon throughout by noting the two main contributions the book offers. Namely, more-than-human pedagogies as an educational offering that addresses issues such hierarchical anthropocentrism and bounded individualism, while attending to the various more-than-human actants that have the power to impact and implicate learning in OEE. I describe how such a pedagogy may help us confront ecological issues and rethink how we relate to the world through OEE. Furthermore, immanent praxiography as methodological approach is revisited, with its contribution as a practice-focused approach to emergent inquiry highlighted. The chapter and book close with a coda, written from the mountains of Victoria, highlighting the urgency of ecological precarity and the possible role OEE may play in learning to respond.

References #StopAdani_movement. (2019). Stop Adani. Retrieved from https://www.stopadani.com/ @SaveWesternPort. (2018, May 12). Do you want Crib Point to become industrial wasteland? Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/SaveWesternPort/ Abram, D. (1996). The spell of the sensuous: Perception and language in a more-than-human world. Vintage Books. ACARA. (2018). Sustainability. Retrieved from https://www.australiancurriculum.edu. au/f-­10-­curriculum/cross-­curriculum-­priorities/sustainability/ Affifi, R. (2015). Educating in a multispecies world (Doctoral dissertation). University of Toronto. https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/72849/1/Affifi_Ramsey_R_201511_PhD_ thesis.pdf Albrecht, G. (2012). The age of solatalgia. The conversation: Academic rigour, journalistic flair, 14 Jan 2020). Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/the-­age-­of-­solastalgia-­8337 Allen, M. R., Dube, O. P., Solecki, W., Aragón-Durand, F., Cramer, F., Humphreys, S., M. Kainuma, J. Kala, N. Mahowald, Y. Mulugetta, R. Perez, M., & Wairiu Zickfeld, K. (2018). Framing and context. Retrieved from https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/chapter-­1/ Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press. BOM. (2020). Annual climate statement 2019 [Press release]. Retrieved from http://www.bom. gov.au/climate/current/annual/aus/ Braidotti, R. (2013). The Posthuman. Polity Press. Braidotti, R. (2019). Posthuman knowledge. Polity Press.

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Carbonell, R., Iggulden, T., & Davies, J. (2019). Murray-Darling basin could be missing billions of litres of water, study claims. Retrieved from https://mobile.abc.net. au/news/2019-­0 3-­0 6/billions-­o f-­l itres-­o f-­w ater-­m issing-­f rom-­m urray-­d arling-­ basin/10873782?pfmredir=sm&sf208963016=1&smid=Page:%20ABC%20Australia-­ Facebook_Organic&WT.tsrc=Facebook_Organic Carrington, D. (2019). Youth climate strikers: ‘We are going to change the fate of humanity’. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/01/youth-­climate-­ strikers-­we-­are-­going-­to-­change-­the-­fate-­of-­humanity?fbclid=IwAR35-­OC-­Rxh8lomWphW6 hHsVKmKAS1TbSaABM8ikEnOTvTzSxzieiV8q3gg CAT. (2019). Climate Action Tracker. Retrieved from https://climateactiontracker.org/global/ temperatures/ Charlson, F. (2019). The rise of ‘eco-anxiety’: Climate change affects our mental health, too. The conversation: Academic rigour, journalistic flair. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/ the-­rise-­of-­eco-­anxiety-­climate-­change-­affects-­our-­mental-­health-­too-­123002 Clarke, D. A. G. (2019). Practising immanence: (still) becoming an environmental education academic (Doctoral dissertation). University of Edinburgh. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/35533 Clarke, D. A. G., & Mcphie, J. (2014). Becoming animate in education: Immanent materiality and outdoor learning for sustainability. Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Learning, 14(3), 198–216. https://doi.org/10.1080/14729679.2014.919866 Davies, B. (2021). Entanglement in the world’s becoming and the doing of new materialist inquiry. Routledge. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia (B. Massumi, Trans.). Bloomsbury. Flanagan, R. (2019). Tasmania is burning. The climate disaster future has arrived while those in power laugh at us. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/ feb/05/tasmania-­is-­burning-­the-­climate-­disaster-­future-­has-­arrived-­while-­those-­in-­power-­ laugh-­a t-­u s?fbclid=IwAR08dY2Poa6m-­_ zBitM7ORjyBrqVEfyaO23jQsHMMbUJRE nvN-­Unmuts8FY Fletcher, R. (2017). Connection with nature is an oxymoron: A political ecology of “nature-deficit disorder”. The Journal of Environmental Education, 48(4), 226–233. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 00958964.2016.1139534 Gough, N. (2014). Undoing anthropocentrism in educational inquiry: A phildickian space odyssey? In N.  Snaza & J.  Weaver (Eds.), Posthumanism and educational research. Taylor and Francis. Gough, N. (2016). Postparadigmatic materialisms: A ‘new movement of thought’ for outdoor environmental education research? Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education, 19(2), 51–65. Guattari, F. (2000). The three ecologies. Bloomsbury. Halsey, M. (2007). Molar ecology: What can the (full) body of an eco-tourist do? In A. Hickey-­ Moody & P.  Malins (Eds.), Deleuzian encounters: Studies in contemporary social issues (pp. 135–150). Palgrave Macmillan. Haraway, D. (1988). Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist Studies, 14(3), 575–599. Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press. Ingold, T. (2021). Correspondences. Polity. IUCN. (2020). The IUCN red list of threatened species. Retrieved from https://www.iucnredlist.org/ Jickling, B., Blenkinsop, S., Morse, M., & Jensen, A. (2018). Wild pedagogies: Six initial touchstones for early childhood environmental educators. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 34(2), 159–171. Jukes, S. (2018). Thinking outdoor environmental education differently: Material relations on a Snowy River journey (Master of Outdoor Education and Environment (Research)). La Trobe University. Jukes, S., Stewart, A., & Morse, M. (2019). Acknowledging the agency of a more-than-human world: Material relations on a Snowy River journey. Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education, 22(2), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42322-­019-­00032-­8

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Koro-Ljungberg, M. (2015). Reconceptualizing qualitative research: Methodologies without methodology. Sage. Law, J. (2004). After method: Mess in social science research. Routledge. Leopold, A. (1953). Round river: From the journals of Aldo Leopold. Oxford University Press. Lynch, J. (2018). Education in outdoor settings: The teacher’s role in more-than-human curriculum making (Doctoral dissertation). University of Stirling. https://core.ac.uk/download/ pdf/199408025.pdf Lynch, J., & Mannion, G. (2021). Place-responsive pedagogies in the Anthropocene: Attuning with the more-than-human. Environmental Education Research, 27(6), 864–878. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/13504622.2020.1867710 Malone, K., & Truong, S. (2017). Sustainability, education, and anthropocentric precarity. In K.  Malone, S.  Truong, & T.  Gray (Eds.), Reimagining sustainability in precarious times (pp. 3–16). Springer. Mannion, G. (2020). Re-assembling environmental and sustainability education: Orientations from new materialism. Environmental Education Research, 26(9–10), 1353–1372. https://doi. org/10.1080/13504622.2018.1536926 Mcphie, J. (2019). Mental health and wellbeing in the Anthropocene: A posthuman inquiry. Palgrave Macmillan. Mcphie, J., & Clarke, D. (2015). A walk in the park: Considering practice for outdoor environmental education through an immanent take on the material turn. The Journal of Environmental Education, 46(4), 230–250. https://doi.org/10.1080/00958964.2015.1069250 Monforte, J. (2018). What is new in new materialism for a newcomer? Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 10(3), 378–390. https://doi.org/10.1080/2159676x.2018.1428678 Orr, D. (1991). What is education for? Six myths about the foundations of modern education, and six new principles to replace them. In Context, 27(Winter), 52. Patagonia.com.au. (2019). The fight for the bight has come to a head. Retrieved from https://www. patagonia.com.au/pages/bigoildontsurf Pleasants, K., & Stewart, A. (2019). Entangled philosophical and methodological dimensions of research in outdoor studies? Living with(in) messy theorisation. In B.  Humberstone & H. Prince (Eds.), Research methods in outdoor studies (pp. 9–20). Routledge. Plumwood, V. (2003). Decolonizing relationships with nature. In W. B. Adams & M. Mulligan (Eds.), Decolonizing nature: Strategies for conservation in a post-colonial era. Routledge. Pinar, W. (1994). Autobiography, Politics and Sexuality: Essays in Curriculum Theory, 1972–1992. Peter Lang. ReclaimKosci. (2019). Reclaim Kosci. Retrieved from https://reclaimkosci.org.au/ Richardson, L. (2001). Getting personal: writing-stories. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 14(1), 33–38. Schuijers, L. (2021). In a landmark judgment, the Federal Court found the environment minister has a duty of care to young people. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/ in-­a-­landmark-­judgment-­the-­federal-­court-­found-­the-­environment-­minister-­has-­a-­duty-­of-­ care-­to-­young-­people-­161650?fbclid=IwAR3PEesbjdyq9kDrFi7IazU6aDtwDGlkVVC01AZV NEZtHMermbQXnVkG0Us St. Pierre, E. (1997). Methodology in the fold and the irruption of transgressive data. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 10(2), 175–189. https://doi. org/10.1080/095183997237278 St. Pierre, E. A. (2004). Deleuzian concepts for education: The subject undone. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 36(3), 283–296. Stewart, A. (2020). Developing place-responsive pedagogy in outdoor environmental education: A rhizomatic curriculum autobiography. Springer Nature. Strom, K., Haas, E., Danzig, A., Martinez, E., & McConnell, K. (2018). Preparing educational leaders to think differently in polarized, post-truth times. The Educational Forum, 82(3), 259–277. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131725.2018.1458361

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van Dooren, T. (2018). Thinking with crows: (Re)doing philosophy in the field. Parallax, 24(4), 439–448. https://doi.org/10.1080/13534645.2018.1546722 Vince, G. (2020, 13th January). How scientists are coping with ‘ecological grief’. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jan/12/ how-scientists-are-coping-with-environmental-grief Williams, J., & Grafton, R. Q. (2019). Missing in action: Possible effects of water recovery on stream and river flows in the Murray–Darling Basin, Australia. Australasian Journal of Water Resources, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1080/13241583.2019.1579965 Woinarski, J., Burbidge, A., & Harrison, P. (2015). Ongoing unraveling of a continental fauna: Decline and extinction of Australian mammals since European settlement. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(15), 4531–4540. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1417301112 WWF. (2018). Living planet report 2018: Aiming higher. WWF. WWF. (2019). World Wildlife Fund annual report and impact highlights Australia 2019. Retrieved from https://www.wwf.org.au/knowledge-­centre/resource-­library/resources/annual-­ report-­2019-­gs.sa6p1o

Chapter 2

Connecting with Lines of Flight: Reviewing Texts of Influence Scott Jukes

Abstract  This chapter is split into two parts. Part One explores Stewart’s (2020) book, Developing place-responsive pedagogy in outdoor environmental education: A rhizomatic curriculum autobiography as a point of departure in my own rethinking of pedagogy and curriculum. The book travels his 20+ year journey of practicing/researching place-responsive OEE within south-eastern Australian, drawing upon Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy. I open discussions on this book as it is one that has been influential for me, before I segue into part two. Part two emerges from my experiences in the 2019/2020 Australian summer. Two things of note happened, bushfires ravaged the east coast of Australia and I read Jamie Mcphie’s (2019) Mental health and wellbeing in the Anthropocene: A posthuman inquiry. This part of the book is a situated essay focusing on Mcphie’s book as a tool to think with. I found it offered me generative ways of thinking differently about the environment and climate induced events such as the fires. I discuss Mcphie’s book and its relevance for environmental education researchers, including the many conceptual and methodological possibilities it provides (which I put to work myself later).

2.1 Overview of the Chapter In this chapter, I review two texts that influence my project. The two texts—Stewart (2020) and Mcphie (2019)—are quite different from one another yet both have offered inspiration for the path I take in this research. It is in the wake of their work that this book flows. Obviously, a focus on two texts has affordances, in that I can explore them with some detail. However, it also means that there will be silences, with plenty of literature missed. Nonetheless, it is important to acknowledge and review this work in the earlier stages of this book due to the influence it has had on my project. Furthermore, there are threads later that pickup from what has started here. S. Jukes (*) Federation University, Berwick, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Jukes, Learning to Confront Ecological Precarity, International Explorations in Outdoor and Environmental Education 13, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34200-4_2

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The sections below have been written with particular audiences in mind, with the voice for both being slightly different. For example, the first essay was written as an entry discussion to Deleuzo-Guattarian concepts and place-responsive pedagogy, based off Stewart’s (2020) work. Alternatively, the review of Mcphie’s (2019) book was framed to express some of the posthumanist ideas I thought valuable for the environmental educators and for environmental education research. I attempt to highlight the generative potential of the book and how it provides some examples for alternative modes of research. I trust that the reader of this book can see the intention behind this chapter, including how these texts have provoked me and influence my research.

2.2 Part One: Stewart’s Developing Place-Responsive Pedagogy Place-responsive pedagogy has grown significantly over the last few decades. For example, Gruenwald (2003a, b) has been one that influenced the turn towards place in education, arguing for place-consciousness. Wattchow and Brown (2011) have made a significant impact, aiming to foster the lived experience of local places in outdoor education (OE). Whilst Mannion and Lynch (2016) offered a comprehensive overview of the primacy of place in outdoor studies. However, it is the work of Stewart, largely captured in his book Developing place-responsive pedagogy in outdoor environmental education: A rhizomatic curriculum autobiography (Stewart, 2020), that has significantly shaped my own pedagogy and, also, my approach to research. Thus, it is the focus of this section. Alistair Stewart (2020) asks questions that provoke different ways of thinking about outdoor environmental education (OEE). He prompts educators to think critically about pedagogical practices, inquire into the places we teach and re-evaluate how we form relationships with the more-than-human world. As he states, ‘survival of the more-than-human world is intimately linked to how we think about and act in their interests’ (Stewart, 2020, p.  181). A significant thread running through Stewart’s book is this pressing need to ethically re-evaluate how we think about and relate to unique Australian socio-ecological contexts. Despite the distinctly Australian focus, many of the lessons that can be gleaned from his book are relevant to, and worth contemplating in, other places. Stewart’s work comes at a crucial time for rapidly changing environments and species facing extinction. It also emerges from several decades of development in OE where the environmental education overlap has gained increased focus. For example, academics such as Andrew Brookes (2002a, b, 2004) argued for a move away from universalist and personal development centred approaches in OE towards more concentration on the specific environments and cultural contexts educators practice in. In 2016, the Australian Journal of Outdoor Education even changed its name, adding ‘environmental’ into its title (see Quay, 2016, and Gough, 2016, for

2.2  Part One: Stewart’s Developing Place-Responsive Pedagogy

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discussion on this). Stewart has been central in this development of OEE and, in particular, place-responsive pedagogies.1 Stewart’s (2020) book travels his 20+ year journey of practicing/researching place-responsive OEE within south-eastern Australia. Throughout he offers pedagogies that attend to the bio-geographical and cultural locations in which he practices, and a curriculum that draws upon natural and cultural history. The book provides a critique of some taken for granted approaches whilst offering original alternative possibilities. In the development of curriculum and pedagogy, Stewart reaches beyond previous OEE literature, delving into philosophy and environmental history to produce a thought provoking and pragmatic text, highlighting the potential OEE has in engaging students with places. In simple terms, his approach is about exploring and getting to know places, not expeditions through them.

2.2.1 Deleuzo-Guattarian Ideas for OEE Drawing upon French poststructuralists Deleuze and Guattari (1987), Stewart (2020) takes their mission to destabilise dominant modes of thought, applying qualities of their philosophy to his work in OEE. What results is a book with an unconventional structure that takes readers on ‘lines of flight’. This is to say that many of the ideas and concepts Stewart explores provoke new ways of thinking for OEE. Structurally, the book does not follow an established linear model and has no chapters (so to speak). Instead, the book consists of 13 plateaus (inspired by Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) ‘A thousand plateaus’). Each plateau is linked in multiple ways to other plateaus; the plateaus don’t have conclusions or findings, they are explorations and provocations into thinking differently about OEE and/or particular environmental contexts. Many of the plateaus are made up of previously published works, but importantly, this is not just a reproduction of papers published elsewhere. The book links plateaus together, adding personal accounts, extending ideas and taking divergent paths or pausing for contemplation (something I have also aimed to do in this book). The collection of works is envisioned as curriculum autobiography—what Stewart calls rhizocurrere. Rhizocurrere brings together Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the rhizome and Pinar’s currere. These concepts require some explication, and I will offer a brief and partial interpretation (see plateau 2 for Stewart’s explanation). The rhizome is a concept that encourages open and divergent modes

 For example, Stewart’s Seeing the trees and the forest: Attending to Australian natural history as if it mattered (Stewart, 2006) was declared in 2014 one of the most significant articles published in the Australian Journal of Environmental Education over the previous 30-years (Cutter-Mackenzie et  al., 2014). Furthermore, his Decolonising encounters with the Murray River: Building place responsive outdoor education (Stewart, 2004) was one of the most cited papers in Australian Journal of Outdoor Education/Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education between 2000–2013 (Brookes & Stewart, 2016). 1

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of thought—it is about making connections and moving in multiple different directions. In a sense, the concept is also political, in that it challenges hierarchical and centralised notions of thought/knowledge production. Currere, is a form of curriculum autobiography, deriving from Latin ‘to run’ or ‘to run a course’. The emphasis lies on the living development of curriculum, rather than curriculum as a static object to be observed (I see this as the process of developing curriculum not curriculum as a product). In this sense, rhizocurrere is an emergent form of curriculum autobiography that explores Stewart’s (re)thinking of OEE. By no means is it essential to grasp rhizocurrere to get value from the book. The first three plateaus contain most of the philosophical/methodological discussions, whereas the latter plateaus involve pedagogical discussions in locations such as the Murray River and central Victorian goldfields. As a collection of ideas, this is a book for outdoor environmental educators to pick up and read in sections or as a whole. Any plateau can be read whenever, as there is no order. Each plateau will help generate ideas for teaching, learning and the development of curricula. But Stewart doesn’t layout rules or a how-to script for developing curriculum or practicing place-responsive pedagogies: his book is ‘a report on an exploratory journey’ (Stewart, 2020, p. 4) that accepts curriculum development as an iterative (and itinerant) process. For me, following Stewart’s journey has prompted (re)thinking of my OEE practice, what I include/exclude and how landscapes can shape pedagogy.

2.2.2 The Importance of Place-Responsive Pedagogy One of the things I appreciate about Stewart’s book is that it is delivered from a situated position. As an educator and researcher, Stewart deeply cares about the Australian landscape and the places he teaches in, provoking others to consider their contexts. He situates his research within the places and conditions in which he teaches and uses theory to uncover blind-spots and generate different perspectives to improve outdoor learning. Throughout the book, Stewart critiques the devastating effects of colonisation on Australian landscapes, showing how destructive attitudes are still being perpetuated: In relative terms Australia is a wealthy nation and has high levels of literacy, yet it also currently has the highest rate of land clearing of any developed nation and arguably the worst record of animal extinction of any nation on earth (Lindenmayer, 2007). The settlement of Australia by Europeans has been marked by a failure to recognise that the landscapes, flora and fauna of the continent are radically different from those of Europe. (Stewart, 2020, p. 171)

But what does this have to do with OEE? For Stewart, a focus on adventurous activities and romanticised experiences aiming to connect with (generic) nature can leave

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the realities of the particular environment a forgotten backdrop. Such focus may be another colonial trait of ignoring a place’s bio-geographical and cultural histories, disregarding human/more-than-human communities that live there and importing unfitting practices from elsewhere. The ecological health of many south-east Australian environments is declining and should act as a reminder that cultural (and educational) perspectives need a shakeup. But Stewart explains that OEE literature has largely had nothing to say about declining ecological conditions in Australian places. Furthermore, pedagogical approaches that respond to local specifics have been few and far between. He contends that cultural viewpoints still remain largely ignorant of the particularities of the natural world, threatened species and ecological decline. For Stewart, nature is not all one thing, separated from humanity; landscapes are distinctive and unique, therefore pedagogy should reflect responsiveness to the land itself. For the most part, Australians do not seem ‘ecologically attuned’ (p.  45), and remedying this ignorance is one important step that a place-responsive OEE might offer. To become more attuned to places, Stewart suggests that learning in OEE might attend to native species (e.g., plateaus 7 and 12), Indigenous culture (e.g. plateaus 6 and 8) and specific natural and cultural histories (e.g. plateaus 9, 10 and 11). Such strategies have implications as they can bring Australians into a closer relationship with the diverse continent and develop a greater understanding of past mistakes, present problems and prospects. These themes and more permeate throughout the plateaus. Rather than tell the reader how to perform place-responsive pedagogy, the strength of Stewart’s book is it explains why place-responsive pedagogy is important and offers an example of how Stewart has thought and enacted place-responsive pedagogies. Not all places are the same so not all place-responsive pedagogies should be the same. Rather than rules, Stewart provides questions and ideas to think with and consider. In summary, Stewart experiments with concepts and reflects upon Australian stories of natural and cultural history, providing an assemblage as unique as the Australian landscape itself. Moreover, he offers an ethically minded and carefully delivered thesis on generating maximum potential through our position as outdoor environmental educators, especially within our current ecological precarity. For me, Stewart’s work has called me to pay closer attention to where I am when practicing OEE. But it has also provoked me to continually rethink my pedagogy, respond to ever-changing socio-ecological contexts and to play with concepts in practice. If we outdoor environmental educators are to make a transformative difference through our educational experiences, we need to develop a critical awareness of the plight of the environments we work, and how our worldviews and actions perpetuate ecological decline. If we follow Stewart’s lead, maybe ‘settler Australians will be better able to think themselves into the country and adapt more successfully to the constraints of the environment. Perhaps then more sustainable futures will be possible to imagine’ (Sinclair, 2001, p. 234).

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2.3 Part Two: Mcphie’s Mental Health and Wellbeing in the Anthropocene and Posthumanist Provocations The first line of Jamie Mcphie’s book is a bold and provocative one: ‘There is no such thing as mental health’ (Mcphie, 2019, p. v). For Mcphie, the word mental was ‘invented and appropriated’ (p. v) and inappropriate when considered in a posthumanist sense. As Mcphie argues, the notion of mental health residing only in the head is problematic—a relic of Cartesian dualisms, where the mind and body are distinct and separate from one another. Instead, Mcphie asks, what if mental health and wellbeing were distributed throughout our environment—as environ(mental) health—and planetary ill-health influenced our mental health? It may seem strange that a book on the topic of mental health and wellbeing is the focus of my attention in this chapter. However, it is the alternative perspectives and different ways of thinking that Mcphie offers which may disrupt some common perceptions of mental health and the environments in which we live—it is the transdisciplinary nature of Mcphie’s work that provides relevance to environmental education research. Mcphie challenges distinctions between humans and the environment, exploring human-environment relations through different concepts and experimental research approaches. Mcphie’s posthumanist take on human-­ environment relations has bearings for how we think of environments, and therefore warrants attention for how I grapple with environmental problems in my work.

2.3.1 Key Concepts: Beyond Dualisms, Towards Immanence A changing climate, species extinction, rapid transformation of landscapes—in general, environmental catastrophe or ecocide—are part of this time being labelled the Anthropocene.2 Mcphie (2019) adds mental ill-health into the mix, explaining ecocide as a problematic issue not completely separate from mental ill-health: there is a ‘growing body of evidence indicating that anxiety, stress and mental ill-health are becoming more prevalent in modern Western societies’ (p.  3) despite greater wealth, life expectancy and access to health care. From an ecological sense, mental health is an issue ‘that involves the wider mental human-environment assemblage’ (p. 9). This is to say that humans are not separate from the planet and, in many ways, mental health, physical bodies and a damaged planet are not independent entities. Such framing signals his intention to investigate how mental health and wellbeing are distributed in the environment, where ‘ecocide is a mental health issue’ (p. 8). This leads to a key concept of his book—environ(mental) health. The idea proposes that ‘mental ill-health is evident in humans and the environment if viewed through  Admittedly, the Anthropocene as a label is troublesome for Mcphie, due to its anthropocentric foundation (see also, Haraway, 2016, for further discussion on the problematic naming of the epoch), and uses it for its accessibility. 2

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an alternative lens, one that doesn’t choose to isolate mental from physical process or culture from nature (or humans from environments for that matter) [original emphasis]’ (p. 42). Further entangled within environ(mental) health is the force of capitalist modes of production and consumption. Philosophically, this hints at Mcphie’s disdain for Cartesian duality and alternative approach to the project. What people might find difficult about the book is the complexity and number of concepts deployed. Posthumanist thinking is not for the faint-hearted and Mcphie likens it to learning another language. In some respects, the generous footnotes3 help introduce the language, ideas and concepts. Furthermore, the book doesn’t dwell too long on one topic, moving through ideas quickly but circling back to them later. This approach develops and reinforces key messages whilst keeping the reading engaged through the complex philosophical discussions. In saying that, if a reader has no previous understanding of posthumanist theory, the ideas will still likely be confronting and take some grappling with. The approach taken for the study is described as a process-relational ontology of immanence. I mention the approach (which may be a barrier for accessing the book) as it enables the new and innovative ideas put forward. As such, the study is not a psychological exploration of mental health, but an ontological one which turns to materiality and an animistic world without pre-defined boundaries or points. I think of this as the human mind and body entangled in a broader more-than-human world—a removal of conventional boundaries. Or simply, to use Haraway’s (2016) phrase, ‘everything is connected to something’ (p. 31). Thinking with a philosophy of immanence is to consider nothing isolated or transcendent (Colebrook, 2002). Mcphie (2019) explains immanence is ‘an attempt to break free from the Cartesian trap of self-other or nature-culture dichotomies that reify transcendent and static modes of thought and practice’ (p. 41). So, for such an ontology, bodies become zones of entanglement with the world, where the mind (or thought) extends topologically. It is such ideas that environmental educators may find generative because they help unsettle inequitable dualisms, including human exceptionalism and anthropocentric thinking in research practice.

2.3.2 Post Qualitative Empirical Inquiry Mcphie’s (2019) book is not all philosophy and theory. Spread throughout chapters (in what are called preludes, interludes and postludes) a post qualitative empirical inquiry is performed, focusing on the ‘Walking in Circles’ (WiC) group. WiC was formed by participants from a few therapeutic groups and resulted in a range of outings to environments to investigate the perceptions of participants and the  Personally, I much prefer footnotes to endnotes. A quick glance at Mcphie’s footnotes adds variant readings, a way to think with a concept or makes an interesting side comment without having to flick all the way to the back of the book. For me, the footnotes add to the reading rather than disrupting it. 3

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therapeutic capacity of environments. As Mcphie explains, this evolved into a post qualitative action research project which includes participants as co-researchers. This imaginative inquiry enacts methods (or non-methods) such as psychogeography. One example involves the group following a circular line pre-drawn on a map as a way of exploring a location. The ventures to outdoor environments include urban and peri-urban settings (such as a shopping mall) where ‘co-researchers’ create empirical materials via journals, photography, video, etc. The ventures and discussions of the WiC group co-create insightful investigations and ruptures in thought, specific to times and particular places. This is not a conventional humanist qualitative methodology, but one guided by the environments and co-researchers as much as (if not more than) Mcphie. I see potential here to open new modes of inquiry for outdoor and environmental education research, adapted to various locations and research situations. Mcphie’s creative and emergent approach offers both an ethical and engaging style of research.

2.3.3 Questioning the ‘Healing Power’ of Nature Another idea worth highlighting for environmental educators is the discussions on the healing power of nature. The benefits of time in nature are regularly discussed in environmental discourse—often portrayed as a panacea—where time in nature is good and more time is better. However, Mcphie (2019) highlights that the healing power of nature can actually be the healing power of the concept. Concepts (such as nature) have performativity—they do something—and shape how we think. But how the concept performs depends on the socio-cultural, geographical, material, historical, cognitive and political specificity of a person or group of people. For example, how a person perceives nature (the concept, e.g., a romantically idealized conception) and what a person perceives nature to be (actual bio-geographical location, e.g. a green space such as a manicured park or wilderness area) will impact how a person engages with and experiences a particular environment. Furthermore, the perception of the experience then influences whether time in that environment was beneficial for them. Does a person perceive a landscape to be damaged and degraded, or wild, healthy and flourishing? Is it pouring with rain, full of scary leaches and just plain hard work? Maybe you like rain, leaches and hard work? Mcphie (2019) highlights that of the studies purporting mental health gains from time in nature, the ones he reviewed restrict nature to idealistic and romanticized conceptions. Such interpretations have consequences and reveal underlying issues with the ‘connection to nature’ rhetoric (also see Fletcher, 2017). For example, those that perceive (or have access to) green nature are only acknowledging a certain image of an environment. Alternatively, those with an ecological education (those that may see environmental destruction) or a post-romantic view might perceive a world with wounds and experience negative emotions when encountering such a ‘nature’. Mcphie agitates further, questioning if we are already of nature (ontologically), how

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are we separate to it? How can we connect to something we are already participating with4? As he explains, the real problem is a crisis of perception and conception (how we conceive, develop and understand ideas), not a literal disconnection. Borrowing from Brookes’ (2002b, 2004) line of thinking about outdoor education curriculum, I also wonder if connection to nature rhetoric is dominated by decontextualized, universalist and absolutist tendencies? Our abstracted epistemologies, separated from ontology, have left us free from messiness but with a certain image of the world. Mcphie’s ruminations bring ontology in conversation with epistemology, ethics and the nuanced complexity often missed by normative approaches to inquiry.

2.3.4 What Does a Book Do? In posthumanist thinking, meaning and what something ‘is’ tends to be overlooked in favor of different questions, such as how does a thing work, or what does it do? Mcphie (2019) follows such a practice, asking what things such as a concept might do. This aspect of a process-relational inquiry looks for performativity and productive possibilities over identity and categorization. Hence, I’m prompted in this review to think about what the book does—what was its affect as I read it? I first read Mental health and wellbeing in the Anthropocene over the 2019/2020 summer period in south-eastern Australia. During this time, bushfires raged for months on end, with an estimated 17 million hectares burned across the country. This was the largest fire in modern record. Thirty-three people perished in the fires, over 3000 homes were destroyed and an estimate of over one billion mammals, birds and reptiles were killed. The fires wreaked havoc irrespective of human or other-than-human life. I was never in any direct physical danger from fires. However, friends were at risk, places I work/love/spend much of my time in were irreversibly damaged and the resulting smoke blanketed my home whenever the wind blew it my direction. It is within these events that I read Mcphie’s book and they undoubtedly work together in shaping how I consider the book and the events of the summer. Smoke in my lungs, constant haze, news clips of leaping flames, images of jet black skies and expanding fire zones on emergency services apps all created affects and altered my (perceived) connection to (a specific) nature (in the high country of Victoria). Concepts such as nature turned post-romantic, place lost its purity and even the word fire developed a new capacity to act in my thoughts. My mind extended across the state into fire zones to empathise with species and places I have become attached to and darkened at the sight of blackened landscapes and burnt  As Mcphie (2019) elaborates:

4

We can never “reconnect to nature” because there were never any points to connect in the first place. An immanent version of nature always already includes us. It includes the impoverished. It includes the minoritarian. It includes our products. It includes plastic. It includes moving from observation to participation. This post-romantic perspective is a far cry from a Teletubby [manicured] landscape. (p. 223)

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bodies. I consider this in conjunction with Mcphie’s (2019) extended body hypothesis, where ‘the physical body is extended in time and space conceptually, perceptually and affectively’ (p. 184). As the fires receded and I ventured physically back to these areas, I was uplifted by green shoots sprouting from eucalypts and sobered by silty rivers showing the signs of erosion. The material events of the summer reshaped the world and myself as part of it. This is a world in process where perceptions of it are not static. Now, as I sit down and write this review, the planet is wrapped in the grips of the COVID-19 pandemic and many of us cannot leave our homes, visit friends or go to our workplaces. Mcphie’s book is both poignant and valuable to think with in such times. It has prompted me to think about the relationship between physical surroundings, the environment and mental health in ways I never had before. Throughout, Mcphie offers methodologically innovative ways for moving beyond mind-body dualisms and accounting for the physical nature of mental phenomena. He challenges commonly held assumptions on the way to a non-reductive ethical consideration of human-environment relations. In short, the book did something for me. It altered how I thought about the world, how I think about research and thus, continues to perform as I note down these words here and continues on throughout this body of work.

2.3.5 Afterword After writing this review, I started conversing with Jamie Mcphie about his book, my review and a potential collaborative project. David Clarke—Jamie’s co-­ conspirator in several articles/projects—got involved in the conversations too. An article (see Jukes et al., 2022) emerged from our discussions that picks up on the themes of post qualitative inquiry, fires, COVID-19, political ecologies and more. An adaption of this article is included as Chap. 10. If the reader enjoyed the conversations about Jamie’s book above, then they may choose to jump to Chap. 10 and follow on from where this review ended. Otherwise, up next is Chap. 3, where I discuss the overarching philosophical~methodological approach to this book.

References Brookes, A. (2002a). Gilbert White never came this far South: Naturalist knowledge and the limits of universalist environmental education. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 7(2), 73–87. Brookes, A. (2002b). Lost in the Australian bush: Outdoor education as curriculum. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 34(4), 405–425. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220270110101805 Brookes, A. (2004). Astride a long-dead horse. Mainstream outdoor education theory and the central curriculum problem. Australian Journal of Outdoor Education, 8(2), 22–33.

References

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Brookes, A., & Stewart, A. (2016). What do citation patterns reveal about the outdoor education field? A snapshot 2000–2013. Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education, 19(2), 12–24. Colebrook, C. (2002). Gilles Deleuze. Routledge. Cutter-Mackenzie, A., Gough, A., Gough, N., & Whitehouse, H. (2014). Opening to the Australian journal of environmental education special 30-year anniversary issue. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 30(1), v–vi. https://doi.org/10.1017/aee.2014.12 Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. (B. Massumi, Trans.). Bloomsbury. Fletcher, R. (2017). Connection with nature is an oxymoron: A political ecology of “nature-deficit disorder”. The Journal of Environmental Education, 48(4), 226–233. https://doi.org/10.108 0/00958964.2016.1139534 Gough, N. (2016). Australian outdoor (and) environmental education research: Senses of “place” in two constituencies. Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education, 19(2), 2–11. Gruenwald, D. (2003a). The best of both worlds: A critical pedagogy of place. Educational Researcher, 32(4), 3–12. Gruenwald, D. (2003b). Foundations of place: A multidisciplinary frame-work for place-concious education. American Educational Research Journal, 40(3), 619–654. Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press. Jukes, S., Clarke, D., & Mcphie, J. (2022). The wisp of an outline ≈ Storying ontology as environmental inquiry↔education :–). Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 38(3–4), 328–344. https://doi.org/10.1017/aee.2021.31 Mannion, G., & Lynch, J. (2016). The primacy of place in education in outdoor settings. In B.  Humberstone, H.  Prince, & K.  Henderson (Eds.), Routledge international handbook of outdoor studies (pp. 85–94). Taylor & Francis. Mcphie, J. (2019). Mental health and wellbeing in the Anthropocene: A posthuman inquiry. Palgrave Macmillan. Quay, J. (2016). Editorial. Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education, 19(1), 1. https://doi. org/10.1007/BF03400981 Sinclair, P. (2001). The Murray: A river and its people. Melbourne University Press. Stewart, A. (2004). Decolonising encounters with the Murray River: Building place responsive outdoor education. Australian Journal of Outdoor Education, 8(2), 46–55. Stewart, A. (2006). Seeing the trees and the forest: Attending to Australian natural history as if it mattered. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 22(2), 85–97. Stewart, A. (2020). Developing place-responsive pedagogy in outdoor environmental education: A rhizomatic curriculum autobiography. Springer Nature. Wattchow, B., & Brown, M. (2011). A pedagogy of place: Outdoor education for a changing world. Monash University Publishing.

Chapter 3

Philosophical~Methodological Processes: Immanent Praxiography Scott Jukes

Abstract  This chapter offers the philosophical framing for the book and introduces the methodological concept of immanent praxiography. I discuss the posthumanist disposition that influences the project and I present some of the ontological assumptions. Furthermore, this chapter frames how experimentation and play come into the methodological processes. A table is included that summarises some of the different aspects and offerings of the chapters, linking together key ideas and presenting through lines. In short, this chapter offers a map for the emergent methodological processes that have produced this book.

3.1 Challenging Human Exceptionalism: Working Within the Post-anthropocentric Material Turn It matters what thoughts think thoughts. It matters what knowledges know knowledges. It matters what relations relate relations. It matters what worlds world worlds. It matters what stories story stories. (Haraway, 2016, p. 35)

In opening these methodological discussions that bring this book together, I draw attention to the epigraph above. Haraway (2016), a prominent feminist thinker and post philosopher (composter as she might say), is suggesting that we must think about the ways we think. For example, our methodologies and research practices involve ways of thinking that produce the knowledge of our research. As such it is an ethical act to seriously consider how our methodological thinking produces As Stewart (2015, 2020) explains, philosophy and methodology are entangled. He utilizes the tilde (~) symbol to show that philosophical~methodological considerations are ‘enmeshed in one another’ and ‘are always already coexistent’ (Stewart, 2015, p. 1182). S. Jukes (*) Federation University, Berwick, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Jukes, Learning to Confront Ecological Precarity, International Explorations in Outdoor and Environmental Education 13, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34200-4_3

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different knowledge and ideas, including what our methodologies both focus on, highlight and silence. I acknowledge that, as an academic, researchers are part of the academic machine that has many striated, sedimented or ingrained habits, or worse yet, hegemonic rules that must be followed in the production of ‘new knowledge’ (which, honestly, sounds a little paradoxical to me). Gough (2016), as a voice within outdoor and environmental education, among many other voices from other disciplinary areas, has signaled alternative possibilities (without being prescriptive), which I aim to act upon. The first aspect of thinking that I aim to tackle in my approach is hierarchical anthropocentrism. Hierarchical anthropocentrism and human exceptionalism both involve thinking that humans (or a certain essentialist image of the human) are separate, distinct and more important than other species (Braidotti, 2013). Braidotti (2013) explains that ‘post-anthropocentrism displaces the notion of species hierarchy and of a single, common standard for “Man” as the measure of all things’ (p. 67). Braidotti (2013, 2019) highlights that humanism often privileges the western white able-bodied man, so in this way, to challenge human exceptionalism is also to acknowledge feminist and anti-humanist perspectives. Broadly speaking, the movement of posthumanism (or feminist posthumanism) takes up this task of challenging the normative image of the human (e.g., Braidotti [2013] uses the Vitruvian man to represent this normative image), what it means to be human and any notions of hierarchical anthropocentrism. Specifically, Braidotti (2013) highlights that post-­humanism (note the hyphen) involves life beyond the self, whereas post-­anthropocentrism involves life beyond the species. A key facet of the posthuman predicament is inequalities, both for human and non-human alike. Importantly for me, posthumanism is not about life without the species human or the end of humankind, but about reformulating affirmative relations with(in) the world. For Braidotti (2013), posthumanist theory can be a ‘navigational tool’ and ‘useful as a term to explore ways of engaging affirmatively with the present, accounting for some of its features in a manner that is empirically grounded without being reductive and remains critical while avoiding negativity’ (p. 5). As such, I deploy posthumanist theorising as a tool to navigate the terrain of this project/the present, helping inspire the methodological process of this book. Haraway (2016), in a chapter titled Tentacular Thinking, asks the question: ‘what happens when human exceptionalism and bounded individualism, those old saws of Western philosophy and political economics, become unthinkable in the best sciences, whether natural or social?’ (p. 30). This question spurs me on, and I rearrange it into a question that guides my methodological positioning: what happens when I challenge human exceptionalism, hierarchical anthropocentrism and bounded individualism when thinking about how I enact pedagogy in outdoor environmental education (OEE)? In other words, how can I conceive the relationship of student-­environment with a flatter (non-hierarchical) process-relational ontology? How might I do away with dualisms such as human-nature or human-environment altogether? But why such questions and such an orientation? Gough (2016) highlights that outdoor and environmental educators often value world views such as biocentrism and ecocentrism as ethical positions. However, Gough also notes that many

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researchers of outdoor and environmental education instinctively embrace humanistic methodologies—methodologies that centre the human in approaches to investigation and knowledge production. For example, surveys and interviews might ask what people (students, educators, participants) think, learn and practice. Such methodologies place humans in the centre and value what they do, know and practice first. This is a subtle example of human exceptionalism, where we ground knowledge production in/from humans and hierarchically value humans in the production of knowledge. Gough (2016) further suggests a movement beyond conventional paradigmatic research, advocating for different movements in thought that may come from areas such as relational materialism, feminist posthumanism and other diverse theoretical movements—what he summarises as postparadigmatic materialisms. I’m similarly interested in theories that decentre humans in research practice, and lean towards process-relational modes of inquiry (over a practice of centring anything, such as humans or ‘nature’ [e.g., Quay & Jensen, 2018]). Methodologically, I embrace an interest in process ontology whilst working with(in) posthuman/post-­anthropocentric theoretical orientations.

3.2 Voice and the Posthuman Subject: Nothing Acts Alone The posthuman nomadic subject is materialist and vitalist, embodied and embedded—it is firmly located somewhere, according to the radical immanence of the “politics of location” … It is a multifaceted and relational subject, conceptualized within a monistic ontology, through the lenses of Spinoza, Deleuze and Guattari, plus feminist and post-colonial theories. It is subject actualized by the relational vitality and elemental complexity that mark posthuman thought itself. (Braidotti, 2013, p. 188)

You will have noticed I use ‘I’, ‘my’ and other first-person pronouns. As St. Pierre (2008) states, ‘of course, it is almost impossible to say or write a sentence without using “I” to refer to “me,” no matter how I think about “myself.” We are always bound by the language and the “I” of humanism’ (p. 329). As she continues, ‘escaping the “I” is impossible’ (p. 329). I consider ‘I’ (or my ‘self’) to be a particular agentic assemblage. Not a bounded human individual but a posthuman subject influenced by various distributed agencies that co-constitute my becoming. I am not a stable subject, ontologically separated, nor is my identity fixed in being, therefore I never write or do research from one point. ‘I’ is almost a misnomer; however, it is a signifier I cannot avoid (and the multiplicity that is I prefers to write in first person voice). St. Pierre (2011) writes that ‘things—and some will say people as well— exist not by themselves but only in relations’ (p. 617). The ‘I’ refers to me and the literature I have read, think with, the experiences I have had, the memories that flood my thoughts and the various other things (assemblages) that influence me, and continue to influence and change me. Furthermore, in some chapters I move to write as ‘we’, where I have collaborated with others. The move to ‘we’ in certain chapters partly acknowledges that I never think and act alone.

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I also think beyond myself, my body and extend into the world with blurred borders: With this understanding, phenomenological perspectives in outdoor education (where the subject that is dwelling in the world is a centralized ‘point’ of ‘being’ and perception) require a sense of temporality that sweeps away the borders of the subject, the self, leaving a haecceity. (Clarke & Mcphie, 2014, p. 205)

The concept of haecceity is explained by Deleuze and Guattari (1987) as ‘a mode of individuation’ (p. 304). The ‘I’ that continues through this project is not a bounded individual with a concrete essence or unity. Rather, the ‘I’ is a haecceity, consisting of movements, relations, compositions that are ‘always in the middle’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 307). Thus, first person voice in this project is a haecceity, and ‘I’ might be read as always under erasure. To think of this a different way, drawing upon biology, Haraway (2015) explains that: No species, not even our own arrogant one pretending to be good individuals in so-called modern Western scripts, acts alone; assemblages of organic species and abiotic actors make history, the evolutionary kind and the other kinds too. (p. 159)

As Haraway (2016) further asserts, bounded individualism has become unavailable to think with. The world is sympoietic, meaning it makes-with others: ‘Nothing makes itself; nothing is really autopoetic or self-organizing’ (Haraway, 2016, p. 58). It is together, intra-actively as Barad (2007) describes it, that everything is co-­ constituted. Thus, it is such ontological dispositions that (continually) shape ‘my’ voice in this project.

3.3 Methodologies Without Methodology? Experimentation and Play The posthuman predicament, in both the post-humanist and post-anthropocentric sense of the term, drives home the idea that the activity of thinking needs to be experimental and even transgressive in combining critique with creativity. (Braidotti, 2013, p. 104)

In a discussion on labels, Koro-Ljungberg (2015) highlights that the meanings of labels are constantly changing—they are always on the move. Furthermore, she implies that the use of labels is always connected to a context. Many times throughout the research-writing process I have been asked what my methodology is, like I could take a label premade in a book on the shelf that would succinctly describe my approach. I often stumbled or straight out defied and said I’m not following a methodology. Experienced researchers would often raise a quizzical eye. Other times I would say something like, ‘I’m doing a post qualitative inquiry’ (invented by St. Pierre, 2011), as if post qualitative inquiry is a formed legitimate methodology to follow.1 That did not always cut it either. But now, here, in this section of the book,

 It is not a methodology to follow, as St. Pierre (2019) states, ‘post qualitative inquiry does not exist prior to its arrival; it must be created, invented anew each time’ (p. 9). 1

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the time has come to tackle the label and describe what I have done. I say ‘what I have done’ as I write this later in the project, after much of what follows this has already been written. And now, after the fact, I can describe what I did, as some of the processes happened by surprise or became clearer in the doing. Two words that signify my approach are experimentation and play. These words pop up in the chapters that follow, without much unpacking, so I will unpack them here. First, experimentation has involved trying things, holding a level of uncertainty and unpredictability. For example, my provocation to students on a ski tour journey, asking them to consider something that fascinates them was an experiment. That experiment played a part in the creation of the picture story book Ya produced in Chap. 4. The picture story book wasn’t planned but happened; a productive convergence of experimenting with ideas and practices. Many of the experiments in this project have involved attempts to think and do differently in the contexts I work, whilst being open for something remarkable to take hold. Deleuze and Guattari (1994) contend that ‘to think is to experiment, but experimentation is always that which is in the process of coming about—the new, remarkable, and interesting that replace the appearance of truth and are more demanding than it is’ (p. 111). Thus, experimentation has not been about finding the truth, or even a truth, but about exploring and speculating while remaining open to encounters that ask something, do something or create something. And this is what I feel OEE can do as a form of education; create conditions where students are asked something and provoked to think (in a figurative sense)… but more on that later. For now, this notion of open-­ ended experimentation could suit what Koro-Ljungberg (2015) calls methodologies without methodology. I will come back to Koro-Ljungberg’s idea after I discuss play. Play also helps my process of experimentation, as play involves fun (research can be fun, right?). Noel Gough (personal communication, 29th September, 2021), made a passing comment to me about SF as ‘serious fun,’ in reference to a presentation he gave.2 The comment stitched a connection for me to Donna Haraway, who has many SF figurations (e.g., science fiction, science fact, speculative fabulation, speculative feminism, string figures, so far [Haraway, 2016]). The queer playfulness of Haraway’s writing and the comment by Noel reminded me that some of (what I think are) my most interesting ideas—ideas that have gained traction—have emerged out of trying, attempting, experimenting and, ultimately, playfulness. Haraway (2008) suggests that ‘play is not innocent. Play can open up degrees of freedom in what was fixed. But loss of fixity is not the same thing as opening new possibilities for flourishing…’ (p. 155). Thus, for me, there is a serious side to playing with concepts, practices and pedagogy, where there remains a responsibility to work towards something generative and strive to both unfix practices whilst also working towards new possibilities for flourishing and new capacities for acting. Koro-Ljungberg (2015) explains that methodologies without methodology involve fluid practices, rather than rigid, stable or predetermined linear methodological structures. Experimentation and play come into this process for me,

 Noel has also included ‘play’ in some of his curriculum inquiry, with what he calls rhizosemiotic play (see Gough, 2007). 2

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helping me think creatively rather than in defined boundaries or following a strict methodological process. It is in this sense that the project has been emergent; I did not start out with rules to follow. Thus, my project is more philosophical than scientific, whilst still being empirical. Gough (2007), drawing upon the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari (1994), argues that ‘if philosophy is to succeed in doing important things … it must also seek to do interesting and remarkable things by creating novelty and difference’ (p. 287). Thus, experimentation and play signify a methodological orientation that I enact in my practice, which maintains a level of uncertainty and not-knowing through the empirical process. Furthermore, experimentation and play help create multiplicity, embraces complexity and difference, rather than reproduce sameness.

3.4 Immanent Praxiography: A Fluid Methodology In Chap. 1, I described some of the conditions of the present that press into and influence this project. Drawing upon Braidotti (2013) and Strom et  al. (2018), I noted this was a mapping of the politics of location. Thus, it is immanent to these conditions, embodied and embedded in the present, that this project emerges. The problems of the present involve multiple changing landscapes that provoke this project and my approach to inquiry. The task is to create affirmative ways to respond within the contexts that I work. My approach to inquiry involves experimenting with theories and practices that inquire into and with the world. As a label for this approach, I have chosen immanent praxiography. To explain why I have chosen the label immanent praxiography, I will start in what might be more familiar terrain. In a sense, my approach could be labelled autoethnography. However, this project is not just about me and my experiences, nor does it include the notion of myself as a bounded individual or autonomous human subject. Furthermore, this project is not a study of culture (ethno) or cultural experiences. Hence the label autoethnography is not appropriate or accurate. Similarly, ethnography does not work as a label as the project doesn’t involve humans alone. I focus on more than my students and do not ground knowledge production within a humanist subject. The embodied embedded posthumanist subject that writes this project emerges through a dynamic and fluid relational field. Bueger and Gadinger (2018) unpack the term praxiography, stating it: …implies that the study of practices has much in common with ethnography (but also other more established procedures, such as those of ethnomethodology and interpretative social science). The common concern is to record, to describe and to reconstruct (−graphy); however, the interest lies not in culture (ethno), but with practice (praxis). If ethnography is usually concerned with people’s way of life, praxiography is interested in understanding practices and their configurations. (p. 132)

Thus, with my project focusing on pedagogical and research practices infused with posthumanist theory, praxiography is a label that helps describe the process.

3.4  Immanent Praxiography: A Fluid Methodology

39

The methodological label of praxiography was established by Mol (2002) and has been highlighted by the likes of Law (2004) and Clever and Ruberg (2014) (among others) in a variety of fields. Clever and Ruberg (2014) explain that praxiography aligns with the new materialisms as it challenges the distinctions between nature and culture, whilst arguing we practice reality, offering an alternative to social constructionist or essentialist approaches. Law (2004), drawing upon Mol, explains that our methods of investigation produce the knowledge that researchers report upon. Thus, our knowledge is not separate from the practices that produce it: reality ‘is not independent of the apparatuses that produce reports of reality’ (Law, 2004, p. 31). Which is to say that there is not necessarily a fixed reality ‘out-there’, removed from inquiry waiting to be discovered. Instead, methodologies and methods are practices (as are pedagogies) that ‘participate in the enactment of realities’ (Law, 2004, p.  45). Therefore, the enactment of methods (and methodologies) is crucial in making (a difference to) the various knowledge reported. For my project, I am both researcher and practitioner (researcher-practitioner) and aim to better understand and shift my practice as an educator through experimental research in order to make a difference to both education and research. In the paragraphs that follow, I draw upon several praxiographic studies to exemplify some understandings of the methodological concept before further articulating my own conceptualisation of immanent praxiography for this project. Situating praxiography within the material turn, Clever and Ruberg (2014) emphasise that praxiography pays ‘more attention to material practices, to different kinds of actors and … a more open eye to encounters (between bodies, objects, experts, and techniques)’ (p. 547). Their research explores body history, but despite their research context being quite different from my own, some of their understandings are worth unpacking and tweaking for my purposes. For example, they explain how new materialists focus studies on the performance of differences through shifting realities. As they elaborate, ‘encounters, practices, and moments where matter and culture are acting together, producing meaning or a reality in that moment. In this way, matter becomes an important actor in the analysis of practices [original emphasis]’ (p. 552). Thus, an element of praxiography involves diverging from binary oppositions and attending to movement, differences and matter. Clever and Ruberg (2014) argue that ‘praxiography mainly ends up being a reminder to take all human and non-human actors in knowledge producing practices into consideration’ (p. 561). Mitchell (2020) also enacts a praxiographic method in investigating pedagogies of improvement science in medical education. Mitchell notes that praxiographic methods relate to ethnographic methods and Actor Network Theory,3 with a focus

 Importantly, Bodén et al. (2019) highlight that relational materialism was ‘first articulated and framed within Actor Network Theory’ (p. 1). However, in education, relational materialism also has links to Barad’s (2007) agential realism and the ontological/material turn, feminist new materialism, posthumanism and post-qualitative studies (Bodén et al., 2019). I make this footnote to highlight that, although not synonymous or all one thing, this theoretical terrain has many links and intersections (what Bodén et al. [2019] call a ‘loosely related “family” of approaches’ [p. 1]). 3

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on socio-material practices that do not privilege the human. Furthermore, for Mitchell, learning is relational and is an orientation that resonates with my ­conceptualisations of learning. Another study by Godin et al. (2020) deploy what they call game development praxiography to develop a knowledge pipeline between teaching practice and professional practice in the context of video game development. Godin et  al. (2020), drawing upon Bueger and Gadinger’s (2018) book International Practice Theory, state that praxiography highly resembles ethnography with the key difference being a focus on practice. They also assert that praxiography insists on the use of participant observation (which is one particular area where my deployment of the label praxiography differs from some previous studies utilising the label). For me, their project shows that some of the tenets of praxiography can be manipulated in productive ways to help provide a methodological approach specific to a problem and context. Law (2004) argues that ‘realities are not explained by practices and beliefs but are instead produced by them. They are produced, and have a life, in relations’ (p. 59). Therefore, inevitably, the application of praxiography as a label for my research in OEE performs in its own way within and through the composition of relations that this book emerges from. As mentioned earlier, I did not set out to conduct a praxiographic study, nor do all elements of other researchers praxiographies align with what I have performed in my practice/research (not that the praxiographic studies I have explored are overly neat, overtly strict or prescriptive). However, as a label, it has its affordances and it is my teaching and research practices that have produced this book. As Deleuze and Guattari (1994) explain, all concepts have a history and a becoming. Hence the methodological concept of praxiography enters a new territory through its connection to this project. However, by approaching this project with openness and an intention to see how posthumanist theorising (broadly construed) might influence my pedagogical practice, immanent praxiography has emerged as a label that somewhat suits my approach. My practice is both as a researcher and an outdoor environmental educator (researcher-­practitioner). I blend theory into my OEE research and teaching whilst acknowledging theorising as a practice. Furthermore, practice also involves theory4—practice is a mode of inquiry that might tell us something of the world. Fig. 3.1 depicts a mobius strip where theory and practice ultimately operate on the same plane, eschewing any gap between theory and practice. St. Pierre (2011) writes that ‘we and the world are products of theory as much as practice, and … putting different theories to work can change the world. History, of course, tells us that’ (p. 614).

 As I have written elsewhere (Jukes, 2020): ‘I use the term praxis in two senses. Firstly, NM [new materialist] theories/methodologies are performative and process-oriented; theorising is a practice, or theorypractice, with no divide between them (Pleasants & Stewart, 2019). Secondly, and poignantly for this paper, my practices as an educator are performative and I look to think with and enact NM theories – hence, praxis’ (p. 1751). 4

3.4  Immanent Praxiography: A Fluid Methodology

41

Fig. 3.1  A sketch of a mobius strip, depicting theory and practice on the same plane. Here, in a process ontology, they continually feed into and through one another

I write immanent praxiography because it is through immanence that my practice (and all life) emerges.5 Immanent means remaining within (St. Pierre, 2019). Or as Coleman and Ringrose (2013) assert, ‘immanence refers to the specificity or singularity of a thing; not what can be made to fit into a pre-existent abstraction’ (p. 10). Thus, an ontology of immanence refers to nothing isolated, outside or transcendent. There is no fixed value, goal or ideal to be achieved. Which is to say, there is no outside moral order, leaving room for the not yet created to emerge from a flatter process-­relational ontology. Immanence, and Deleuze and Guattari’s (1994) plane of immanence,6 is necessarily vague and difficult (even impossible) to grasp as it involves the not yet created. For Deleuze and Guattari (1994), it is from the plane of immanence that new concepts may emerge and become individuated:  As St. Pierre (2019) writes, immanence ‘cannot be immanent to something exterior to it because immanence is always already within it. In other words, if immanence could be exterior to itself, it would be transcendent, not immanent’ (p. 5). 6  Deleuze and Guattari (1994) write that: 5

The plane is clearly not a program, design, end, or means: it is a plane of immanence that constitutes the absolute ground of philosophy, its earth or deterritorialization, the foundation on which it creates its concepts. Both the creation of concepts and the instituting of a plane are required, like two wings or fins. (p. 41)

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3  Philosophical~Methodological Processes: Immanent Praxiography The plane of immanence is not a concept that is or can be thought but rather the image of thought, the image thought gives itself of what it means to think, to make use of thought, to find ones bearings in thought. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, p. 37)

For me, immanence helps undo and unthink some sedimented and habitual categories. Immanence helps me blur some boundaries, unthink some dichotomies, allowing some hierarchical (and possibly hegemonic) traditions to be resisted, forgotten or put aside. I write ‘some’ because I cannot say I have let go or forgotten all presupposed structures, but I have at least attempted to. This process has enabled me to try and do practice differently. Le Grange (2017) explains that an ontology of immanence means ‘that the world (reality) does not comprise separate self-­contained substances, but that everything that exists (“living” and “non-living”) is a modification of life’ (p. 95). Thus, my praxiography has not stood as a transcendent methodology that has determined the methods and practices of this research. Nor is practice separate from theory (or vice versa). Rather, it might be thought that the practices in this book are modifications of life, with immanent praxiography a label that stands in as a signifier. Le Grange (2017) further writes that ‘action in the world is driven by life itself— by that which is within, and that connects everything’ (p. 95). I have not studied from the outside looking in, but instead conducted this study from within. With this approach I focus on the local and the specific more so than general or universal (with place a concept that runs through much of this book). Moreover, as noted in Chap. 1, I have opened with the idea to explore more-than-human pedagogies. Rather than set out to define a more-than-human pedagogical practice, I instead have aimed to practice multiple versions of what may be called more-than-human pedagogies. Law (2004) writes that ‘a praxiography allows us to investigate the uncertain and complex lives of objects in a world where there is no closure’ (p. 59). For this project, we might consider the object (of inquiry) being the notion of morethan-human pedagogies. Hence, this praxiography investigates the uncertain multiplicity of more-than-human pedagogies. Or in other words, how I have made attempts to orient practice in OEE towards engaging with more-than-human worlds.

3.5 Mapping Multiple Experiments in More-­Than-Human Pedagogies To provide a map of the remainder of the project, Table 3.1 offers a summary. This book draws upon and includes some of my work that has been previously published. However, for this book it has been added to, reworked, extended and, as a result, made something more. The table gives insight into the chapters, nodding to original publications they stem from, introducing the problem, onto-epistemological context, perspectives/positionalities attuned to, some of the key concepts, the empirical materials created and the pedagogical possibilities. The table is by no means exhaustive and is a partial snapshot looking to highlight some of the offerings of each

6—Thinking with a Landscape

5—Listening for More-­ Than-­Human Voices

Chapter 4—Assembling More-Than-­ Human Stories

Problem, prompt or question/s What might new materialist and posthuman theory add to place-­ responsive pedagogies? How might I take the idea of more-than-human stories and use it practically to engage with and read landscapes whilst bushwalking? How might I grapple with a contentious environmental problem in a place I work? Nomadic perspectives across particular alpine landscape, post-colonial, post-­ anthropocentric, ecofeminist

Alpine landscape (across seasons)— bushwalking, environmental studies on extended journeys and attunement through photography

Alpine landscape (Summer)— bushwalking, environmental studies and attunement through photography

Perspectives or positionalities Blend of educator, student and imagined more-than-­ human perspective (snow gum), co-productions Post-anthropocentric educator perspectives

Onto-epistemological context/practices Alpine landscape (Winter)—ski touring, snow camping and arts-based practices

Table 3.1  Tabulated map of chapters linking ideas

Anthropocentrism, place-responsiveness, concepts as method, thinking with landscapes

More-than-human stories, reading landscapes,

Key concepts/theory Stories, place(s), entangled relationships, assemblages, material agencies, the more-than-human

Photographs, (figurative) ‘sketches’, memories

Photographs, memories

Empirical materials Picture story book, student reflective writing

(continued)

Think with different aspects and actants in the landscape, consider the cultural conditions and ethical problems that influence contentious environmental problems

Extend the notion of more-than-human stories and how they might be read in landscapes to challenge human exceptionalism and humanistic perspectives

Pedagogical offering More-than-human stories as a speculative ethical praxis for considering a place, its history and its environmental problems

3.5  Mapping Multiple Experiments in More-Than-Human Pedagogies 43

Chapter 7—Learning from the Fluxes and Flows of a Riverscape

Problem, prompt or question/s How may landscapes and their features shape learning? How might educators diffractively read landscapes through material encounters? 8—Exploring How might remake activities be used in More-Than-­ Human History OEE? And how may such activities be Through enhanced through Remake new materialist Activities theoretical orientations? How do 9—The technologies and Mediating movement influence Influence of with/in landscapes? Technology and Movement How can we blur boundaries between in Learning humans and the Outdoors world?

Table 3.1 (continued)

Consider the ways that Videos, Situated knowledge, Technology, photographs, technology and travel can movement, embodied and embedded learning embodiment, machinic student essays implicate OEE. Shows how learning is mediated assemblages, journeys through movement, landscape and technologies and can be oriented towards ecological precarity

Follow the matter-flow and engage with the nomadic story of things. How is this story shaped by anthropocentric resource extraction/ consumption mindsets?

River and floodplain forest scape— Journeying by canoe as environmental studies, videography, photography and student essaying

Handmade canoe paddle, photographs, memories

Nomadic perspective Remake activities, stemming from the diffraction, story, sustainability life of a piece of timber

Pedagogical offering Examine encounters, attune to the more-than-­ human and read the possible material agencies and political ecologies that shape conditions

University campus and mountain and river scapes—Paddle making/remake activities

Empirical Key concepts/theory materials Diffraction, landscapes, Poem, videos entanglement, more-than-human visual analysis, imagining fluxes and flows, journeys

Perspectives or positionalities Situated knowledge, embodied and embedded learning

Onto-epistemological context/practices River and floodplain forest scape— Journeying by canoe as environmental studies, videography

44 3  Philosophical~Methodological Processes: Immanent Praxiography

11— Responding to Climate Change Through OEE

Chapter 10—Storying Shared Worlds

What are some ways OEE can confront climate change and climate change pedagogy?

Problem, prompt or question/s What can emerge through creative and collaborative writing to/with/through contemporary events?

Fieldwork in river, alpine and bush environments. Climate events and learning activities that attune to climate. Arts-based practices.

Onto-epistemological context/practices Online video conversations amongst fires influenced by climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic— collaborative writing as inquiry Bearing witness to climate, conceptualising climate change in particular places (situated knowledge)

Perspectives or positionalities Overlapping worlds, attempts at emergent lively writing with events and other authors

Affect, response-­ ability, relational ontologies, climate change education theory

Key concepts/theory Affect, events, immanence, lines, movement, political ecologies, cosmopolitics, post-qualitative inquiry

Video, photographs, curriculum documents

Empirical materials Life events, creative expressions of life Pedagogical offering Consider living through entangled environments made of lines, movements and relationalities. Offers a lively storied example of opening to the affects that events can produce, whilst remaining conscious of the politics at play Pedagogy for confronting climate change in different OEE contexts

3.5  Mapping Multiple Experiments in More-Than-Human Pedagogies 45

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chapter. The aim is to provide an overview that may allow the reader to see both links and differences that help make the praxiography visible and the meta-­ conceptualization of more-than-human pedagogies apparent.

3.6 Empirical Materials, Post Qualitative Inquiry and Transgressive Analysis The empirical materials column in Table 3.1 highlights some of the novel ways that I have created empirical materials through my practice. Following Denzin (2013), I prefer to think of these as empirical materials rather than data. I touch on this argument multiple times in various chapters below, so I will not repeat this positioning at length here. However, a key orientation is that the materials are something created through practice and are something to think and work with/through, rather than data that holds a truth. The meanings of the empirical materials are in motion and do not refer to fixed truths. Moreover, what I wish to highlight here is that my movement to consider non-textual, at times difficult to apprehended, ephemeral and/or creative approach(es) to empirical materials is encouraged by post qualitative dispositions. Such creative outlets (watercolor paintings), photographs, memories, atmospheres, sketches, stories, crafted materials (paddles), crafting processes, notes in journals, videos, essays, literature, theories, concepts, writing have all emerged through enactments, performances and ultimately practices. I have thought with these materials and/or through the performance of creating these materials for this project with an emergent and generative disposition. In doing this, I have been inspired by St. Pierre (2011), who argues for the rethinking of data and rethinking of (what she calls) conventional humanist qualitative research in her manifestation of post qualitative research. St. Pierre (2011) offers a critique of qualitative research by challenging the normative orthodoxy steeped in overly determined, reductionistic standardised knowledge production. She argues that qualitative research has lost some of its potential to produce alternative knowledge by being too normalised and stuck within a positivist paradigm. St. Pierre (2011) further problematises aspects of conventional qualitative research by critiquing overly reductionist, totalising, or simplistic research. And as I noted above (and will further later in this book), I’m similarly inspired by Gough’s (2016) provocation to consider postparadigmatic approaches that does not ground research in conventional paradigmatic structures. St. Pierre’s (2011) critique of conventional humanist qualitative research is also coupled with a ‘coming after’, which is a non-prescriptive provocation that encourages researchers to consider doing away with standardised methodologies that prescribe practices from the beginning. With further support from Gough (2016) to do away with conventional and normative paradigms, such orientations have been infused through the philosophical~methodological practices shaping my project. Such encouragement has influenced my tendency to play and experiment with

3.6  Empirical Materials, Post Qualitative Inquiry and Transgressive Analysis

47

practices (as discussed above). An ethical aspect of this process has been to continually try and allow for open-ended fabrication whilst being ready for difference/s to emerge. Thus, the empirical materials that I draw upon often derive from or were produced in the encounters and relations of the research process without being designed in advance. In each of the chapters below, I have thought with different materials and events alongside theory and concepts. Table 3.1 has aimed to provide a summary of this, and the chapters below walk this path with further specificity. However, I will close this chapter by briefly noting a few practices that have not made it into the other chapters. I will explain these practices in more of a storied fashion. Undertaking such a large project as this is a significant commitment that infuses your life, often looming in the background even when not ‘researching’ (at least this has been the case for me). Awake at night thinking through theory, grappling with problems. Having a day off but still wondering what Deleuze was getting at in a certain passage. On field trips working with students and having conversations that diverge organically into areas of interest to my research. Being told by my partner to improve the elevator pitch to help when friends ask about your research at social gatherings. Or even going for a walk or a run with sentences, paragraphs and events rattling around in my thoughts. For me, this research project has leaked into (and at times taken over my life). And vice versa, my life has leaked into and through this project (it is part of me and I am part of it)—as Koro-Ljungberg (2015) explains, ‘the methodology or research process is not fragmented but involves fluid components connecting different acts of researching, living, and experiencing’ (p.  95). Furthermore, St. Pierre’s (1997) notion of transgressive data has helped me get to this moment in thought. She explains that transgressive data involves data that doesn’t fit into categories, such as dream data, emotional data, sensual data and response data. The moments I mentioned above are not data, but I have come to think of them as examples of how research has transgressed my life. Hence, I consider those unofficial moments when my project is being thought, rethought and contemplated as transgressive rumination and transgressive analysis. Let me unpack a little more. Rumination, contemplation and the time to sit with and sift through my thoughts, events, philosophical texts have been crucial for me in being able to think, do and write this project into existence. The boundaries of me as a person, a researcher and an outdoor environmental educator have all been breached and leaked into one another. This contemplative rumination has resulted in transgressive analysis. Countless times throughout this project I have hit a roadblock when writing or responding to a problem, but let it go and gone for a walk or a run. Then I have found myself thinking through the problem whilst out on the walk or run and come back to the computer with an increased ability to tackle the specific problem with a little more clarity. I do not mean to sound unique in sharing this, and I do not think it is particularly revelatory. However, in reading St. Pierre’s (1997) notion of transgressive data, I have further contemplated the non-binary, non-categorical distinctiveness of life, and how life streams through this research project. Little events like a walk on the beach or a run near the dam around the corner (see this dam in Fig. 3.2)

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have interrupted stagnated thought, folded them over and been inspirational for this project. Thus, if I am to highlight one of the more influential methods of analysis, I could say that it has been going running, walking, driving, paddling, skiing and/or bike riding! To start wrapping this chapter up, I will draw upon the images below in Fig. 3.2. The image (Fig. 3.2) is of some diffraction patterns caused from some stones I threw into a dam near my house. I draw upon this act of creating some diffraction7 patterns as a conceptual metaphor for the different chapters of this book. What I am

Fig. 3.2  Throwing stones into a dam, making diffraction patterns. (Photos by Scott Jukes)

 Note that in Chap. 7, Sect. 7.3 I discuss diffraction as a concept in much greater depth, drawing upon key authors that have developed the idea. 7

References

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suggesting is that each of the chapters involve concepts that overlap and interfere, with them all involving the experimentation/development of pedagogy for OEE. What has flowed through each chapter is transgressive elements of my life, with each chapter involving and flowing into and through others in certain ways. Pedagogy and practices in OEE are key through lines, but there are many more subtle lines that continue through. In other words, each of the chapters to come is a complex singularity—an assemblage of thinking, theory, materials, people, stories, concepts and assumptions. These singularities can be read alone/separately, but there are overlapping waves (diffraction patterns) that entwine, creating cumulative waves of thought between. As such (as with any assemblage), the whole is more than the sum of its parts. I hope that the singularities and the whole do something for the reader and provoke some new avenues for thought and practice.

References Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press. Bodén, L., Lenz Taguchi, H., Moberg, E., & Taylor, C.  A. (2019). Relational materialism. In G.  Noblit (Ed.), Oxford research encyclopedia of education (July 2019 ed.). Oxford University Press. Braidotti, R. (2013). The posthuman. Polity Press. Braidotti, R. (2019). Posthuman knowledge. Polity Press. Bueger, C., & Gadinger, F. (2018). International practice theory. Macmillan. Clarke, D. A. G., & Mcphie, J. (2014). Becoming animate in education: Immanent materiality and outdoor learning for sustainability. Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Learning, 14(3), 198–216. https://doi.org/10.1080/14729679.2014.919866 Clever, I., & Ruberg, W. (2014). Beyond cultural history? The material turn, praxiography, and body history. Humanities, 3(4), 546–566. https://doi.org/10.3390/h3040546 Coleman, R., & Ringrose, J. (2013). Introduction: Deleuze and research methodologies. In R. Coleman & J. Ringrose (Eds.), Deleuze and research methodologies (pp. 1–22). Edinburgh University Press. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia (B. Massumi, Trans.). Bloomsbury. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1994). What is philosophy? (H. Tomlinson & G. Burchell, Trans.). Columbia University Press. Denzin, N. (2013). The death of data? Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 13(4), 353–356. https://doi.org/10.1177/1532708613487882 Godin, D., Roux-Girard, G., Flayeux, J., Boisvert, J., & Savard, S. (2020). Game development praxiography: A methodological approach to setup a knowledge brokering pipeline between higher education institutions and the game development industry. The Computer Games Journal, 9, 15–27. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40869-­020-­00092-­7 Gough, N. (2007). Changing planes: Rhizosemiotic play in transnational curriculum inquiry. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 26, 279–294. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-­007-­9034-­6 Gough, N. (2016). Postparadigmatic materialisms: A ‘new movement of thought’ for outdoor environmental education research? Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education, 19(2), 51–65. Haraway, D. (2008). When species meet. University of Minnesota Press.

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Haraway, D. (2015). Anthropocene, capitalocene, plantationocene, chthulucene: Making kin. Environmental Humanities, 6(1), 159–165. https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-­3615934 Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the chthulucene. Duke University Press. Jukes, S. (2020). Thinking through making: Junk paddles, distant forests and pedagogical possibilities. Environmental Education Research, 26(12), 1746–1763. https://doi.org/10.108 0/13504622.2020.1806991 Koro-Ljungberg, M. (2015). Reconceptualizing qualitative research: Methodologies without methodology. Sage. Law, J. (2004). After method: Mess in social science research. Routledge. Le Grange, L. (2017). Environmental education after sustainability. In B. Jickling & S. Sterling (Eds.), Post-sustainability and environmental education (pp. 93–107). Palgrave Macmillan. Mitchell, B. (2020). Student-led improvement science projects: A praxiographic, actor-­network theory study. Studies in Continuing Education, 42(1), 133–146. https://doi.org/10.108 0/0158037X.2019.1577234 Mol, A. (2002). The body multiple: Ontology in medical practice. Duke University Press. Pleasants, K., & Stewart, A. (2019). Entangled philosophical and methodological dimensions of research in outdoor studies? Living with(in) messy theorisation. In B.  Humberstone & H. Prince (Eds.), Research methods in outdoor studies (pp. 9–20). Routledge. Quay, J., & Jensen, A. (2018). Wild pedagogies and wilding pedagogies: Teacher-student-nature centredness and the challenges for teaching. Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education, 21(3), 293–305. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42322-­018-­0022-­9 St. Pierre, E. (1997). Methodology in the fold and the irruption of transgressive data. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 10(2), 175–189. https://doi. org/10.1080/095183997237278 St. Pierre, E. (2008). Decentering voice in qualitative inquiry. International Review of Qualitative Research, 1(3), 319–336. St. Pierre, E. (2011). Post qualitative research: The critique and the coming after. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The sage handbook of qualitative research (Vol. 4, pp. 611–625). Sage. St. Pierre, E. (2019). Post qualitative inquiry in an ontology of immanence. Qualitative Inquiry, 25(1), 3–16. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800418772634 Stewart, A. (2015). Rhizocurrere: A Deleuzo-Guattarian approach to curriculum autobiography. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 28(10), 1169–1185. https://doi.org/1 0.1080/09518398.2014.974719 Stewart, A. (2020). Developing place-responsive pedagogy in outdoor environmental education: A rhizomatic curriculum autobiography. Springer Nature. Strom, K., Haas, E., Danzig, A., Martinez, E., & McConnell, K. (2018). Preparing educational leaders to think differently in polarized, post-truth times. The Educational Forum, 82(3), 259–277. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131725.2018.1458361

Chapter 4

Assembling More-Than-Human Stories: Outdoor Environmental Education as a Co-production Scott Jukes and Ya Reeves

Abstract This chapter draws upon pedagogical experimentation on a ski-touring journey in the Australian Alps. The aim of the chapter is to build upon place-­ responsive pedagogies in OEE with insight from new materialist and posthumanist theory. The chapter focusses on the generative potential of considering co-­productions and assemblages that include the materiality of a more-than-human world. Combining place-responsive and new materialist ideas, the concept of more-­than-­human stories is offered as a pedagogical strategy that may challenge anthropocentrism and develop different ways of thinking about and with more-than-human places. An example of these ideas in practice is offered, where Ya, an undergraduate student, presents her more-than-human story—One Single Moment—a picture-­story book created on the ski-touring journey. Following her picture-story book, she maps the conditions of possibility, the various pedagogical influences that led to the creation of One Single Moment. The aim through this chapter is to offer methodological and pedagogical insight into using new materialist theories in creative and productive ways.

4.1 Introduction This chapter embraces a picture storybook, a student as co-author and a ‘multi-­ modal methodology’ (Coole & Frost, 2010, p. 32) of the new materialisms. The chapter is a co-production between Scott, Ya Reeves and the Bogong High Plains in the Australian Alps. Our conversations that led to this chapter began on a ski touring trip for the subject ‘Winter Alpine Environments’1 in the Bogong High

S. Jukes (*) Federation University, Berwick, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] Y. Reeves Independent Researcher, Mount Beauty, VIC, Australia

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Jukes, Learning to Confront Ecological Precarity, International Explorations in Outdoor and Environmental Education 13, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34200-4_4

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Plains.2 The pairing for this chapter emerges from a sharing and grappling of ideas, where Scott as an educator working in collaboration with Ya as a student at the time offers some unique perspectives of educator-student-place relations. In part, this research partnership is inspired by Honan’s (2014) post qualitative stance urging researchers to disrupt habits of (re)presenting research and knowledge production along with rethinking the relations between the researcher and researched. Blanche Verlie and CCR 15 (2020) also provides a prompt for such an approach, with her new materialist research ‘co-authored’ with the university course Climate Change Responses (CCR 15). What such a statement signifies is the ‘entangled voice’ or co-created knowledge that her research emerged from. For Scott as a researcher interested in outdoor environmental education (OEE) pedagogy, the topic of students and their developing understandings and responses to teachings are crucial. From here on we use ‘we’ to signify the collaborative coproduction that this research emerges from. Within this chapter, we build upon place-responsive pedagogies3 in OEE by drawing insight from new materialist and posthumanist theorising. Reid (2019), in a recent editorial, explains there is a ‘spike in interest raised by the curious work of “new materialisms”’ (p. 165). We are also intrigued by the emerging new materialisms and how we might add to this ‘bubble of activity’ (Reid, 2019, p. 165) for OEE research and pedagogy. Somewhat alongside or enmeshed with new materialisms is posthumanist critical theory, which Braidotti (2013, 2019a, b) describes as a convergence of post-humanism and post-anthropocentrism in the development of ethically accountable, critical and creative new ways of approaching thinking. Without wanting to conflate new materialist and posthumanist approaches, Braidotti (2013, 2019a, b) and Coole and Frost (2010) describe the possibilities as transdisciplinary, and in this chapter, we introduce particular aspects employed in

 Winter Alpine Environments, is an Outdoor Environmental Education subject at La Trobe University. The subject description, written by Anthony Mangelsdorf (2018), explains: ‘Students examine aspects of natural history, land management, snow deposition and ecology directly relevant to selected Alpine environments of South Eastern Australia. Students develop technical expertise of cross-country ski touring to enable safe exploration and promote experiential and interpretative knowledge of winter alpine environments.’ 2  Australia’s alpine areas (including surrounding slopes and valleys) make up 0.3% of Australia’s landmass (Slattery, 2015). The Bogong High Plains make up a small part of these alpine areas. As a sight of study, they offer a unique landscape with endemic species and contested natural history. The high plains are part of the Victorian Alpine National Park, established in 1989, after a long struggle for ‘protection’ (Slattery, 2015). The alpine areas have been (and remain in some aspects) a contested space between interest groups such as grazers, hydroelectric power, ski resorts, timber industry, conservationists and recreational users. Current issues facing the high plains are climate change and invasive species that are threatening endemic species. These topics are discussed at various times through the Winter Alpine Environments subject. 3  Importantly, we do not imagine place in a static or anthropocentric way. As we develop throughout this chapter, places don’t belong to humans—we are part of them. Places are inherently more-­ than-­ human, unbounded and inconsistent. Our new materialist and posthuman perspectives envision places as open-ended assemblages. 1

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our thinking, learning, research and pedagogies. For now, we offer a brief review of place-responsive pedagogies as a significant body of work, which is used as a springboard for this chapter.

4.2 Place-Responsive Pedagogies OEE is often associated with experiential approaches to education, with adventurous activities being a significant area of practice. Throughout the last few decades OEE has turned towards theories of place with aims to foster relationships between people and places (for example, Raffan, 1993; Baker, 2005; Stewart, 2004a, b, 2008; Wattchow & Brown, 2011). Authors such as Lugg (2004) have called for more attention to the environment with a reappraisal of activities used in OEE. Other authors, such as Stewart (2004b, 2008) and Wattchow and Brown (2011), have called for pedagogies of place-responsiveness, to ensure places don’t become ‘featureless backdrops’ to outdoor learning (Stewart, 2008, p. 94). Somerville (2010) explains the potential for the development of place relations and place studies in broader educational contexts: While research in the physical sciences has typically been seen as the solution for complex environmental problems, emerging research in the eco-humanities suggests that changing our relationship to our places is as important as techno-scientific solutions. In this way place can offer an important framework for an integrated educational curriculum which seeks to address environmental issues from a range of perspectives that could cross traditional subject boundaries... (p. 331)

We follow other outdoor environmental educators in seeing the educational potential of place studies in both our field and other fields of education. However, ideas surrounding whose place is prominent and how place is defined are still concerns for place-based educators (Lynch & Mannion, 2016). What places and whose places are highlighted? We agree with Gough’s (2008) suggestion that places are not profoundly pedagogical but may become so via the ways they can be ‘envisioned, named, transformed and traversed’ (p. 72). Part of our intention in this paper is to explore how we may reconceptualise place from new materialist and posthumanist perspectives, challenging anthropocentric and static notions of place. The use or creation of stories or storylines as a way to envision place is a strategy explored and advocated by several researchers (for example, Mikaels & Asfeldt, 2017; Somerville, 2010, 2013; Somerville et al., 2009; Stewart, 2008; Wattchow & Brown, 2011). Wattchow and Brown (2011) explain in their signposts to a place-­ responsive pedagogy the power of place-based stories and the importance of representing experiences. Studying a place’s histories and ecologies is part of place-responsiveness (Wattchow & Brown, 2011), and we add, requires attentiveness to the various more-than-human and material elements of places. As Wattchow and Brown explain, ‘places are brimful of personal, geological, ecological, historical, economic and political stories’ and place-responsive educators would be well placed to cultivate worthwhile stories (p. 193). In Somerville’s (2010) framework

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for a pedagogy of place, she also advocates for stories, expressing ‘our relationship to place is constituted in stories and other representations [author’s emphasis]’ (p. 342). Narrowing our focus for this chapter, we are curious about storied understandings of places and we wish to see if they can work in conjunction with the new materialist and posthumanist thinking we introduce later. Elsewhere, Somerville (2013) further advocates for storylines and learning through storied understandings of places. Drawing upon the research of Pretty et al. (2009), Somerville explains there is ‘substantial evidence supporting the significance of local ecological knowledge expressed as stories, ceremonies, and discourses [author’s emphasis]’ (p. 5). She argues through her work with indigenous people of the Murray-Darling Basin that such storied knowledge is constantly in process and relation to local places. The significance is that stories can help guide a society’s actions. A theme that we will ponder and return to throughout this chapter is the role of story, whilst considering whose stories are told? If we read and come to know a place, what stories can be seen in the landscape (Stewart, 2008)? Where do stories come from and how are they told? Prins and Wattchow (2020) also support storytelling practices, stating ‘it is important to acknowledge that stories are not just a representation or an account of what has happened but rather, a continual communication that is also a way humans make sense of their world’ (p. 87). Yet we also echo the interests of Mannion and Lynch (2016), who raise important concerns about practices focussing on human centred stories. In addition to stories making sense of a human world, we argue throughout this paper that stories can help draw us into and part of the more-than-­ human world when we consider different perspectives, meanings and complex entanglements with matter. Hence, we move towards new materialist motivated thinking.

4.2.1 From Places to (New Materialist Inspired) Assemblages New materialist and posthumanist critical theories have been narrowly explored in OEE research, with Gough (2016) and Pleasants and Stewart (2019) offering appraisals for their unique potential. Following the emergence in broader educational research, some authors (for example, Clarke, 2017; Clarke & Mcphie, 2014, 2016; Mcphie & Clarke, 2015, 2020; Mikaels & Asfeldt, 2017; Payne, 2016; Ruck & Mannion, 2020) in OEE are utilising new materialist and posthumanist approaches in place of humanistic methodologies. In particular, some research involving place-­ responsive pedagogy incorporates these posthuman and new materialist methodologies, with a particular interest in the concept assemblages (see Jukes et al., 2019; Mannion et al., 2013; Mannion, 2020; Stewart, 2018). As Mannion (2020) explains, the concept assemblage was created by Deleuze and Guattari (1987), translated from the French verb agéncement. The verbing connotation is purposeful, indicating an active coming together of things. Consequently, any assemblage, be that a place, or a research project such as this, is an assemblage of various human, more-­ than-­human, and material elements that impact, affect and implicate each other in

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their coming together (Mannion, 2020). We find the concept useful for considering places as made by dynamic heterogeneous relationships of human and more-than-­ human actants (Jukes et al., 2019). Mannion (2020) proposes an assemblage pedagogy and assemblage research, offering advice on how outdoor, environmental and sustainability education may incorporate such theories into practices. But why is it important or valuable to approach research and pedagogy in such a way? As Mannion (2020) justifies, humanistic methodologies employed in educational research do not yet seem successful in adequately addressing issues of our time, such as climate change and global precarity; critiques of humanism are permeating and building forceful arguments. Mannion (2020) refers to Malone et  al. (2017) in stating some of these arguments: The need for a de-centring of the human in our ontologies and epistemologies (for example, in solely looking to the needs of humans in definitions of sustainability or in child-centred approaches), a countering of human exceptionalism in general towards a relational orientation (in terms of, for example, human-plant, human-animal, human-place), a revision of ‘stewardship’ views of the environment (with its paternalistic associations of sympathy, mastery and control), a greater acceptance of environmental crisis of the Anthropocene (particularly climate change, but in connected ways food insecurity, migration, and so on), and a foregrounding of the importance of alternative ways of knowing. (p. 1354)

In agreeance with Stewart (2018), we are in a pressing time where we need to think differently about ‘how humans conceptualize and relate to the more-than-human world’ (p. 139). We find these emerging ideas in our field, and from broader educational research, particularly thought-provoking. Hence, this chapter investigates experiments with pedagogy from such a philosophical-methodological disposition.

4.3 Philosophical~Methodological Disposition: A Post-­anthropocentric Material Turn Numerous authors in new materialist/posthumanist critical theory explore ways of paying attention to the agency and materiality of bodies, including those of non-­ humans (for example, Barad, 2007; Bennett, 2010; Braidotti, 2013; Coole & Frost, 2010; Fox & Alldred, 2015). As van der Tuin (2018) states, ‘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’ (p. 277). Noting the plurality of new materialisms and posthumanist critical theory, Gough (2016) explains they are a collection of concepts and approaches in formation4 (see Gough & Whitehouse, 2018, for an exploration of various viewpoints including ecofeminism and new material feminism). At this stage, it is important to explain what we mean by concepts. Many new materialist and posthumanist researchers follow Deleuze and Guattari (1987, 1994)

 We acknowledge debate over whether new materialisms are actually new, considering they draw upon a range of philosophical traditions. Nonetheless, the neologism ‘new materialism’ works and it is the newer work from this disposition we predominantly cite. 4

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and their pluralistic and process-oriented ontology. Deleuze and Guattari (1994) describe the function of philosophy as the creation of concepts; ‘there are no simple concepts. Every concept has components and is defined by them. It therefore has a combination. It is a multiplicity…’ (p. 15). Colebrook (2002) adds that a ‘concept is not a word; it is a creation of a way of thinking’ (p. 20). What a concept does is ‘provoke us, [it] dislodges us from our ways of thinking and opens experience up to new “intensities”: a way of seeing differently’ (Colebrook, 2002, p. 20). That is not all that concepts can do, as Mcphie and Clarke (2020) explain, concepts work in real and material ways; ‘they perform ecologically’ (p. 1510). Concepts are not ‘fixed entities’, explain Ruck and Mannion (2020, p. 1377), but becomings that work in practice to facilitate understandings. Lenz Taguchi and St. Pierre (2017) argue for conceptual-based practices in educational research as a way of enacting different thinking. Hence, many in new materialist and posthumanist critical theory consider concepts as ways of thinking, and thinking differently, in order to investigate our contexts. As it is beyond the scope of this chapter to lay out all the concepts and possibilities of new materialist/posthumanist critical theory, instead we highlight a combination of ideas we have found generative to think with and have organised them into three overlapping categories: material agencies and entangled relationships as assemblages of a more-than-human world. We unpack these below with reference to how we use them or how they have been used in some (outdoor) environmental education research.

4.3.1 Material Agencies Matter can often be depicted by dominant Western thought as dead, inert, brute or passive, prioritising superior human agency over static objects (Barad, 2007; Bennett, 2010; Coole, 2010; Coole & Frost, 2010). In a countermovement, new materialisms examine the agentic capacity of matter. New materialists see ‘materiality as always something more than “mere” matter: an excess, force, vitality, relationality, or difference that renders matter active, self-creative, productive, unpredictable’ (Coole & Frost, 2010, p. 9). The active capacity of matter to make a difference in the world is an aspect examined by new materialists, moving away from the subjugation of non-human material agencies. People are not the only material bodies that form the world, and it is the various scales of materiality that come together forming and shaping the world—other material actants include, for example, bacteria, omega-3 fatty acids, electricity grids, rubbish, snow, weather, climate, trees, stones, green barrels and the list can go on: ‘Materiality is a rubric that tends to horizontalize the relations between humans, biota, and abiota’ (Bennett, 2010, p. 112). The work of Bennett explores the vibrancy of matter and its affective agencies, highlighting the aesthetic or enchanting aspects of materiality. Furthermore, she urges for attention to the vital materiality of the world, human habits of consuming matter and the capacity of non-human things. What such attention to material

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agencies does is acknowledge the political ecology of worldly matter in non-­ dualistic ways. When considering material agencies, Barad (2007, p. 151) clarifies agency is not something matter possesses; agency is enactment, a performance of different activity. Mattering, for Barad (2007), is a process: ‘Matter isn’t situated in the world; matter is worlding in its materiality’ (pp. 180–181). The expansive process ontology of Barad offers insight for understanding phenomena differently. Thinking is not separate from the body, the body is not separate from the world, culture is not outside of nature. Materiality from this sense is not governed by an outside order, but its agency performs in conjunction and relation to other things, with its own immanent desire and will for positive pluralistic creation (Bennett, 2010; Coole, 2010). Simply put, in thinking with materialist theory we eschew adages such as mind over matter, and don’t think of materialism as ownership of material things—instead we pay attention to the materiality of the world, it’s iterative becoming and our inherent human entanglement with it. A focus on materialism offers educators a lens to consider the world, how matter acts with (or without) us and where the physical stuff in our learning contexts can even assist our pedagogical aims (Jukes et al., 2019). In this sense, matter may also be considered as ‘storied,’ having a narrative agency (Oppermann, 2018). Which is to say that stories of the world may be expressed in and through matter.

4.3.2 Mutual Entangled Relationships: Assemblages Coole and Frost (2010) discern ‘an overriding characteristic of the new materialisms [is] their insistence on describing active processes of materialisation of which embodied humans are an integral part, rather than monotonous repetitions of dead matter from which humans are apart’ (p. 8). New materialisms help to highlight the importance of thinking through our relationships with the material world in non-­ dualistic ways, and that thinking with different ideas helps create new understandings. Building on ideas of agency being performative, agency is also relational. For exploring material relationships, it is again helpful to return to Barad (2007, 2008). Her conception of intra-action re-draws the boundaries of relations—relations are within and part of the world and its performance. Intra-active relationships are the entanglement of bodies that co-constitute the world and what it is becoming. Phenomena, for Barad, are specific intra-actions, relationships or entanglements. An example phenomenon may be a rapid in a river: the intra-active relationships of water, stones and gravity (among other things) merge to become a rapid. This entangled relationship is an assemblage of heterogeneous actors performing in particular ways creating the phenomena. Furthermore, matter and discourse are entangled in what Barad describes material-­ discursive practices. She describes the world as ongoing material-­ discursive phenomena, where human and non-human matter performs

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intra-­actively—that is mutually entangled in process. Simply, matter and discourse co-constitute meanings. Matter and discourse coexist implicating each other in processes of change. Again, the concept assemblage helps account for mutual entangled relationships of mattering and meaning making. For our project, it is important to bring such ideas into educational discourse as it offers inclusive ways of examining learning contexts. Hultman and Lenz Taguchi (2010) and Gough (2016) build on such mattering; firstly by encouraging educators to challenge notions of anthropocentrism and humans as completely autonomous agents. Secondly, by acknowledging learners are emergent in relational fields where more-than-human matter influences becomings. Such thinking enables pluralistic explorations of human and more-than-human as co-existing. Mannion et al. (2013) support these notions in OEE, explaining ‘relations and interactions of teacher, pupils and places as examples of how culture and nature interact coextensively and contingently’ (p. 804). The aim is to be inclusive, allowing consideration of multiple and numerous influences to a learning context. What implications might this have for (outdoor) environmental education research? Malone and Truong (2017) suggest that ‘reconsidering how a relationship with the planet that doesn’t focus on the human, but on the relationship between the human and the more-than-human may provide a new imagining—a new space for changing how human and nature are being considered’ (p. 5). Elsewhere, Malone (2016, 2017) put such a suggestion to work exploring the assemblage of ‘child-dog-­bodies’ in La Paz, Bolivia. Her investigation of coexisting child-dog-bodies describes the co-merging of children and dogs that live in the streets of La Paz. Such an exploration challenges some conventional notions of children-in-nature such as idyllic romantic childhoods, disrupting some dominant ways of knowing. There are other ways of knowing and relating, and other ways to research becoming-with the more-than-human world. Another example could be the student-snail relations at a campsite on the Snowy River Scott examines elsewhere (Jukes, 2018). There Scott uses the concept becoming (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987), to consider ‘becoming-­snail’. This is not a literal becoming, but a reciprocal exchange or relational encounter. The slimy multitude of snails of the campsite had an aesthetic and affective influence on students, changing the relationship and understanding of non-human others. Bennett (2010) suggests that thinking assemblages of people with other material bodies horizontally is stepping toward an improved ecological sensibility (p. 10).

4.3.3 Becoming of a More-Than-Human World We still need that which is other than ourselves and our own creations [author’s emphasis]. (Abram, 1996, p. ix)

The phrase more-than-human world is highlighted by Abram (1996), where he believes in a certain sense modern humans participate ‘almost exclusively with other humans and our own human-made technologies’ (p. ix)—this has led to a precarious relationship with the more-than-human world. Drawing upon Malone

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(2016) and Clarke and Mcphie (2014), we argue from a posthumanist standpoint it is impossible to not participate with things other than humans, that we are always already participating with a more-than-human world. Abram’s (1996) thesis aims to attract attention to sensuous engagement and embodied reciprocity within a more-­ than-­human world, taking insight from the phenomenological work of Merleau-­ Ponty. Although many aspects of phenomenological work are not commensurate with new materialist approaches, the new materialist work of Coole and Frost (2010), Coole (2010) and Connolly (2010) are amenable to Merleau-Ponty’s focus on embodiment, corporeality and ideas of perception. As Coole and Frost (2010) suggest, they ‘give materiality its due’ (p.  20). However, where new materialist perspectives diverge considerably from phenomenology is the foundation in difference and pluralism and extension of agencies beyond the human in the former rather than essentialism in the latter (among other reasons). We still find resonance with the work of Abram (1996, 2010) due to our interest in the ethical perspective of humans belonging to a more-than-human world. Importantly, what the concept of a more-than-human world does is highlight how humans are part of a world beyond ourselves. Human beings are decentred, horizontalized and brought back to earth among other non-human things. Such a movement is ethical, as it offers a challenge to ownership over the world and a (­re)consideration of relationships with more-than-human others. As St. Pierre, Jackson and Mazzei (2016) advocate: If humans have no separate existence, if we are completely entangled with the world, if we are no longer masters of the universe, then we are completely responsible to and for the world and all our relations of becoming with it. We cannot ignore matter (e.g., our planet) as if it is inert, passive, and dead. It is completely alive, becoming with us, whether we destroy or protect it. (p. 101)

St. Pierre et al.’s (2016) statement instils in us the need for affirmative actions in education where students may learn of the issues of our time whilst also not falling into despair. To return to Abram’s (2010) work, he describes the reciprocity people continually have with the material world—seeing is also being seen, touching is also being touched—as an unfolding of our human existence in a more-than-human world. Our minds inhabit our material bodies which inhabit the world: no separation exists just an extending relationality. Such relational reciprocity is part of everyday existence if we choose to perceive it. But to take this thought into the posthuman realm, what if when perceiving our material reciprocity, we (conceptually) step into the other we are entangled with? This idea is explored in a picture storybook introduced later. It is also an idea explored by Stewart (2018) when he conducts a pedagogical thought experiment with his students to think like a Murray Cod. Although, as Stewart states ‘how can I ever know what a Cod might think?’ (p. 136), such a pedagogical practice allows him and his students to conceptually and experientially inhabit the life and circumstances of the fish and its habitat of the river system. This allows the various relational assemblages of what influences this more-than-human other to be explored.

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Similarly, Mcphie and Clarke (2015) consider a walk in the park, exploring animistic qualities of things they encounter, deconstructing the idea of what something is by instead considering what it does. Their walk in the park challenges many notions of Western thought and considers the materiality of things encountered. Furthermore, they express how humans are an active part of the world, ‘(re)placing both moralistic and connection narratives with a narrative of a relationally underpinned metaphysics of immanence’ (p. 246). The walk in the park is performative, experiential and experimental, opening different possibilities for relational encounters in (outdoor) environmental education. In efforts to think differently about our (present-changing) relationships with a more-than-human world, and build the theoretical terrain of this project, we highlight aspects of posthuman critical theory (Braidotti, 2013, 2018, 2019a, b). Posthuman knowledge production considers humans in conjunction with others (bodies, things, actants, technologies), whilst challenging dominant notions of what it means to be human. Braidotti’s work in developing a posthuman theoretical framework offers ways forward for such a task, urging for critical thinking which acknowledges the co-creation of the world whilst also imagining creative and positively different futures. A material and more-than-human world full of life and vitality envelops ‘us’ (us being the diverse heterogeneous multiplicity called human). Material forces shape, shift and move us—from inside and outside our bodies. If OEE is to foster relationships with the natural world, we would argue considering the material bodies of the more-than-human world as a vital task. Considering a posthuman world challenges notions of anthropocentrism, human exceptionalism and dominant modes of thought (Braidotti, 2013, 2018, 2019a, b). However, as Gough (2016) describes: Challenging hierarchical anthropocentrism (i.e. challenging the assumption of human superiority) does not prevent us from acknowledging an irreducible anthropocentrism, that is, accepting that we necessarily experience the world with species-specific biophysical limitations and possibilities. However, we must also consider how an understanding of irreducible anthropocentrism might be changed by accepting that we increasingly experience the world as posthumans, with perhaps (eventually) fewer species-specific biophysical limitations and with further possibilities provided by biophysical extensions, enhancements and assemblages. [author’s emphasis] (pp. 61–62)

What might posthumanist theorising allow us to see, feel and do? In what ways are we already posthuman? A way we may become posthuman in an outdoor educational context is how students and educators become skiers when attached to skis, on snow, in alpine areas (see Fig. 4.1). Such an assemblage extends our capabilities, allowing us to travel in alpine areas in particular ways, that allow us to participate and intra-act with that environmental assemblage: this assemblage has particular affordances. Furthermore, our focus in such thinking moves towards places as belonging to more than just us humans, towards material bodies and pedagogies of responsiveness. We belong to the assemblages; they don’t belong to us. Thinking and (re)thinking about our place and other non-human’s place in the world is an ethical act. This is not a transcendent or theological movement, but an acknowledgment of the vital materiality of things, including their agency, vibrancy and power (Bennett, 2010).

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Fig. 4.1  Becoming skiers—A student-snow-ski assemblage. (Photo by Scott Jukes)

4.4 Assembling a Concept: More-Than-Human Stories We have been encouraged by Malone and Truong’s (2017) call to engage ‘with alternative discourses that consider other ways of knowing the human and more-­ than-­human world… by exploring creative pedagogical approaches’ (p. 7). As outdoor environmental educators and researchers we are faced with the problem: how might we prompt student understandings of human and more-than-human relationships that have shaped, currently shape and might shape the future of different places? And more specifically, how can we make these ideas into a pedagogy that is useful and digestible for our students? St. Pierre et al. (2016) describe working with the new materialisms: Put simply, we can’t tell someone how to do this new work, how to think [author’s emphasis], how to experiment, how to tip an assemblage toward the plane of immanence. Our best advice is to read and read and read and attend to the encounters in our experiences that demand our attention. If we have something different to think with, we might be able to live on a different plane of thought, a different plane of experience. (p. 106)

Braidotti and Hlavajova (2018) explain the posthuman era, this geological moment of the Anthropocene, needs critical and creative scholarship to address the precarity of our time—this time of mass species extinction and climate change induced by human actions. Developing ethical understanding and different perspectives of the more-than-human world require different ways of thinking. This includes

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conceptual creativity and experimentation, where we must ‘trust in the powers of the imagination’ (Braidotti & Hlavajova, 2018, p. 10). Hence, we return to concepts: Concepts are intensive and create orientations for thinking. It is in this respect we might begin to think of concepts as methods, precisely because concepts are at once prehuman (emerging from the problems or plane of thinking in which we find ourselves), but that also reconfigure or reorient the plane precisely by being prompted by a problem. (Colebrook, 2017, p. 654)

As Colebrook (2017) proposes, there is an educational power in concepts. In assembling ideas we have thus far explored, we wish to arrange them into a concept, a pedagogical way for thinking: we call it more-than-human stories. What more-than-human stories as a concept brings together is storylines, aspects of place responsive-pedagogy and new materialist/posthuman theories. The concept aims to foster the imaginative potential of student’s formation of knowledge about the more-than-human world, both factually and creatively, envisioning storied matter (Oppermann, 2018). The idea of more-than-human stories is also influenced by Haraway’s (2016) speculative fabulations; her creative storying of the worlds of species. Haraway’s work compliments that of van Dooren (2014), who advocates for storying ways of life to create new understandings and relationships with those other-than-human. Van Dooren explains that places can be storied by humans and more-than-humans and should be understood as material-discursive phenomena (p. 67). For van Dooren, stories of those other than us are worth telling in this time of mass extinction, loss and precarity: ‘stories are part of the world, and so they participate in its becoming. As a result, telling stories has consequences: one of which is that we will inevitably be drawn in new connections, and with them new accountabilities and obligations’ (van Dooren, 2014, p. 10). Our aim through more-­ than-­human stories is developing different perspectives that enable ethical consideration of the entangled web of various species on earth. We acknowledge there are different genres of stories, from factual to folk, and different storied practices, from reading, telling and making/authoring (Payne, 2010). Although aiming to be factual, more-than-human stories may shift what storylines are made relevant, displacing the human as the central actant in a story. They may be made or told. The art of the story may help us enter, explore and consider the lives of more-than-human others. More-than-human stories as a pedagogical strategy may prompt students to think humans as part of assemblages of the more-than-human in different and creative ways. As Colebrook (2017) suggests, education should not be a mass normalizing project, but instead an open-ended project of creative difference: ‘education is at once necessary to bring forth a future distinct from what we already are, and yet that orientation toward a world of relations that is not oneself comes with the essential risk of stupidity’ (p. 651). Giving students the freedom to think, and think differently, to see where the agentic capacity of the more-than-human world guides them has risks. Yet the relinquishing of control is something worth trying, having political consequences (Morse et al., 2018). Also, it must be noted that such ideas are not the only aspect of the educational milieu. For example, the ski touring journey this research emerges from included teaching about natural histories, cultural influences and the elements of Australian alpine environments in winter. Such an OEE

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experience may unfold material-discursive phenomena (Barad, 2007, 2008)—the entanglement of matter and meaning—where more-than-human stories may play a part.

4.5 Empirical Materials: An Emergent More-­Than-Human Story Method in the new, then, might be characterized as emergent in the act of creation… (St. Pierre et al., 2016, p. 105)

The ski touring journey, as part of OEE subject Winter Alpine Environments, included pedagogical experimentation where a more-than-human story emerged. Informed by Denzin (2013), we present empirical materials, rather than using the descriptor of data. These empirical materials include: (i) an example of a more-­ than-­human story, and (ii) a postscript. Using ‘empirical materials’ implies that they are not a universal truth or brute fact gathered, instead they are a performative insight into this particular educational context and its thinking with concepts. The empirical materials were something created—a proliferation emerging from an immanent assemblage of events. Mannion (2020) highlights that thus far it is less common for new materialist researchers to suggest exemplars for educators and other researchers. Although the empirical materials below may not be exemplary, they are examples of experiments with new materialist ideas: • One Single Moment—a picture storybook made by Ya—is an example of a more-­ than-­human story. The picture storybook was drawn and written by Ya on the ski touring journey. Whilst partly a thought experiment, One Single Moment can be considered a ‘narrative experiment’ (Gough, 2014), that uses watercolour pictures with words. The picture storybook is more than a representation; it is a figuration, an ‘expression of alternative representation’ (Braidotti, 2013, p. 164). It involves making and performance, emerging from contextual situatedness (subjectivity). The re-reading by others is continued performativity and an echo of affects that allows thinking with a more-than-human other. • Following One Single Moment, is what we call a postscript—a mapping by Ya of the conditions of creation/possibility that led to her making the picture storybook (Braidotti, 2013, 2019a). In other words, the mapping in the postscript is a rhizome5 that led to the proliferation (line of flight) of the picture storybook (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987).

5  A rhizome is a concept created by Deleuze and Guattari (1987) as a way of thinking differently to linear images of thought, allowing heterogeneous connections and movements. Gough and Price (2004) explain that ‘abandoning arborescent [tree like/linear] thinking means becoming nomadic, allowing thoughts to wander beyond familiar territories and to produce new texts/terrains’ (p. 31).

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These empirical materials blur the boundaries of conventional qualitative inquiry; we envision this research as postparadigmatic (Gough, 2016), posthuman (Braidotti, 2013, 2018) and new materialist (St. Pierre et al., 2016). Mcphie and Clarke (2020) explain ‘new materialist approaches aim for creation and production’ (p. 1511). The non-conventional efforts in this research aim to be different. As St. Pierre (2018) encourages: ‘inquiry should begin with the too strange and the too much’ (p. 607) as it allows differences to emerge. The things that do not seem strange are ‘what everyone knows, what everyone does, the ordinary, repetition. Post qualitative inquiry asks … us to trust that something unimaginable might come out that might change the world bit by bit, word by word, sentence by sentence’ [and drawing by drawing] (St. Pierre, 2018, p. 607). Co-producing this paper offers opportunities for new co-created ways of knowing to emerge, enabling discussion of both educator’s pedagogical intention and student’s learning and response—which both acknowledge the more-than-human influences in the educational milieu. Furthermore, as Braidotti (2019b) points out, ‘we need sharper focus on the complex singularities that constitute our respective locations’ (p. 54). Hence, we offer this chapter as a focus on the singular and productive aspects of our location.

4.5.1 One Single Moment: By Ya Reeves

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4.5.2 A Postscript: Conditions of Creation/Possibility (Mapping a Becoming) This section, written by Ya nine-months after making the storybook, involves a mapping of the various influences and circumstances that led to its creation as a way of ‘apprehending points of growth’ (Mannion, 2020, p. 1360). Mapping the conditions of creation is an effort to avoid essentialising the production of One Single Moment to an abstract concept because, truthfully, there is a multiplicity of heterogeneous effects immanent to the educational context. Below Ya presents some for her: Postscript This book was a culmination of things; things I both understood and didn’t, a process of producing and grappling with new knowledge. • The first part of the trip, 3 days with an educator that appeared genuinely interested in the way my brain worked, and who encouraged me to keep thinking and articulating, was electrifying. Scott was open about his pedagogical experimentation, challenging us to think differently, trying to shift our focus away from the human and towards the material agency of the place. • Difference was something that Scott searched for, urging difference to be sought out and paid attention to. This was an educator’s invitation to take off running with any and all ideas. A hint that no productive response could be incorrect. • Scott facilitated an activity that encouraged us to explore a fascination.6 His fascination, which he shared later on, was to do with Snow Gums and their way of existing comfortably in this place that we find so challenging. This reignited an old fascination of mine. Could I read the history of a tree in the tree itself? • As a child between 1999 and 2008, I watched one Snow Gum grow in my backyard in Dinner Plain (a small town in the Australian Alps). The tree grew slower than anything, every year those branches would touch the ground with the weight of snow, catapult back up in the Spring. Every year, the catapult became less, branches turned downward more. By the time we left, the tree had changed shape, not just grown taller, grown out. More than that, I could see those heavy years written in the creases of the tree elbows. (continued)  ‘Fascinations’ is an activity/thought experiment Scott has been playing with, aiming to acknowledge the agency of the more-than-human world, prompted by previous research (Jukes et al., 2019; Jukes, 2018). Fascinations aims to develop what Bennett (2010) describes as an aesthetic-affective openness, while also relinquishing some control. As Morton (2016) states, ‘being interested means I am in charge. Being fascinated means that something else is’ (p. 149). Intriguingly, the etymology of fascination derives from Middle French and Latin words with meanings like bewitch/er, enchant, spell and speak. Hence, there is a hope that the more-than-human can cast a spell beyond our control, that may shake us out of anthropocentric hubris and disrupt conventional thinking.

6

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• Whilst I always wrote, finding intrigue in words and telling stories even as a kid, I had a complex relationship with drawing. I drew as a way of journaling when I got tired of words. I always thought paintings needed to be representations, accurate, capturing some exact Truth. I was never so good at that. But drawing and painting were becoming extensions of word expression. • Whilst working for another university, Scott had facilitated an assessment task that involved writing a story from the perspective of something other than a human. He told me about this task, and it stuck in my mind. I was conscious of not anthropomorphizing the subject of the story. I felt like it needed to be grounded still in its own existence, and there was a danger of imposing a human character onto, say, a tree, in order to give it value or to empathise with it. • Scott explained to me aspects of his research and the theory/philosophies that intrigued him. He explained the concepts of the rhizome, intra-action, and material agency, his attempts to challenge anthropocentrism in research and practice. Whilst I found these concepts difficult to grasp, I started to actively try and view the place through some of these conceptual lenses. • During the second part of the ski trip (5 days), Scott and I were in different groups, and mine skied North towards Bogong (Victoria’s highest mountain). Without having Scott there to query, I was left alone to make sense of our conversations without his guidance. Drawing and writing helped me to unpack the ideas. • On day three of the trip, I turned on my phone to discover that a former student/friend of mine, Tom, had committed suicide a day earlier. He was 18. I associated Bogong with Tom, as it was a place I had spent important time with him, a place that he had been exploring since he was a small kid. The areas we were skiing presented clear views over to Bogong, that big horseshoe of a mountain. This news was all-encompassing, and I decided that I needed a productive focus for distraction. • I started writing One Single Moment that morning, day 3. Started channeling all of my energy into that assessment task that Scott had told me about. • I started drawing the book as we travelled from place to place. Drew from what I saw at the time, the trees in front of me, the colours, tufts of lichen, angles in branches. The pictures follow the trail of our tour yet are punctuated with my own memories (of fearfully watching the 2003 fires tear into the Alps, of smudgy musk sunsets). The book started to be an embodiment of the place, more than just a story of one snow gum, and that place was also becoming an embodiment of my memories of Tom. Among the other aspects of the trip, it became a three-day mission of creating through grief and emotion, wrestling with understanding, and adding more layers to my own understanding of the High Plains. (continued)

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• Made the book in the most uncomfortable of places. Ass numb at 10 pm in the hut, cramped in my sleeping bag in the morning, adding scribbles halfway through windy lunches, pinning the scraps of paper down with carrots and Sriracha sauce. I utilised whatever I had, including string from my repair kit to bind it, and mat repair glue to paste the front and back cover. • I finished it on the last morning before we left the mountain. Handed it over to Scott unceremoniously in a carpark as a means of thanking him. Didn’t make any copies. Nine months later, Scott sent me a copy.

Just as the above factors contributed to the production of the book, the book itself produced a proliferation of thoughts in me when I eventually re-read it all those months later. Here are just a few: • EMBRACING THE IN-BETWEEN: This book was caught somewhere in between understanding, theory, emotion, place, stability, new friendships, new perspectives. The book itself is a process, as I was learning whilst creating. It fails to (neither does it attempt to) capture some essential truth, represent a singular theory, or strictly adhere to rules—for me, it inhabits this in-between quite comfortably. • PROVOCATION: It wouldn’t have come about (or perhaps come about in the same way) without provocation from Scott, by way of his conversation, interest, sharing of concepts, and the obvious way he sought difference and encouraged divergent thinking. Nor without his easy ability to expose his own pedagogical ideas and approaches to his students. • LAYERS OF UNDERSTANDING: My history in the place has informed much of the story’s content. When I say history, I am referring to my experiences as well as my understanding of cultural and natural history. They are essential to the ability to read (or even consider) the history of the tree. The book comments on: –– Natural History: the weathered and nutrient-poor condition of Australia’s very old mountain, the predominant winds, subnivean spaces as homes to marsupials, the recent and devastating fire history, and the Snow Gum’s ability to adapt to its conditions, bending rather than breaking. –– Cultural History: the extensive history and importance of this Alpine Environment to Indigenous people, the many sacred sites, as well as the European/cattle grazing tradition of building huts across the mountains. –– Current Political Debates: surrounding feral animals, their impact, and their subsequent existence in the mountains (the storybook mentions the ‘deer heads rubbing’ against the tree). (continued)

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Neither through concepts, nor emotion alone could I have produced One Single Moment. • VOICE OF THE PLACE: One Single Moment wouldn’t exist without the landscape being what it was, when it was, where it was. The quality and richness of that trip, in all of its complexity and messiness, could never be entirely replicated, as the conditions will and can never be the same. But alpine environments in winter in Australia have a rare, isolated, ephemeral, shifting, and productive quality. This book is located in and a product of that place, and in many ways, I believe it seeps a similar character.

4.6 Complexity, Productivity and Offerings Investigating the multiple threads of this research shows that matter and place are complex and multi-storied phenomena. As Somerville (2013) describes, ‘writing about place is an ontological act, producing the self at the same time as writing the words. It is predicated on unwinding the spiral of “material form and interpretative understandings or experiences” to enable new possibilities to come into being’ (p. 19). One Single Moment is a story about the history, material form and vitality of Snow Gums on the Bogong High Plains. The picture storybook, combined with the mapping in the postscript, is also an enactment of thinking with and through concepts, place, pedagogy and educational experiences. Gough (1999) asserts that there is a contested nature to epistemological concerns in educational and environmental research. Thus, we acknowledge that environmental education research as an epistemological endeavor is entangled with ontology, with materiality, our student’s pasts, the environments history. The presentation of One Single Moment and the Postscript are a non-reductive mapping of onto-epistemological formations. It shows part of the complexity of education, pedagogy and the student experience. However, we note here the generative capacity of education, that although things may be complex, even messy, it is not something to avoid—messiness is truthful to the reality of educational contexts. Ya as a student, grappling with multiple complex subjectivities was able to formulate a story that imaginatively reaches for new ways of understanding. The story writing/drawing process allowed expression and communication of complex ideas. The material and social milieu of OEE contexts could do well to allow time and space for creatively thinking through the environment and the more-than-human in open-ended ways. Enabling students to create their own discourses, as Gough (1999) suggests, has valuable educational potential. We add that this creation is material-discursive, always in conjunction with material agencies. In this way, such a pedagogy may be envisioned as ‘wild’ (Morse et al., 2018), as it acknowledges the self-will and agency of both students and the more-than-­ human world in the formation of knowledge and subjectivity.

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Hence, more-than-human stories offer a conceptual heuristic for considering our place in a more-than-human world, more-than-human inhabitants and different spatio-­temporal perspectives. In other words, we offer more-than-human stories as a strategy or tool for the educator in the assemblage theory toolbox (Mannion, 2020) where place becomes the co-storyteller (Payne, 2010). In a similar vein to Mannion (2020), we imagine this as a step towards more-than-human pedagogies. What it might allow is a (re)envisioning of current and future relationships, recognising the entangled and mutually constitutive relationships between the humans and that which is more-than-human. Yet, the risk with an open-ended pedagogy is that it may not reach such a lofty aim. Nevertheless, we must guide, provoke and catalyse students and look for the assemblage convertors (Bennett, 2010, p.  42; Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 378) that prompt ethical rethinking in this time of the Anthropocene. For as Braidotti and Hlavajova (2018) state, ‘“We” are in this anthropocentric crisis together’ (p. 12). ‘We’ are not all the same (Braidotti, 2019a) yet we environmental educators might enact our pedagogy in creatively different and context specific ways. Environmental educators should be encouraged to experiment with new ideas, play with pedagogy and not baulk at complexity. Embracing relational openness and affirmative action’s when working with our students and more-than-human others may be a step to co-producing a positive future.

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Pretty, J., Adams, B., Berkes, F., Ferreira de Athayde, S., Dudley, N., Hunn, E., et al. (2009). The intersections of biological diversity and cultural diversity: Towards integration. Conservation and Society, 7(2), 100–112. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-­4923.58642 Prins, A., & Wattchow, B. (2020). The pedagogic moment: Enskilment as another way of being in outdoor education. Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Learning, 20(1), 81–91. https://doi.org/10.1080/14729679.2019.1599295 Raffan, J. (1993). The experience of place: Exploring the land as teacher. The Journal of Experiential Education, 16(1), 39–45. Reid, A. (2019). Blank, blind, bald and bright spots in environmental education research. Environmental Education Research, 25(2), 157–171. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622. 2019.1615735 Ruck, A., & Mannion, G. (2020). Fieldnotes and situational analysis in environmental education research: Experiments in new materialism. Environmental Education Research, 26(9–10), 1373–1390. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2019.1594172 Slattery, D. (2015). Australian Alps: Kosciuszko, Alpine and Namadgi National Parks (2nd ed.). CSIRO Publishing. Somerville, M. (2010). A place pedagogy for ‘global contemporaneity’. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 42(3), 326–344. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-­5812.2008.00423.x Somerville, M. (2013). Water in a dry land: Place-learning through art and story. Routledge. Somerville, M., Power, K., & de Carteret, P. (2009). Introduction: Place studies for a global world. In M. Somerville, K. Power, & P. de Carteret (Eds.), Landscapes and learning: Place studies for a global world (pp. 1–20). Sense Publishers. St. Pierre, E. (2018). Writing post qualitative inquiry. Qualitative Inquiry, 24(9), 603–608. https:// doi.org/10.1177/1077800417734567 St. Pierre, E., Jackson, A., & Mazzei, L. (2016). New empiricisms and new materialisms: Conditions for new inquiry. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 16(2), 99–110. Stewart, A. (2004a). Canoeing the Murray River (Australia) as environmental education: A tale of two rivers. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 9(1), 136–147. Stewart, A. (2004b). Decolonising encounters with the Murray River: Building place responsive outdoor education. Australian Journal of Outdoor Education, 8(2), 46–55. Stewart, A. (2008). Whose place, whose history? Outdoor environmental education pedagogy as ‘reading’ the landscape. Journal of Adventure Education & Outdoor Learning, 8(2), 79–98. https://doi.org/10.1080/14729670801906125 Stewart, A. (2018). A Murray Cod assemblage: Re/considering river scape pedagogy. The Journal of Environmental Education, 49(2), 130–141. van der Tuin, I. (2018). Neo/New Materialism. In R. Braidotti & M. Hlavajova (Eds.), Posthuman glossary (pp. 277–279). Bloomsbury Academic. van Dooren, T. (2014). Flight ways: Life and loss at the edge of extinction. Columbia University Press. Verlie, B., & CCR15. (2020). From action to intra action? Agency identity and goals in a relational approach to climate change education. Environmental Education Research, 26(9–10), 1266–1280. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2018.1497147 Wattchow, B., & Brown, M. (2011). A pedagogy of place: Outdoor education for a changing world. Monash University Publishing.

Chapter 5

Listening for More-Than-Human Voices: The Expressive Power of Landscapes Scott Jukes

Abstract  This chapter introduces the idea of reading landscapes in relation to more-than-human worlds. I explore the practice of reading more-than-human stories in the landscape through examples from extended bushwalks in the Australian Alps. The aim of this chapter is to engage with the expressive power of landscape, offering some pedagogical strategies for attuning to more-than-human worlds. The chapter argues that by paying close attention, we may see that different features can tell us something about our shared worlds—a movement away from colonialist practices.

5.1 Reading Landscapes All education happens somewhere. In schools, classrooms are the obvious norm, but for outdoor education, the learning environment is the landscape, which may differ in dramatic ways. Which is to say, the landscape as both a setting and backdrop to outdoor education is ever changing and ‘many-voiced’ (Abram, 1996, p. ix). Stewart (2008) argues that we should avoid having landscapes (or places) as featureless backdrops to outdoor environmental education (OEE), instead suggesting we should read landscapes as part of a practice of attending to the specifics of that local area. In this chapter, I take this notion of reading landscapes and merge it with some of the ideas from the previous chapter. In particular, I want to explore how we may listen for and read more-than-human stories in a landscape. I have started exploring this elsewhere in a limited fashion (see Stewart et al., 2021), however, I extend these discussions in a practical manner in this chapter, drawing upon extensive fieldwork on OEE journeys in the Australian Alps. As I introduce this chapter further, we should grapple with this notion of ‘reading’ landscapes. In the context of discussing reading landscapes, what we are talking S. Jukes (*) Federation University, Berwick, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Jukes, Learning to Confront Ecological Precarity, International Explorations in Outdoor and Environmental Education 13, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34200-4_5

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about is a form of literacy where we may read, listen, and otherwise focus our consciousness towards landscapes in order to make sense of them. To be specific, it is about listening and attending to the landscape so that we might understand some of what is, might be or has gone on there. For me, this is more than phenomenologically attuning ourselves to direct personal experience, but attunement towards more-thanhuman encounters and relationships, bearing witness to more-than-human voices and socio-ecological situations, coupled with philosophical reflection (or diffraction). My hope is that such a process may help us see and know the places we visit in OEE differently. As I delve into this notion of reading a landscape further, I realise it can be rather complicated. The way we read landscapes is influenced by the ways we participate with them, our worldviews and the concepts or theoretical frameworks we use to guide ‘readings’ (Stewart et  al., 2021). Which is to say that worldviews and the concepts we think with act materially (Mcphie & Clarke, 2020), influencing future worldings. Furthermore, landscapes act, constantly changing and varying (from season to season but also over time, and quite rapidly in some instances due to influences such as climate change). Thus, more-than-human aspects of landscapes implicate and perform in a myriad of ways. In summary, the main intention of this chapter is to further extend the idea of more-than-human stories offered in the previous chapter, linking it to the idea of readings landscapes. I provide some examples of listening for more-than-human voices and reading the stories of a place, situated in the Australian Alps, to see what these concepts might do in practice. A premise embedded in this chapter is that matter can tell us things about the world—it has an expressive power. As Iovino and Oppermann (2014) explain, ‘“more-than-human” materiality is a constant process of shared becoming that tells us something about the “world we inhabit”’ (p. 1). Which is to say that we are constantly becoming entangled with materiality (such as the material aspects of the landscapes we inhabit), yet we can better learn to listen to what more-than-human voices are telling us. The next section explores how we might become entangled in landscapes before I discuss examples of practice.

5.2 Landscapes Shape First, it is informative to look at this word landscape. I will borrow from Macfarlane (2013)—a wonderful landscape author in my opinion—who has a brilliant way of articulating his use of the word (bear with my while I quote him at length): ‘Landscape’ is not something to be viewed and appraised from a distance, as if it were a panel in a frieze or a canvas on a frame. It is not the passive object of our gaze, but rather a volatile participant—a fellow subject which arches and bristles at us, bristles into us. Landscape is still often understood as a noun connoting fixity, scenery, an immobile painterly decorum. (p. 255)

As Macfarlane elaborates, he prefers to consider landscape in a more active sense, with a ‘hidden verb’:

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Landscape scapes, it is dynamic and commotion causing, it sculpts and shapes us not only over the courses of our lives but also instant by instant, incident by incident. I prefer to take ‘landscape’ as a collective term for the temperature and pressure of the air, the fall of light and its rebounds, the textures and surfaces of rock, soil and building, the sounds (cricket screech, bird cry, wind through trees), the scents (pine resin, hot stone, crushed thyme) and the other transitory phenomena and atmospheres that together comprise the bristling presence of a particular place at a particular moment [original emphasis]. (p. 255)

Hence, when I use the term landscape throughout this chapter, and further in this book, Macfarlanes articulation is often what I have lingering in mind. I will also explore this again in Chap. 8, but I view landscapes and their features as imbued with agency—their physical features are not passive or inert. As such, I consider the word landscape to be part verb and part noun, where, in short, landscapes are full of life and stories.

5.3 Listening for More-Than-Human Stories in the Australian Alps One begins post qualitative inquiry with a concrete encounter with the real, not with a research question. (St. Pierre, 2019, p. 12).

Each year, for the last 6  years, I have walked for 18-days with small groups of undergraduate OEE students through the Kosciuszko National Park (KNP), Australia. Part of our aim on these journeys has been to develop understandings of the landscape, through stories of the alpine, montane and river environments. To do this, I enact a pedagogical approach of listening for and reading more-than-human stories in the features of the landscape (Jukes & Reeves, 2020). For this approach, rather than focusing on purely human stories or histories, we pay attention to entangled stories that connect through the landscape. It is important to note, as I mentioned in Chap. 1, that the more-than-human is not cut off, separated, from human action or involvement. The intention behind the language and idea of more-than-­ human stories is this attempt to decentre humans and challenge or call out human exceptionalism. This practice of engaging with more-than-human stories is a decolonising project, as it acknowledges that places belong to more than just humans and express agency (Jukes, Stewart & Morse, 2019). Consequently, using the term more-than-human emphasises this step away from human centrality and exclusivity (an act of colonisation) whilst also being inclusive of humans. Landscapes have stories to tell. Noticing and engaging with material features provides an entryway into reading the more-than-human stories of the landscape. In this manner, ‘reading’ is a metaphor that also involves listening to the expressive power of a landscape’s features, which can provide pathways into particular stories. This listening and reading creates a dialogical relationship with more-than-­human worlds (Plumwood, 2003). For my practice in KNP, the duration of the journey allows for a sustained engagement with the landscape, where different stories relating to ecology and history crisscross, flow and connect (rhizomatically), building

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layers of understanding. When we encounter different features of the landscape, they prompt material-discursive learning possibilities, where we may begin thinking with the landscape through our embodied encounters (Jukes, 2021). As Pip Morse (2021) states, ‘stories in the landscape can emerge not just linguistically, but also through embodied sensory experience’ (p.  1240). Similarly, Mikaels and Asfeldt (2017) explain, reading the landscape is a skill to be learned, happening through embodied experience and bodily attention towards more-than-human elements.

5.3.1 Feldmark Foray’s Bodily attention might start by recognising that different landscapes are unique. The mountains of KNP, for example, are islands within a flat dry continent. Only 0.01% of Australia consists of alpine and sub-alpine areas elevated enough to experience consistent winter snowfall (Slattery & Worboys, 2020). The alpine areas of KNP are particularly distinct, with the high treeless zones covering an area of roughly 100 sq. km. Here the terrain is relatively rugged, whilst still being home to a range of endemic species of flora and fauna. For us walkers, even in summer, this is a harsh environment. But it is only harsh on our terms. It is also delicate, and in a precarious condition of ecological health due to combined effects of changing climate, invasive flora and fauna species and human development. As we walk the highest and most exposed ridges we enter what is called feldmark—one of the many diverse vegetation communities in KNP.  What is so incredible about feldmark is that it grows in the ‘most unfavourable situations’ (Costin et al., 2017, p. 46). Feldmark is some of the highest, windiest, driest, rockiest and generally most exposed places in the Alps. Here, prostrate shrubs and flowers, such as the alpine sunray (Fig. 5.1), cling in-between rocks. For flora such as the alpine sunray, this is not a punitive unforgiving landscape, but home. Human language, from a human perspective, is what makes places (communities) such as feldmark ‘harsh’, ‘unforgiving’ or ‘extreme.’ If we were to place an alpine sunray into the ‘comfort’ of my lounge room, with its managed climate and steady temperatures, the alpine sunray would find this quite extreme and likely die. Feldmark and flowers such as Alpine Sunray do not live a separate existence from humans. Yes, they have very different modes of being, but human lives cross and tangle with such environmental communities, in both direct and indirect ways. In the age of the Anthropocene, on a planet increasingly influenced by climate change, these mountainous areas, and small communities such as feldmark, are fragile islands of altitude. Just as coastal places face concerns of rising seas and inundation, alpine areas also face rising temperatures and inundation from species migrating in elevation. Feldmark and the alpine sunray are characters in the story of the alps, a story that faces the impending figure of climate change and extinction. When walking in the alps with my students, every step we take shares the ground with the landscape. Our slow footfall becomes interconnected with each vegetation

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Fig. 5.1  An Alpine sunray in feldmark of the main range, KNP. (Photo by Scott Jukes)

community. We tread lightly and observe, making sure to dodge feldmark flowers or 15,000-year-old peat bogs. We sleep on alpine grasses, feel the ground underneath us and listen to the wind gust overhead. We don’t just pass over the land but learn through the materiality of embodied movement and engagement with it (see also Chap. 9). The landscape shapes our experiences and therefore our learning—what is required, though, is to be attentive students, look beyond human perspectives, engage with different worlds and read critically the stories that emerge.

5.3.2 Stoney Perspectives The alpine landscape of Australia is old. Poking up amongst many alpine bogs and herb fields are lichen covered granite boulders (Fig. 5.2). These lithic bodies form the ground we walk and are the oldest aspects of these places. As Cohen (2015) remarks, human life resembles the fleeting presence of mayflies when juxtaposed with rock and stone: A fortunate animal endures perhaps seventy [years]. These ubiquitous boulders, not even the eldest of the earth, possess the lifespan of millions upon millions upon millions of fortunate animals. They will persist into a future so distant that no human will witness their return to liquids and powders. (Cohen, 2015, p. 30)

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Fig. 5.2  An ancient landscape, where stone shapes footfall. (Photo by the Scott Jukes)

Considering time, such as geologic timescales, helps provide perspective. Pip Morse (2021) suggests we might engage our imagination to help conceive such non-human time scales within our pedagogical practices in OEE. For Morse, doing so might help challenge dominant perspectives that consider geology and topography inanimate, and instead perceive the active fluid agency and vibrant capacity of such things to shape and make our worlds. Macfarlane (2019) offers additional value in considering the time scale of things: When viewed in deep time, things come alive that seem inert. New responsibilities declare themselves. A conviviality of being leaps to mind and eye. The world becomes eerily various and vibrant again. Ice breathes. Rock has tides. Mountains ebb and flow. Stone pulses. We live on a restless earth. (pp. 15-16)

The term Anthropocene indicates our actions are/will be written on geologic strata—we are leaving a dark legacy to be read in future landscapes. But what can we read now? How does reading the more-than-human stories in the landscape shift perspectives and open new worlds? I don’t intend to offer a definitive answer, but these features I’ve mentioned are examples from my practice that I imaginatively explore with students. When we look at rock, we also see lichen. Another wild story emerges. Lichens are the union of fungi and algae and are some of the first organisms to establish themselves in different ecosystems (Sheldrake, 2020). They work away at rocks,

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mining them for minerals, wearing them away, dissolving them in a process called weathering. During this process they create soils and shape landscapes. Furthermore, as Sheldrake (2020) explains, lichens pose riddles as they confuse conventional boundaries of individual organisms. Fungi and algae collaborate to make lichen, covering 8% of the surface of the planet. To read the lichens on the rocks also provides a segue into questioning our own individuality—an idea that is increasingly being called out as false (for example, see Haraway, 2016). The symbiosis that is lichen opens stories of mutual constitutions and collaborative relationships between and across all life—a fascinating more-than-human story worth exploring with students. Investigating such connectiveness can lead to a relational understanding of life that can uncover and confront hierarchical perspectives.

5.3.3 Introduced Inhabitants Another specific (and inevitable) landscape encounter in KNP involves horses and/ or their impacts (for example, see Fig.  5.3). These horses were introduced by European settlers in the nineteenth century and form an aspect of colonial heritage that is celebrated by some Australians. Those that celebrate this culture see horses as part of their identity and the identity of these mountains. In contrast to the heritage perspectives, scientific research insists that hard-hoofed ungulates are invasive,

Fig. 5.3  Altered vegetation, pugging and erosion of the streambank, caused by introduced horses, headwaters of the Ingeegoodbee River, KNP. (Photo by Graeme L. Worboys)

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causing intense cumulative damage to catchments and endemic species in the alps (Slattery & Worboys, 2020). However, settler history and scientific findings are not the only aspects worth exploring. The aim, through our encounters, is to pay attention to webs of relationships. In a horse encounter, this involves discussions on the related cultural narratives, historical relationships, ecological implications, political debates, ethical dilemmas (such as extinction, human management and culling) and ultimately the worldviews and life worlds of the variously implicated human and non-human stakeholders (this particular discussion gets extended further in Chap. 6). I suggest one task for educators is to encourage students to attentively read the landscape, making connections between various stories and features. As Stewart (2006) explains, ‘stories seemingly unrelated may become connected through a common element’ (p.  93), and the job of educators is to encourage students to diversly read the landscape and make connections between various stories. As the journey unfolds, a mosaic of more-than-­human stories develop that explore multiple perspectives and worlds.

5.4 Provoking Thought The alpine landscape of KNP has gradually adapted over millions of years. Throughout the last few hundred years, European settlers and their introduced species have in many ways been agents of destruction to this fragile landscape. Reading stories in the land beyond dominant settler narratives helps promote respectful ways of seeing and, hopefully, less destructive ways of relating to places such as KNP. Pondering the life of rock and lichen, a feldmark flower or a streambed damaged by introduced species offers some valuable learning—pondering how all these stories overlap and interweave offers different considerations for outdoor environmental educators and their students. Some questions that provoke me and my students in this practice include: • What are some of the dominant human stories of the landscape? What narratives might be silenced or less-dominant? • What might be some of the possible more-than-human stories that can be listened to and read in the landscape? To approach similar questions in other, possibly more accessible ways, I often ask: • • • •

What fascinates you in this landscape? What stands out or calls to you? Why is this feature calling to you? What is its story? What can this feature tell you? What might the landscape tell you if you listened? What influences, overlaps or relates to this feature and/or landscape?

The aim and significance of more-than-human stories is that they don’t privilege human worlds, purely romantic conceptions, or an anthropocentric gaze, whilst not ignoring human involvement either. Engaging with more-than-human stories also

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attempts to avoid some colonising perspectives and human-nature separations/ dichotomies. Simply put, the intention is to explore the complex worlds of a particular landscape, as a respectful learning endeavor.

5.5 Towards Granular Stories for Confronting Environmental Problems To help get a grasp of the reality of ecological precarity, Tsing (in Tsing & Bazzul, 2021) articulates the need for granular stories of the Anthropocene. In other words, rather than explore planetary scale problems, problems might be explored in spatio-­ temporal specificity. What this can do is help us grapple with and attend to entwined social and ecological issues. The next chapter is an example of this, extending some of the discussions introduced within this chapter. Specifically, I explore the issue of introduced horses in the Australian Alps, embracing the complexity of this story by attending to both cultural and ecological dimensions. I also offer the pedagogical concept of thinking with the landscape to help me in this task.

References Abram, D. (1996). The spell of the sensuous: Perception and language in a more-than-human world. Vintage Books. Cohen, J. (2015). Stone: An ecology of the inhuman. University of Minnesota Press. Costin, A., Gray, M., Totterdell, C., & Wimbush, D. (2017). Kosciuszko alpine flora. CSIRO Publishing. Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press. Iovino, S., & Oppermann, S. (2014). Introduction: Stories come to matter. In S.  Iovino & S. Oppermann (Eds.), Material ecocriticism. Indiana University Press. Jukes, S. (2021). Thinking with a landscape: The Australian Alps, horses and pedagogical considerations. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 37(2), 89–107. https://doi. org/10.1017/aee.2020.26 Jukes, S., & Reeves, Y. (2020). More-than-human stories: Experimental co-productions in outdoor environmental education pedagogy. Environmental Education Research, 26(9–10), 1294–1312. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2019.1699027 Jukes, S., Stewart, A., & Morse, M. (2019). Acknowledging the agency of a more-than-human world: Material relations on a Snowy River journey. Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education, 22(2), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42322-­019-­00032-­8 Macfarlane, R. (2013). The old ways: A journey on foot. Penguin. Macfarlane, R. (2019). Underland: A deep time journey. Penguin. Mcphie, J., & Clarke, D. (2020). Nature matters: Diffracting a keystone concept of environmental education research – Just for kicks. Environmental Education Research, 26(9–10), 1509–1526. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2018.1531387 Mikaels, J., & Asfeldt, M. (2017). Becoming-crocus, becoming-river, becoming-bear: A relational materialist exploration of place(s). Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education, 20(2), 2–13.

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Morse, P. (2021). Flowing magma bodies: Towards a relational understanding of imaginative pedagogical possibilities. Environmental Education Research, 27(8), 1229–1244. https://doi. org/10.1080/13504622.2021.1926432 Plumwood, V. (2003). Decolonizing relationships with nature. In W. B. Adams & M. Mulligan (Eds.), Decolonizing nature: Strategies for conservation in a post-colonial era. Routledge. Sheldrake, M. (2020). Entangled life: How fungi make our worlds, change our minds and shape our futures. Penguin Random House. Slattery, D., & Worboys, G. (2020). Kosciuszko: A great national park. Envirobook. St. Pierre, E. (2019). Post qualitative inquiry in an ontology of immanence. Qualitative Inquiry, 25(1), 3–16. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800418772634 Stewart, A. (2006). Seeing the trees and the forest: Attending to Australian natural history as if it mattered. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 22(2), 85–97. Stewart, A. (2008). Whose place, whose history? Outdoor environmental education pedagogy as ‘reading’ the landscape. Journal of Adventure Education & Outdoor Learning, 8(2), 79–98. https://doi.org/10.1080/14729670801906125 Stewart, A., Jukes, S., Mikaels, J., & Mangelsdorf, A. (2021). Reading landscapes: Engaging with places. In G.  Thomas, J.  Dyment, & H.  Prince (Eds.), Outdoor environmental education in higher education: International perspectives (pp. 201–213). Springer. Tsing, A., & Bazzul, J. (2021). A feral atlas for the Anthropocene: An interview with Anna L.  Tsing. In M.  Wallace, J.  Bazzul, M.  Higgins, & S.  Tolbert (Eds.), Reimagining science education in the Anthropocene (pp. 309–319). Palgrave Macmillan.

Chapter 6

Thinking with a Landscape: Engaging with Environmental Issues Through Outdoor Education Scott Jukes

Abstract  In this chapter, I propose the possibility of thinking with a landscape as a pedagogical concept, inspired by posthumanist theory. I enact this concept in the Australian Alps, concentrating on the contentious environmental dilemma involving introduced horses and their management in this bio-geographical location. The topic of horses is of pedagogical relevance for place-responsive outdoor environmental educators as both a location-specific problem and an example of a troubling issue. The chapter has two objectives for employing posthumanist thinking. Firstly, it experiments with the alternative methodological possibilities that posthumanist theory affords for OEE, including new ways of conducting educational research. Secondly, it explores how thinking with a landscape as a pedagogical concept may help open ways of considering the dilemma that horses pose. The pedagogical concept is enacted through some empirical events which sketch human-horse encounters from the Australian Alps. These sketches depict some of the pedagogical conversations and discursive pathways that encounters can provoke. Such encounters and conversations are ways of constructing knowledge of the landscape, covering multiple species, perspectives and discursive opportunities.

6.1 Surveying the Linguistic Terrain This chapter proposes some possibilities for thinking with a landscape as a place-­ responsive pedagogical concept, inspired by posthumanist theory (e.g., Ulmer, 2017). The idea of thinking with a landscape is enacted in the Australian Alps (AA), concentrating on the contentious environmental dilemma involving introduced horses and their management in this bio-geographical and cultural location. The topic of horses is of pedagogical relevance for place-responsive outdoor S. Jukes (*) Federation University, Berwick, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Jukes, Learning to Confront Ecological Precarity, International Explorations in Outdoor and Environmental Education 13, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34200-4_6

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environmental educators as both a location-specific problem and an example of a troubling issue. I adopt a posthuman sensibility as a way to engage (immanently) with the landscape1 and the particularly contentious inhabitant—the horse. I aim to do this in a multiplicity of ways. To begin, thinking with is an acknowledgement that thinking is not a solitary act (Lloro-Bidart, 2018; Ulmer, 2017; van Dooren, 2018); that is to say, thought is relational, involves others and can be prompted by nonhuman entities. So, I am trying not to think strictly about horses or the AA, but with them, in a more relational sense. My first hurdle appears when deciding what exactly to call these horses. Horses inhabit many places around the world, but the ones in the mountains of Australia— places such as Kosciusko National Park (KNP)—are different.2 Names and descriptions vary; brumbies, wild horses, feral horses, Equus caballus, exotic, pest species, cultural icon, invasive, heritage, non-native and introduced (to name some). As Halsey (2006) explains, ‘…naming matters. Names levy effects. They either preclude or leave open particular kinds of potentials, capacities and juxtapositions of bodies’ (p. 2). I acknowledge names are an anthropocentric label applied to a being otherthan-human. Drawing upon Halsey (2004, 2006), naming (categorising) ‘nature’— such as naming a horse—is wrapped up in how one envisions it. Such modalities then flow on to have innumerable influences and effects. I’m led to consider, what is in these names and what do they do? Arthur (2002) offers some help in understanding language and what it implies about landscapes. She is a lexical cartographer—she maps landscapes through the language used to describe them—exploring the way different lexicons (vocabularies) and cultural influences shape perceptions (and conceptions) of places, their features and environmental politics. I hasten to add, places, landscapes or the inhabitants of them also play a part in shaping conceptions and perceptions. They are not static—both the landscape and the language perform, shaping ways of thinking and seeing. For my posthuman project, I do not intend to perform a lexical cartography. But the language still matters. Language can (in part) influence a ‘particular construction of a landscape,’ presenting ‘domain[s] of understanding’ (Arthur, 2002, p. 191) and can shed some light onto the topic of horses in the AA. In one sense, brumbies are seen as national heritage and part of Australia’s pioneering history during colonisation. A report on the cultural heritage value on brumbies states the name is: A colloquial Australian term for a horse that has been raised in the wild. The term ‘brumby’ was in usage in NSW by 1881, one theory being that it derived from a Queensland Aboriginal word, booramby, meaning ‘wild’ (Australian National Dictionary online; Baker  Engaging with a landscape is an involvement, a participation with and a relationship to—something I think is valuable to consider as an educational endeavour. For example, drawing upon Mcphie and Clarke (2020), ‘Landscape is not a fixed scene to be “gazed upon” by an image capturing spectator (through a lens) that catches and then frames a representation of it’ (p. 12). Landscapes (particular places) are participated with in various ways by human and non-human actors, which co-constitute the particular landscapes. 2  I don’t mean a different breed, as they are reported to be genetically the same as domestic horses in Australia (Context, 2015). 1

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1966, p. 66). Another theory was that it derived from the name of an early settler in NSW, Sergeant James Brumby, who on moving to Tasmania in c.1804, released his horses into the wild (Campbell 1966). (Context, 2015, p. 14)

Where ever the name emerged, for some people it invokes images of mountain cattlemen—the hard men that tamed the wild bush—pursuing horses, as described in Banjo Paterson’s (1890) iconic ballad The Man from Snowy River. Seddon (1994) describes the Snowy River area: ‘it is romantic country, and the scene of epic deeds, so romance is in the air’ (p. 160). It is hard not to get caught up in these cultural stories of the landscape. A counter waypoint in the linguistic terrain is feral horse, implying that the animals—the largest animals in the mountainous areas of Australia—are non-native invasive pests that destroy fragile and unique ecosystems and crucial waterways. In Autumn 2019, the Australian Alps National Parks Co-operative Management Program (AANP) conducted an aerial survey of horse numbers in the AA, showing a 23% increase in horse numbers per annum, with a total number estimated to be 25,318 (AANP, 2019). This shows a marked increase from 9190 in their 2014 aerial survey. The increase in horse numbers has conservationists calling for better management, including culling. In terms of naming, Williams (2019) argues we (humans) should ‘be blunt about terminology—these animals are feral horses’ (p. 5). He continues by stating: It is important to note the definition of the term ‘feral’ here—the word denotes a wild population derived from an original domesticated stock. In this sense, it is neither provocative nor insulting; rather, it is a calm statement of fact. Nevertheless, we should never refer to them by the romantic alternatives—‘wild horses’ or ‘brumbies’… The term ‘feral horse’ says directly that the animals are not Australian and have not co-evolved within the ecosystems of the Australian Alps network of national parks. (p. 5)

Yet the term is provocative for some, raising the ire and adding to a polemic debate. I consider the different perspectives of the debate important, for as Barad (2007) states, ‘difference cannot be taken for granted, it matters—indeed, it is what matters’ (p. 136). Feral horses vs brumbies: this is the basic premise of the conflict, set out in simplistic, anthropocentric and dualistic fashion.3 However, one key strategy of my project is to complicate the dualisms and challenge inequalities on order to open discourse. Differences do not need to be laid out in a dichotomous fashion; they can be pluralistic. In efforts to break this dichotomous and anthropocentric naming, I refer to the horses, plainly, as horses. I am still referring to the particular horses situated within and part of the areas (commonly and collectively known) as the

 Thank you to one of the anonymous reviewers for helping point this out. As the reviewer noted of the debate, ‘on the one side the horse is a romantic sentimental idea, on the other a crude intruder. Where, of course, the horse itself is neither’. Another way to consider the dichotomy is a subjective view (cultural constructions of these horses) or an objective view (horses as pest from a scientific gaze). If we are to think differently, how do we escape such thinking? 3

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Australian Alps. I use the strike through (sous rature) in a similar vein to Halsey4 (2006). For this chapter, the strike through signifies the contested terrain of naming the horses and that the beings are a multiplicity, with naming always already a human imposed construct. Furthermore, with the help of Halsey (2006), this ‘in turn, is to commence a line of flight (however treacherous) toward a different kind of ethic(s)’ (p. 86). The names for these horses are just my starting point for this volatile topic. The debate ranges well beyond linguistics and the naming of the animal, also involving issues of horses’ material agencies within the AA, other species, people, colonial heritage and, broadly, ethics. I argue that such explorations are pedagogical for OEE and can be helped by posthuman sensibilities.5 The questions which help guide this chapter are: what might we learn when we pay attention to the dynamic landscape of the AA? And more specifically, what can we learn of the landscape when we focus on encounters with horses? Experiences with the landscape and encounters with horses can present educational opportunities, where such knowledge making opportunities involve nonhuman elements (Barad, 2007). This move is ontological, where non-human animals and the material landscape can act as co-teacher (Morse et al., 2018). In other words, humans can learn through encounters and explorations with the more-than-human world. Notably, thinking with, in my case, is not thinking for (a value laden term) or like (how can we think like a non-human animal?). My aim for this chapter is to explore the agentic assemblage (Jackson & Mazzei, 2016) of the AA (a landscape, an ecology, an environment, a multispecies community or specific bio-geographical and cultural location) and horses as notably contentious actors with/in/of it.

6.2 Posthuman Sensibilities: Methodological Considerations Broadly speaking, posthuman knowledge moves away from the conventional humanities, towards alternative and ethically minded modes of thought (Braidotti, 2019). Under the banner of posthuman knowledge are a range of approaches to thinking that have genealogical lines leading from a range of philosophies. A key question is what can posthuman thinking do? I ask ‘what it can do’, as it isn’t a specific set of protocols, but a divergent array of ideas for investigating specific situated contexts (Ulmer, 2017). For Braidotti (2019), posthuman knowledge production involves the convergence of post-humanism and post-anthropocentrism. Post-humanism, for Braidotti (2019), is influenced by post-structural, post-colonial and feminist theories. These theories encourage a rethinking of dominant  The practice of the strike through originated with Derrida, but it’s Halsey (2006) that prompts my usage. 5  Posthumanism is a diverse and growing area of thought, and a full review is beyond the scope of this chapter. I use the term sensibility to indicate that it’s from this sense that I write. Braidotti (2013) offers a notable overview of posthumanism. 4

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discourses, attempt to chart accurate histories and include the influence of materiality and corporeality of different bodies (including non-human) in knowledge production. Furthermore, posthuman knowledge also includes attention to relational agencies of matter (Barad, 2007). As I continue my explorations in this chapter, I will emphasize the post-colonial possibilities in my Australian educational context. Post-anthropocentrism—Braidotti’s (2019) other element of posthuman convergences—challenges human exceptionalism (humans as superior beings) and prompts me to question centering the human in research and knowledge production practices. However, I agree with Affifi’s (2020) arguments that anthropocentrism (and nonanthropocentrism) comes in varying degrees, in what he calls a fluid binary: ‘What is considered nonanthropocentric in one way is always anthropocentric in another, and vice versa’ (p. 1437). In short, the fluidity of (non)anthropocentrism can fall into what Gough (2016) describes as an irreducible anthropocentrism, despite the extension of both thought and biophysical limitations. We (humans/ researchers) choose what to deanthropocentrise, which is where Affifi (2020) notes the grounding is still partially humanistic. In other words, the researcher cannot completely remove their shadow from the sketch they draw. Nonetheless, in my case for this chapter, I strive to challenge some forms of anthropocentrism whilst inevitably slipping into other forms (due to my inherent humanness). One step is to acknowledge humans are wrapped up amongst and a part of a more-than-human world. Being of the world means that I am not above it, but an agentic entity with it. This leads me to a form of post-anthropocentric knowledge production (through an onto-epistemological position), which sees humans as not the only participants in the construction of knowledge. Or, as Ulmer (2017) describes, ‘humans are characters in a cast of many’ (p. 833). This can be described as a flat(ter) ontology, but (as you will see later) a completely flat ontology doesn’t sit comfortably for me in this work. Ulmer (2017) highlights the potential of posthuman methodologies for education, explaining they can offer openings to think differently about the challenges of our times. I experiment with a posthuman sensibility (Braidotti, 2013, 2019), as it offers a way of exploring the AA and horses, without sticking to one particular traditional discipline (such as science, social science or humanities). I aim to play with some different modes of thinking as a pedagogical approach. Although, I am conscious that provocations to think differently have limitations. As Barad (2007) highlights, in posthuman research a researcher’s subjectivity is inescapable.

6.3 Thinking with a Landscape: A Pedagogical Concept As a place-responsive outdoor environmental educator concerned with the planet’s current ecological predicament, I aim to attend to problematic environmental dilemmas in the bio-geographical and cultural locations I work. Stewart (2006, 2020) prompts me in this task, urging outdoor environmental educators to attend to the

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entangled natural and cultural histories in which they teach. What I want to explore is how we might think with a landscape as a pedagogical concept for learning aspects of natural-cultural history. As Colebrook (2017) explains, concepts are valuable for education as they ‘create orientations for thinking’ (p. 654). For me, thinking with a landscape is a pedagogical concept that orients my thinking towards (and with) the AA. The purpose of this section is to further unpack what I mean by thinking with a landscape and how we may enact the concept in practice. From a process-relational perspective, Mcphie (2019) contends that thinking is not necessarily located in the head but is extended throughout the material features of our environment. Simply put, we are participating with the environment materially and cognitively and by doing so we construct knowledge situated in those places. Mcphie (2019) discusses this notion via the extended body hypothesis—that the mind is not separate from the body nor the body separate from the environment (and in Mcphie’s instance, what part this has to play in mental health). Such thinking stems partly from Clark and Chalmers (1998) extended mind theory, where people ‘lean heavily on environmental supports’ (p. 8) for thinking and that ‘cognitive processes ain’t (all) in the head!’ (p. 10). What such ideas can do is break mind/ body dualisms and human/environment dualisms. In my OEE setting, in places such as the AA, students’ minds (and connected bodies) extend throughout the environment and think with features of the landscape. But this isn’t a one sided affair, as the features of the landscape are always relationally acting upon students in trans-­ corporeal ways (Alaimo, 2018). What students may learn from such a process is varied, depending on a whole range of contextual factors, and can be influenced by the way educators facilitate attention. With this process in mind (sic), I will return to Stewart’s (2006) pedagogical provocation to attend to Australia’s natural cultural history as if it mattered. Stewart’s (2006) research asks outdoor environmental educators to observe what is materially visible within the landscape. In a similar manner, van Dooren et al. (2016) recommend cultivating the arts of attentiveness, where attentiveness requires curiosity and care. Importantly, to observe only one aspect of an environment narrows what knowledge may be constructed; to cultivate attentiveness by observing multiple layers’ (perspectives/lives) whilst participating within an environment promotes an understanding of the relations: ‘Developing a pedagogy of Australian natural history requires paying attention not only to one’s surroundings but also to the implications of observing one aspect of an environment and not another’ (Stewart, 2006, p. 92). For an example, if I only look at horses, and not the broader landscape or features within that landscape, I will only have a limited view. As Stewart (2006, 2011, 2020) further advocates, we need more environmental education research and pedagogy that grapples with Australia’s (difficult) natural histories (which have been marked by increasing rates of native species extinction, loss of habitat and fragmentation). For Stewart (2006, 2011) this is a decolonising task. So rather than just observing horses, for example, or horses living within the landscape, educators and researchers can also grapple with the histories that have led to horses being within this landscape (such as the colonial societies settler history that led to them being in the Alps). But how might I specifically enact such a practice in my context and for this research?

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Horses are part of the natural cultural history of the AA—what I consider to be a more-than-human story (Jukes & Reeves, 2020). To engage with natural cultural history, Stewart (2008) suggests, educators may read the landscape as a text (as I introduced in the last chapter). Texts can be read and interpreted in any number of ways. Of course, landscapes are not static texts, which leads me to think of how stories/texts emerge and which ones are attended to. To read and understand a text requires literacy. To read a landscape as text (or matter as text—Iovino & Oppermann, 2014), I argue educators (and in turn, their students) require environmental or ecological literacy (Orr, 1992). Literacy includes an ability to critically read between the lines, so to speak—or in an ecological context, an ability to read relationships. So, students’ and educators’ thinking extend into the physical environment and grapple with reading the complex text that is the landscape. As an educator, I am wary of how the landscape as a text may be read, what conceptualisations may be constructed and what certain conceptualisations might do. I consider thinking with a landscape to be a situated practice. In my teaching in the AA, I attend to material encounters that emerge within fieldwork experiences to start up or enter discourse with my students and the place. It is through emergent encounters with features, species or other material aspects of the location we are within that starts this conversation. I find these encounters and conversations link well with some of Barad’s (2007, 2008) posthumanist theorising. For example, matter and meaning are entangled and co-constitutive, and is a generative way to consider pedagogical practices of thinking with the landscape. What I mean by this is that material events open discursive conversations about the interactions (or intra-­ actions in Barad’s terms) between bodies and how they matter. Or in other (contextualised) words, an encounter with a horse in a creek can be a starting point for various discussions about such an event and what it does (in ecological, cultural, aesthetic senses). Hence thinking with the landscape of the AA may offer a way of learning—learning by discursive thinking that extends into more-than-human ways of life.6 Landscapes offer rich signs of their past, if one knows how to read them. And critical reading enables broader understandings. It is such pedagogical consideration I aim to put to work.

6.4 Pedagogical Concept as Method: Thinking with the Australian Alps At the beginning of this chapter I laid out my objectives: in summary, they were to engage with posthuman thinking as a way to explore OEE pedagogy within the AA, centring on the horse dilemma. Thus far I have framed the issue briefly, discussed

 Rose and van Dooren (2017) explain that ways of life may also be considered a particular ethos (plural ethea), meaning style, habit or embodied way of being. Furthermore, they explain: ‘An ethos is not an essence. Ethea are emergent, performative co-becomings, never uniform, isolated or fixed, bleeding into and co-shaping one another, and yet somehow maintaining their distinctive uniqueness’ (p. 122). 6

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some posthumanist methodology and the pedagogical concept of thinking with a landscape. To explore these ideas further, I will utilise the concept of thinking with a landscape as a method for investigating its pedagogical potential in the AA (Lenz Taguchi & St. Pierre, 2017). Lenz Taguchi and St. Pierre (2017) explain that using concept as a method is an approach which acknowledges acts of thought as practices that reorient ways of thinking. My employment here is to experiment with acts of thought which stem from empirical events in the AA. The events move beyond empirical descriptions of what students have said or proving learning outcomes, but instead explores the various ways of thinking that are possible.

6.4.1 Empirical Events: Sketches of the Australian Alps As I have mentioned in Chap. 3, Denzin (2013) questions what counts as evidence and what counts as data, beyond conventional positivist approaches. As an alternative, Denzin asks the researcher to imagine a different world, without ‘data’ and ‘evidence’, where there are new performative ways of producing knowledge. Weaver and Snaza (2017) also add that ‘in order to experiment with new approaches, we have to stop believing in [conventional] “methods”, we have to stop performing them properly [original emphasis]’ (p. 1056). And so, to attempt something new or different, I refer to empirical events, rather than data, and expand the boundaries of what counts as ‘evidence’ in the production of educational research. The empirical events are depicted below via what I call sketches, which provide entryways to OEE encounters with horses in the AA. These are empirical encounters that I have experienced with undergraduate OEE students across several years and are not from one single fieldwork exercise. I say ‘sketches’ because they are not total representations or complete accounts, but short images and descriptions written later by myself that ‘sketch’ the situation, presenting conditions of possibility. Following each sketch are discussions of discursive prospects for understanding aspects of the encounters in different ways. Ulmer (2017) writes that ‘thinking with is more-than-representational’ (p.  841). Rather than representations of empirical findings, these discussions create pathways that may help in the production of place-­ responsive learning. Moreover, these discussions are not static facts but open ended and potential considerations for educators; they are ‘an experimentation in contact with the real’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 12). I offer these discussions as a pedagogical map rather than a tracing that represents student learning. The four sketches which follow are titled: (1) H o r s e s of the alps, (2) Multispecies communities, (3) Colonial heritage, and (4) Necropolitics and ethical paradoxes.

6.4.2 Sketch One: Horses of the Alps To think with another is to attend to them in a way that takes seriously their own modes of life and understanding. This engagement … requires carefully paying attention ... (even if not always in support of them) … (van Dooren, 2018, p. 439)

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My mind and body were wandering past Mount Jim on the trail towards Mount Hotham. As I glanced up and surveyed the trail ahead, I realised I was being watched. A mob of h o r s e s had been basking in the sun and we had interrupted their lunch. They started snorting and getting a little antsy. I realised it was because a foal was asleep in the grass between us and the mob and we were continuing to walk towards it (Fig. 6.1). The mare snorted more warnings, wanting to protect its young. The other h o r s e s placed their bodies between us and the other foals…

Fig. 6.1 Encountering horses on the Bogong High Plains. (Photo by the Scott Jukes)

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I cannot think like a horse, but through encounters, such as the one I sketched above, I can consider a horse on its terms. They are intelligent and perceptive. They can perceive a threat, feel things and care for their kin (signs of animal sentience7). They live in communities and have social responsibilities. I have often referred to them as feral and destructive, but that is a human label. Horses do not consider themselves as pests or ferals, and like other creatures of the world, are trying to eke out an existence the only way they know how: ‘ferals do not recognise themselves by that name’ (Probyn-Rapsey, 2016, p. 19). As Peterson (2019) highlights, ‘animals are not objects but sentient, active agents who have interests of their own and that do not always act in accordance with human preferences and values’ (p. 130). To have an encounter such as the one sketched above is different to thinking at population level, considering the destructive potential of large numbers of horses across the AA. An encounter with a family of horses opens some conversations. For example, the horses met above did not seem ‘feral’ but behaved in a relatable way. The label feral changes the perception of the animal. Probyn-Rapsey (2016) discusses that the category of feral, when applied to animals, opens them up to greater cruelty, placing them inside an ‘ethical vacuum’ and opening them to ‘being exterminable’ or ‘killable’ (pp.  18–19). Ferals do not fit inside an ‘imagined norm’ (Probyn-Rapsey, 2016, p. 21). And, as such, horses could be described as a problem animal, as they don’t fit everyone’s idea of ‘nature’. Peterson (2019) discusses ‘problem animals’, explaining that ‘conservationists value nature selectively. Many share an ecocentric perspective that values individual creatures based on their contribution to the greater ecological good. Good animals are wild, native, and in the right numbers in their proper landscapes’ (p. 129). From this value judgment, horses fit outside of idealised nature. This opens an ethical conundrum, highlighting the degrees of (non)anthropocentrism and the difficulty with shaking anthropocentrism: ‘even ecocentric approaches to valuing nature can reinforce human interests and preferences’ (Peterson, 2019, p. 130). Conservation ethics still has an underlying assumption that humans know what is best when it comes to environmental management (Peterson, 2019). But feral acts of survival are a sign of resilience and defiance to domestication (Fawcett, 2009). It could be argued that humans are just as much a threat to the Alps as horses. Whether it’s building the proposed pumped hydro-electrical project of Snowy 2.0, alpine ski resorts, human induced climate change, bushwalkers bringing weeds or also trampling vegetation. It can also be argued that horses are not the greatest ecological threat, with deer and pigs also causing much ecological damage (from a conservation perspective). Such arguments move the spotlight off horses. Conversely, to focus too much on horses would be horsecentric, and against a relational consideration of the environmental context. From a posthumanist perspective, agency is

 Hoole (2017) notes that ‘Horses are a bundle of emotions. This is not surprising, given that they are very social animals, with a close relationship with others in their herds and are also prey animals whose response to threat is to run away as fast as possible’ (para. 5). 7

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distributed and no thing acts alone (Barad, 2007; Bennett, 2010). So, I will expand my gaze to consider horse material relationships with others.

6.4.3 Sketch Two: Multispecies Communities To be able to listen to non-human sentient beings’ voices and habitats, humans have to re-­ enter those worlds. Not as master storytellers or superior species, but as students. (Weaver & Snaza, 2017, p. 1060)

Our group was searching for the headwaters of the Murray River. We had left a 4wd track and were walking via a compass bearing through the bush. Horse tracks made it easier for us to travel, with well-worn paths heading the direction our compasses pointed. There was a clear gully ahead. The gully had a small trickling stream in the middle, surrounded by pugging—signs of h o r s e s (Fig. 6.2). We followed the stream (what we thought to be the upper reaches of the Murray River) to where it bubbled out of the ground—the start of a 2508 km journey to the sea. Just above the spring was a large wallow. More signs of h o r s e s making themselves comfortable. After 9 days to get to this point we shared feelings of wonder at the spring and shock at the disturbance caused by h o r s e s .

Fig. 6.2  Near the headwaters of the Murray River. (Photo by Scott Jukes, 11th of February 2019)

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Horses have the capacity to act and affect in ways described in the last sketch— the ability to produce emotive responses and have humans empathise with their lives. But the horses have other capacities as well. It is not the horse itself (what it is) that is the focus of this section, but what a horse does (materially) as part of the landscape of the AA. What a horse does is always in relation to other things in the alpine landscape. For me as an educator, encountering signs of horses in waterways opens opportunities for reading the material landscape. Educators may take these opportunities to guide students’ attention to the material details and help students interpret what such relations produce. Why is it important to consider the material relations? As Slattery (2019) states, ‘the uninformed visitor or citizen who knows little of ecology, history or land management, overblown, selective cultural claims interpreting the historic value of the mountains speak louder than the science’ (p. 7). And so, the material relations I observe are to do with alpine ecologies. I am not going to state that science has the ultimate God like view of ‘seeing everything from nowhere’ (Haraway, 1988, p. 581) but it would also be an error to ignore specific scientific viewpoints in this discussion. Therefore, here I aim to engage productively with some scientific studies and what they tell us about horses in the Alps. Simply, horses do not live in isolation, separate from the Alpine landscape. To move a gaze from horses (singular), to horses and… (horses always in relation with their surrounds) opens up the environmental context and the perspective of conservation discourse. Some historical background may help understand aspects of a scientific-based approach to land conservation in the Alps. Historically, grazing was banned from alpine areas in KNP as the hard hoofs of cattle and horses used by cattlemen caused damage to valuable water catchments. As Slattery (2019) aptly points out, ‘it is ironic that this generation has again allowed a major exotic animal grazing issue to build up to such an extent, apparently in ignorance of their own recent history’ (p. 8). Horses’ physical bodies impose consequences on the landscape and its native inhabitants through the disturbances they create. Disturbance, as Tsing (2015) explains, ‘is a change in environmental conditions that causes a pronounced change in an ecosystem’ (p.  160). Sometimes disturbance is positive, prompting new life (e.g., certain types of fire in mountain ash forests), but disturbance can also be destructive and limit diversity and multispecies flourishing. Tsing reminds me that disturbance (as an analytical tool) requires awareness of the observer’s perspective. From a horse perspective, they make themselves at home through pugging and wallowing, however, in such a process they also trample vegetation and defecate. Cherubin et al. (2019) see such acts as disturbance, explaining the consequence is damage to alpine vegetation and waterways, which also impacts other species which call these places home. In particular, Robertson, Wright, Brown, Yuen and Tongway (2019) state that one of the most significant impacts of horses is the damage they cause sphagnum bogs and fens (an endangered ecological community). Sphagnum bogs and fens are crucial to alpine waterways as they act as large sponges or soaks— these are a source of many of eastern Australia’s largest river systems. These ‘sponges’ occur in treeless basins of alpine and sub-alpine environments, absorbing and holding large amounts of water. They regulate the water flow and retain silt, peaty soils and decaying organic materials (Slattery, 2015). The water is slowly

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released year-round, flowing across much of eastern Australia. Although alpine areas make up a minority of catchment size, they provide the majority of water volume to streamflow, with some fen peats being 15,000 years old (Costin et al., 2017). The traits of these areas make them susceptible to damage from horses and other hard-hooved animals, which have adapted over long periods of time without such animals. Cherubin et al. (2019) found that most of the impacts and activity in sphagnum bogs (in their research area) were attributed to horses, not other introduced herbivores. Impacts include trampling, channeling, spreading weed species through faeces and altering/ driving vegetation change. These environments are water catchments used as a resource by humans and also habitat for animals other than horses. The alpine water skink is one whose habitat is affected. They are a robust little lizard (less than 10 cm’s) that digs burrows into or under sphagnum moss (Meredith et al., 2003). The broad-toothed rat, a tubby critter with a gentle demeanor similar to a guinea pig (OEH, 2017), is another affected. These two species warrant our attention when thinking with the AA as they are caught up in this relational web. Recent research by Cherubin et al. (2019) explains that the impact of horses on sphagnum bogs and fens can negatively influence presence and abundance of such native inhabitants. Schulz et al. (2019) also conducted a study examining the impact of horses on broad-toothed rat and their various habitats. Schulz et al. (2019) compared the abundance of broad-toothed rat to the level of horse impact, finding the ‘level of feral horse impact had an overwhelming negative impact on broad-toothed rat occurrence’ (p. 33). Schulz et al. (2019) further state that ‘the decline in occupancy with increasing horse impacts suggests that feral horse impacts drive local population extinctions’ (p. 34). Furthermore, the loss of vegetation density due to horse grazing and trampling can also impact on the development of the subnivean space beneath the winter snowpack, resulting in loss of habitat and changes in snowpack. The northern corroboree frog, known for its striking yellow and black colouring, is another whose habitat is disturbed by horses. Already ravaged by the introduced amphibian chytrid fungus, the northern corroboree frog is on the verge of extinction and faces multiple stressors, with numbers declining over the last few decades due to drought, habitat loss, climate change and the fungus (Foster & Scheele, 2019). Foster and Scheele (2019) compared habitat protected and unprotected by horse exclusion plots. Their results provide evidence of horses impacting both quality and quantity of breeding habitat for the critically endangered species. The increase in horses also poses risks to the frogs due to direct trampling. Foster and Steele state that horse impacts on the alpine environment may compound other threats to the ecosystem. Horses live as part of multispecies communities—webs of life. They are part of actual worlds lived by a range of other species that are often overlooked. The introductions I have made above are brief and limited, with there being other species that may be impacted directly and indirectly by horses. Some of these include the threatened alpine tree frog, alpine bog skink, alpine she-oak skink and alpine spiny crayfish (Robertson et al., 2019). The southern corroboree frog is another critically endangered frog species that resides only in the KNP (Hunter et al., 2009). The unfortunate fact is that many of the species and habitats I have mentioned are endemic to Australian alpine environments; environments that have adapted over millions of years without

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hard-hoofed ungulates. With alpine areas covering just 0.3% of Australia’s landmass (Slattery, 2015), these species have nowhere else to go. The threat of extinction is real. It matters who is bound up with whom, and in what ways (van Dooren, 2014). Extinction is not a singular moment, but an elongated drawn-out process of suffering and loss (van Dooren, 2014). Multiple species are experiencing this loss and it is worth environmental educators paying attention to the lifeways that are disappearing and caring about what happens. Conversations that touch on such topics are central to my OEE practice walking and skiing through the AA with university students. This practice is an experiential and embodied method for encountering these multispecies communities and considering with care these more-than-human worlds.

6.4.4 Sketch Three: Colonial Heritage ‘Look! Brumbies!’ said one of our group. ‘Aren’t they beautiful?’ Even though we were near dead horse gap, these h o r s e s were very much alive. ‘They are pretty tough to survive out here through such a storm!’ said another. They are a spectacular sight, large dark beasts contrasting against the stark white backdrop (Fig. 6.3). They are wild animals in a wild landscape. The aesthetic image of horses in the Alps is powerful and part of the cultural attachment. Also, these animals are just battling to survive in a foreign land like European settlers.

Fig. 6.3  Horses encountered in the snow near Dead Horse Gap on an OEE ski tour. (Photo by Scott Jukes)

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This section is opened by a picturesque scene and is my entryway into the topic of cultural heritage in the AA. In the OEE context such as the one I sketch above, I have students with a range of cultural perspectives join me in the AA. I have had past students whose family are former mountain cattlemen, horse lovers and also passionate conservationists. Their world views (among others) are complex to navigate in an educational setting. The cultural perspectives inevitably combine (and clash) during conversations in the AA and thinking with the landscape is inevitably entangled with cultural discourses, hence, the foray into this discussion. Heritage, as a concept, refers to the meaning ascribed to ‘material relics’ (Menzies, 2019, p.  201). ‘Brumbies’ as a living material relic offer a symbol of national heritage and cultural value, which Menzies (2019) describes as an ‘avatar of belonging’ for white Australians (p. 201). The framing of brumbies as cultural heritage offers an insight into the narratives and discourses surrounding Australian heritage. Taking a critical standpoint, I suggest this may be a neocolonial (Ponzanesi, 2018) attitude of reinscribing hegemonic values by glorifying colonial remains—a form of environmental imperialism. Horses were introduced during colonial settlement—just a few hundred years ago—and now offer a form of colonial heritage, a reminder of the varied damage many European introductions have had on the Australian landscape. From a postcolonial standpoint, I am concerned that promoting horses has a darker side. By championing brumbies are we not subjugating the indigenous flora and fauna species, natural heritage and Indigenous cultural heritage? Is the value for the brumby as heritage an unacknowledged ‘speciesism’? The cultural aspect of the debate stirs up trouble, prompting me to question whose cultural heritage are we talking about? For something to be recognised as heritage in Australia, it needs to be assessed against set criteria and of outstanding value to the nation. What I wish to emphasize is that ‘value’ is based on perception and that from a conservation perspective Australians might need a re-evaluation (if Australia’s natural history is to matter [Stewart, 2006]). The iconography of ‘brumbies’ can mask the damage they cause to the landscape (Straight Talk, 2015). For Menzies (2019), the affective power of the horse in the Australian imaginary also instils settler Australians with a feeling of belonging—the co-constitutive power of the horse-human relationship. This power is crucial, as ‘belonging’ for settler Australians has been hard-fought, with the Australian environment offering fierce competition to European desires. As Flannery (2003) states: The Man from Snowy River is an archetypal Australian hero—one of the brave Aussies who tamed the rugged land. He sits side by side with the archetypal stockman in our constellation of national icons. We even have an entire museum at Longreach, Queensland devoted to the adulation of such men. Yet our worship of the self-reliant stockman neatly sidesteps the fact that the men of the cattle frontier were the shock troops in our Aboriginal wars. As Henry Reynolds has so amply demonstrated, during our frontier wars—the only wars ever fought on Australian soil—thousands of men, women and children were killed in battle or murdered in cold blood. There is a deep current in our colonial Australian society that resists these simple facts and clings to the great founding lie. (pp. 6–7)

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The popularity and heroism of masculine men and their horses seem to be a dominant trope in the Australian psyche (Welberry, 2005). Stories such as The Man from Snowy River (Paterson, 1890) are examples of the hard-fought accomplishment of pioneering in the face of the wild bush. Yet as Stewart (2004) explains, ‘Eurocentric model[‘s] of understanding and relating to the land has been an ecological failure in Australia’ (p. 48). What other stories can we explore? What other avatars of belonging (Menzies, 2019) may we develop? Can we not develop attachment and care for something such as the broad-toothed rat? Or is the unfortunate naming of ‘rat’ too much to overcome? An Indigenous story of relating—The Learning Walk—told by Aunty Rachel Mullett (2014) of the Monero people, tells a different tale of belonging with the landscape around what is now known as Kosciuszko. In Aunty Rachel Mullett’s story, she describes the cultural performance of travelling through the landscape, living with and learning from the land, understanding it’s seasons and rhythms. I don’t intend to romanticise Indigenous culture, however, this example read in juxtaposition with The Man from Snowy River offers two different and contrasting ways of being and belonging with the Australian landscape. Bruce Pascoe’s (2018) Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the birth of agriculture offers another example of Indigenous relationships with the land contrasting to settler Australians, confronting the lie of colonisation that is often told—the lie of terra nullius and Indigenous apathy to the colonisers invasion. Maybe settler Australians need to develop other ways of relating to the Australian landscape. Welberry (2005) and Flannery (2003) both argue that settler Australians hang their identities on cultural imaginaries. Welberry states the ‘“best” intruder (silver horse/Jim Craig8) could “earn the right” to live in a privileged virgin space through demonstrating the ability to “read” and survive the landscape’ (p.  23). However, colonisers and early settlers forcibly took the land, hardly ‘earning the right’. In contrast, Pascoe’s (2018) research shows Indigenous people did not just survive, Indigenous culture thrived for 40–80 thousand years before European colonisation (invasion). Thriving for such a period also provides evidence of a sustainable lifestyle, something that seems elusive for our current society. Stewart (2004), drawing upon ecofeminist Val Plumwood, explains non-indigenous Australians could learn from Indigenous Australians about ‘how to relate to and understand the land without appropriating their knowledge’ (p. 48). Richard Swain, an Aboriginal man born and bred in the Snowy mountains,9 argues that all Australian’s could cultivate heritage value for native species and landscapes instead of misplacing heritage value in a destructive pest (personal communication, 13 February and 22 November 2019). Richard suggests that caring for Country and the Australian landscape (not including introduced species) does not have to be a uniquely Indigenous thing. Australians  Silver horse refers to the fictional character from Elyne Mitchell’s children’s books and Jim Craig the name of the man from Snowy River in the 1982 film, based on Banjo Patterson’s poem. 9  Richard is also an ambassador for the Invasive Species Council and an instigator of the Reclaim Kosi campaign. 8

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embracing native species and caring for their ways of life may be a decolonising project (Cattelino, 2017).

6.4.5 Sketch Four: Necropolitics and Ethical Paradoxes The smell of decay hits suddenly. The beating sun bakes a carcass ahead of us. The body is unmistakably another horse (Fig. 6.4). We have seen about eight in the past few days, as we have walked along the Snowy River, upstream of Moyangul. The heat is relentless and the landscape bone dry—it’s no wonder the horses are doing it tough here. We are on day 15 of our walk and have traversed the alpine, subalpine and montane regions of the KNP. We are now in the dry rain shadow area of the Snowy River. The signs of horses are everywhere—despite being very remote, this is no pristine wilderness. Encountering dead horses provides an entryway into discussions on necropolitics (the politics of living and dying), a discussion which also broaches environmental ethics in this case. Necropolitics, according to Quinan (2018), ‘asks who gets to live and who must die (or who must live and who is let die), in the contemporary political economy’ (p. 271). For the horses of the AA there are contrasting perspectives across the borders of Victoria and New South Wales (NSW). In the KNP in NSW horses are

Fig. 6.4  Horse next to the Snowy River, near Paupong Creek. (Photo by Kane Harris)

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somewhat protected as cultural heritage via the Kosciuszko wild horse heritage act, introduced in 2018. The legislation mandates sustainable horse numbers in the park. Whereas in Victoria, after a federal court battle ending in May 2020, Parks Victoria were allowed to manage horse numbers, removing all horses from certain areas. I won’t delve into the details of each state as it is beyond the scope of this chapter and continually dynamic (things may have changed by the time this is published), however the most controversial aspect of this dilemma is culling. The scientific discourse, largely speaking, supports culling as a management practice (e.g., Driscoll et  al., 2019). Beeton and Johnson’s (2019) research conducted modelling for a range of management strategies, concluding that culling is the most efficient and cost-effective method of management. Fertility control is not seen as viable by some as it takes a long time for populations to decline (Hobbs & Hinds, 2018). On the other hand, brumby advocates (including animal rights activists) are staunchly opposed to culling (this can be evidenced in many ways, especially in the media and petitions at the time of writing, e.g., Schubert, 2020). The main concerns tend to be the horse’s heritage value, the welfare of horses and the inhumanity of culling.10 Welfare of horses is also a concern for scientists (in a different form) in fire ravaged, drought stricken and overpopulated areas of the AA. Stuck in the middle of the volatile human debate is the horses and the other species of the AA.  Among many things, this is a dilemma of competing ethical paradigms. The investigation of Driscoll et al. (2019) explores and evaluates the ethical and social aspects of horse culling from a conservation standpoint, stating they think ‘barriers to culling appear to be unfounded’ (p. 64). The values of Driscoll et al. (2019) are with the health of the ecosystem (not including horses), supported by scientific evidence. It is worth quoting Driscoll et  al. (2019) to understand this argument: Unlike native animals, feral horses have been placed in the alpine parks by people and allowed to multiply to their thousands by ineffective management. We therefore argue that  It is worth shedding some more light onto the perspective of culling being inhumane. Chapple’s (2005) research into the culling of horses in the Guy Fawkes River National Park (GFRNP) uncovers the imbedded political aspects of culling and is often cited as a root cause of concern when the topic of culling horses is raised. In 2000 an aerial cull occurred in the GFRNP where 606 horses were shot and killed from helicopters. The cull was conducted by the NPWS following bushfire and drought where the horse’s condition was deemed poor due to lack of feed. The decision to cull was over concern for the ecosystem and also the welfare of starving horses. Yet the NPWS did not consult the community or RSPCA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Animal Cruelty to Animals), receiving severe backlash in the media, especially over one horse that was still alive 5 days after being shot. The 1 horse out of 606 that did not die quickly despite 2 shots in the ‘killing zone’ (English, 2000) has been used to leverage the debate. Public sentiment fuelled the backlash, overlooking expert knowledge from English (2000) whose report deemed the aerial cull to be appropriate and the most humane option for the welfare of the horses (as a population). The result was a ban on aerial culling, contrary to English’s (2000) recommendations, and was seen as a ‘political reaction to an intense media campaign’ (Chapple, 2005, p. 235). The flow-on effect is still present today in the discussion of culling horses in the AA. 10

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feral horse suffering cannot be dismissed as just a natural process in the wild; people are directly responsible, and ethically culpable for feral horses being in situations where they face extreme suffering and death. (p. 67)

The extreme suffering and death Driscoll et al. (2019) refer to is due to the conditions horses face through trapping and rehoming, where many horses don’t get rehomed and end up going to abattoirs.11 Furthermore, as the image in Fig.  6.4 points out, some of the drier drought stricken areas of the AA (as not all ecologies of the Alps are the same) provide conditions of suffering for horses due to lack of viable feed, creating harsh conditions of living and dying. For Driscoll et al. (2019), they call these conditions, without culling, ‘a landscape of suffering’ (p. 68). The horse issue presents a paradox from multiple angles. Firstly, leaving space open for horses may result in the suffering of those horses and the other species (including endangered ones) that live in the shared places of the AA; opening space for survival of other native and endangered species in the AA may require the removal and death of horses. Driscoll et al. (2019) offers a ‘complete ethical equation’: the balance between the mostly instantaneous death of aerial culling against: (i) the prolonged suffering of horses in the alpine parks, especially at times of stress; (ii) the suffering of native animals affected by the horses and; (iii) the ethics of damage to water catchments and threatened ecosystems, and increasing the risk that species will become extinct (Fraser & MacRae 2011; Fraser 2012). (p. 67)

The argument—scientifically, culturally and ethically—is complex; from a multiplicity of angles living and dying will occur. There is also an assumption from the scientific viewpoint that humans have the position to observe, decide and act on behalf of other species. This presents another paradox for posthumanist modes of thought which aim to challenge human exceptionalism and want to rethink ways of being human (including relationships with the more-than-human world). Van Dooren (2019) raises relevant points surrounding management (in general), stating that management implies human control, and possibly even mastery over the environment (a worry for ecofeminists). Van Dooren has concerns over human stewardship, entitlement or right to the earth, conveying a more bio-egalitarian viewpoint. He states the earth is ‘not ours to sort out’, however ‘as earthly inhabitants like any others, we must still alter places and have impacts and ideas about how things might be’ (p. 124). To do nothing and expect everything to work out positively for all may be enforcing a nature-culture divide, where humans should separate themselves from ‘nature’. On the other hand, if humans are of the world, we might have a responsibility to attend to the messes we humans have played a part in creating. This point segues well into further discussions of responsibility.  Driscoll et al. (2019) state that ‘rehoming has been advocated as a solution to over-abundant feral horses. However, the Kosciuszko trapping programme between 2002 and 2015 only managed to rehome 18% of trapped feral horses, the rest went to the abattoir (OEH 2016a)’ (p. 66). The stress of mustering, attempted rehoming and the ultimate end at an abattoir for 82% of those horses is also an animal rights concern, and why scientists are arguing culling is more humane. 11

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Who gets to live and who is to die, and how? Death is inevitable, but extinction shouldn’t be an inevitability in our times. Haraway’s (2016) idiom of ‘living and dying well’ serves this discussion. Are horses currently living and dying well? Could it be defined as ‘well,’ healthily or humanely? Or does it involve pain, suffering or stress? There is no universal answer to these questions. I am further prompted by Haraway (2016) in asking does the horse’s presence in Alpine areas encourage ‘multispecies flourishing’ (p. 3) or ‘multispecies wellbeing’ (p. 51)? Or does their presence pressure the possible extinction of others? For me, to think with the landscape is to consider if, on the whole, it is flourishing as an environment. Are the lesser-known species, the rare, endangered and fragile ones, left with space to survive? Van Dooren (2019) reminds me that ‘not all possibilities (ideals, perspectives, projects, even bodies) are compatible, capable of mutual flourishing in the same placetimes’ (p. 56)—living for some comes at the expense of others. As with Braidotti (2013), I am also aware ‘that we live in the era of the Anthropocene, that is to say an age when the earth’s ecological balance is directly regulated by humanity’ (p. 79). The circumstances of living and dying are valuable and important to think through, especially for OEE students. Are horses in the Alps expendable12 or replaceable? Is culling (killing) them (ethically) acceptable? Are species such as the broad-toothed rat or the corroboree frog just needier endangered beings? Are native species expendable? Are native species just a human construction based on a limited temporal scale, contained by human made borders? Van Dooren (2014) warns of the problematic nature of ‘trumping’ endangered species over others, justifying mass death in the name of conservation (p. 160). Elsewhere, van Dooren (2011) queries whether invasive species, those deemed to be out of place, are illegitimate life. Van Dooren is not an advocate for feral or invasive species, but he does ask difficult and illuminating questions. All the choices—­management or lack of management in various forms—are not value-free and there isn’t a situation where everyone (human and nonhuman) is innocent, equal or wins. Ultimately I am reminded by van Dooren and Rose (2016) that good, and even ethical, responses are ‘always context specific and relational’ (p. 90). The same goes for confronting education within this context that broaches such topics. What responsibility do educators have? I find Affifi’s (2020) words particularly helpful here: ‘Rather than setting out to defend one pole of a crude dichotomy, the challenge lies in identifying concrete situations, given thoughts, experiences, models, practices, and pedagogical experiences’ (p. 1437). In such situations we  A notable connection regarding the expendability of horses is in the horse racing industry. Recently the Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC) (Meldrum-Hanna, 2019) aired an investigation into the horse racing industry in NSW and eastern Australia, showing the life and death of many horses after racing careers (both successful and unsuccessful). Many horses (speculated in the thousands) were sent to abattoirs and knackeries and disposed of after they were no longer turning a profit or wanted. It is beyond the scope of this research to delve into the issue of horses as a product consumed via the racing industry, however, it is notable that horses seem to be expendable in such circumstances. 12

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may attempt to ‘foreground and background the human, [contemplate] how these ways interact with one another, and what effects this has on people and the planet’ (p.  1437). Affifi explains that what is left is a ‘series of overlapping micro-­ dichotomies that shift and interact, forever banished from the a priori comfort of a totalising position by which to prescribe thought or pedagogy’ (p.  1437). Moreover, part of my educational philosophy values questions as much, if not more, than any answer, as questions provoke thought. Thus, I find it particularly generative to dive into such complexity, educating with the various perspectives and intricacies to do with the landscape and its issues whilst encouraging students to think through and formulate their own (educated) understandings and subjectivities. Drawing upon Fien (1995), environmental education, no matter what form it takes, is never value-­free. As such, I admit my teachings are not value-free, unbiased or completely objective—I have a viewpoint, developed over years of living, working and researching the AA.  This entangles my pedagogical approaches and researcher subjectivity, with this chapter being a partial example of my ruminations on this topic.

6.5 Thinking Beyond Horses: Fostering Sustainable Relations This chapter has enacted thinking with a landscape—a concept utilised to consider the AA and the horse problem. The sketches from the AA have been our entryway into the landscape and a problematic multispecies situation. My discussions have explored the horse issue as one complex layer of the AA’s natural history. Following Stewart (2006), I think Australia’s natural history matters and I have aimed to attend to the landscape with care via a postcolonial sensibility. This natural history is layered with ethical and political complexity, but is a rich topic to consider. In truth, I know I have not accounted for everything relating to horses (let alone the AA and the endemic species there) and this will continue to be an ongoing line of discussion. My investigation has been situated and partial, a finite point of view from somewhere (Haraway, 1988; Ulmer, 2017). On a personal level, I also acknowledge that my viewpoint may not be fully ‘posthuman’. I tend to agree more with the scientific consensus and postcolonial angle on this topic, with my concern more with the species labelled native than those considered introduced. This may be counter posthuman and not completely bio-egalitarian, but it is a contradiction I am willing to accommodate. Affifi (2020) helps me sit with this thinking. He offers an extreme thought experiment: ‘Can you imagine some wily nonanthropocentrist defending the existence of nuclear waste or the Great Pacific Garbage Patch on the grounds that such material is ‘of’ the world as much as anything else?’ (p. 1436). Horses are a less extreme example but still on this spectrum. Because horses are of the earth do they need protecting in the AA? In the situated example I have portrayed, I do

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backpedal away from a pro-horse perspective in favour of management for the welfare of the broader landscape and its natural history. Nonetheless, my objective of employing a posthumanist methodological sensibility has enabled me to consider alternate ways of conducting educational research. Furthermore, a posthumanist sensibility has prompted me to think with animals and landscapes, allowing entryways to critically examine situated OEE contexts and navigate the complexity of precarious times. We have inherited these complex conditions and we have choices to make for our shared (multispecies) futures. There is a lot at stake and I believe it is important to invite students into this thinking. As Haraway (2016) advocates, through ‘passion and action, detachment and attachment’, we may develop abilities to respond (p. 34). One approach, which educators may work towards, is to reimagine and develop different ways of thinking and relating with Australian (and global) landscapes, including its native, threatened, endangered and feral species.

6.6 Afterword: Do We Construct Knowledge, or Does Learning Flow and Emerge? After writing the above chapter, a few lingering afterthoughts sat with me that I could not quite pinpoint. It took me a little while, but I realised the thing that didn’t sit quite right was the notion of ‘constructing knowledge’, something I mention in passing a few times within the ‘Thinking with a landscape’ section of the chapter (Sect. 6.3). Educators often use construction metaphors, stemming from social constructivist theories and educational philosophers such as Vygotsky and Piaget. But those operating in the posthumanist and new materialist realms are looking beyond social constructivist paradigms and rather see knowledge growing through socio-­ material practices and flowing across bodies, with learners emerging through relational fields (for example, see Hultman & Lenz Taguchi, 2010). I recently encountered the work of Riley (2021), who highlights the idea of mutual affecting in OEE as a departure from classical humanist ideas of individualised subjects as autonomous actors. Mutual affecting embraces relationality, where learners are ‘in constant negotiation with the world [original emphasis]’ (p. 228). Similar perspectives are also mentioned by Mannion (2020), who highlights that for (what he calls) assemblage educators, ‘teaching and learning cannot be about content delivery alone or be solely based on mental constructivism. Assemblage educators will support and address learners’ everyday performative embodiments in place’ (p. 1364). In other words, rather than developing conscious cognition, student learning may also be materially affected by the places and actants within an assemblage (see also Riley & White, 2019). I was intending to hint towards such perspectives in this chapter, with the idea of thinking with a landscape. However, the reader of this book

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might see my use of ‘construction’ in the chapter above under erasure and instead replace such epistemological ideas as noted here. To elaborate further, there is a dynamic affective capacity to educational contexts, when considered from posthumanist onto-epistemologies. For example Pederson (2016), when discussing posthumanism and education, states: While humanist education theories typically view knowledge and learning as something that is ‘constructed’ or ‘achieved’, posthumanist ontologies rather configure pedagogical practice as convergences of flows and intensities; a mutual contagion between human (‘teacher’, ‘learner’, ‘child’, ‘student’) and nonhuman (‘classroom’, ‘computer’, ‘textbook’, ‘subject matter’) entities moving and traversing different sides of the learning process, forming momentary, unstable learning assemblages within a varying specter [sic] of world-forming and world-affecting potentialities. (para. 2)

Thus, I may clarify further by stating that thinking with a landscape involves attending to and feeling the flows and constant processes that emerge in material encounters. Learning can also emerge and be shaped by following different matter-flows (as you will see in the next two chapters). Such thinking can help cross any (made up) human/non-human border, where learning stems from various actors and more-­ than-­human agencies and isn’t always in total control of teachers. The reader will see in the following two chapters (as well as in Chap. 10) how I embrace such an onto-epistemology in my pedagogical practice. The following two chapters have a greater emphasis on lines and flows, embracing relational conceptions of learning.

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Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 23(5), 525–542. https://doi.org/10.1080/0951839 8.2010.500628 Hunter, D., Osborne, W., Smith, M., & McDougall, K. (2009). Breeding habitat use and the future management of the critically endangered Southern Corroboree Frog. Ecological Management & Restoration, 10(S1), 103–109. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1442-­8903.2009.00461.x Iovino, S., & Oppermann, S. (2014). Introduction: Stories come to matter. In S.  Iovino & S. Oppermann (Eds.), Material Ecocriticism. Indiana University Press. Jackson, A. Y., & Mazzei, L. (2016). Thinking with an agentic assemblage in posthuman inquiry. In C.  Taylor & C.  Hughes (Eds.), Posthuman research practices in education. Palgrave Macmillan. Jukes, S., & Reeves, Y. (2020). More-than-human stories: Experimental co-productions in outdoor environmental education pedagogy. Environmental Education Research, 26(9–10), 1294–1312. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2019.1699027 Lenz Taguchi, H., & St.Pierre, E. (2017). Using concept as method in educational and social science inquiry. Qualitative Inquiry, 23(9), 643–648. Lloro-Bidart, T. (2018). A feminist posthumanist ecopedagogy in/for/with animalScapes. The Journal of Environmental Education, 49(2), 152–163. https://doi.org/10.1080/0095896 4.2017.1417225 Mannion, G. (2020). Re-assembling environmental and sustainability education: Orientations from new materialism. Environmental Education Research, 26(9–10), 1353–1372. https://doi. org/10.1080/13504622.2018.1536926 Mcphie, J. (2019). Mental health and wellbeing in the Anthropocene: A posthuman inquiry. Palgrave Macmillan. Mcphie, J., & Clarke, D. (2020). Nature matters: Diffracting a keystone concept of environmental education research – Just for kicks. Environmental Education Research, 26(9–10), 1509–1526. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2018.1531387 Meldrum-Hanna, C. (2019, 17th October 2019). The dark side of the horse racing industry. 7.30 report, ABC. Menzies, I. (2019). Heritage icon or environmental pest? Brumbies in the Australian cultural imaginary. In K. Guest & M. Mattfeld (Eds.), Equestrian cultures: Horses, human society, and the discourse of modernity. University of Chicago Press. Meredith, C., Hudson, S., Robertson, P., & Clemann, N. (2003). Alpine water skink: Eulamprus kosciuskoi. In DSE (Ed.), (pp. 1–5). DSE, Victoria. Morse, M., Jickling, B., & Quay, J. (2018). Rethinking relationships through education: Wild pedagogies in practice. Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education, 21(3), 241–254. https:// doi.org/10.1007/s42322-­018-­0023-­8 Mullett, A. R. (2014). The learning walk. In Victorian Aboriginal Corporation for Languages (Ed.), Nyernila: Listen continuosly (pp. 24–27). Arts Victoria. OEH. (2017). Broad-toothed rat. Retrieved from https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/threatenedspeciesapp/profile.aspx?id=10510 Orr, D. (1992). Ecological literacy: Education and the transition to a postmodern world. State University of New York Press. Pascoe, B. (2018). Dark emu: Aboriginal Australia and the birth of agriculture. Magabala Books. Paterson, A. B. (1890, April 26). The man from Snowy River. The Bulletin. Pederson, H. (2016). Education. Retrieved from https://criticalposthumanism.net/education/ Peterson, A. (2019). Problem animals. Environmental Ethics, 41(2), 129–141. https://doi. org/10.5840/enviroethics201941213 Ponzanesi, S. (2018). Neocolonial. In R. Braidotti & M. Hlavajova (Eds.), Posthuman glossary (pp. 279–281). Bloomsbury Academic. Probyn-Rapsey, F. (2016). Five propositions on ferals. Feral Feminisms, 6, 18–21. Quinan, C. (2018). Necropolitics. In R.  Braidotti & M.  Hlavajova (Eds.), Posthuman glossary (pp. 270–272). Bloomsbury Academic.

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Riley, K. (2021). Postcolonial possibilities for outdoor environmental education. In G. Thomas, H.  Prince, & J.  Dyment (Eds.), Outdoor environmental education in higher education: International perspectives (pp. 225–234). Springer. Riley, K., & White, P. (2019). ‘Attuning-with’, affect, and assemblages of relations in a transdisciplinary environmental education. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 35(3), 262–272. https://doi.org/10.1017/aee.2019.30 Robertson, G., Wright, J., Brown, D., Yuen, K., & Tongway, D. (2019). An assessment of feral horse impacts on treeless drainage lines in the Australian Alps. Ecological Management & Restoration, 20(1), 21–30. https://doi.org/10.1111/emr.12359 Rose, D. B., & van Dooren, T. (2017). Encountering a more-than-human world: Ethos and the art of witness. In U. Heise, J. Christensen, & M. Niemann (Eds.), The routledge companion to the environmental humanities. Routledge. Schubert, S. (2020). Inside the mission to save Victoria’s High Country brumbies from being culled. Retrieved from https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-­05-­25/ inside-­the-­mission-­to-­save-­victorias-­high-­country-­brumbies/12281380 Schulz, M., Schroder, M., & Green, K. (2019). The occurrence of the broad-toothed rat Mastacomys fuscus in relation to feral horse impacts. Ecological Management & Restoration, 20(1), 31–36. https://doi.org/10.1111/emr.12360 Seddon, G. (1994). Searching for the Snowy: An environmental history. Allen and Unwin. Slattery, D. (2015). Australian Alps: Kosciuszko, Alpine and Namadgi National Parks (2nd ed.). CSIRO Publishing. Slattery, D. (2019). Science and evolving community knowledge and opinion on feral horses in Kosciuszko National Park. Ecological Management & Restoration, 20(1), 7–8. https://doi. org/10.1111/emr.12365 Stewart, A. (2004). Decolonising encounters with the Murray River: Building place responsive outdoor education. Australian Journal of Outdoor Education, 8(2), 46–55. Stewart, A. (2006). Seeing the trees and the forest: Attending to Australian natural history as if it mattered. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 22(2), 85–97. Stewart, A. (2008). Whose place, whose history? Outdoor environmental education pedagogy as ‘reading’ the landscape. Journal of Adventure Education & Outdoor Learning, 8(2), 79–98. https://doi.org/10.1080/14729670801906125 Stewart, A. (2011). Becoming-speckled warbler: Re/creating Australian natural history pedagogy. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 27(1), 68–80. Stewart, A. (2020). Developing place-responsive pedagogy in outdoor environmental education: A rhizomatic curriculum autobiography. Springer. Straight Talk. (2015). Community engagement report: Wild Horse Management Plan review. Retrieved from https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/-­/media/OEH/Corporate-­Site/ Documents/Animals-­a nd-­p lants/Pests-­a nd-­w eeds/Kosciuszko-­w ild-­h orses/community-­ engagement-­report-­wild-­horse-­management-­plan-­review-­2015.pdf?la=en&hash=7225FC432 DD76C832A648D0BEE81FAD695228D8D Tsing, A. L. (2015). The mushroom at the end of the world: On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. Princeton University Press. Ulmer, J.  B. (2017). Posthumanism as research methodology: Inquiry in the Anthropocene. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 30(9), 832–848. https://doi.org/1 0.1080/09518398.2017.1336806 van Dooren, T. (2011). Invasive species in penguin worlds: An ethical taxonomy of killing for conservation. Conservation and Society, 9(4), 286–298. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-­4923.92140 van Dooren, T. (2014). Flight ways: Life and loss at the edge of extinction. Columbia University Press. van Dooren, T. (2018). Thinking with crows: (re)doing philosophy in the field. Parallax, 24(4), 439–448. https://doi.org/10.1080/13534645.2018.1546722 van Dooren, T. (2019). The wake of crows: Living and dying in shared worlds. Columbia University Press.

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Chapter 7

Emergent Pedagogical Pathways: Learning from the Fluxes and Flows of a Riverscape Scott Jukes, Alistair Stewart, and Marcus Morse

Abstract  This chapter considers the role of landscape in shaping learning possibilities and explores practices of reading landscapes diffractively, situated within a series of river journeys. Co-authored with Alistair Stewart and Marcus Morse, we consider ways we might pay attention to the ever-changing flux of places whilst experimenting with posthumanist praxis. Methodologically we embrace the post qualitative provocation to do research differently by enacting an empiricism that does not ground the inquiry in a paradigmatic structure. In doing so, we rethink conventional notions of method and data as we create a series of short videos from footage recorded during canoeing journeys with tertiary OEE students. These videos, along with a student poem, form the empirical materials in this project. Video allows us to closely analyse more-than-human entanglements, contemplating the diverse ways we can participate with and read landscapes in these contexts. We aim to provoke diffractive thought and elicit affective dimensions of material encounters, rather than offer representational findings. This chapter intends to open possibilities for post qualitative research practice, inspired by posthumanist and new materialist orientations.

7.1 Foreword to the Chapter: Acknowledgments As I open this chapter, I acknowledge the entangled voice of this section. This chapter has been coauthored with Alistair Stewart and Marcus Morse. They helped seed, develop and refine the ideas here, hence I acknowledge their contribution and S. Jukes (*) Federation University, Berwick, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] A. Stewart Independent Researcher, Bendigo, Australia M. Morse University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS, Australia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Jukes, Learning to Confront Ecological Precarity, International Explorations in Outdoor and Environmental Education 13, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34200-4_7

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influence on this chapter. Thus, the next chapter sees a change in voice, from ‘I’ to ‘we’, as I acknowledge the entangled voice of Alistair and Marcus infused with mine.

7.2 Setting the Scene: Starting in the Middle It’s funny the mud, I find it gross, sloppy slimy A hindrance, yet The mud is the river It’s part of this place It makes this place A thousand footprints tell the stories Of roo’s, bird’s, cattle, brumby, Human, It’s funny the mud It was here first Everything has come from the mud Rock over millennia comes from mud Eventually these mud banks Will be towering cliffs, Like down stream near Murray Bridge (SA) I don’t like mud, but I love the river Then I must love mud It’s funny the mud (By Cam Dickie, from the river, 2-08-2020)

This poem, written and shared on the river by Cam, emerges from an outdoor environmental education (OEE) canoe journey. The poem forms part of the empirical materials for this inquiry involving undergraduate OEE students during their studies. This chapter, however, is not so much about the students. Rather, it is about exploring practices of diffractively1 reading landscapes through material encounters and considering ways we might pay attention to the ever-changing flux of places. We hope to (re)conceptualise and further appreciate the ways that landscapes and material features can shape outdoor learning. This chapter includes supplemental materials, in the form of audio-visual footage (videos), along with Cam’s poem above, that add empirical layers to this investigation. We think with these empirical materials and the events they emerge from, alongside theory (Jackson & Mazzei, 2013), to diffractively discuss these events.  As one of us has written elsewhere, here is a brief explanation of how we conceive diffraction (Jukes, 2020b, pp. 1751–1752): 1

a diffractive approach … brings various ideas together, so they can be read differently and offer new insights. As a concept, diffraction is inspired by the physical phenomenon, which involves the bending and spreading of waves around an obstacle or through a gap... Waves combine with one another causing patterns of interference, where, in effect, something new is produced. As a concept, I understand diffraction as a strategy for making a difference, a break from ‘self-reflection and its epistemological grounding’ which can pull researchers into reductionist ways of thinking (Bozalek & Zembylas, 2017, 111).

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Interlude: A Moment to Pause We take this interlude to foreshadow that this project is not laid out in a traditional format. We are asking the reader to approach this chapter (as with others in this book) with an openness that loosens the grip of normative research conventions and embraces post qualitative inspiration to do research differently. First, we include a number of these interludes in what follows that act as temporary diversions from the main text. These interludes allow us to attend to a subtext or perform a divergent conversation—to jump out of the line of discussion before re-entering. They are highlighted by a textbox to signal the interlude and show that there is always another conversation, undertone or direction that inquiry can go in. Second, we take this first interlude as a moment to pause and signal that this chapter is trying to move away from a linear approach. And third, whilst experimenting with structure, we are also attempting to play with writing style. We aim to move away from representational writing and instead wander a little, seeing writing and inquiry as a performance. We also note that this project may not be radical enough for some, and that our attempts to think differently (and think thinking differently) are situated within our contexts and practices as outdoor environmental educators in south-eastern Australia.

7.3 Embodied and Embedded Practices: Situating Learning on a Journey through a Riverscape Recently we have noted an increase in interest amongst educational researchers to engage with, and undertake inquiry informed by new materialist (for example, Clarke & Mcphie, 2020a, b; Sonu & Snaza, 2015), posthumanist (for example, Taylor & Hughes, 2016; Ulmer, 2017) and post qualitative theories (for example, Hart & White, 2022; Lenz Taguchi & St. Pierre, 2017; Mcphie & Clarke, 2019). Encouraged by this diversity of theoretical movements and the new avenues for thought they provide, we have been experimenting with some of these ‘post’ philosophies in our field of outdoor environmental education (OEE) (see for example, Jukes et al., 2019; Jukes & Reeves, 2020; Jukes, 2020b, 2021; Stewart, 2018, 2020). Our engagement with these alternate ways of doing inquiry has prompted us to think differently about our educational practices and the ecological contexts in which we work. The milieu of theoretical ideas has inspired us (to try) creating new ways of thinking and doing (where thinking is also doing [Kuntz & St. Pierre, 2021]), with an orientation towards a different ethic of relating with/in/of the more-­ than-­human world. Our research intends to create lines of flight for us and our students, where we might see the world, and our place in it, anew, by challenging human exceptionalism. We also hope this research assists in making such shifts possible in practice (however small they may be). We are encouraged by emergence of post qualitative inquiry in environmental education (Hart & White, 2022), and aim to contribute by attempting to do research in OEE a little differently and put

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theory to work. In this chapter, we turn to the embodied and embedded material practice of journeying through landscapes (or riverscapes) in OEE. Landscape is a concept with diverse meanings. A landscape, for example, can be viewed as a backdrop—a static scene for the play of human activity. Plumwood (2003), refers to such an orientation as hyper-separation—being drastically different, apart from and denying commonality. Yet as we busy ourselves in our lives, we often forget that landscapes and environments engulf us. Ignoring our material relationship with landscapes, and perceiving landscapes as static, however, is increasingly concerning in our current ecological predicament. Plumwood (2003) explains that perceiving humans as hyper-separate and outside of nature/landscapes/the more-than-human world, can render such environments as dead, passive and lacking agency. By seeing them as separate (and potentially sub-human), it becomes ‘ok’ to dominate and appropriate—a product of human exceptionalism. Humans are impacting the planet and its ecologically diverse landscapes at increasingly rapid rates through a hyper-consumption of ‘resources’ (with resource being only one way to consider rivers, prehistoric organisms or forests, for example). Human separation from many of the landscapes they influence (subtly reinforced through human-nature dualisms) is coupled with drastic changes to these more-than-human landscapes. Humans don’t always perceive themselves as part of this material flow of dynamically changing landscapes, environments and ecosystems. However, people are always already embedded within living landscapes that materially shape their worlds. We see a need to (re)think, relate and engage with landscapes we live amongst in different ways, as we face current ecological and social crises. In other words, we assert a need to challenge human exceptionalism and horizontally explore relations in our teaching/research settings. Our mode of doing this is through the practice of journeying. This practice is always already an embodied performance situated in particular places. The conceptual aim of this chapter is to consider the specific ways we are entangled, intra-act (Barad, 2007) and live with/in landscapes through OEE journeys. Robert Macfarlane helps us in the task of thinking landscapes differently. He is a writer that evokes what Lopez (1988) describes as the internal and external landscapes—the landscape of the mind and the physical land—rendering both landscapes in a seamless fashion. Macfarlane’s (2013, 2019) writing is expressive, providing accessible yet layered texts. He has a passion for journeying and sleeping in strange places, as well as a fascination with paths—or lines through landscapes—and offers some insights that provoke us to read landscapes diffractively. For example, Macfarlane (2013) writes that ‘landscape and nature are not there simply to be gazed upon; no, they press hard upon and into our bodies and minds, complexly affect our moods and sensibilities. They riddle us in two ways—both perplexing and perforating us’ (p. 341). Elsewhere, he depicts landscape as projecting into us ‘as a kind of sunlight, flickeringly unmappable in its plays, yet often illuminating’ (pp. 26–27). The simple premise is that landscapes influence us, with Macfarlane offering some poetic yet at times mystical descriptions of the agency of landscapes:

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We are adept, if occasionally embarrassed, at saying what we make of places—but we are far less good at saying what places make of us. For some time now it has seemed to me that the two questions we should ask of any strong landscape are these: firstly, what do I know when I am in this place that I can know nowhere else? And then, vainly, what does this place know of me that I cannot know myself? (p. 27)

It is the first of the questions that Macfarlane poses that attracts our attention. Plumwood (2003) suggests that it is anthropocentric culture that denies the agency of the more-than-human, and the writing of Macfarlane, imbued with agentic more-­ than-­human landscapes, offers a waypoint in framing our inquiry. Macfarlane explains there is a long history of cognition being both site specific and motion sensitive, and that landscape can be a habitat for particular thoughts (Macfarlane, 2013; Mullins, 2020). A curious notion—landscapes can provide a habitat for particular modes of thinking? Macfarlane explains more specifically that there are thoughts he has had on top of mountains that are seemingly not possible at sea level. Furthermore, there are thoughts that he has had walking, that were provoked from tiredness, movement and the landscape. In agreement with Macfarlane, we suggest there are thoughts we might have whilst canoeing, born of the river environment, that we could not have skiing in the high country, for example. When paddling, you are often in the lowest point of the landscape, enfolded withing a valley, whereas skiing, you might be anywhere from the highest to lowest vantage during your travels. Driving the countryside also might provoke different contemplations to walking the countryside (or grappling with city traffic for that matter). And there is learning we have gained whilst journeying with our students on rivers that we assert could not be gained in a classroom or zoom session—in short, the onto-epistemological context matters. If there is a characteristic of journeys, it is that they flow. Journeying and movement engage us with material landscapes and enliven different thoughts, providing opportunities for encounters with/in/of the more-than-human world. Surely there is something pedagogical in this? It is such provocation that inspires this inquiry. However, we also note that our worldviews and understanding of concepts (such as ‘nature’ or ‘landscape’) also shape thinking. These concepts have a multiplicity of meanings and historical baggage which perform materially (e.g., see Fletcher, 2017, and Mcphie & Clarke, 2020, for insights into ‘nature’, and see Ellison, 2013, for insights into ‘landscape’). Leaving this point aside for the moment, we briefly turn to process philosophy to help us explore the relationships between thought, journeying and material landscapes. Gilles Deleuze is one process philosopher often cited in post qualitative inquiry, that also helps provoke our direction in thought here.2 Drawing upon Nietzsche, he wrote that ‘modes of life inspire ways of thinking; modes of thinking create ways of living. Life activates thought, and thought in turn affirms life’ [original emphasis] (Deleuze, 2001, p.  66). Journeying is more than a straightforward pedagogical  As Kuntz and St. Pierre (2021) proclaim, it is the ‘old–sometimes very old–’ philosophers and philosophies that are provoking the ‘new’ (p. 476). 2

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practice; it becomes a mode (or way) of life for a group as they travel. Journeying provides an alternative way of living to the normal lives of our students (for a time) that activates their thinking in particular modes whilst leaving them open to encounters. The altered context and way of life is one way that journeying affords something educational. However, an important caveat is that students won’t automatically learn what we hope or intend, just by taking them on a journey and stumbling into things. Where we go, what we program/teach and how we facilitate encounters all matters. Thus, our intention through this chapter is to provoke some contemplations on an outdoor learning pedagogy of journeying. For us, this is a pedagogy that engages with the more-than-human world, whilst challenging static and anthropocentric images of thought.

Interlude: Words and Ontological Assumptions We use a range of words/concepts/phrases in this essay to evoke similar, yet slightly different, images. Note the following words throughout this chapter (and book): • • • • • •

Landscapes3 or Riverscape Places More-than-human world Environments Nature Contexts

We acknowledge that words may provoke different thoughts or images for each of us—they perform or do different things. Words are concepts with baggage; baggage that shapes how we think and use them. It is beyond the scope of this study to unravel all these words or phrases used in depth, but in this interlude, we share some ontological assumptions that resonate with us. We also encourage the reader to not take words for granted—but to question both the authors’ and readers’ assumptions and the ways different concepts perform. (continued) 3  We can’t help but share Macfarlane’s (2013) understanding of the word landscape, as it elicits a particularly aesthetic image:

I prefer to think of the word as a noun containing a hidden verb: landscape scapes, it is dynamic and commotion causing, it sculpts and shapes us not only over the courses of our lives but also instant by instant, incident by incident. I prefer to take ‘landscape’ as a collective term for the temperature and pressure of the air, the fall of light and its rebounds, the textures and surfaces of rock, soil and building, the sounds (cricket screech, bird cry, wind through trees), the scents (pine resin, hot stone, crushed thyme) and the other transitory phenomena and atmospheres that together comprise the bristling presence of a particular place at a particular moment. (p. 255)

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For us, places, landscapes, environments, the more-than-human world, are not static backdrops. They are not free of human influence or a pristine idyllic idea of nature outside the tainted (or nurturing) touch of human hands. Humans do not live isolated or separate from the environments they inhabit. Clarke and Mcphie (2014) highlight this ontological reality through their immanent take on the material turn, and suggest that it is not just theorists that gain from tackling such ontological assumptions. Clarke and Mcphie suggest that students and educators can learn by questioning how they see/experience the world around them and employ different philosophical vantage points. Drawing upon Deleuze and Guattari, they offer a vision of environments without ‘falsely boundaried entities’ (p. 199), where environments enact animistic qualities and are forever in the process of becoming (change, process, movement, relational weaving, flux, always already in-formation). Their take is important, because it eschews a conception of the world that is said to consist of objects, where humans are the main actors performing on a static stage: ‘Rather than relations being forged in an already-given space, relations are creative of spaces; they make spaces’ (Clarke & Mcphie, 2014, p. 202). Their alternative ontological perspective suggests ‘a world of affect where the boundary between objects is dispelled’ (Clarke & Mcphie, 2014, p. 200). In a similar manner, Alaimo (2010) refers to perceived boundaries between human bodies and the rest of the world as a contact zone, where: Potent ethical and political possibilities emerge from the literal contact zone between human corporeality and more-than-human nature. Imagining human corporeality as trans-corporeality, in which the human is always intermeshed with the more-than-­ human world, underlines the extent to which the substance of the human is ultimately inseparable from “the environment.” (p. 2)

The ideas put forward by Clarke and Mcphie (2014) and Alaimo (2010) align in part with Barad’s (2007) materialist ontology, which seeks to ‘meet the universe halfway’, acknowledging how the universe pushes back with agency in the becoming of the world. In this research project, we take some of these ontological assumptions and embed them within our empirical investigation of outdoor learning contexts. This builds upon some of our previous work, where we have sought to acknowledge the agency of the more-than-human world (Jukes et  al., 2019; Jukes & Reeves, 2020). Importantly, agency is not a thing but a doing, an enactment, a becoming, and acknowledging that events (such as outdoor learning) are co-constituted/shaped by non-humans is crucial if we are to tackle and break free from of the ‘metaphysical entrapment’ of the western tradition of a ‘staticized worldview’ (Clarke & Mcphie, 2014, p. 203). Yet we also recognise that places don’t speak for themselves, and it is educative to question how we see/read places and challenge our assumptions.

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7.4 Embracing a New Empiricism for Environmental Education Research Why do we acknowledge our textual sources but not the ground we walk, the everchanging skies, mountains and rivers, rocks and trees, the houses we inhabit and the tools we use, not to mention the innumerable companions, both non-human animals and fellow humans, with which and with whom we share our lives? They are constantly inspiring us, challenging us, telling us things. (Ingold, 2011, p. xii) The research context for this paper involves second and third year students studying the subjects River Environments and Teaching in River Environments as part of their Bachelor of Outdoor and Environmental Education at an Australian university. In short, these subjects aim to develop knowledge of river environments, develop technical paddling competence along with learning leadership and teaching skills relevant to journeying in these environments. Interlude: Journeying by Canoe as OEE in Australia We offer this interlude as another important sub-text. Many readers, even if they are outdoor environmental educators from different geographical contexts, may not be familiar with some of the foundational practices that we, as Australian outdoor environmental educators, take for granted. OEE in south-­ eastern Australia, in the programs in which we work, commonly involve a practice of journeying. Journeying by canoe is a popular mode of travel. In this practice we can depart from our campuses with a trailer load of canoes, camping equipment and food, and drive to a river. A vehicle shuttle is performed by staff. We then spend a number of days journeying from our start point to an end point. Generally, these journeys may be around 3–5  days, occasionally longer. Groups of around 12–20 people, then travel as a mobile community in sections of river often designated as national park. All equipment needed is loaded into the boats. The group camps on the river along the way and engages in a range of educational activities, which differ depending on the curriculum focus and pedagogical practices enacted. The field of outdoor education has historically had a focus on personal development and challenge through such activities. Although the tide has shifted on this over the last few decades, such approaches are still prevalent, with humanist perspectives common. We also note that outdoor education is always a form of environmental education, for better or worse. Thus, we write this chapter with a desire to support and extend the environmental education value of journeying practices, beyond anthropocentric conceptions.

The initial approach to the research that informs this chapter was to (intra-­ actively) entangle teaching practice with research inquiry and enact a hybrid form of situational analysis (for recent discussions of situational analysis see, Ruck & Mannion, 2020). In reality, the Scott as principal researcher would go about teaching

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students as per the subject’s curriculum, but he would also be attentive to the material ‘goings on’ in the teaching context and see what provocations emerged. As such, there was no traditional data collection neatly planned and defined in advance (Rautio, 2020). This research involved several river journeys, and these river journeys would provide the empirical prompts for this study. The journeys weren’t completely pre-planned, having time and openness where the group could wander, drift and explore paths in the terrain (e.g., the paths of the rivers flow, old river courses, dried creeks, animal tracks, vehicle tracks). We considered this approach a form of educator enacted psychogeography4 within river environments, as we wanted the terrain and material features of the river-place to produce unexpected encounters. Partly, this was guided by St. Pierre et  al.’s (2016) writings on new empiricism and emergent approaches to research. As they suggest, doing something new means that a pre-given methodology or restrictive set of practices aren’t to be applied in advance. Despite no real recipe for this sort of inquiry, the following quote has been a refrain in Scott’s research practice: Put simply, we can’t tell someone how to do this new work, how to think, how to experiment, how to tip an assemblage toward the plane of immanence. Our best advice is to read and read and read and attend to the encounters in our experiences that demand our attention. [original emphasis] (St. Pierre et al., 2016, p. 106)

There is much in this short quote that we continually return to, both in this chapter, but also our other work (see Jukes, 2020b, 2021; Jukes & Reeves, 2020; Jukes et al., 2019; Stewart, 2018). In this way, too, we tend to think of reading as not just an act but also a metaphor. As Ingold (2011) suggests: If our aim is to read the world, as I believe it ought to be, then the purpose of written texts should be to enrich our reading so that we may be better advised by and responsive to what the world is telling us. (p. xii)

Thus, as outdoor environmental educators, we are not merely reading texts, but continually reading the landscapes we work (reading the world—listening to the world) with insights from texts. What we read diffracts together, illuminating (and shadowing) each differently. Importantly, part of our pedagogical practice aims to bring our diffractive readings to the attention of our students, so they may also see/ experience places differently to how they may otherwise would. Our knowledge of the landscapes we work also informs how we design our learning programs. With this comes experimentation, not in the traditional scientific lab coat variety, but in following trains of thought, following flows of ideas, and following lines in the landscape.

 Psychogeography was first coined by Guy Debord and is said to be a way of wandering or drifting in a city or urban environment (Lyons, 2017). This wandering or drifting sidelines a specific purpose (such as a destination) and can allow unexpected encounters to emerge. Furthermore, there is an orientation towards integrating and contemplating the history of the place wandered through. One of us came to the idea via Mcphie (2019) and have suggested elsewhere that it may have some usefulness as a loose but emergent form of posthuman inquiry for environmental education research (Jukes, 2020a). 4

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As we have already mentioned, the purpose of this project is to inquire further into the process of travelling within and diffractively reading environments as a pedagogical activity. But to frame this in another way, this inquiry is an immanent praxiography (as described in Chap. 3): the combination of practice and theory (practicing theory—praxis). Or, in other words, thinking with theory in practice (Jackson & Mazzei, 2013). Our inquiry searches for resonances in pedagogical practice: where ‘to resonate means to meet. To vibrate with something in some way’ [original emphasis] (Clarke, 2019, p. 2794). These encounters where theory, written texts and pedagogical practice resonate (what we will refer to as events) are the empirical focus of the inquiry in this chapter.

7.5 Postparadigmatic Inquiry, Video as a Method and More-­than-human Audio-Visual Analysis Gough (2016) explains that research in outdoor and environmental education has largely been represented via paradigmatic distinctions or categories. Postparadigmatic theorisation, including movements like new empiricisms and new materialisms, encourages research inquiry to be more innovative and not rely on paradigmatic groundings (such as positivist, interpretive or critical inquiry, nor sit on one side of a divide such as social constructionism or essentialism). Others, such as Law (2004), St. Pierre (2011) and Koro-Ljungberg (2015), support a similar openness to more emergent processes of inquiry. Importantly, these ‘new’ movements (partly influenced by poststructuralist thinking) do not prescribe methods or methodology in advance. And as such, they are not one ‘thing’ and there is no ‘ground’. It is following the encouragement of those cited above that we let go of foundations, pre-given methodological rules and the ‘strictures of exhausted paradigms’ (Gough, 2016, p.  60). Instead, our process for this inquiry involves responding to the problems posed by the educational/research context and a desire to think pedagogy differently/diffractively. What follows is a description of how we conducted this postparadigmatic inquiry and came to adopt video as a method. As mentioned earlier, Scott recorded videos (audio-visual footage) on the journeys, with some of this video footage making the empirical materials for this study.5 Scott recorded footage via an iPhone camera and digital SLR during

 This chapter emerged Scott’s doctoral studies. The empirical materials used in this chapter were approved by his institutions human ethics committee. In this project, students were given a choice to partake and whether they wished to use their names or be given pseudonyms. We see this is a crucial ethical process in our research, as it gives students choice and agency and authors the ability to acknowledge student work/ideas/influences. In other words, it is an attempt to flatten the researcher-participant hierarchy (Hart & Hart, 2019). Notably, all students in this project chose to be identified/identifiable. We also acknowledge that knowledge making practices are always in relation to the assemblage from which they emerge, and that knowledge isn’t just made (or found) by the researchers but co-created through the assemblage (also see Jukes & Reeves, 2020). 5

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unexpected encounters and moments of provocation whilst wandering/drifting through the river-place. At other times the cameras were left recording to see what occurred by chance. We watched audio-visual materials numerous times and edited into shorter videos, based on the way events resonated with pedagogical and theoretical ideas, helping us reorient our thoughts (St. Pierre, 2021; Kuntz & St. Pierre, 2021). In a sense, the aspects of video footage we have used ‘demand[ed] our attention’ (St. Pierre et al., 2016, p. 106)—they resonated, or did something for/to us, ‘making themselves intelligible’ in some way (Maclure, 2013, p. 660), prompting us to think further with the events in the videos. In short, it can be said that the footage (and poem) we chose produced an affect that emerged from the world. These short videos now make up the supplemental material of this research project. Why audio-visual footage as a method of creating empirical materials? First, video was our answer to the problem posed by wanting to analyse material encounters, situations or events. For example, when possible, such moments could be filmed by Scott, and the recorded events could be watched again and again (with a particular focus on complex more-than-human entanglements that might easily be missed with traditional anthropocentric analysis). Doing this allowed the events to keep performing, providing the research team with further opportunities to contemplate, think-with and analyse them. The videos elicit access to situated events that otherwise would not be possible, evoking these events in a mode that words alone cannot provide. Although a relatively novel method for OEE, video has been utilised in other fields of study. For example, the environmental geographer Lorimer (2013) deploys ‘more-than-human visual analysis’ in Deleuzian-inspired research methodology (p. 61). Lorimer explains that ‘more-than-human inclinations do not sit easily within orthodox methodologies’ (p. 63). As such, video provides a ‘supplement’ to field observation, which ‘helps generate a rich data set for subsequent analysis’ (p. 66) and opens possibilities for creative praxis. There is a dynamic liveliness (or becoming) that video can provoke, which Lorimer describes as more-than-­ representational. Others, such as Wood and Brown (2010), describe video in their research as a presentational line of flight, contributing a ‘new filmic affect that can better open up and articulate an aesthetic appreciation of experiences’ (p.  536). For us, video allows researchers (and viewers) to witness embodied practice, whilst attending to ‘material, practical and affective dimensions’ (Lorimer, 2013, p. 63). Videos can also be manipulated during analysis in productive ways (e.g., paused, sped up, slowed down, edited). In our project, video allows us to closely analyse particular entanglements, evoking contemplation on how we participate with and might diffractively read landscapes in these educational contexts. In short, video as a method helps analyse and document material specificities that are of significance to the inquiry at hand.

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7.6 Journey Events: Empirical Encounters Qualitative inquiry might stop looking for depth and hoping for height. It might work instead with, and within, the flat topology of events… (Maclure, 2013, p. 665)

Below we share some encounters and events from the river journeys. The videos and discussions below focus primarily on one of the journeys that was part of this project. This particular journey was a reconnaissance for third year students that were to lead and teach younger students in the same location later in the year (note, a small amount of the video footage comes from the latter teaching journey on a nearby section of the Murray River). This was one of the students’ final facilitated experiences near the end of their studies. Within this context, Scott (as the coordinating staff member) encouraged the students to actively explore the landscape, where they could engage with different aspects of the environment and experiment with different things they could teach with/in/of that place. Scott prompted students to get out of their canoes and go for walks through old dried-up courses of the river or paddle up backwaters, tributaries and billabongs to see what might be there or what could unfold. The discussions and videos below start with some muddy circumstances, diverge into different readings of the mud, and then consider the broader environmental story of the river-place prompted by posthumanist orientations.

7.6.1 Footprints Tell the Stories The poem at the beginning of this chapter, written and shared on the river by Cam (a student), emerges from a journey through Gaiyila (the Yorta Yorta6 name for the lower Goulburn River). The journey occurred mid-winter, in-between two COVID-19 lockdowns and during a reduction of water volume. The water is released from a dam upstream, and flow was reduced after a previous spike in water releases. The ebbing flow after an intensification leaves the steep banks muddy. The mixing of earth and water leads to awkward exits, slipping students and mud-spattered canoes. The mud was only half expected, but intensely affected our journey, influencing the way the landscape (or mudscape) entered and shaped our thoughts. We rode the ebbing flow during the day, battling the mud on the banks when we stopped for rest or a walk. These patterns of life emerged on the journey, with the place and our activities influencing our ways of thinking, feeling and being (Macfarlane, 2013) (Video 7.1).

 The Yorta Yorta people are the traditional owners of Gaiyila/the lower Goulburn River and other surrounding areas. 6

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Video 7.1  The mud. (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.21818076) As the video above and Cam’s poem suggest, such a journey can be a messy affair. We purposefully chose this less than idyllic scene as it offers a provocative entrance into the conditions and reality of this journey. One reading of the muddy events opens a reality that something as simple as a slight drop in water level can lead to frustrating or annoying circumstances for participants. An alternate reading of the muddy banks, with a lens of safety and worst-case scenario (Brookes, 2018), can make us consider the mud as not just difficult but potentially dangerous—something that impinges on safety and may hinder educational success. Furthermore, the muddy and difficult entries and exits make us consider how such a journey may prove exclusive for participants with physical limitations, disabilities or impairment. Yet, as Cam’s poem evokes, thinking about the material connections in places enables a broader image of the river-place to emerge. The water and the mud are part of the affective assemblage, the living process that is that place. Furthermore, the video above is just one segment of a broader journey—a snapshot of that reality (minus experiential aspects such as cool temperatures, breeze through hair, smells of eucalyptus, textures of mud on hands and other sensuous atmospheres)—that had a continuity for the participants beyond a short, edited video. Analysing empirical events diffractively for educational affordances prompts us to consider some other pedagogical pathways—ways to turn the muddy circumstances into something with educative potentials. One example is that footprints may be observed in the mud. ‘Footprints tell the stories’, as Cam wrote in his poem, and we may read footprints to see who/what has visited the river and relies on the water source. Footprints tell us that other-than-human animals also make and shape places. For example, hard hoofed ungulates (such as cattle, horses, pigs) that were introduced by European settlers have played a part in changing landscapes across Australia (for further discussions about these impacts and reading them in OEE contexts, see Jukes, 2021, and Stewart et al., 2021). A range of place specific stories can be opened on such a pedagogical pathway. Observing and following footprints requires specific pedagogical orientations. Anthony Mangelsdorf, in Stewart et al. (2021), discusses his practice of following footprints in the snow during ski-touring journeys. Reading and following footprints in the snow, Anthony explains, involves educators relinquishing some control and considering the landscape as a co-teacher. Such a practice decentres the human educator and acknowledges there is much that can be read in the landscape, if we choose to think with it. Footprints might tell stories and offer insight into more-than-­ human life, but moreover, countless features in any environment have a story that we may encounter, inquire into and follow. As Macfarlane (2013) writes, ‘the imagination cannot help but pursue a line in the land—onwards in space, but also backwards in time to the histories of a route and its previous followers’ (p. 15). From animal tracks to a water course or even an old route made and travelled by traditional owners, we can follow the traces of lines in the land to open a posthumanist educational praxis. Lines always cross and tangle and following such lines can lead

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to other more-than-human encounters. We invite the reader when watching the videos/empirical materials to note some of the encounters and how they could provide further possibilities for environmental education. What do the encounters provoke for you? What stories might you read and what features could you teach with? (Video 7.2) Video 7.2  Encounters. (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.21818067) We think that landscape features can act as signs for educators and students. Taylor (2013) explains that ‘a sign is something material, perceivable by the senses, which refers to something other than itself, and which is recognised by those who use it as a sign’ (p. 47). If features in landscapes can be used as signs, something like a tree with a scar can be used to engage with Indigenous history or events of European settlement—this can also flow into contemporary relationships. For example, a scar tree bears witness to Yorta Yorta peoples respectful and sustainable use of bark for canoe (matha) and carrying dishes. Other trees bear witness to ring-­ barking, a habit by European settler loggers that cut through the cambium killing the tree whilst leaving it standing. After it dies, the standing tree dries out and is burnt in paddle steamers or used as fence posts. There are, too, a multitude of non-­ human agential encounters available—such as entanglements of climatic conditions, seasons, insects, mud, pollination and flowering trees. We cross and tangle with these lines of life as we weave our own path through the living landscape. As Gough (2016) notes, walking somewhere like a rainforest can be as information intensive as searching the Internet. The Lower Goulburn River is no rainforest, but the sentiment remains. In-between the material sign and past events, the educator can act as a diffractive instigator. In the context of teaching future outdoor environmental educators, we think it is our job to assist students in reading such information-intensive environments. What we may attempt to teach with is an openness, attunement and responsiveness to encounters. In our view, any number of features may connect to other features, or link to past, present and future relationships. Such a pedagogy can be thought of as rhizomatic (Stewart, 2020), where connections can be made to a broad array of place-based environmental education curricula. Throughout the life of the journey, or educational experience, this attunement and connection making can become a habit that we can cultivate. An approach in this project—more-thanhuman audio-­visual analysis—is both a methodological and pedagogical tool that can help orientate us towards an increased awareness and responsiveness to the more-than-human. Returning again to Cam’s poem, he expressed his love for the river, and through that appreciation showed an ability to move beyond the subjective human experience of battling with muddy banks. Through the mud poem, Cam expressed the educative power of de-anthropocentrising events in OEE.  The riverscape pierced him, affecting him and prompted him to write the poem that he shared with the group. This is similar to Indi’s story about the red gum roots and pump pipes within

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the encounter video above. The task of writing a poem and story was not instructed to Cam and Indi but emerged during some solo time where the affective intensity of the mud and the riverscape provoked them to write. But importantly, the poem and story also hinted towards a broader environmental story that we (staff and students) deliberately tangled with throughout the journey as we encountered and read the landscape. Interlude: Affordances and Correspondence Lynch and Mannion (2021) suggest that the knowledge and dispositions needed by educators to decenter the human, or challenge human exceptionalism in OEE research has been a silence or ‘moot point’ (p. 867). This provocation provided a prompt for their empirical inquiry which found educators need time and a disposition that attunes with the more-than-human world if educators are to challenge human exceptionalism in educational practices. We agree with Lynch and Mannion and attempted to support such a pedagogical aim throughout the river journeys conducted in this research project. We sought to assist students develop an attunement towards the more-than-human world (or more specifically, the life and ‘goings on’ of the landscape and river environment). One way that we did this was pay attention to affordances of the river environment and cultivate correspondence with the landscape. Affordances, as Ingold (2018) explains, are both ‘opportunities and hindrances’ (p. 39). Drawing upon Gibson (1979), the creator of Affordance Theory, Ingold clarifies that: Perception, for humans and nonhumans alike, is about being alive to the world, about moving around in it, attending to it, and discovering, along the way, what it has to offer, whether for good or for ill. These offerings are what Gibson meant by the affordances of the environment. (p. 39)

In our pedagogical planning, we sought educational opportunities and hindrances—simply, we might ask, what does this place or its features offer? However, as we enter the river environment on our journey, we are entering a world of flux—one we are of and moving with. During the journey we are following the flows of water, the rhythms of night and day and correspond with/in a lively place. The enactment of such a more-than-human pedagogy involves responding to encounters diffractively in a way that respectfully acknowledges more-than-human relations. A more-than-human pedagogy isn’t pre-made by us as humans, nor is out there to be found. A more-than-­ human pedagogy is a situated practice that requires thinking with/in/of the landscape (Jukes, 2021). For as Sonu and Snaza (2015) state, ‘pedagogies inspired by posthumanist and new materialist ontologies are situational encounters made up of entanglements and interweavings, conjoint actions and political ecologies, entanglements that are alive, vibrant, and powerful’ (p. 274).

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7.6.2 Flows: Imagining Wala (Water) Beyond the city, beyond the classroom, are the forests, rivers and mountains governed by ‘forces as yet untrained’ (Ingold, 2015, p. 131)—or so Ingold writes. But the rivers we travel are all trained a little, via the dams, locks and weirs that regulate the flow. Most of the rivers in south-eastern Australia are controlled and regulated—there is a political ecology at play. Regulation enforces flipped flow regimes so that agriculture can capitalise on water when it’s needed for farming in summer. This feeds the crops which feed the nation. What it also has done is strip the river environments of some of its water, which has led to precarious situations for the health of the river environments and adjacent wetlands and communities. There is a tension here, but also a posthumanist educational affordance that we feel ethically compelled to attend to. Water—wala in Yorta Yorta language—is this fluid commodity that shapes the landscape and shapes our journey, but also shapes the lives of many Australians. On our journey, we followed the flow of the river whilst conceptualising the fluctuating flows of water through time. What shapes the flow? What conditions do fluctuating flows create? In the river-place, the only constant is flux. For us as paddlers, absences condition the experience we have on the river as much as presences. The words of Gan et al. (2017) possess a particular ring, resonating here: As humans reshape the landscape, we forget what was there before. Ecologists call this forgetting the “shifting baseline syndrome.” Our newly shaped and ruined landscapes become the new reality. Admiring one landscape and its biological entanglements often entails forgetting many others. Forgetting, in itself, remakes landscapes, as we privilege some assemblages over others. Yet ghosts remind us. Ghosts point to our forgetting, showing us how living landscapes are imbued with earlier tracks and traces. (p. G6)

Our journey is framed by the river’s path we follow. It is entangled within such forces—both human and more-than-human enmeshed together—where we may enter into a trans-corporeal meshwork full of material agencies. When we travel meshwork’s like the river environment, we encounter things along the way—both newer bodies and older ghosts. They can easily be passed without notice, or we can slow and start thinking with the landscape. What the meshwork reveals may not always be read, but by attuning to and thinking with relationships we may make connections and receive jolts that disrupt us, spark us, call our attention and bring us into presence with the world that is, including its ghosts (Video 7.3): What matters is not how fast one moves, in terms of the ratio of distance to elapsed time, but that this movement should be in phase with, or attuned to, the movements of other phenomena of the inhabited world. The question “how long does it take?” only becomes relevant when the duration of a journey is measured out towards a pre-determined destination. (Ingold, 2016, p. 105)

Video 7.3  The rivers many paths. (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.21818055) The video above involves paddling Gaiyila (the lower Goulburn river), but also paddling billabongs, walking previous courses of the river and contemplating both

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the river-place and conceptions of time. Movements in the present, are also overlaid with discussions and imaginative musings about how the river used to look, how it may look in the future and how the river’s health is always in a state of continual flux. The videos above do not share most of the discussions we had or the facilitated teachings. Instead, the videos provide us an opportunity to see and hear the environment we inhabit on the journey (a specific assemblage of material conditions) and contemplate such an environment within a book such as this. We know that the river’s health has declined, is declining, and that the tensions involving rivers, wetlands and regulation in Australia are a highly politicised topic (for example, see O’Gorman, 2021; Sinclair, 2001; Weir, 2009). Seeing and experiencing such tensions is the onto-epistemological affordance of the journey. Features of the meshwork, such as a billabong, open discussions about floodplain ecology, river health, water politics, sustainable development, where we get our food from, Australian agricultural practices, climate change, more-than-human life, various histories, the role of Traditional Owners in managing landscapes, and much more, which can all be diffractively read together to bring forth a landscape configured by political ecologies. Learning of the fluctuating flows and the environmental story is a form of posthumanist education about that place and its more-than-human history—a poignant topic for Anthropocene discourse. As educators, we are inspired by Macfarlane (2013) to ‘read landscapes into being, and to hold multiple eras of history in plain sight simultaneously’ (p. 147). The words of Gan et al. (2017) echo again: ‘The landscape emerges from ghostly entanglements: the many histories of life and death that have made... this place [original italics]’ (p. 5). When we spend time with and attend to a landscape, we participate in a communal history. In this history, there is a continuity between natural, cultural, ancient, recent, human and more-than-human history—the past conveys things into the present (Bergson, 1998), or as Barad (2007) states, ‘the past is never finished’ (p. ix). Furthermore, we don’t just gaze at landscapes, they ‘press upon and into our bodies and minds, complexly affect[ing] our moods, our sensibilities’ (Macfarlane, 2013, p.  341). Travelling the river affords many educational opportunities, and correspondence between students, educators and features of a river-place open a meshwork of educative experiences.

7.7 Provoking Possibilities for Practice As we draw a close on this chapter, we think it important to knot together the two key threads we have been running with. The first thread involves our desire to think and do our outdoor environmental education practice differently. The second thread involves the conceptual shifts that post qualitative inquiry calls for (or allows). As we tie both focuses together, we must add that theorising and research inquiry are also practices, and to render theory and practice separately can reify a theory/practice divide (Clarke & Mcphie, 2020a; Pleasants & Stewart, 2019). And so, we must say we have been practicing our own version of post qualitative inquiry to rethink our

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Fig. 7.1  Considering possibilities for practice

OEE practice. The landscape and mud are involved, just as theory and concepts are, as they perform ecologically (Mcphie & Clarke, 2020). In other words, we have been attempting to provoke possibilities for practice (Fig. 7.1)—both OEE journeying practice (emphasising the environmental education capacities of engaging and attuning with the more-than-human whilst journeying) and post qualitative inquiry for OEE. To dress this knot a little further, we have asked ourselves what becomes available when we engage with places diffractively, when we look beyond the human? What environmental education opportunities exist when we think differently, when we decenter the human, shift focus off our own activities and when we engage processrelational modes of thought (rather than staticised worldviews)? We have edited, written and performed a response to these questions above and (hopefully) prompted attention towards things that might otherwise be easily overlooked—we, at least, saw things we hadn’t noticed before undertaking this project. However, in the (post?) qualitative tradition, we won’t foreclose what others may think, do or be provoked by from here. Instead, we leave asking one final question: what other ways could outdoor and environmental educators think and do their practices differently, in a way that opens engagement and response to the agencies of the more-­ than-­human world?

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Jukes, S. (2020a). Posthuman insights for environmental education. A review of mental health and wellbeing in the Anthropocene: A posthuman inquiry, by Jamie Mcphie. 2019, Singapore: Springer Nature. €69.99, ISBN 978-981-13-3326-2. The Journal of Environmental Education, 51(5), 395–398. https://doi.org/10.1080/00958964.2020.1813678 Jukes, S. (2020b). Thinking through making: Junk paddles, distant forests and pedagogical possibilities. Environmental Education Research, 26(12), 1746–1763. https://doi.org/10.108 0/13504622.2020.1806991 Jukes, S. (2021). Thinking with a landscape: The Australian Alps, horses and pedagogical considerations. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 37(2), 89–107. https://doi. org/10.1017/aee.2020.26 Jukes, S., & Reeves, Y. (2020). More-than-human stories: Experimental co-productions in outdoor environmental education pedagogy. Environmental Education Research, 26(9–10), 1294–1312. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2019.1699027 Jukes, S., Stewart, A., & Morse, M. (2019). Acknowledging the agency of a more-than-human world: Material relations on a Snowy River journey. Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education, 22(2), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42322-­019-­00032-­8 Koro-Ljungberg, M. (2015). Reconceptualizing qualitative research: Methodologies without methodology. Sage Publications. Kuntz, A., & St. Pierre, E. (2021). Proclaiming the new: An introduction. Qualitative Inquiry, 27(5), 475–479. Law, J. (2004). After method: Mess in social science research. Routledge. Lenz Taguchi, H., & St. Pierre, E. (2017). Using concept as method in educational and social science inquiry. Qualitative Inquiry, 23(9), 643–648. Lopez, B. (1988). Crossing open ground. Open Road Media. Lorimer, J. (2013). More-than-human visual analysis: Witnessing and evoking affect in human-­nonhuman interactions. In R.  Coleman & J.  Ringrose (Eds.), Deleuze and research methodologies (pp. 61–78). Edinburgh University Press. Lynch, J., & Mannion, G. (2021). Place-responsive pedagogies in the Anthropocene: Attuning with the more-than-human. Environmental Education Research, 27(6), 864–878. https://doi.org/1 0.1080/13504622.2020.1867710 Lyons, S. (2017). Psychogeography: A way to delve into the soul of a city. The conversation: Academic rigour, journalistic flair. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/ psychogeography-­a-­way-­to-­delve-­into-­the-­soul-­of-­a-­city-­78032 Macfarlane, R. (2013). The old ways: A journey on foot. Penguin. Macfarlane, R. (2019). Underland: A deep time journey. Penguin. Maclure, M. (2013). Researching without representation? Language and materiality in post-­ qualitative methodology. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 26(6), 658–667. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2013.788755 Mcphie, J. (2019). Mental health and wellbeing in the anthropocene: A posthuman inquiry. Palgrave Macmillan. Mcphie, J., & Clarke, D. (2019). Post-qualitative inquiry in outdoor studies: A radical (non-) methodology. In B.  Humberstone & H.  Prince (Eds.), Research methods in outdoor studies (pp. 186–195). Routledge. Mcphie, J., & Clarke, D. (2020). Nature matters: Diffracting a keystone concept of environmental education research – Just for kicks. Environmental Education Research, 26(9–10), 1509–1526. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2018.1531387 Mullins, A. (2020). Uncommon sense. A deep time journey into the underland with Robert Macfarlane. Retrieved from https://www.rrr.org.au/on-­demand/segments/uncommon-­ sense-­a-­deep-­time-­journey-­into-­the-­underland-­with-­robert-­macfarlane O’Gorman, E. (2021). Wetlands in a dry land: More-than-human histories of Australia’s Murray-­ Darling Basin. University of Washington Press. Pleasants, K., & Stewart, A. (2019). Entangled philosophical and methodological dimensions of research in outdoor studies? Living with(in) messy theorisation. In B.  Humberstone & H. Prince (Eds.), Research methods in outdoor studies (pp. 9–20). Routledge.

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Plumwood, V. (2003). Decolonizing relationships with nature. In W. B. Adams & M. Mulligan (Eds.), Decolonizing nature: Strategies for conservation in a post-colonial era. Routledge. Rautio, P. (2020). Post-qualitative inquiry: Four balancing acts in crafting alternative stories to live. Qualitative Inquiry, 27(2), 228–230. Ruck, A., & Mannion, G. (2020). Fieldnotes and situational analysis in environmental education research: Experiments in new materialism. Environmental Education Research, 26(9–10), 1373–1390. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2019.1594172 Sinclair, P. (2001). The Murray: A river and its people. Melbourne University Press. Sonu, D., & Snaza, N. (2015). The fragility of ecological pedagogy: Elementary social studies standards and possibilities of new materialism. Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 12(3), 258–277. St. Pierre, E. (2011). Post qualitative research: The critique and the coming after. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (Vol. 4, pp. 611–625). Sage. St. Pierre, E. (2021). The lure of the new and the hold of the dogmatic. Qualitative Inquiry, 27(5), 480–490. St. Pierre, E., Jackson, A., & Mazzei, L. (2016). New empiricisms and new materialisms: Conditions for new inquiry. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 16(2), 99–110. Stewart, A. (2018). A Murray Cod assemblage: Re/considering riverScape pedagogy. The Journal of Environmental Education, 49(2), 130–141. Stewart, A. (2020). Developing place-responsive pedagogy in outdoor environmental education: A rhizomatic curriculum autobiography. Springer Nature. Stewart, A., Jukes, S., Mikaels, J., & Mangelsdorf, A. (2021). Reading landscapes: Engaging with places. In G.  Thomas, J.  Dyment, & H.  Prince (Eds.), Outdoor environmental education in higher education: International perspectives (pp. 201–213). Springer. Taylor, C. (2013). Mobile sections and flowing matter in participant-generated video: Exploring a Deleuzian approach to visual sociology. In R. Coleman & J. Ringrose (Eds.), Deleuze and research methodologies (pp. 42–60). Edinburgh University Press. Taylor, C., & Hughes, C. (Eds.). (2016). Posthuman research practices in education. Palgrave. Ulmer, J. B. (2017). Posthumanism as research methodology: Inquiry in the Anthropocene. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 30(9), 832–848. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/09518398.2017.1336806 Weir, J. (2009). Murray River country: An ecological dialogue with traditional owners. Aboriginal Studies Press. Wood, M., & Brown, S. (2010). Lines of flight: Everyday resistance along England’s backbone. Organization, xx(x), 1–23.

Chapter 8

Fostering Response-Abilities: Exploring More-Than-Human Histories Through Remake Activities Scott Jukes

Abstract  In this chapter I explore remake activities. Remake activities reuse and recycle waste materials, working them into something useful. The experiential activity seems to be prevalent, yet limited literature covers creative ways of thinking about pedagogical approaches. The chapter examines some of the emerging waste education literature before exploring further possibilities for remake activities, using the example of paddle making as a pedagogical practice in outdoor, environmental and sustainability education. I perform a new materialist praxis for paddle making, enacting a diffractive investigation into a piece of timber as a way of framing paddle making activities. I present the investigation as a narrative that considers the life of the timber and the broader ecological history of the material. This charts ethical and environmental problems relating to particular forests whilst posing different ways of conceptualising timber. Through this, I offer an example of the pedagogical diffractions that can be made during remake activities. In summary, the chapter attends to materiality in divergent ways, through the use of new materialist ideas, to open up educational possibilities.

8.1 Considering Praxis A few years ago, I made my first timber canoe paddle. At the time I was working with Brian Wattchow, a fellow lecturer at an Australian university, where our students’ made paddles and other outdoor equipment out of recycled materials to use on a journey down a local river. Brian has been making canoe paddles for over 20-years as part of a pedagogy of production and prompted my first forays into paddle making (see, Wattchow, 1999, 2001 for some examples of this). A colleague Beau Miles has also been making paddles with students over time (I attended a workshop Beau ran at a S. Jukes (*) Federation University, Berwick, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Jukes, Learning to Confront Ecological Precarity, International Explorations in Outdoor and Environmental Education 13, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34200-4_8

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conference in 2012). His recent video, Junk Paddle – how to make a canoe paddle from junk, offers advice, humour and reasons for undertaking such a task (Miles, 2018). Making canoe paddles is not necessarily a widespread pedagogical practice for outdoor environmental education (OEE) in Australia, but it does occur at a number of schools and universities. Generally speaking, the practice occurs before outdoor fieldwork and is a way to consider technology and its mediating influence on outdoor experience. Paddle making is also conducted as an experiential remake activity, which according to Wattchow (2001), develops the performative skills and techniques of crafting, bringing the maker into engagement with ‘the Earth’s materiality’ (p. 24). Counter to Brian and Beau, Alistair Stewart discusses why he has moved away from making canoe paddles in his pedagogy (Stewart, 2020). Alistair states he loves to make and use timber paddles, however they: Have become symbolic for me of my deliberate change of direction in developing outdoor environmental education pedagogy. As enjoyable as they are to make and use, to focus on timber paddles, the craft, equipment and techniques in an educational context, seems to me to be hubris, selfish and disrespectful when I contemplate other stories about the river, how it has changed over time, and its ecological plight today. (Stewart, 2020, p. 60)

I appreciate where he is coming from; to focus on the equipment or the activity may silence the stories of the river or environment and the recent degradation. In other words, if our students are primarily focusing on the task of making a paddle, the paddles direct physicality or the use of a paddle as a piece of equipment, the river and its broader ecological health can quickly become a backdrop. Here lies a problem this paper attends to: how might paddle making as pedagogy avoid the trap of silencing broader ethical-environmental issues (as Stewart, 2020, suggests)? Furthermore, what can paddle making offer as OEE that attends to environmental histories and relationships? I have been experimenting with the pedagogical potential of paddle making since making my first paddle, and this chapter offers an example of my paddle making praxis (where theory is practiced). My experimentation with paddle making has involved undergraduate OEE students across two different Australian universities and I have been developing my praxis over the last 5 years. I see links and overlap between my praxis and environmental education, sustainability education, waste education and experiential education. What I suggest through this chapter is that activities like paddle making can become pedagogical via the conversations and discussions they create—including correspondence with other-than-human materials (Ingold, 2013)—which may open different ways of thinking. My intention with these discussions—and the major objective of this chapter—is to attend to the broader ecological histories (or more-than-human histories) which materials emerge from (such as a paddle). Such discussions generate openings for ethical dialog about environmental problems, moving beyond the direct materiality of the timber and onto other related matters. For me, new materialist theories are a guide in shaping these conversations. Later in this chapter, I discuss some of this theory and offer one in-depth example of a piece of timber and its broader more-than-human ecological history. Before this though, I will explore the idea of waste and remake (repurposing) activities via recent literature.

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8.2 Waste and Remake Pedagogies As many educators are aware, we are living on a damaged planet (Haraway, 2016). Waste produced through human hyper-consumption and junking is one of a plethora of unsustainable practices rapidly altering a diverse array of environments. As Haraway (2016) explains, ‘change on earth is not the problem; rates and distributions of change are very much the problem’ (p. 73). Ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns is one of the United Nations’ goals for sustainable development (United Nations, 2019): Worldwide material consumption has expanded rapidly, as has material footprint per capita… Urgent action is needed to ensure that current material needs do not lead to the over extraction of resources or to the degradation of environmental resources. (n.p.)

As such, waste education can offer valuable learning opportunities for education for sustainability and research literature on waste education seems to be on the rise. Examples of the increasing literature include So et  al.’s (2019) recent book, Environmental Sustainability and Education for Waste Management, along with the other research cited throughout this chapter. However, OEE has not engaged with pedagogical possibilities of waste education in any significant manner. In their review of waste education studies, Jørgensen et al. (2018) explain that many researchers ‘approach waste education as a behavioural change domain and view research as a matter of identifying causal effects by means of quantitative methods, without taking contextual factors into account and without referring to or adding to theoretical approaches’ (p.  808). Jørgensen et  al. suggest that the behavior change rationale aims at creating good habits that don’t require much thinking in terms of waste management. But there is more potential in waste education than just teaching waste management. Jørgensen et al. explain ‘there is a much wider educational potential in waste and waste practices than making sure that children know “how to make the waste reach the waste bin”’ (p. 810). Hodgins (2015) and Cutter-­Mackenzie-­Knowles and Siegel (2019) suggest that thinking differently about waste may be a more generative mode of waste education. For example, Hodgins (2015) raises a question that helps prompt my inquiry; ‘can pedagogies of waste make space for and attend to the technological, social, material, economic, political, and ethical matters of our relentless production-consumption cycle?’ (p. 96). I see such a question widens the scope of what is possible in waste education. In helping further articulate the need for broader approaches to waste education, Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles and Siegel (2019) offer a cartography of waste education in Australia. Their cartography presents a paradox: despite waste education’s presence in curriculum and growth in delivery in Australian schools, waste production per capita still rose between 2006–2007 and 2014–2015 (p. 214). They suggest a posthumanist framing for rethinking concepts of waste and pedagogical approaches

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that might combat malconsumption.1 I agree that different ways of thinking about waste may open new prospects for practice and sustainability. As such, my intentions in this chapter, through my OEE praxis below, aim to experiment with pedagogical practices that may also fit under a category of waste education. Remake activities, where students craft things out of repurposed materials, ‘are common recycling activities in environmental and sustainability education’ (Hofverberg, 2020, p. 1281). As a form of waste education, remake activities can offer different ways of thinking about waste. Such activities can be useful for educating about materials and sustainable consumption and production, therefore warranting attention in environmental education research. Hofverberg explains, ‘there is limited knowledge about students’ encounters with materiality, and further, about how these human-material encounters can contribute to a remake pedagogy’ (p. 1282). Repurposing discarded materials back into something useful is a potentially meaningful activity for students—it entangles matter and meaning (Barad, 2007). Furthermore, ‘the reuse of waste in creative activities offers waste materials the possibility of a new “life”’ (Jørgensen et  al., 2018, p.  811). For example, Hofverberg’s (2020) research discusses the practice of using old clothing to (re) make into something else. Hofverberg (2020), who draws upon anthropologist Tim Ingold (2013), describes the crafting/making of things by students: ‘I do not consider that students act upon passive materials, but rather, in the crafting process, students join forces with the materials as they answer to them in a practice of correspondence’ (p. 1283). A process of crafting develops a relationship with materials (e.g., see Fig. 8.1), moving beyond thoughts of consumption. What Hofverberg offers through her study is an exploration of the process of making between students and materials, elucidating what stories students recognise. Such stories involve the decision making process of what to make and how they may work with the materials they have in reciprocal correspondence. Knowing about the source of materials was also an important aspect of remake activities for Hofverberg and is what I take as a central aim of my later explorations. What I offer through those explorations are post-anthropocentric pedagogical additions educators may consider including in remake activities. I use the term post-anthropocentric as a move beyond student-­material encounters and branch into discussions of the ‘waste’ itself, including its ecological history (before it became waste). I also note that ‘waste’ is often considered on human terms and this anthropocentrism is something I will attend to shortly. Repurposing, remaking and reconceptualizing waste can be a small step towards challenging hyper-consumptive lifestyles and exploitative or wasteful practices. As Hofverberg explains, this is about promoting a story of zero waste. The ‘zero waste’ story is relevant as students learn for sustainability, which may be considered a ‘remaking for sustainability’ (Hofverberg, 2020, p. 1290). Jørgensen et al. (2018)  The concept of malconsumption ‘is indicative of a way of life that does not recognise or pay heed to the ecological and social significance of the act of consumption’ (Hillcoat & Rensberg, 1998, as quoted in Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles & Siegel, 2019, p. 209). 1

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Fig. 8.1  Ingold (2013) describes making as a reciprocal correspondence between the maker and materials—a process along a path of co-operation and variation for both crafter and timber

state that ‘waste thus creates a link to both the past and the future, and thereby has the potential to provide educators with concrete entry points for discussions about the temporal perspective of sustainability’ (p. 811). I understand the sentiment of zero waste refers to an attempt to preclude the impunity of wasteful and malconsumptive practices. Alternatively, Hodgins (2015) offers some considerations worth noting: Producing zero waste is of course impossible, but it is a catchy phrase, and certainly looks good on signage! Our own bodies are constantly producing waste as we breathe out carbon dioxide and excrete that which our bodies deem dangerous or unnecessary… (p. 92)

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Furthermore, Hodgins touches on a fact I have also explored elsewhere; that when it comes to the materiality and agency of waste, it really cannot be thrown ‘away’ (see Jukes et al., 2019). Waste often continues to exist (such as in landfill, downstream on a river, somewhere in the ocean etc.) despite being disposed of. Hodgins (2015) raises the valid point that ‘waste for us may be fuel for others’ (p. 92), disrupting the anthropocentric conceptualisation of waste. One things waste can be another’s food or home. Furthermore, non-human animals produce their own waste which humans sometimes find useful and even quite valuable (e.g., the cat-like civet that poops coffee beans that rich westerners drink for around US$80 per cup). The message I take from these discussions is that how we think about ‘waste’ matters and there are many ways to consider used commodities. It is such ideas that I believe can be fruitful to consider during remake activities and OEE pedagogy.

8.2.1 ‘Junk’ Paddles As with Beau Miles (2018), I encourage my OEE students to find and collect used timber for their paddles. Clearly, it is more sustainable to make a paddle out of discarded timber than to buy one off the shelf of a store (providing you have access to some basic tools). All commercial fleet paddles I have encountered in my years as an outdoor environmental educator and river guide are mass produced and made out of plastic and aluminum. Yet, as Beau demonstrates in his video, scrap wood is everywhere, we don’t need to buy it. Finding wood, whether it’s on the side of the road,2 in a salvage yard or otherwise discarded, can diverge into questions, discussion or new thoughts about waste or junk. For example, how does a commodity become discarded junk? Why are materials so easily wasted and replaced in modern society? Odegard (2012), who’s research explored working pedagogically with junk in the context of childhood play, explains junk materials can encourage imagination and creative thinking. How might making a junk paddle prompt the imagination or creative thinking? The critical declaration that OEE may be part of the problem it seeks to educate against is discussed briefly by Payne (2002). If OEE is to perform an ethical praxis, it may need to examine and acknowledge how it contributes to the ecological crisis through the purchase and consumption of equipment such as ‘plastic kayaks, carabiners, cambered skis, goretex jackets, geodesic tents, maps/compasses, neoprene wetsuits and kevlar paddles’ including their design, manufacturing and retailing (Payne, 2002, p.  17). Using mass produced industrial technologies, according to Wattchow (1999, 2001), may be a lost pedagogical opportunity. The ‘hidden work’ of modern technologies is something Wattchow (2001, p. 20) underlines, suggesting  If you take a walk through an industrial estate you will come across a lot of discarded wood, such as pallets, frames and other ‘junk’ left out on the nature strip. Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles and Siegel (2019) state that ‘as a nation, Australia is generating more commercial/industrial waste and construction/demolition waste, which are related to the tide of malconsumption’ (p. 214). 2

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if it is left unquestioned it may provide a hidden curriculum opposing some aims of OEE. He proposes the alternate process of crafting, which focuses on the technique and skill of making simple technology. However, rather than focus on the physical crafting or making process, I want to question what else remake activities can do? What is rendered possible when undertaking such a pedagogy? Ingold (2013) suggests that discussions grounded in the context of practical activity can prompt productive new insights. Thus, my initial suggestion is that remake activities can be a small challenge to wasteful, malconsumptive or less-than-mindful practices and help raise insightful discussions about commodities and consumption—a step away from the neoliberal machine or the ‘capitalist drive to buy, buy, buy’ (Hodgins, 2015, pp. 93–94). In other words, discussions during remake activities (as in Fig. 8.2) may encourage students to explore the trajectories of socio-material practices, consider habits of consumption and the value placed on things (Jørgensen et al., 2018). To use Haraway’s (2016) turn-of-­ phrase, remake activities could help students become response-able in their learning-­making for sustainability. By response-able, I mean that learning-making may develop capacities and capabilities to respond to our troubling and unsustainable times in small ways. Verlie and CCR15’s (2020) sentiments echo mine: ‘rather than conceptualizing learning as the absorption and reproduction of a reservoir of facts, relational [or new] materialists often prefer to focus on “response-ability”’ (p. 1270). For me, this practice comes in the form of remake activities that engage with materials and ponder the more-than-human histories and possible life of the timber being worked with. I employ a diffractive approach for considering more-­ than-­human histories, which I describe next and enact afterward.

8.3 Enacting New Materialisms: A Diffractive Approach Through my reading of new/neo materialist3 (NM) theories (for example Barad, 2007; Bennett, 2010; Braidotti, 2013, 2019; Coole & Frost, 2010), I have come to pay closer attention to materiality. During this attentiveness, I have come to see matter as storied (Iovino & Oppermann, 2014). For example, the materiality of a paddle  St. Pierre, Jackson and Mazzei (2016) explain the descriptor ‘new’:

3

Whether work is “new” is always a matter of debate, and scholars doing new empirical, new material work usually begin by addressing that issue and pointing out that the descriptor “new” does not necessarily announce something new but serves as an alert that we are determined to try to think differently. (p. 100) New/neo materialisms are a pluralism of various approaches/divergent ways of thinking that may be found alongside relational materialism (for example, Hultman & Lenz Taguchi, 2010), material feminisms (for example, Alaimo & Hekman, 2008), posthumanism (for example, Braidotti, 2013, 2019) and post-qualitative research (for example, St. Pierre, 2011). What they have in common is a desire to challenge or disrupt dominant modes of thinking, especially those generally taken for granted in Western thought.

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Fig. 8.2  Students working with their future paddles: an active response to the materials and an act towards sustainability—or, becoming response-able. (Photo by Scott Jukes)

has a story (a history)—what I consider as a more-than-human story (Jukes & Reeves, 2020). Which is to say that materials ‘are knots in a vast network of agencies, which can be “read” and interpreted as forming narratives, stories’ (Iovino & Oppermann, 2014, p. 1). And so, I am with Wattchow (1999) when he states: I cannot think of a paddle without thinking of timber. I cannot think about timber without thinking about trees and the lives of those people who turned those trees into timber. I cannot think about trees without thinking about forests and our indebtedness to them whenever wood is removed and worked into something else. (p. 27)

As with Brian, I cannot think about my paddle without considering its past, where it came from and the stories it holds: the ‘narrative of the organic material’ (Wattchow, 1999, p. 27). I don’t intend to explicate what NM theories are through a review of the literature (for examples, see Bodén et al., 2019; St. Pierre et al., 2016; Ulmer, 2017), however, I will offer a brief and partial introduction to some principles I employ in this methodology. Proponents of NM methodologies aim for creatively reimagining matter and its potential agencies whilst being against the inequitable performance of dualisms. NM methodologies, put simply, involve a (re)turn to matter and an acknowledgment of material agencies—where matter matters, alongside language, discourse and culture (Barad, 2007). Matter can even express a narrative agency (Oppermann, 2016).

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However, as Gough and Adsit-Morris (2020) highlight, a turn to materiality does not ignore or separate discursive figurations and the poststructural genealogy of NM methodologies. Which is to say, words and concepts still matter. And thus, I will attempt to show the performance and influence of matter through some NM concepts (ways of thinking) in my praxis, as this seems to be less prevalent in the emerging literature (Mannion, 2020). I use the term praxis in two senses. Firstly, NM theories/methodologies are performative and process-oriented; theorising is a practice, or theorypractice, with no divide between them (Pleasants & Stewart, 2019). Secondly, and poignantly for this chapter, my practices as an educator are performative and I look to think with and enact NM theories—hence, praxis. To perform this praxis, I deploy the concept diffraction as a NM method. Why diffraction? To explain, it is helpful to start with reflection as a visual, or optical, metaphor, then juxtapose it with diffraction (Barad, 2007). Reflection has long been used in discussions of knowledge production and methodology (and is particularly prominent in OEE discourse). For example, I could have students reflect upon their experiences paddle making. However, Barad (2007) states that reflection could be a ‘pervasive trope’ of mirroring sameness (p. 72), a ‘self-referential glance back at oneself’ (p. 88) whilst keeping ‘the world at a distance’ (p. 87). In short, it is representational and there are other ways of viewing. Alternatively, Barad (2007) offers a diffractive approach, which brings various ideas together, so they can be read differently and offer new insights. As a concept, diffraction is inspired by the physical phenomenon, which involves the bending and spreading of waves around an obstacle or through a gap (for an in-depth explanation, see Barad, 2007, pp.  71–94). Waves combine with one another causing patterns of interference, where, in effect, something new is produced. As a concept, I understand diffraction as a strategy for making a difference, a break from ‘self-reflection and its epistemological grounding’ which can pull researchers into reductionist ways of thinking (Bozalek & Zembylas, 2017, p. 111). Counter to reductionist modes of thinking, Barad encourages it as a figurative practice for knowledge production. Barad draws upon Haraway (1992) in the development of diffractive thinking, with the latter stating: Diffraction does not produce “the same” displaced, as reflection and refraction do. Diffraction is a mapping of interference, not of replication, reflection, or reproduction. A diffraction pattern does not map where differences appear, but rather maps where the effects of difference appear [original emphasis]. (p. 300)

As such, diffraction opens up possibilities of transformation and the effects of transformation—in other words, how transformations matter (Barad, 2007). Which is to say, diffraction is not just looking for a general change, but specific material entanglements, analysing consequences and the ‘effects of connection’ (Haraway, 1992, p. 295) where ‘details matter’ (Barad, 2007, p. 90). As a method, diffractively reading does not oppose ideas, but holds them together, illuminating the ‘exteriority within’ (Barad, 2008, p. 122). And so my praxis diffractively ‘reads’ the agentic materiality of a piece of timber, its related ecological history, while also adding in some further NM concepts. My aim, through this

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praxis, is to consider the timber of a paddle differently—to shift thinking and think ecologically (Adsit-Morris, 2017). Thus, I propose that paddle making praxis can be a performative task where something new is produced, both materially in the form of a paddle and conceptually in the thinking of students. In actuality, my students are part of the conversations and influence its direction. But for this chapter, I purposefully do not include the responses of students, as I aim to avoid placing students/humans as the sole ground for knowledge production, nor be outcomes-focused by proving student learning. Including student voice would also move beyond the scope and intention of this chapter, which is to offer some NM additions to the framing of paddle making as a remake activity which attends to more-than-human environmental histories and ecological issues.

8.3.1 Thinking Through Making Thinking posthumanly, things … come alive and tell stories if we know how to listen. (Mcphie, 2018, p. 309)

The label of NM in education often crosses with post qualitative inquiry (PQI) (for example, St. Pierre, 2011; Weaver & Snaza, 2017). PQI contrasts with conventional humanistic qualitative inquiries with a mission to produce alternative modes of thought via different knowledge production practices. St. Pierre (2018) explains ‘the experimentation required in post qualitative inquiry cannot be accomplished within the methodological enclosure. This experimental work is risky, creative, surprising, and remarkable,’ adding ‘there is no recipe, no process’ (p. 604). I cannot say my work is remarkable or without a process. Nevertheless, I experiment with alternate methods which entangle research and education, aiming to reconceptualise matter in my educational context. I do not draw from traditional data sources; instead, I draw upon my timber paddle, its life, my memories whilst making it and various literature that helps diffract ways of understanding materials: ‘inanimate objects like computers, desks, pencils, books, or rocks can also be made into “data”’ (Weaver & Snaza, 2017, p. 1061). Not including traditional data that is usually expected in research is a risk. Yet I’m encouraged by Weaver and Snaza (2017), who point to some of the empirical aspects I do attune to: If research—in education or any other field—is going to be up to the task of mattering in the more-than-human world in which we live, it has to embrace such risks... the risk of attuning ourselves to the bodies, encounters, networks, and affects that have always already made the world what it is, but which have been disavowed and ignored by humanist, anthropocentric, methodocentric science. (Weaver & Snaza, 2017, p. 1058)

In addition, Springgay and Truman (2018) call for a ‘shift from thinking about methods as processes of gathering data toward methods as a becoming entangled in relations’ (p. 204). My praxis entangles with the timber of my paddle, its ecological history and the more-than-human bodies that relate with it.

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A paddle, as it is being made into paddle form, is within a process of becoming (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; Ingold, 2013). As Ingold (2013) states, ‘whatever the objective forms in which they are currently cast, materials are always and already on their ways to becoming something else—always, as Barad puts it, “already an ongoing historicity” (Barad 2003: 821)’ (p. 31). Ingold (2013) further explains that the crafter ‘thinks through making’ (p.  6), through engagement with materials, where knowledge grows through practice and the ‘art of inquiry’ (p. 6). The art of inquiry involves considering the ‘fluxes and flows of the materials’ with which a crafter works, ‘following where it leads’ (pp.  6–7). This opens some correspondence with the material, one where the maker is a participant and material pushes back and, in a sense, guides the maker. When I made my first paddle, I was led by the materials and have inquired into its life, its line of becoming. Now, when I make paddles with students I share the story of my timber paddle—including the diffractive interferences that overlap and pattern the timber—which opens how they might consider materials, including their paddles. It is a version of this narrative that I offer below. The story emerges during the act of making, stems from matter and is patterned by material relations, travelling beyond the making of the paddle along the timbers line of becoming. As Deleuze and Guattari (1987) might word it, I ‘follow the matterflow’ (p. 479). This opens connections between the timber and the life of a tree, along with various consequences and affected others, diffractions I consider pedagogic in the context of remake activities and OEE. What I am not doing is explaining how to make a paddle or describing the specific processes of students making paddles. Instead, I show how one might follow the matter-flow as a NM pedagogical possibility.

8.4 Diffraction Patterns: Narrating a Material Metamorphosis Matter is a powerful, mindfully bodied word, the matrix and generatrix of things … It doesn’t take much digging or swimming to get to matter as source, ground, flux, reason, and consequential stuff—the matter of the thing, the generatrix that is simultaneously fluid and solid, mathematical and fleshy—and by that etymological route to one tone of matter as timber, as hard inner wood (in Portuguese, madeira). Matter as timber… [original emphasis] (Haraway, 2016, p. 120)

When I introduce paddle making activities with my students, I start by laying my paddle on the floor, with the excess pieces around it (as in Fig. 8.3) and share the story of my paddle. I confess to them part of the story is unknowable, but I like to speculate, contemplating and posing questions along the way. In some respects, this narrative is a fiction. Gough (2015) enlightens the idea of ‘fiction’, disrupting how I previously understood fiction as a narrative. He suggests we tend to consider fact as truth and fiction as something made up, a lie. Whereas:

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Fig. 8.3  A paddle emerging from scrap timber. (Photo by Scott Jukes) A fiction, from the Latin fictio, is something fashioned by a human agent. ‘Fact’ also refers to human action: a fact is the thing done, ‘that which actually happened’, the Latin factum being the neuter past participle of facere, do. Thus, both fact and fiction refer to human experience, but ‘fiction’ is an active form—the act of fashioning—whereas ‘fact’ descends from a past participle, which disguises the generative act. (Gough, 2015, p. 237)

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I cannot argue that fiction in this sense is not real. However, I do not think the fiction, the narrative of the canoe paddle, is exclusively fashioned by me the human agent—there are so many other agents that influence the story, metamorphosing the piece of timber and diffractively patterning it. Fabricating the story is not an autopoiesis (self-making) but a sympoiesis (making-with) (Haraway, 2016, pp. 58–61). What has fashioned—made, created, produced, moulded (pick your adjective)4— the paddle and the narrative is the multiple others I am about to introduce.

8.4.1 A Door Frame I found the piece of timber in Fig. 8.4 in a friend’s backyard. I thought it was junk; rubbish that was rotting and going to waste. My friend used the timber as a plank when painting his house. When I took the wood and started working with it, paying attention to its physicality, I could see a few paint splatters and the marks of hinges. The painting plank had a past life as a door frame. The wood was lying in a backyard in Victoria (Australia), behind an old cottage, and this is where my thoughts start diffracting. The piece of timber was palimpsestic: marked and battered, showing part of its history, whilst I scraped it clean (with a plane and spokeshave) to remake it into something else. I considered the real possibility of this door frame being in that cottage for many decades. The house was over a 100 years old. Could the timber be over a 100 years old? What would it have seen (if it could see)? Who put it there? What was the history of the timber? I sensed the tree becoming inorganically alive (Mcphie, 2018).

8.4.2 A Tree As I considered the timber whilst working on the paddle those years ago, my thoughts were further influenced by its materiality. The plank, once I uncovered more layers with my father’s old hand plane, looked like ash. Quite likely mountain ash in my part of the world. This type of south-eastern Australian hardwood is tall, straight and grows on the sides of higher hills along the Great Dividing Range. I don’t worry if I am 100% accurate on identifying the wood or its exact source location, as my mind has already run away with the possibilities. My thoughts are taken elsewhere, stretching to the places I often see mountain ash and alpine ash.

 Maybe it is amiss of me to refer to the paddle in past participle. To do so is against new materialist tendencies and the process-oriented ontologies of those such as Deleuze and Guattari (1987, 1994) that influence my thinking. The paddle, the piece of timber, is still in the process of fashioning, creating, moulding in various ways. Admittedly, I recently felt a crack in the shaft and am currently adding a strip of river red gum to strengthen it. 4

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Fig. 8.4  A rotting plank of wood… or something more? (Photo by Scott Jukes)

I regularly see them looming over the road as I drive through the Black Spur, I ski under them at Mount Stirling and I feel their shade in the Yarra Ranges as I walk amongst them in summer. That’s where my thoughts went, with this old plank. I’m reminded of Brian’s article and my thoughts are influenced by his (Wattchow, 1999). He briefly pondered the source of his timber paddle before focusing on the

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paddle as technology. I want to dwell a while with my timber as a tree: ‘it will unlock its story to the attentive’ (Wattchow, 1999, p. 27). I opened up Costermans’ (1994, p. 98) Trees of Victoria and Adjoining Areas; mountain ash is a pale brown wood, straight-grained, fairly hard and strong. Ingold (2011) explains that ‘the properties of materials … are not attributes but histories’ (p. 32), where ‘every property is a condensed story’ (p. 30). Costermans also states it is ‘valued for construction, veneer packing, pulp and paper, etc.’ (p.  98)—a hint towards some of the timbers history. Eucalyptus regnans is its botanical name, which ‘means “ruling” or “reigning”: a scientific title that echoes its popular image as a forest monarch’ (Griffiths, 2001, p. 16). The hardwood is the tallest flowering plant in the world, having productively adapted to many disturbances in finding its niche (Griffiths, 2001). For example, mountain ash has a paradoxical relationship with fire; they are easily killed by fire, yet require it to release seeds and promote regeneration of forests (Griffiths, 2001). As a result, regrowth forests must produce viable seeds before another fire or the whole forest may be wiped out. To combat this, mountain ash grows quickly in the first 20 years of their life, reaching heights over 40 meters and producing viable seed in that time. They continue to grow well over 50 meters and thrive in conditions of ‘very occasional widespread but intense conflagrations’ (Griffiths, 2001, p. 23). I remember being dwarfed by the Ada Tree in the Yarra Ranges, an >80 m giant that has a girth of roughly 15 m and is estimated to be over 300 years old. Early European settlers claimed that some old trees ranged from 90 to well over 100 m (Griffiths, 2001, pp. 16–17). Statements of height were grand with reliable measurement only coming from felled trees. Unfortunately, there aren’t many mountain ash left at heights above the Ada Tree, as so many were felled (and continue to be felled) for their value as a commodity. Griffiths states that only approximately half of mountain ash forest remains, with most of this regrowth forest. The rest has been lost to felling, farming or fire. My paddle was a tree, felled in a forest, sold and used as a door frame. Maybe its origins are in the hills near the Ada tree? My thoughts bounced back to the cottage—it’s amazing how our human brains fire synapses, making connections, allowing us to visualize any manner of things. Actually, on the topic of things, Ingold (2011) states that ‘things are their relations [original emphasis]’ (p. 70). The piece of timber, in its various forms and transformations, is forged via material relationships. So, in the cottage the tree stood, as a door frame, for decades, reliably serving its (anthropocentric) purpose. To become the timber that stands reliably as a door frame for many decades, the tree must have also grown for many decades. My mind bounces back to the Yarra Ranges, the Central Highlands, and the life of trees. I could speculate that the tree—this metamorphosing door frame-plank-paddle—would have lived in the hills for 80 years, possibly more. Mountain ash trees grow at altitudes between 200 and 1100 m’s in places where annual rainfall is greater than 1000  mm (Costermans, 1994). Such stands of trees are typically within large valleys in moist soils. These are the lines of thought I traced when I worked on my paddle and the diffractions I share in my discussions with students.

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8.4.3 A Life I am inspired by Ingold (2010) to explore some varying perspectives on timber. ‘Objects’, things that are acted upon, are often made from timber. The desk I currently write from is made from timber. The act of my writing this chapter is allowed by the object, my desk. I also have a note pad next to me, a few pencils and plenty of books. Some of the citations for this chapter come from books on my shelf. These objects, derived from trees, might seem static. They don’t go anywhere or do anything unless I act upon them. The timber paddle, currently sitting in my garage, might also be considered a static object, a finished product that doesn’t do anything unless acted upon by a human such as myself. Conversely, there are many other ways we can conceptualise timber. For example, what if we go wandering through some bushland: Is the tree, then, an object? If so, how should we define it? What is tree and what is not-tree? Where does the tree end and the rest of the world begin? These questions are not easily answered—not as easily, at least, as they apparently are for the items of furniture in my study. Is the bark, for example, part of the tree? If I break off a piece in my hand and observe it closely, I will doubtless find that it is inhabited by a great many tiny creatures that have burrowed beneath it and made their homes there. Are they part of the tree? And what of the algae that grow on the outer surfaces of the trunk or the lichens that hang from the branches? Moreover, if we have decided that bark-boring insects belong as much to the tree as does the bark itself, then there seems no particular reason to exclude its other inhabitants… (Ingold, 2010, p. 4)

This is a lengthy quote, but a valuable one for offering insight into Ingold’s line of thinking. The thought experiment continues by describing all the other possible creatures living in the tree along with the dynamic movement of the tree in response to the wind. Rather than focus on a tree as a statically defined object, Ingold would rather think differently and contend that a tree is its relations made by continuous flows of materials. In other words, organisms such as trees are constituted within relational fields (Ingold, 2011). To take mountain ash as an example, they are that tree only because of particular soils, terrain, rainfall, elevation, bark, bushfires, lichen, insects and so on. I could even argue the latitude and events such as Gondwanan continental history are more material relationships which make mountain ash (or make it possible for people to identify them as that particular eco-socio-­ cultural construction of a tree). Ingold (2010) surmises that ‘the tree is not an object at all, but a certain gathering together of the threads of life’ (p. 4), and that ‘life is open-ended: its impulse is not to reach a terminus but to keep on going’ (p. 10). To consider the timber of my paddle as a tree (and a tree as it’s relations) begins to diffract its life into multiple other threads of life and ongoing processes. Even though the tree is no longer in the ground growing, it is still caught up within multiple threads of life and existence, and we do not have to conceive its timber as a static and passive entity. We may begin to ‘appreciate how lively even “dead matter” can be’ (Barad, 2007, p. 419).

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8.4.4 A Home To further ruminate with the timber paddle, I am beginning to see that as a tree it was once a home to different organisms—a gathering of life. It is likely that the tree was home to native fauna, such as the leadbeater’s possum (the state of Victoria’s faunal emblem). These cute critters are endemic to Victoria and are critically endangered. The habitat and populations of leadbeater’s possum is under threat from logging and bushfires (Lindenmayer et al., 2013). The fate of mountain ash forests and leadbeater’s possum are an afterthought to the human need for timber and a highly contested topic. Lindenmayer and Possingham (2013) scathingly state ‘in the past, most losses of species have been the result of ignorance or an unfortunate catastrophic event. We now see a government in a developed nation taking calculated actions to drive an endangered species to extinction’ (p. 680). They are referring to the leadbeater’s possum and government allowing clearfell logging in their known habitat (although, as I review the proofs of this book, the Victorian government has just announced that native forest logging will end as of 2024)—environmental destruction is a political affair. As Lindenmayer and Laurance (2012) explain, ‘logging can affect key biodiversity, carbon and ecosystem-process values at a range of spatial and temporal scales’ (pp. 14–15). Logging, conducted at unsustainable levels, is environmental hubris (Lindenmayer & Laurance, 2012). What mountain ash forests offer, other than timber and pulpwood, is particularly valuable to the planet. For example, mountain ash forests are the most carbon dense in the world (Keith et al., 2009, as quoted in Burns et al., 2015). Yet, as Burns et al. (2014) explain: The mountain ash forest is being damaged by the practice of clearfell harvesting, in which 60% of the total biomass remains on the site as waste slash which is burnt, and 40% is used as wood products. From these wood products, 72% is used to make paper. This is despite the fact that wood chips to make paper can be sourced from existing plantations. (para. 10)

If this is not shocking enough, Burns et al. (2014) conduct modelling which suggests that if a business-as-usual approach to management of these forests continues, there is a 97% chance of ‘ecosystem collapse’ by 2067 (also see Burns et al., 2015). Even if all logging stopped and there were no bushfires, there is still a 92% chance of ecosystem collapse (Burns et al., 2014, 2015). This is not just death, but double death (Rose, n.d.). Which is when: So many losses occur that damaged ecosystems are unable to recuperate their diversity. The death of resilience and renewal, at least for a while. … The unmaking of country, unravelling the work of generation upon generation of living beings; cascades of death that curtail the future and unmake the living presence of the past. The death of temporal, fleshy, metabolic relationships across generations and species. (para. 4–6)

Human extraction and alteration of the landscape is leading to something bleak indeed.

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Concerns over water catchments in the area have also been raised by Lindenmayer and Taylor (2019) due to logging practices. Their research explains that logging is occurring on slopes steeper than codes of practice allow, which leads to soil damage compromising water supply. Old growth mountain ash forests yield more water than logged regrowth catchments (Burns et al., 2014) and continued logging has impacts on our river systems in our dry continent. About 90% of Melbourne’s water supply comes from the mountains of ash forests (Griffiths, 2001). Noting these threads fosters some attention to often unseen and unheard beings, places and practices of anthropocentric utility. These threads of life are impacted and disturbed by human consumption and society’s needs for timber and paper. These practices also raise tension with the human need for water supplies. Issues such as this are indicative of our times, which are fuelled by current economic structures and political decision making. I could continue along these lines; however, I have moved quite a distance from making a paddle out of junk wood. Yet conversations about such topics easily branch out in divergent ways that create new connections, and this is partly the point of following the matter-flow into emergent topics. The paddle I attempt to make has become a plank, a door frame, a tree, a life and a home for other life, through a diffractive thought experiment. The narrative has mapped some diffraction patterns and looked at the effects of the metamorphoses. I have been exploring these connections because, within the conditions these connections provide, new possibilities for learning through remake activities can arise (it’s not just about making a paddle). Like I noted earlier, drawing upon Hofverberg (2020) and Jørgensen et al. (2018), remake activities can look into the source of the materials used and enter into conversations on the temporal aspects of sustainability. Drawing upon Ingold (2013), this is a form of correspondence—a line of correspondence, if you will—that delves further than a singular physical interaction and involves thinking through observations made whilst making. Starting with the timber and considering its life has opened new possibilities for thought during the making of a paddle.

8.5 Praxis as a Line of Flight I have tracked a history of the timber to out-of-the-way places, encountering different ‘things’ along the way (Haraway, 2016). To quote Mcphie (2018): ‘to be honest, I did not have much of a choice in the matter… the inquiry took me for a walk’ (p. 315). I agree with Clarke (2019) who states ‘adventures in thought can be powerful learning experiences’ (p.  255). Making my paddle has led to thinking about timber which leads to trees and on to forests which lead to the critters that reside in them: ‘a forest is not just any forest, but a unique community of trees’ (Griffiths, 2001, p. 9). These forests (real places) are part of a water catchment that feeds some of the rivers I canoe along with my paddle and students (such as Birrarung [the Yarra River] and also Gaiyila [the Lower Goulburn River]). The logging of these forests impacts the water

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flow into these rivers. Where my thoughts wander is taken by the timber and its more-than-human histories—a material-semiotic line of flight (Gough & AdsitMorris, 2020). As Haraway (2016) states ‘nothing is connected to everything; everything is connected to something’ (p. 31) and what connections I follow matters. For me, remake activities are a way to open conversations about these matters. Making a paddle prompts discourse. The wood gives me something to think with and I share these stories, these thoughts, with students as I frame the activity and we work away crafting paddles; it’s about ‘training the mind and imagination to go visiting, venture off the beaten path’ (Haraway, 2016, p. 130). I encourage my students to ponder questions as they make a paddle: where did your piece of wood come from? What was its life before taking it into your possession? What of the places the tree may have come from? From my observation, making paddles captivates students’ attention and imagination—the paddles act back on them as they craft them. They come alive as their paddles come alive, and their thoughts diverge as they work the wood. Although, admittedly, not all paddles get completed. Was my paddle, the one that often propels me downstream, always there inside the tree? A part of me likes to think so. However, in actuality, it emerged through events, encounters and diffractions that felled, sawed and whittled the tree allowing the paddle to materialise. I think of all those encounters as intra-actions (Barad, 2007)—not separate interactions, but co-productive and mutually constitutive—in metamorphosing the tree into a paddle. Unfortunately, as I have discussed above, the becoming of the paddle, through its various forms, leaves a ghost in the place the tree used to dwell—a site of double death and an example of ‘where the effects of differences appear’ (Haraway, 1992, p. 300). This is another angle of mutual constitution. The felling of the tree may lead to a door frame and paddle, but also leaves a marked effect on the life of beings in the forest the tree was felled.

8.6 Ongoing Narratives I don’t always tell the account of the paddle the same and the story doesn’t have to stop there. The story is a conversation that can pause, get picked up later or altered according to student engagement. I encourage students to start their own narratives with their piece of wood and share them whilst we craft them or later on the river. I tend to imagine these figurations through Le Guin’s (1989) carrier bag theory, something I came to via Haraway (2016). Le Guin’s theory for storytelling aims to challenge dominant linear (spear-like) narratives of conquest and instead hold things together in relation (bag-like). If a story is more like a bag containing things, the story looks different: ‘it’s clear that the Hero [Man] doesn’t look well in this bag. He needs a stage or a pedestal or a pinnacle. You put him in a bag and he looks like a rabbit, like a potato’ (Le Guin, 1989, p. 153). I see this approach as a diffractive pedagogy, trying to pattern the story differently, looking at the effects of particular actions and emergent relationships.

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Adsit-Morris (2017) also uses the carrier bag theory (other-wise known as the bag-lady practice of story-telling), explaining it so: Viewing narratives in a more ecological way, as a collection of stories of life, of everyday beings and doings. Gathering requires a different logic, an attunement and attentiveness to processes and practices of ongoingness (not simply endings), a shift in focus from the hero to all the “Others” in the story. (p. 45)

Adsit-Morris (2017) has taken this approach ‘transmogrifying it into a new materialist research methodology’ (p. 46), and it offers me guidance. Such narratives that strive for ongoingness are a helpful alternative in our strange and precarious times. These stories pick things up along the way and gathers them into contemplation. I am also inspired by Haraway (2016) in crafting the story of the paddle, trying to tie and hold together relations; webbed and braided stories, grasping for something other than ‘bounded utilitarian individualism’ (p. 49). Making paddles has prompted me to think-with the timber, the tree, the forest, the catchment, the water, the leadbeater’s possum—the many actants all caught up. In effect, this has been an attempt at thinking differently and sharing that thinking. For me, thinking differently is a precursor for acting differently and being different—something needed for a future beyond unsustainable cycles of production and consumption (because, frankly, recycling isn’t enough). To think differently through remake activities moves them from an act of recycling to something with more open and generative educational potential that might disrupt some habits that lead to excessive resource extraction.

8.7 Remaking Pedagogy: Opening Thought As Monforte (2018) explains, ‘thinking differently is partly a matter of finding a place of freedom’ (p.  385). I acknowledge I have granted myself some narrative (and conceptual) freedom and diverged from conventional approaches to research inquiry. What I have attempted to do, and what I attempt to do with my students, is follow ‘some threads of life’ (Ingold, 2010, p. 4). To further borrow Ingold’s (2013) words, sharing the history of my paddle ‘is not to explicate the world, to provide the information that would amount to a complete specification, obviating the need for would-be practitioners to inquire for themselves. It is rather to trace a path that others can follow’ (p. 110). Importantly, as Deleuze and Guattari (1987) write, ‘following is not at all the same as reproducing’ (p. 433). And thus, a general proposition I encourage for remake activities is to follow the material to where it leads (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987)—both in the making process and conceptualisation of the history of the material. Such a proposition is a resource ‘for action, but does not determine it’ (Ingold, 2013, p. 54). I don’t intend for my students to reproduce the same paddle as me or tell the same story of their paddle as me or even think of waste or remake activities as I do. What I do intend is to open correspondence between myself, students, materials and the broader world. In this chapter, I have attempted to diffract how we engage with matter by making connections between the ‘thing’ and the forces of the world that produce it and

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the scars that are sometimes left in the landscape due to our modern ways of life. If such relations are to be attended to in pedagogy, it may remove separations and objectifications between environments and human action. This includes the political and ethical aspects of environmental problems humans are entangled with. Damaged environments and critically endangered species may act upon us people, affecting us and (hopefully) urging us to respond in the ways that we can: ‘not because we are transcendent super-humans that can save the world, but because we are of the world [original emphasis]’ (Hodgins, 2015, p. 96). As Braidotti (2019) contends, ‘we need relational and affective accounts of ways of being human. We need specific contextual solutions to global problems’ (p. 72): this chapter and my praxis is an attempt at responding. The response begins by learning of some of the issues and continues through little acts like a remake activity and trying to think differently. My hope with such a practice is for students to feel empowered and become response-able, by remaking something (Fig. 8.5) that was cast away and taking a moment to respect the possible life of things.

Fig. 8.5  A collection of storied matter in the form of student paddles. (Photos (and paddles) compliments of river environments students)

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8.8 Transitioning into the Next Chapter Above I explored a more-than-human history of a piece of timber by following the matter-flow. I could just as easily say I was thinking of the matter’s duration and its ecological history. The next chapter picks up some of these ideas and takes them into a different context. Rather than working on our paddles, the next chapter takes us more directly to the river. You will see a setting where I journey with students via canoe, using this technology as a way to engage with the river environment. We follow different matter-flows in the river environment to see what emerges, with the chapters focus on the role of non-digital technology in shaping some of what is possible. Again, it is not a focus on the technology or the activity that is the pedagogical aim, but what affordances these things offer in creating unique pedagogical approaches for learning to confront ecological precarity.

References Adsit-Morris, C. (2017). Restorying environmental education: Figurations, fictions, and feral subjectivities. Springer Nature. Alaimo, S., & Hekman, S. (2008). Material feminisms. Indiana University Press. Barad, K. (2003). Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Signs. Journal of women in culture and society, 28(3), 801–831. Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press. Barad, K. (2008). Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. In S. Alaimo, & Hekman, Susan (Ed.), Material Feminisms (pp. 135–169). Indiana University Press. Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant matter: A political ecology of things. Duke University Press. Bodén, L., Lenz Taguchi, H., Moberg, E., & Taylor, C.  A. (2019). Relational materialism. In G.  Noblit (Ed.), Oxford research encyclopedia of education (July 2019 ed.). Oxford University Press. Bozalek, V., & Zembylas, M. (2017). Diffraction or reflection? Sketching the contours of two methodologies in educational research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 30(2), 111–127. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2016.1201166 Braidotti, R. (2013). The posthuman. Polity Press. Braidotti, R. (2019). Posthuman knowledge. Polity Press. Burns, E., Lindenmayer, D., & Keith, H. (2014). A job for Victoria’s next leaders: Save the central highlands. The Conversation: Academic rigour, journalistic flair. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/a-­job-­for-­victorias-­next-­leaders-­save-­the-­central-­highlands-­34608 Burns, E.  L., Lindenmayer, D.  B., Stein, J., Blanchard, W., McBurney, L., Blair, D., & Banks, S. C. (2015). Ecosystem assessment of mountain ash forest in the Central Highlands of Victoria, South-Eastern Australia. Austral Ecology, 40(4), 386–399. https://doi.org/10.1111/aec.12200 Clarke, D. A. G. (2019). Practising immanence: (Still) becoming an environmental education academic (Doctor of philosophy). University of Edinburgh. Coole, D., & Frost, S. (2010). Introducing the new materialisms. In D. Coole & S. Frost (Eds.), New materialisms: Ontology, agency, and politics (pp. 1–43). Duke University Press. Costermans, L. (1994). Trees of Victoria and adjoining areas (5th ed.). Costermans Publishing.

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Chapter 9

Environmental Learning Through Relations: The Mediating Influence of Technology and Movement Scott Jukes, Alistair Stewart, and Marcus Morse

Abstract  This chapter examines some unexamined assumptions involving both technology and movement for outdoor learners. Co-authored with Alistair Stewart and Marcus Morse, we explore ways of learning landscapes through non-digital technology and movement within a tertiary education context involving canoe journeys in south-eastern Australia. We examine the ways that both non-digital technology and movement come together to help shape orientations through situated examples from OEE fieldwork. Our investigations utilise posthumanist and process-­relational theories for exploring onto-epistemological dimensions of outdoor learning. We bring such theory into conversation with photos, videos and student essays to analyse our OEE fieldwork contexts. In this way we highlight that types of technology (such as a canoe) and movement cannot be taken for granted; rather, they help constitute the ways we come to know places, whilst also acknowledging some of the cultural and conceptual orientations that also influence learning. This chapter offers alternative insights for learning landscapes and the mediating influence of technologies.

9.1 Framing: Technology and the Posthuman In humanisms, boundaries are described between human and animal, or human and plant life, or human and inert technology, in order to preserve the special status of humanity. Process ontologies discard these boundaries and emphasise the shared events that make for human–animal and human–technology assemblages. (Williams, 2018, p. 372)

S. Jukes (*) Federation University, Berwick, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] A. Stewart Independent Researcher, Bendigo, VIC, Australia M. Morse University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS, Australia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Jukes, Learning to Confront Ecological Precarity, International Explorations in Outdoor and Environmental Education 13, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34200-4_9

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We are currently living in a time marked by extinction, loss and environmental precarity. We are also living in a time of rapidly accelerating advanced capitalism and climate change. For many, technology and technological intervention is implicated in current ecological predicaments (for example, Bridle, 2022). As Braidotti (2019) states, ‘at the core of our predicament – but not its sole cause – is the unprecedented degree of technological intervention we have reached, and the intimacy we have developed with technological devices’ (p.  3). Technology intervenes and mediates much of our lives. Technological advancement is occurring at such a pace that humans are hyper-consuming technology and resources at unsustainable rates, while simultaneously transforming our ways of being human. Braidotti (2013, 2019), among others, asserts that we are becoming posthumans, referring to our technologically embedded and rapidly transforming lives as the posthuman condition. As Braidotti (2019) notes, ‘the posthuman condition implies that “we”—the human and non-human inhabitants of this particular planet – are concurrently positioned between the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Sixth Extinction’ (p. 2). However, as alluded to in the epigraph to this chapter, conventional western thought (such as humanism) often separates and categorises humans apart from other animals, landscapes and technologies. As we have argued elsewhere (see Jukes et al., 2022a), bounded individualism and human exceptionalism create problematic boundaries, including conceptual separations between humans and landscapes. This can influence human domination over these landscapes and their more-than-human inhabitants, perpetuating anthropocentric ways of thinking. Haraway (2016) asserts that bounded individualism and human exceptionalism are notions that are problematic in our shared world, and are ideas we should think beyond if we are to stay with the trouble of confronting ecological precarity. For us authors, posthumanism (and related new materialisms) offer possibilities for thinking beyond bounded individualism and human exceptionalism. Hill (2021) supports this stance, stating that: The pertinent turn towards post-humanism enables critique of humanist or anthropocentric ways of thinking and being. Post-humanism reconsiders human subjectivity, ethics, norms and values, through lenses which account for the more-than-human world, something that is so pressing given the many complex ecological issues facing the world we live in. (p. 240)

Such movements in thought are building in outdoor environmental education (OEE), with Gough (2016) highlighting some opportunities for research, and others such as Mannion (2020), Riley (2020, 2021) and Hill (2021) engaging with pedagogical implications these theoretical positionings offer. As an initial framing, this chapter aims to confront the problem of sedimented dichotomous boundaries between humans and the rest of the world. Admittedly, we confront this problem in a small way, within and through OEE practice. We do this by engaging with posthumanist theorisation and process ontologies as orientations that enable us to blur some boundaries between humans and the rest of the world (such as the boundaries created by human-nature and human-technology tropes). Technology becomes a key focus, then, with posthumanist theorising allowing us to consider ways in which non-digital technology shapes worlds, enhances biophysical capacities and connects people with/in the world in ways that might not otherwise be possible (Braidotti, 2019). We enact such possibilities through OEE settings, drawing upon a range of (post)qualitative empirical materials, which we will introduce shortly.

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9.1.1 Technology and OEE In OEE, the role of technologies is a topic that is increasingly being discussed (e.g., Cuthbertson et al., 2004; Hills & Thomas, 2020, 2021; Wattchow, 2001). Recent discussions have focused on the role of digital technologies in outdoor settings, however, there has been minimal focus on the technologies used to travel with/by in outdoor journeying practice. Thus a question that prompts our inquiry is: how do (some non-digital) technologies enable ways of engaging with the world? And furthermore, how does technology influence how we move through and learn with/in landscapes? Our main technological focus for this chapter is on the canoe/canoeing, however, a few other related technologies also enter our discussions. In undertaking such an investigation, we are conscious of arguments from the likes of Hill (2021), Stewart (2004, 2020) and Lugg (2004) that critique a focus on activities themselves within outdoor learning. These authors, part of the broader place-responsive and environmental turn in OEE, argue for pedagogies that orientate learners toward places/environments/communities. Contributing to this discourse, our investigation explores the way technology opens particular ways of engaging with landscapes. Such an intention aims to eschew technology/not technology binaries and instead focus on practices of engaging with places through technology and movement. Understanding the etymological roots of the word technology provides us with some guidance. The word technology, according to Ingold (2016), ‘was formed on the stem of the classical Greek tekhne, whose original connotation was human skill or craftsmanship’ (p. 130). There was a bodily root in the early understandings of the word that tied technologies to humans and their capacities, which also had similar connotations to the word art. Tekhne, or techne, implied the manner or way in which a thing was gained—technology, then, assumes technique. In this sense, technology involves a way of doing something, rather than a thing alone. Henderson (2003) writes that ‘once, a technology was a practice. It was a human affair steeped in traditions and the social fabric of living’ (p. 14). As educators in Australia, the Canadian technology of the canoe is part of a practice of canoeing, a way in which we gain access to and participate with places. A more contemporary image of technology might likely be something fuel powered or digital, such as a smartphone, artificial intelligence, robotics, or nanotechnologies, although it is also important to remember that walking boots, a canoe, a bike, a pair of skis, or even a drink bottle are all forms of technology. For this chapter, we see technology spanning beyond contemporary visions of electronic devices, encompassing all manner of instruments used in practice. As Cuthbertson et al. (2004) suggested, technology may be either traditional or modern, with technology acting as a filter for how we engage with outdoor environments. Furthermore, to add to this, our image of technology involves ways of doing something, as technologies shape how we may go about our practice. By

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envisioning technology in this way, we embrace a posthumanist ontology, that negates an artificial separateness between humans and the rest of the world—instead there are relations and processes, where the human is irreducibly entangled and coevolving with technology (Hoel, 2018). Which is to say that technologies influence the way humans engage with/in the world—they change what a body can do—even in ‘low tech’ outdoor education settings.

9.1.2 Movement, Process-Relational Ontology and OEE Entangled in this investigation is movement. Firstly, in a process-relational ontology, the world is in constant movement/flux (for some alternative discussions on this see Jukes et al., 2022b). So for us, one underlying assumption involving movement is that everything is in a process of change (becoming). Simply put, humans do not dance around on a static stage. Rather, humans are in constant relational negotiation with an animate world—there are always multiple actors in any event, where a mutual affecting occurs (Riley, 2021). However, a second consideration (and the primary focus for this chapter) is the movement of bodies in OEE (e.g., a person with canoe). A person paddling a canoe in a river environment is an example of movement and correspondence with/in the world (or drawing upon Haraway (2008, 2016), a way of becoming-with the world). The technology of the canoe mediates the canoers engagement with/in the river environment, just as the river mediates the canoer in a dance of mutual constitution. From a posthumanist position, a subject is not presupposed in this relating. Technology considered as a practice, enables modes of movement, modes of constituting a subject, along with modes of engaging with the world. We feel technologies (such as the canoe/canoeing and other similar technologies) and the role they play in enabling certain modes of movement are often potentially taken for granted—almost so fundamental as to be overlooked—and investigation of onto-epistemological aspects of practice can offer new insights for outdoor environmental educators. Thus, throughout this chapter, we explore ways that technology and movement are relational, and how this dynamic plays a part in orienting participants towards landscapes.

9.2 Empirical Context of the Chapter The empirical aspects of this chapter are geographically situated in south-eastern Australia, involving canoeing journeys with tertiary OEE students. As with Chap. 7, this chapter has been coauthored with Alistair Stewart and Marcus Morse. As authors/researchers, it is important to note that we were also lecturers overseeing

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the fieldwork drawn upon in later discussions. As educators and researchers in this chapter, we take a situated approach to knowledge production (Haraway, 1988), noting that OEE is always performed in ‘particular geographic, social and cultural contexts’ (Brookes, 2002, p. 405). Thus, we acknowledge our view is always partial as we are situated within specific conditions. Which is to say, our inquiry does not aim to offer any universal viewpoint or finding, as it is impossible to extrapolate such things from our particular (and ever changing) context.

9.3 Methodological Processes To guide the rest of this chapter, we frame some methodological considerations for the way we have structured this inquiry. We start with St. Pierre (2008), who questions conventional approaches to qualitative inquiry that are steeped with positivist undertones: In my research I have not studied participants; rather, I have investigated a topic… And I have used comments from everyone I could find, from published researchers and theorists, from participants, from colleagues, from characters in film and fiction, from anyone and everyone to help me think hard about that topic. Thus, I believe all those comments are data—Foucault’s words are data just as much as the “voices of participants”—and should be treated as such. I also believe we should seriously rethink the organization of the conventional qualitative research report because it artificially isolates those data in different sections and thus contributes to weak analyses—too many voices, too little analysis. (St. Pierre, 2008, p. 331)

St. Pierre (2008) informs our decisions to rethink conventional aspects of research. Like St. Pierre, we research a topic—the role of technology and movement in learning landscapes in our OEE practice. Encouraged by St. Pierre, we reconsider some of the conventional notions of data (for other instances, see Jukes & Reeves, 2020; Jukes, 2020, 2021; Jukes et al., 2022a). Firstly, we prefer the term empirical materials, rather than data, following the encouragement of Denzin (2013). The empirical materials are not brute facts, data to be coded or generalised, and there is no universal or essential truth in the data. Instead, our empirical materials help our discussions—analysis of these materials offer some different ways to consider OEE contexts and practices. As Denzin (2013) writes, ‘meanings are always in motion, incomplete, partial [and] contradictory’ (p. 354). It is in this sense that our empirical materials help us articulate realities and possibilities specific to the focus of inquiry. Secondly, we draw upon photos, video, student essays and theory as our empirical materials. These materials, or at least the way we present them, are partly influenced by Lynch and Mannion’s (2016) vignettes of walking interviews with educators. The difference with our vignettes is that they are selections of videos, photographs and student essays that evoke shared events from river journeys with undergraduate OEE students. We explore these vignettes alongside, and with,

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literature that provides us with theoretical ideas and posthumanist concepts to broaden the scope of our inquiry. In other words, theory, concepts and literature do not sit in separate sections but are blended with our empirical materials. In this sense the results do not just live in a results section, and discussions do not just belong under a heading titled so. Our goal is to provide insight into the role of technology and movement in OEE while aiming to think beyond the bounded autonomous human subject by blurring perceived boundaries between humans and the rest of the world. Including photos and video offers something beyond words and text—hopefully something affective—and our approaches to the use of video can be read in depth elsewhere (see Jukes et al., 2022a). For us, utilising video enables inquiry to move beyond humans as sole grounds for knowledge production (arguably an anthropocentric practice), instead allowing examination of events and a broader context. This ties in with our engagement with posthumanism and process ontology, as videos follow along with events in process, recording the dynamic movements and entangling of people and place. As part of our empirical materials we offer excerpts from student essays as well. A key reason for including some excerpts from students essays was to add student insights alongside other empirical materials, to combine what is written by students with theory and viewable contexts in videos and photos. Taking a premise from Barad (2007), we see that matter and meaning are entangled. Including student meanings, theory and contextual matter (through video and photo) together cohere with this onto-epistemological premise. Importantly, we are not intending to prove student learning in any quantitative positivist sense, but instead explore onto-­ epistemological questions. Another reason for including student essays was to avoid potential problems with presentness. St. Pierre (2008) argues that voice in its presentess (such as in conventional qualitative interviews) vanishes immediately and trying to capture presentness always fails. We took St. Pierre’s provocation and instead experimented by presenting students with an essay prompt1 to contemplate based on previous critical incidents or transformative experiences in river-­environments. The essay prompt was open-ended, allowing for students to explore events of their interest relating to river environments. The premise was to give students time to think, as well as literature and concepts to think with. These essays branched out into different events of importance for each of the students, and we only draw upon a small number of student essays that had relevance to the object of our inquiry in this chapter.  The following is a brief adapted summary of the essay prompt given for the student essays: The aim of this essay is to perform a diffractive* analysis of a learning experience in a river environment… The essay may utilise recorded field notes, photographic images or other relevant materials produced on previous river experiences to help analyse the experience... Your analysis of this experience is to draw upon teaching content, subject reading materials (e.g., Stewart, 2018; Morse et al., 2018; Jukes et al., 2019) and relevant literature to identify ingredients of the experience. *Diffraction is an alternative to the often discussed optical metaphor of reflection. Rather than mirror sameness, a diffractive analysis maps what made a difference and examines how these differences matter (Barad, 2007). 1

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The essays, along with photos and videos, were approved by the La Trobe University Human Ethics Committee under the number HEC20092. As they are adults, we gave the tertiary OEE students the option to use their real names or pseudonyms. All students in this study chose to be identifiable. We feel this act acknowledges the students’ work as their own and that we are citing their work as we would any other author’s ideas/work.

9.4 Entangling Technology, Modes of Travel and Landscape: What Worlds Are Opened? In Bill Mason’s (1984) Path of the Paddle, the iconic Canadian canoeist offers a parable about canoe travel. The parable, titled ‘The shrinking land’, is found in the introduction to his guide to the art of canoeing, and provides a simple but poignant message about technology and travel. Mason asks the reader to contemplate hiking along a lake shore amongst a mountainous backdrop. The hike is of considerable distance through rough terrain—it is a difficult but adventurous journey. After a time, Mason explains, you encounter a canoeist. The canoeist offers you a seat in their boat. You accept, as the terrain is difficult and the canoe will offer a different perspective of the shoreline, whilst still being slow enough to absorb it. However, Mason points out that in accepting the ride, the lake has now diminished in size. Canoeing along the lake will be much quicker than hiking the difficult shoreline. As the journey continues, the canoe encounters a motorboat. The motorboat offers a ride and the original canoeist accepts. Upon entering the motorboat, you feel a sense of the lake diminishing further in size. As Mason describes: When the journey is over and you are dropped off at the point where you first came upon the lake, the mystery is gone. You’ve seen it all; yet, you’ve seen nothing. The motorboat driver meant well, but he has only succeeded in diminishing the size of the lake. (Mason, 1984, p. 3)

One message in Mason’s parable is that our modes of travelling within landscapes make a difference to how we experience and perceive them. This message (although possibly quite obvious) is significant for OEE in Australia as it often involves a practice of journeying. For us, a key question worth contemplating is how do our modes of movement (always mediated by different technologies) make a difference to educational experiences? What does a pedagogy that involves continual movement and engagement with/in the more-than-human world do? In Mason’s case, he promotes a simple and slow mode of travel, as he believes it maintains the scale of landscapes, rather than shrinking them—simply, he wants to keep the world big. Through this, Mason suggests, we might engage with these landscapes in a way that does not diminish them (spatio-temporally), allowing us to attend more closely to specific details and worlds. However, we must note that other worlds get closed off (e.g., if we never experience the speedboat, we also never understand the world of speedboats in the same way). The point we take from Mason is that the technologies

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(as practices) and modes of movement we enact open particular worlds whilst closing off others. For us, a key question for educators to ask is what worlds we aim to open for our students? How do the technologies and modes of travel we choose mediate educational experiences? Do they focus on notions of adventure or open us to different aspects of the more-than-human world, such as ecological precarity? Let us explore an example from our practice, involving a canoeing experience. We set the scene with an excerpt from one of our student’s essays: Place is a key concept for OEE (Thomas et al., 2019). However, Gough (2008) explains that the concept place is not inherently pedagogical. Instead, places become pedagogical through the ways they are ‘envisioned, named, traversed and transformed’ (p. 72). The important thread that relates to our inquiry and the vignette above is the ways that we traverse landscapes/places. Gough (2008), elaborates explaining that ‘different outdoor activities provide lenses through which to ‘see’ forests [and other outdoor places]’ (p. 82). He offers a few examples of activities and how they prompt particular engagements and ways of seeing (and we add, ways of touching, smelling, hearing, tasting) environments, before stating: Individuals will learn different things about the forest from the particular activity they have chosen, but the meaning of that knowledge will also be shaped by the activity. A practical problem for outdoor environmental educators is judging whether an activity can be shaped to develop particular knowledges or to create particular meanings. (Gough, 2008, p. 83)

It is this practical problem—the way our activities develop particular knowledge— that we think crucial for outdoor educators to consider in their own environmental and cultural contexts. Canoeing is one such activity (involving technology that enables certain modes of movement) that opens us to specific possibilities for knowing. For example, Maggie’s words in Vignette 9.1 share a particular world—a specific

Vignette 9.1 The dawn paddle involved the Barmah lake, which is connected to the Murray by adjoining creeks. It involved pelicans, ducks, woodland birds, insects and fish. There was Giant Rush, Moira grass and River Red Gums. Water, sediments, mist, clouds and sun. Finally as a special addition there were canoes, paddles, pfd’s [personal flotation devices], porridge and people [Fig. 9.1]. The sun rising and glowing across the clouds is what drew us, the people, to this place at this time. The mist made it cold which made us appreciate the sun. The insects were there enjoying the rush and the fish were feeding in the sediments. The pelicans were coming and going, often likely influenced by how close we were. Our paddles made splashes in the water… There was a beautiful stillness to the place and we were able to slowly drift, taking it all in. What I gained from this experience was an understanding of how the health of a river has a strong flow on effect to many other places. Rivers are not just linear but are made up of floodplains, lakes, creeks and more. I had a strong feeling of being a visitor in someone else’s home… (Maggie, student essay). (continued)

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And here is a link to a video of paddling at dawn on Barmah Lake: https:// doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.16689430.v1

Fig. 9.1  A dawn paddle on Barmah Lake. (Photo by Maggie Williams)

environmental and cultural context. This is a world of water birds, fish etc., where the health of this environment was considered. But Maggie also includes personal flotation devices, people and paddles into the discussion too. The video and photo (Fig. 9.1) further reveal aspects of that world (e.g., the carp [a destructive invasive species in this place] that thrashes past in otherwise tranquil dawn waters in the video at 1:08). But that world would be another altogether if Maggie was in a speedboat. To paint another picture for the way technology and modes of movement alters what epistemological engagements might be had, we draw upon Australian novelist,

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Tim Winton. In Winton’s (2015) landscape memoir, Island Home, he describes travelling the Australian landscape via car: I’ve seen a hell of a lot of landscape through the car window, most of it viewed at speed in bleary, lazy glimpses … behind the wheel I glance outward, but I’m not sure how much I really see. Thanks to air conditioning most of us no longer smell the peculiar scents of places; we hear no birds, feel no wind. We’re mostly oblivious to fluctuations in temperature. You register little more than the noise of the engine and the soundtrack you’ve brought with you. You travel too fast to notice many creatures. Sometimes you recognize a native mammal only the second before you reduce it to roadkill. Seeing the country by car, you may think you’re in the landscape but really you’re in geographical limbo. Enclosed in your steel cocoon you experience the car first, the place you’re in comes a distant second. (p. 180)

As Winton’s description shows, our modes of movement mediate our engagement with the world. This video on the way home from a river trip down the Murray, offers a depiction similar to Winton’s text: Driving from the river video—https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.16689442.v1. The video from the bus contrasts to the other videos that are based in the river environment throughout this essay. What we seek to convey is that the technologies we move by/with shape our realities and open us to particular possibilities whilst closing off others. The different types of engagements that can be planned in OEE have ontoepistemological consequences for education—in other words, we are always becoming-with the world in different ways (Haraway, 2008). At the centre of both Winton and Mason’s descriptions above is technology, not as a thing but as a way of doing. Our modes of movement—the technologies we use—at least in part determine the particular speeds and intensities of our journeying, potentially dictating the routes we may choose to take. In OEE, our modes of movement can also be described through activities, such as walking, canoeing, rafting or bike riding. These activities each require particular technologies (hiking boots, canoes, rafts, bikes)—or if we think back to the etymological root of the word technology: canoeing, rafting or riding is the skilled performance of doing something, engaging with an environment, where our technological engagement is a way of being embodied and embedded in that place. We think there is something pivotal about the relationship between landscape, modes of movement and technology, and how these relations influence learning contexts. Of course, landscape, movement, technology and learning contexts are all also conceptually mediated and culturally influenced. But we will address this later in the chapter. We offer below, another situated example to explore this relationship between landscape, movement and technology. Vignette 9.2 shows a particular context involving paddling a full Barmah Lake and surrounded flooded forests inundated with ‘environmental water’ (water allocated to the environment by water managers, to flush the river and flood the forest, mimicking pre-dam flooding regimes to help the ecosystem’s health).

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Vignette 9.2 Full Lake, Flooded Forest video: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare. 16665898.v1

Fig. 9.2  Paddling through giant rush (Juncus ignens) in a flooded tributary to Barmah Lake. (Image by Scott Jukes)

How does canoeing create orientations within the landscape of Vignette 9.2? How does the activity of canoeing (and its equipment/technology) create patterns of relationality, or mediate becoming-with the landscape (Haraway, 2008)? For us, the canoe allows students to travel into this otherwise difficult to access environment (e.g., see Fig. 9.2—you cannot walk or drive a speedboat in such an environment). Moreover, the canoe allows particular ways of accessing this place. The canoe allows a slow immersion into the place, where students can develop an understanding of the fluxes and flows of this landscape, if educators help to guide attention this way.2 We believe travelling by canoe makes realities of this landscape intelligible,  Obviously, we are not attempting to empirically validate that all people would experience slow emersion or learn the fluxes and flows of the landscape. What we are suggesting is that being there in this way opens up possibilities to learn such things. We do not believe the environment speaks for itself here—educators have a key role, as we also discuss further elsewhere (see Jukes et al., 2022a). 2

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including some of the precarious ecological position such places are in.3 However, educators still have a key role in developing pedagogical strategies for confronting the nuanced complexities of these places. For us, moving by canoe has us moving with the environmental water as it travels and disperses, engaging materially with the story of water management and river regulation. Moving by canoe also opens particular encounters with animals, like the sleepy koala that was caught out by the environmental water releases and the emus here—(Emus on the lake video https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.16689448.v1). Importantly in this example, our pedagogical approach aims to attend to the landscape through the activity, and does not focus on the activity as the end itself. We point out precarity, species threatened with extinction and threats to functional integrity, in aiming to foster affirmative relations with the place. We engage with different stories, follow different relational threads and grapple with the tangle of worldviews wrapped up in the landscape. The canoe gives us physical access and movement allows for encounters to emerge. But if we were to flip our focus here, Barmah Lake (and the volume of water within it) allows for canoeing to occur. From this perspective, the landscape shapes what might be possible, and our technologies and modes of travel are a reciprocal correspondence between what a person may do, what a landscape allows and what technological mediations may intervene. This coming together provides different ways of knowing, or different aspects of a landscape to be apprehended (which we will discuss further in the following section). Such moments as depicted in the vignettes are a shared event between students, the landscape and the technology that made it possible to be there, entangled with a desire to listen and learn from the place. Landscape and technology enable us to learn through our movements. What we encounter become something we can attend to and being there makes the knowledge gained more than academic, it becomes felt and carries an affective weight (as depicted by Maggie in the first vignette above). However, as one of our students, Kayla points out, ‘highly impactful learning experiences are not isolated in the moment themselves, but are made up of many overlapping facets that combine to create learnings that are meaningful and transformative’ (Kayla, student essay), such as the worldviews we carry and conceptions we make. As argued previously by Stewart et al. (2021), pedagogical frameworks and different worldviews contribute to the way students engage with places in OEE.

 For example, river red gums and moira grass thrive on flood water (even need flood water), the Barmah wetland (a RAMSAR site) and its various birdlife relies on water, whilst the invasive giant rush chokes up waterways changing the functional integrity of the floodplain (see Fig.  9.2). In short, many of the native species require floodwater to survive. However, we know that floodwater is heavily regulated, with water perceived as a commodity by many in the Murray Darling Basin (such as farmers, irrigators, politicians and communities. For an in depth exploration of water politics in this region, see Simons, 2020). 3

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9.5 A Pause: More-Than-Human Approaches to Education As we have been demonstrating, the ways people move among places partly shapes their engagement with them. This opens pedagogical possibilities, without guaranteeing what might be learned by a student. As we suggest above and have explored elsewhere (see Jukes et al., 2022a), we may use encounters with different features as pedagogical provocations. These may be considered learning events, as they involve more than just a human teacher. One of us has described this as thinking with a landscape (Jukes, 2021), where students minds and bodies extend to think with features and stories of landscapes in material-discursive ways. This partly draws upon Mcphie’s (2019) extended body hypothesis (which builds upon Clark and Chalmers (1998) extended mind theory). Thinking with a landscape also involves a pedagogical orientation that attends to landscapes, problematic environmental issues and complex and contested histories. Haraway (2016) asserts that ‘to think-with is to stay with the naturalcultural multispecies trouble on earth’ (p. 40). For us in OEE, these are key elements of a more-than-human pedagogy—a pedagogy that stretches beyond an anthropocentric focus (such as teacher or student-­ centered learning), towards a relational approach with less sedimented boundaries between humans and the rest of the world. As Riley (2021) highlights, OEE can move beyond classical humanist ideas of autonomous human agents by embracing relational ways of thinking where learners are ‘in constant negotiation with the world [original emphasis]’ (p. 228). We think these are important considerations for OEE. However, for now, we return to our key focus of learning through technology and movement.

9.6 Learning Through Technology and Machinic Assemblages Earlier, as one of our guiding questions, we asked how technology influences ways we move through and learn with/in landscapes? We must admit, we do not intend to offer a definitive answer. However, we do believe this is a useful question for educators to ask in their own specific contexts. We have been examining canoeing in south-eastern Australia, but we now diverge to take a look at the work of Spinney (2006), who explores mobility as a way of constituting place. His ‘kinaesthetic ethnography’ explores people on bikes climbing Mont Ventoux in France and how they come to know that place. For Spinney, cyclists are a hybrid subject—object, with cycling becoming fundamental for the ways that those people lived with, felt and created meaningful relations with that place. There are two aspects of Spinney’s research that we tease out below, as we think them particularly pertinent for OEE.

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9.6.1 The Agency of Technology Firstly, the cultural lure of Mont Ventoux as a site of history for cyclists (such as Tour de France stories, magazine articles and other heroic depictions) is part of what brings cyclists there. Yet Spinney (2006) suggests ‘being there’ also adds to cultural representations. For Spinney (2006), being there and participating in the riding of Mont Ventoux is an embodied event that offers something other than observing cultural depictions alone. In other words, for the cyclist, the place is constituted, or made manifest, through the activity of cycling. The cultural element of ‘cycling Mont Ventoux’ is still there, but it is morphed and changed through further material entanglements of participating in the event. In this way, cycling becomes a cultural performance that materially reshapes what might be felt and learned by a participant (just as it is also a material performance that shapes culture). This provokes us to think about OEE, place-responsive education and what we can learn through journeys (journeys down the Murray River and Barmah Forest in our examples). In particular, there is an onto-epistemological distinction between paddling in an area or learning about the place through another more physically distant method (in a classroom, for example). Barad’s (2007) theory of agential realism entangles ontology and epistemology, writing that: We don’t obtain knowledge by standing outside the world; we know because we are of the world. We are part of the world in its differential becoming. The separation of epistemology from ontology is a reverberation of metaphysics that assumes an inherent difference between human and nonhuman, subject and object, mind and body, matter and discourse. [original italics] (p. 185)

As such, the ways that people learn involves nonhumans and are shaped by the various entanglements of which we are a part (whether in the classroom or outdoors, but both differently). The second aspect of Spinney’s (2006) work we want to touch upon is that the technology of the bicycle provides a mode of movement that opens different ways of attending, feeling and relating with environments. Through this act of mobility, different realities of the environment are felt and made visible, while others are rendered absent. Spinney (2006) explains that when cycling Mont Ventoux, ‘what came to the fore was a place constituted by the sensations and movements of a prostheticised body’ (p. 712). This prostheticised body involves both bike and person: ‘The human organism modifies itself with technologies that produce, temporarily, a new organism: a hybrid object—subject. Thus objects must be seen as crucial to the ways in which subjects effect agency as an accomplishment’ (Spinney, 2006, p. 715). But the bike—referred to as an object by Spinney—is really a ‘constellation of relations’ (Manning, 2014, p.  174) imbued with agency. Adding further consideration, we must not forget the cyclist’s body is not separate from their thoughts, cultural norms, or gendered and classed influences of the activity of cycling—these all further shape the cycling experience.

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9.6.2 Machinic Assemblages and Messy Connections Despite Spinney’s (2006) work having a phenomenological orientation, these connections of person-bike-mountain encourage us to think of Colebrook’s (2002) contemplations on Deleuze and Guattari’s machinic assemblages: Think of a bicycle, which obviously has no ‘end’ or intention. It only works when it is connected with another ‘machine’ such as a human body; and the production of these two machines can only be achieved through connection. The human body becomes a cyclist in connecting with the machine; the cycle becomes a vehicle. (p. 56)

In this instance, a ‘machine’ is a figuration for a body that connects and works with other bodies, to produce something altogether different—the connection of a body with other bodies changes what they can do (and is a process). Colebrook goes on to explain that the bicycle could also become an art object if placed in a gallery, just as the human body might become an artist when connected with a paintbrush. Colebrook alludes to the idea that things perceived as closed systems, such as a human body or some mechanical entity (e.g., bike, watch, car), are really illusions. All these things are machines that connect to other machines: ‘There is no aspect of life that is not machinic; all life only works and is insofar as it connects with some other machine [original italics]’ (Colebrook, 2002, p.  56)—or, it ‘is what it does’ (ibid). As a concept, machinic assemblages unravel: ...the modern fantasy of the body as a stable, unified, bounded entity, and gives a language to the multitude of connections that bodies form with other bodies (human and otherwise). A body’s function or potential or ‘meaning’ becomes entirely dependent on which other bodies or machines it forms an assemblage with. (Malins, 2004, p. 85)

It is in this way that cycling Mont Ventoux creates an assemblage (a person-bike-­ mountain assemblage, each functioning with the other, transmitting intensities [Deleuze and Guattari, 1987, p. 2]) which opens specific conditions and possibilities. Alaimo’s (2010) concept of transcorporeality also comes to mind here, where ‘imagining human corporeality as trans-corporeality’ acknowledges that ‘the human is always intermeshed with the more-than-human world’ (p. 2), giving human corporeality a more porous nature. But, to add a place-specific material reality to the Mont Ventoux cycling example, these conditions and possibilities would be different if the person and bicycle connected with the Great Ocean Road, and rode along that coastscape in Victoria (or any other location). There would be different smells, different pollen in the air, salt from sea spray and a range of other transcorporeal agents that infuse and influence the rider. In the case of an activity like cycling, the landscape is also a machinic assemblage that the assemblage of the bicycle rider plugs into and travels with. The road, the corners, the pitch, the view, the cultural elements (language, what side of the road to ride on etc.), the locals, the social group rode with, the altitude, the weather all produce affects that connect to the rider and produce the conditions of possible experience—in this sense, the rider is never an individual and always

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contextually shaped. We can extend this discussion into any of the vignettes already shared above. The point we wish to make is that different landscapes create different connections due to their physical characteristics (material agencies) and also their cultural compositions (discursive amalgamations). Or as Deleuze and Guattari (1987) write, ‘an assemblage, in its multiplicity, necessarily acts on semiotic flows, material flows, and social flows simultaneously’ (p. 24). We believe such considerations are important for educators and outdoor programmers to attend to. Before looking at a landscape-culture composition from our OEE river environments context, we contemplate what Deleuze and Guattari (1987) write about machinic assemblages: We think the material or machinic aspect of an assemblage relates not to the production of goods but rather to a precise state of intermingling of bodies in a society, including all the attractions and repulsions, sympathies and antipathies, alterations and amalgamations, penetrations, and expansions that affect bodies of all kinds in their relations to one another… Even technology makes the mistake of considering tools in isolation: tools exist only in relation to the interminglings they make possible or that make them possible. The stirrup entails a new man-horse symbiosis that at the same time entails new weapons and instruments. Tools are inseparable from symbiosis or amalgamations defining a Nature-Society machinic assemblage. (pp. 104–105)

For us, thinking with/of assemblages is to consider the dynamic constellation of relations (to use Manning’s (2014) phrase quoted earlier) and what this coming together of relations may do and become. For example, in the context of this chapter, the canoe, connected to a river environment, students and the idea of OEE has the capacity to become more than a recreational activity. The intermingling of bodies, the attractions of a specific Nature-Society machinic assemblage is evoked by OEE student Dan in the next vignette.

Vignette 9.3 I came to acknowledge that I, too, was an agent in the landscape, and that I was not ‘detached’ to it simply for being a human, nor for my limited time on the Murray. I had assembled into the complex tapestry that was the River; I had transformed into a ‘hybrid’, of sorts, between myself, the campfire, the forest, and the riverbank. At that moment, I was in contact with countless other living and non-living things that, when assembled, meant we had become one greater entity. My story was not the only narrative in that place; just like everything around me, I was an agency to an infinite number of stories that are interwoven to make the universe. Becoming more-than-human— be it as simple as a human-canoe-river assemblage—gives value to technologies or objects that we may previously take for granted… By listening to the sounds of the river, the crackle of fire, the whisper of leaves rustling, and seeing the blue-grey clouds swelling above the tree canopy, I realized that indeed there is a character to the Murray River; an (continued)

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Fig. 9.3  Flooded Budgee Creek, a tributary to Barmah Lake. (Image by Scott Jukes)

integral character to an ancient and beautiful story that I had become a part of. Viewing the world through such a lens can be challenging, for it defies many anthropocentric notions of learning where humans are at the centre of everything and the environment is something different. (Dan, student essay).

Dan’s writing above could be described as being nature, in Rautio’s (2013) terms—an interspecies articulation of finding and composing connections to the surrounding nonhuman world. Such a relational view that expresses nonhuman agency could also echo Clarke and Mcphie’s (2014) call for an animate and immanent take in OEE, where humans are of the world. Dan’s words resonate with an aesthetic intensity—a desire which ‘is the productive energy flow that moves between bodies in assemblages and enables them to momentarily alter their modes of composition’ (Malins, 2004, p.  89). It would appear that Dan perceives few boundaries between himself and the surrounding world, and he sees himself as part of and influenced by the assemblage. But then again, there is a romantic tinge in Dan’s words too. The aesthetic he portrays in his writing is of a more romantic conception of nature, shaped by specific cultural views—a conception that Clarke and Mcphie (2020) highlight as a common (and potentially problematic) practice in environmental education research. They argue that such a practice still highlights one side of the nature/culture binary, silencing other possibilities. Still, Dan portrays

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his consideration beyond a bounded self, with a care for the more-than-human river place in which he finds himself. If we take Clarke and Mcphie’s (2020) point seriously, and blur the borders of nature/non-nature, other vibrant materialities may come to the fore. For example, Bennett (2010) highlights the affective capacity of rubbish, Affifi (2020) considers appreciating the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and elsewhere we have acknowledged the agency of a green barrel on a river journey (see Jukes et al., 2019). Mcphie and Clarke (2020) argue that things such as rubbish/artificial nature (a chip packet is one example they highlight) are not of another nature to green landscapes. They state that ‘somehow human produce has become separated from the existing universe’ (p. 1516), but ‘if humans are nature too then surely everything we produce is of nature (the material, force and energy of the world/universe)’ (p. 1517). Again, this comes down to what worlds different conceptions and perceptions attend to. Previously, the first author of this chapter (Jukes, 2020) has explored the complex ecological history of a canoe paddle, tracing the life of the paddle back to a door frame, a tree, a forest and the practices of logging that shape that forest. The same could be done with the aluminium/plastic paddle or petroleum derived materials of the life jacket in Fig. 9.3. As Jukes (2020) argues, there is educational potential in exploring the history of our equipment. However, this is not the world that Dan attended to in his essay in Vignette 9.3. And these were not the worlds his lecturer’s chose to emphasise in their teaching at this time. All educational contexts involve a milieu of forces, a specific nature-society machinic assemblage that can produce knowledge, through the intensities, desires and affects of that ephemeral spatio-temporal assemblage. It would be anthropocentric hubris to think we, as educators, are fully in control of what goes on. In this section, we have highlighted the role that technology and movement can play. We have also traversed a path that acknowledges that specific landscapes, cultural influences and conceptualisations impact student learning. Educators do, however, have some control over the technologies they choose to use, along with the pedagogical orientations they enact. These choices enable some worlds to be acknowledged, whilst others are closed off. For us, we see an imperative to make manifest the realities of the technologies we use and the landscapes we move through. Such realities include the threat of further extinction,4 environmental precarity and the ever-­ increasing rates of change that have threatening consequences for life within our continent. For us, this is how we may think with a landscape as part of a more-­than-­ human pedagogy—something we demonstrate in the next section.

 Woinarski et  al. (2015) explain how Australia’s land mammals are suffering extreme rates of extinction, with over 10% of endemic terrestrial species already lost since European settlement. They compare this to continental North America, where only one land mammal has become extinct since European settlement. Their research shows a further 21% of these Australian endemic terrestrial mammals are now being assessed as threatened, noting that losses in Australia are primarily due to predation from introduced species and changed fire regimes. 4

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9.7 Discussions on Technology, Movement and Blurred Boundaries In this final section, we discuss the use of technology as an embodied movement into the world—a movement in which we attend to the world but are intimately (always already) a part of that world. Taking the example of a paddle, we might consider it as an extension of the human body, an area of sensitivity in both directions that blurs the experience of feeling the world and being felt. Merleau-Ponty (1968), for example, characterises the intertwining of two such related/divergent possibilities as ‘chiasmic’ (pp.  130–155). The term chiasma is used by Merleau-­ Ponty ‘as a figure for understanding both the paradoxical contact and separation of the intersubjective relation’ (Toadvine, 2009, p. 111). The perception that we might touch this something other, and yet be part of that something other being touched, places us more directly in the world. Merleau-Ponty writes from a phenomenological perspective that pre-supposes a perceiving human subject, yet his later writing (The Visible and Invisible, 1968, for example), pushes the boundaries of phenomenology by conceiving of something approaching a ‘more than human’ phenomenology. Merleau-Ponty was heavily influenced by Whitehead’s process philosophy, and as Manning (2014) suggests, ‘Merleau-Ponty’s turn to Whitehead arguably brings phenomenology to its limit’ (p. 164). Hence why we mention Merleau-Ponty, and those that have been influenced by his later work, in our posthumanist/new materialist process-relational inquiry. For us, the chiasm has similar relationality and entanglement to new materialist concepts such as mutual constitution and intra-action (Barad, 2007)—however, Barad’s intra-action contends that there are no pre-supposed individuated entities (a key differentiation between posthumanist/new materialist/agential realist ontologies and the pre-supposing subjects of phenomenology). Barad (2007), a key figure in new materialist/posthumanist theory, draws upon another related idea of Merleau-­ Ponty that is of relevance here. Barad (2007) highlights Merleau-Ponty’s (1962) inquiries into the use of instruments in the performance of everyday tasks. The discussion mentions how instruments are incorporated into the body, whilst the body is extended (or dilated) beyond the skin, blurring any ‘inside/outside’ boundaries. The example of a blind man using a stick to navigate local surroundings is used, highlighting that for the blind man the stick is no longer an object that is perceived in itself. Instead, the end of the stick becomes an ‘area of sensitivity’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p. 143) that the world is perceived with, extending touch to a broader radius and scope. Our reading of this work prompts us to consider how ‘dilating our being-in-the-­ world’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p. 143) into the tools and technologies we utilise in OEE, and seeing them as an extension of our touch, helps us perceive (through an extended mind and body) a multitude of vibrant materialities specific to the assemblages of body-technology-landscape/place. In short, technologies both mediate and enhance the capabilities and capacities of bodies. This happens in specific ways, through performances (movements), which we think relevant for outdoor

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environmental educators and theorists of adventure education alike. The bounded individual human is blurred in such thinking (an agential cut undone [Barad, 2007]), as a human body is always more-than-human and transcorporeal due to the prosthetic extensions that change what it can do (perform), perceive (feel) and conceive (imagine). In other words, we are always the very substance of our environment (Alaimo, 2010). We are not in our bodies, we are our bodies, and our bodies extend into and move with the world. Just as we are also an assemblage of concepts shaped by the culture in which we live. As Barad (2007) states, ‘bodies in the making are never separated from their apparatuses of bodily production’ (p. 159). What we come to through these investigations is the understanding that bodily performance influences what is felt, imagined and, therefore, learned. In other words, learning is partly embodied, materially implicated and culturally amalgamated, where ‘bodily performance and intellectual comprehension are as viscerally linked as eating and digestion’ (Ingold, 2016, p.  15). These understandings have implications for outdoor learning, OEE and adventure education, as the bodily performances we design connect us to the world in particular ways, opening specific learning possibilities. As Deleuze (1988) writes, ‘the body surpasses the knowledge we have of it, and thought likewise surpasses the consciousness we have of it’ (p. 18). Which is to say that we can’t apprehend every aspect of the events we are part of, however, particular movements can enable opportunities for specific multiplicities to be attended to. Furthermore, the world pushes back (so to speak), with the body’s specific situatedness (Barad, 2007, drawing upon Haraway) being a key connection within a machinic assemblage. And as for us, drawing upon Hultman and Lenz Taguchi (2010), we perceive an ontology where learners are not autonomous human subjects, but bodies that emerge through relational fields. To think beyond the notion of autonomous human subjects acknowledges the more-than-­ human agencies that shape the world all humans are part of. In this sense, the places of bodily performance are part of the educational milieu, and a key consideration for place-responsive educators, where learning is not a universally replicable affair.

9.8 Implications for Practice, Limitations and Future Directions As we have traversed these discussions, we start to ask; what might this mean for a practitioner on a canoe trip? The implications for us (which we offer as potential implications for the reader) are that we need to consider both the particularities of the landscape and technologies we use. We believe it is worthwhile considering how the practice attunes us to a place and what worlds it opens. What might the practice make students, see, think and feel? Who and what does the practice include and

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exclude? What movements and becomings are possible? How do different actors shape the assemblage and what role do non-humans play? The writing of this chapter has helped us ask such critical questions in and of our practice. We offer the concepts and critical mode of questioning as potential implications to be brought into others practice, into their own situations. However, this leads us to several limitations for the research in this chapter. First, we have drawn upon only a few examples to contextualise our explorations and discussions. There are innumerable other environmental contexts, technologies, ways of travelling and cultural groups that we could investigate to shed light on specific practices. How these may come together would create another altogether different assemblage that would offer something else. Furthermore, in this chapter we thought with particular theories and concepts, with the performance of specific concepts stronger than others. Thus, this inevitably creates a particular discourse, that would otherwise be different if we enacted other theories and concepts in other ways. However, this leads to possible future directions in research. We see potential in further exploring the role of different technologies in OEE pedagogical research. Mobile and digital technologies are receiving increased attention, yet many discussions still involve either/or debates and humanistic elements. There is also further scope to examine the agency and pedagogical potentialities of other non-digital technologies. Importantly, we believe that our field could greatly benefit from further theoretical rigour and conceptual creativity, as this can enable different ways of thinking and doing, which may help us confront the pressing issues of our times.

9.9 Inconclusion: Looping Back For this chapter, we take our lead from Gough (2008), and provide an inconclusion. As Gough explains (drawing upon Deleuze and Guattari), beginnings, endings, introductions and conclusions all imply a linear movement. Linear movement is hardly what we have tried to undertake in this inquiry, thus we suggest looping back to the initial sections of this chapter and judge for yourself if we went where you expected. We hope to have, at least in part, confronted the problem of sedimented dichotomous boundaries between humans and the rest of the world through a consideration of technology and movement. Our explorations have been generative for us, helped us think harder about our practices, assumptions and the multiplicity of influences in our own teaching—both the ones we have some control over and aspects we do not. Our focus has been on learning landscapes through technology and movement, and we hope to have provoked others to consider elements of their own practice in relation to blurring some boundaries.

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References Affifi, R. (2020). Anthropocentrism’s fluid binary. Environmental Education Research, 26(9–10), 1435–1452. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2019.1707484 Alaimo, S. (2010). Bodily natures: Science, environment, and the material self. Indiana University Press. Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press. Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant matter: A political ecology of things. Duke University Press. Braidotti, R. (2013). The Posthuman. Polity Press. Braidotti, R. (2019). Posthuman knowledge. Polity Press. Bridle, J. (2022). Ways of being: Beyond human intelligence. Allen Lane. Brookes, A. (2002). Lost in the Australian bush: Outdoor education as curriculum. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 34(4), 405–425. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220270110101805 Clark, A., & Chalmers, D. (1998). The extended mind. Analysis, 58(1), 7–19. Clarke, D. A. G., & Mcphie, J. (2014). Becoming animate in education: Immanent materiality and outdoor learning for sustainability. Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Learning, 14(3), 198–216. https://doi.org/10.1080/14729679.2014.919866 Clarke, D.  A. G., & Mcphie, J. (2020). Tensions, knots, and lines of flight: Themes and directions of travel for new materialisms and environmental education. Environmental Education Research, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2020.1825631 Colebrook, C. (2002). Gilles Deleuze. Routledge. Cuthbertson, B., Socha, T., & Potter, T. (2004). The double-edged sword: Critical reflections on traditional and modern technology in outdoor education. Journal of Adventure Education & Outdoor Learning, 4(2), 133–144. Deleuze, G. (1988). Spinoza: Practical philosophy (R. Hurley, Trans.). City Light Books. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia (B. Massumi, Trans.). Bloomsbury. Denzin, N. (2013). The death of data? Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 13(4), 353–356. https://doi.org/10.1177/1532708613487882 Gough, N. (2008). Ecology, ecocritiscm and learning: How do places become ‘pedagogical’? Transnational Curriculum Inquiry, 5(1), 71–86. Gough, N. (2016). Postparadigmatic materialisms: A ‘new movement of thought’ for outdoor environmental education research? Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education, 19(2), 51–65. Haraway, D. (1988). Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist Studies, 14(3), 575–599. Haraway, D. (2008). When species meet. University of Minnesota Press. Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press. Henderson, B. (2003). Technology and outdoor travel/education. Pathways: The Ontario Journal of Outdoor Education, 15(2), 13–17. Hill, A. (2021). Embracing local community through post-activity outdoor education. In G. Thomas, J. Dyment, & H. Prince (Eds.), Outdoor environmental education in higher education: International perspectives (pp. 235–245). Springer. Hills, D., & Thomas, G. (2020). Digital technology and outdoor experiential learning. Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Learning, 20(2), 155–169. Hills, D., & Thomas, G. (2021). Digital technology in outdoor education. In G. Thomas, J. Dyment, & H. Prince (Eds.), Outdoor environmental education in higher education: International perspectives (pp. 147–159). Springer. Hoel, A.  S. (2018). Technicity. In R.  Braidotti & M.  Hlavajova (Eds.), Posthuman glossary (pp. 420–423). Bloomsbury Academic.

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Hultman, K., & Lenz Taguchi, H. (2010). Challenging anthropocentric analysis of visual data: A relational materialist methodological approach to educational research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 23(5), 525–542. https://doi.org/10.1080/0951839 8.2010.500628 Ingold, T. (2016). Lines: A brief history (Routledge classics edition). Routledge. Jukes, S. (2020). Thinking through making: Junk paddles, distant forests and pedagogical possibilities. Environmental Education Research, 26(12), 1746–1763. https://doi.org/10.1080/1350462 2.2020.1806991 Jukes, S. (2021). Thinking with a landscape: The Australian Alps, horses and pedagogical considerations. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 37(2), 89–107. https://doi. org/10.1017/aee.2020.26 Jukes, S., & Reeves, Y. (2020). More-than-human stories: Experimental co-productions in outdoor environmental education pedagogy. Environmental Education Research, 26(9–10), 1294–1312. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2019.1699027 Jukes, S., Stewart, A., & Morse, M. (2019). Acknowledging the agency of a more-than-human world: Material relations on a Snowy River journey. Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education, 22(2), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42322-­019-­00032-­8 Jukes, S., Stewart, A., & Morse, M. (2022a). Following lines in the landscape: Playing with a posthuman pedagogy in outdoor environmental education. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 39(3–4), 345–360. https://doi.org/10.1017/aee.2021.18 Jukes, S., Clarke, D., & Mcphie, J. (2022b). The wisp of an outline ≈ Storying ontology as environmental inquiry↔education:–). Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 39(3–4), 328–344. https://doi.org/10.1017/aee.2021.31. Lugg, A. (2004). Outdoor adventure in Australian outdoor education: Is it a case of roast for Christmas dinner? Australian Journal of Outdoor Education, 8(1), 4–11. Lynch, J., & Mannion, G. (2016). Enacting a place-responsive research methodology: Walking interviews with educators. Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Learning, 16(4), 330–345. https://doi.org/10.1080/14729679.2016.1163271 Malins, P. (2004). Machinic assemblages: Deleuze, Guattari and an ethico-aesthetics of drug use. Janus Head, 7(1), 84–104. Manning, E. (2014). Wondering the world directly – Or, how movement outruns the subject. Body and Society, 20(3–4), 162–188. https://doi.org/10.1177/1357034X14546357 Mannion, G. (2020). Re-assembling environmental and sustainability education: Orientations from new materialism. Environmental Education Research, 26(9–10), 1353–1372. https://doi. org/10.1080/13504622.2018.1536926 Mason, B. (1984). Path of the paddle: An illustrated guide to the art of canoeing. Key Porter Books. Mcphie, J. (2019). Mental health and wellbeing in the Anthropocene: A posthuman inquiry. Springer Nature. Mcphie, J., & Clarke, D. A. G. (2020). Nature matters: Diffracting a keystone concept of environmental education research – Just for kicks. Environmental Education Research, 26(9–10), 1509–1526. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2018.1531387 Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of perception. Routledge. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1968). The visible and invisible: Followed by working notes. Northwestern University Press. Morse, M., Jickling, B., & Quay, J. (2018). Rethinking relationships through education: Wild pedagogies in practice. Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education, 21(3), 241–254. https:// doi.org/10.1007/s42322-­018-­0023-­8 Rautio, P. (2013). Being nature: Interspecies articulation as a species-specific practice of relating to environment. Environmental Education Research, 19(4), 445–457. https://doi.org/10.108 0/13504622.2012.700698

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Riley, K. (2020). Posthumanist and postcolonial possibilities for outdoor experiential education. The Journal of Experimental Education, 43(1), 88–101. Riley, K. (2021). Postcolonial possibilities for outdoor environmental education. In G. Thomas, H.  Prince, & J.  Dyment (Eds.), Outdoor environmental education in higher education: International perspectives (pp. 225–234). Springer. Simons, M. (2020). Cry me a river: The tragedy of the Murray–Darling Basin (Quarterly essay, 77). Black Incorporated. Spinney, J. (2006). A place of sense: A kinaesthetic ethnography of cyclists on Mont Ventoux. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 24, 709–732. St. Pierre, E.  A. (2008). Decentering voice in qualitative inquiry. International Review of Qualitative Research, 1(3), 319–336. Stewart, A. (2004). Canoeing the Murray River (Australia) as environmental education: A tale of two rivers. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 9(1), 136–147. Stewart, A. (2018). A Murray Cod assemblage: Re/considering river scape pedagogy. The Journal of Environmental Education, 49(2), 130–141. Stewart, A. (2020). Developing place-responsive pedagogy in outdoor environmental education: A rhizomatic curriculum autobiography. Springer Nature. Stewart, A., Jukes, S., Mikaels, J., & Mangelsdorf, A. (2021). Reading landscapes: Engaging with places. In G.  Thomas, J.  Dyment, & H.  Prince (Eds.), Outdoor environmental education in higher education: International perspectives (pp. 201–213). Springer. Thomas, G., Grenon, H., Morse, M., Allen-Craig, S., Mangelsdorf, A., & Polley, S. (2019). Threshold concepts for Australian university outdoor education programs: Findings from a Delphi research study. Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education, 22(3), 169–186. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42322-­019-­00039-­1 Toadvine, T. (2009). Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of nature. Northwestern University Press. Wattchow, B. (2001). A pedagogy of production: Craft, technology and outdoor education. Australasian Journal of Outdoor Education, 5(2), 19–27. Williams, J. (2018). Process ontologies. In R. Braidotti & M. Hlavajova (Eds.), Posthuman glossary (pp. 271–273). Bloomsbury Academic. Winton, T. (2015). Island home: A landscape memoir. Milkweed Editions. Woinarski, J., Burbidge, A., & Harrison, P. (2015). Ongoing unraveling of a continental fauna: Decline and extinction of Australian mammals since European settlement. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(15), 4531–4540. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1417301112

Chapter 10

Storying Shared Worlds: Collaborative Writing as Ecological Inquiry Scott Jukes, David A. G. Clarke, and Jamie Mcphie

Abstract  This chapter is co-authored with Dave Clarke and Jamie Mcphie and is an experiment in collaborative writing as a form of inquiry. We write with and through the events of our lives, to see how ontology manifests itself within our processes of collaborative inquiry in environmental education. Fires, viruses, lines and cosmopolitics infuse this chapter as we strive to think and enact inquiry in alternative ways. The chapter also offers insights into some of the further backstories and considerations that furrowed along underneath some of the other chapters in this project.

10.1 Prelude: Relational Writing Experiments In some ways, this chapter is a bit of a leap from the last chapter and many of the others in this book. It is a writing experiment with different voice and tone, which tells part of my research story that has not yet been told. But it is not just my story, it is also Dave’s story and Jamie’s story. More so, it really isn’t our stories as individuated selves, but a storying of shared worlds. The chapter that follows is a playful writing experiment. It meanders and gropes towards the unknown, speculating and circling that which we find ourselves of. This collaborative writing project began after I reviewed Jamie’s book (see Jukes, 2020). Jamie and I got chatting via email and video calls and started discussing a collaborative project. We played ideas like thinking with fire and thinking with floods, but then the conversations meandered further, and Dave got involved. The S. Jukes (*) Federation University, Berwick, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] D. A. G. Clarke University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK J. Mcphie University of Cumbria, Ambleside, UK © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Jukes, Learning to Confront Ecological Precarity, International Explorations in Outdoor and Environmental Education 13, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34200-4_10

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writing and inquiry process was slow at first—none of us really knew what we were doing/wanting to do. But over time it came together. Now I think it offers a unique insight into our lives and work. The writing expresses some of the struggles of trying to enact different processes of inquiry, including the in-between bits, the messy bits but also the enjoyable joyful funny aspects. But I think (or at least hope) it shows some serious sides too: Efforts at ethical inquiry, the way affective aspects of our lives always influence our thinking and how inquiry and education are entangled within our lives. Affect is concept increasingly coming into my considerations. Hickey-Moody and Malins (2007) explain that ‘affect is that which is felt before it is thought; it has a visceral impact on the body before it is given subjective or emotive meaning’ (p. 8). I find this description of affect helpful and notice, looking back now, how affective moments play out in this chapter. For me, there is an honesty in our groping efforts at ontological inquiry in the writing below. I also see below as a lively enactment of theoretically inspired writing, rather than simply writing about such theory. My sections tell some of the backstories, some of the provocations within my thinking that have influenced other chapters in this book. For one, it openly grapples with the notion of lines, which is interweaved in quite a few of the other chapters/my thinking. But it also shows the expansion of my writing style and further efforts at thinking differently and opening modes of inquiry. But most of all, it is the product of a playful experiment in writing with Jamie and Dave.

10.2 Venturing into the Hinterland Post qualitative inquiry does not exist prior to its arrival; it must be created, invented anew each time. (St. Pierre, 2019, p. 9)

They thought they felt something, perhaps. The wisp of an outline, yet not distinct enough to trace. Good. They circled it, at times, and at other times found themselves within. As they walked (a sort of walking. Figurative but real. Digital, but here. Over months of events) it curled open and headed in several other directions. Foldings in the backcloth that furrowed them along until, as they walked and talked, they felt that perhaps a territory was becoming simultaneously clearer and more obscure, that they might find a way to enquire, to start, even as it meant becoming the folds themselves. Then an email—a call for papers on post qualitative inquiry… and an impulse to respond, but not sediment; decompose instead, branch like hyphae, make a filament (or even a few?). They aren’t yet sure where it will go, but it has a quality and rhythm. As they coalesce, Scott, Jamie, and Dave each come to this project differently (of course). From their own situations, with their own problems (even when shared, they are different) and here, in this paper, with different voices and different ways of writing—exposing a polyvocal attempt. We (for the first shift in voice) take post qualitative inquiry to be infused with a question mark, wary of attempts to make it a ‘thing’, and wary of important critiques—we want to keep the politics vital—but also wary of its claim to difference

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(is it different? Or is it more like permission in certain spaces? And if so, for who?). And yet, here we are, drawn to potentials, to the opening of conditions, to the possibility of something still to come. We hope to make a shift, to realise (as in make manifest) ontology and its everyday performance as synonymous with environmental education. Environmental education as a life. At times we draw, grate, rake our worlds through, over and into each other. At others we pause, hold a breath and conceive with what we find ourselves of. Events. As virus. As researcher-­educators. As fires, let loose and consuming homes. As imaginations of possible research presents and futures. As allegories of the moment. In truth, as of yet, we are not sure what else this will do (or what it can do), but we are striving to create conditions of possibility that may allow us to do something. Each time I read the abstract I prepared for this paper, I get a little more pissed off that I am (a) attempting the impossible and (b) just being a wanker. (Riddle, 2018, p. 61)

10.3 Smoothing Some Striations to Open (Our) Inquiry Flick through the posthuman glossary. Page 34. Entry, Animal: ‘Animals are living beings of various kinds’ (Timofeeva, 2018, p. 34). That’s obvious… A tangent in thought—Page 260, footnote 17, in Sheldrake’s (2020) Entangled life: The system of classification devised by Carl Linnaeus and published in his Systema Naturae in 1735, a modified version of which is used today, extended his hierarchy to human races. At the top of the human league tables were Europeans: ‘Very smart, inventive. Covered by tight clothing. Ruled by law.’ Americans followed: ‘Ruled by custom’. Then Asians  – ‘Ruled by opinion’ – then Africans: ‘Sluggish, lazy … [c]rafty, slow, careless. Covered by grease. Ruled by caprice.’ (Kendi, 2017). The way hierarchical classification systems order different species can be seen, by extension, as species racism. (p. 260)

Hierarchical ordering, systemisation, classification, categorical thinking, all striations that have a function, but a function that can subjugate and oppress with racist undertones. Clearly, for us at least, Euro-exceptionalism subtly works all the way down through human categorisation and infuses the Linnaean system of classification. Take the Eastern Curlew, for example (sometimes commonly referred to as the Moon Bird, because the distance it flies in its life of migratory travels averages the distance to the moon). What is the Eastern Curlew east to? Europe. Let’s flick back to the Posthuman glossary on animals (and please excuse the extended line of quotations). ‘According to the famous Chinese encyclopedia, quoted by J.L Borges, quoted by Foucault [1973, p. xv],’ Timofeeva (2018) shares that: animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies. (p. 34)

Did that make you laugh? Did it do something? Shatter something? Open something up? And what of the politics at play? It was not uncommon for Borges to create sources, mix real names with imaginary ones and, in the creation of a magical

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realist genre, disturb the taken-for-granted in the reader’s reading. No source can be found for this ‘famous encyclopedia’ and, as Longxi (1988) notes: [it] may have been made up to represent a Western fantasy of the Other, and that the illogical way of sorting out animals in that passage can be as alien to the Chinese mind as it is to the Western mind. In fact, the monstrous unreason and its alarming subversion of Western thinking, the unfamiliar and alien space of China as the image of the Other threatening to break up ordered surfaces and logical categories, all turn out to be, in the most literal sense, a Western fiction. (p. 110)

That aside, the (made up?) quote is now out there, rewording the world, and it did something for us. But we could provide another more sombre classification: Extinct or not (yet?) extinct. We can find all manner of ways of classifying things, naming things, caging things, subjugating things, sedimenting and putting them in a box. Categorisation involves individuation and power. In their box, things may lose their shine, their affective capacities and, although they are contained, controlled and held in their place (apparently), they lose animacy, their life. Break them out of their hierarchical classifications and they might be able to do a little more. We come to the notion of post qualitative inquiry with a range of intentions, affectations, contemplations. Each of us have been drawn to post qualitative inquiry in different ways for our research. One of the draws has been an opening up of the ways we think and do (research). Yet, as post qualitative increasingly becomes a label, a piece of language that creates a reality (Koro-Ljungberg, 2015), we don’t want that reality to become an overbearing singular transcendent reality that boxes inquiry in—another classified sedimented methodology to follow. Sedimentation, the search for solid ground, is a habit: ‘We constantly lose our ideas. That is why we want to hang on to fixed opinions so much. We ask only that our ideas are linked together according to a minimum of constant rules’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, p. 201). As practices become normalised they can lose their radical potential. So, our intention in doing post qualitative inquiry—or whatever this may be called—is to let go of some rules and try acts of writing that let go of fixed grounding. You see, we don’t want to territorialise post qualitative inquiry, because that would work counter to the open-ended fabrication that is made possible through poststructuralist thought and post philosophies that have fed into the emergence of post qualitative inquiry. We still aren’t sure what this is yet, nor exactly what it will do, but for now, at least, we think it will be an attempt at environmental education research that stories our realities. In other words, we remain open to life as it’s lived, and write to, through and with the events that shape the world(s) in which we live. And we will endeavour to remain open to the potentials that come our way(s): In a world tending toward the colonization of smooth space  – spaces which obey no categorical rule and are bound by no overarching institutionalized limit – I think it critical to look for and maintain spaces that allow proximities to becomings… (Halsey, 2007, p. 147)

Thus, we have decided to a risk and write with freedom—to use writing as a mode of collaborative inquiry—within the events of our lives, and tease out the

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environmental conditions always present but often hidden in the formation of things. We use this as a kind of heuristic. But we can’t say what we will imagine yet—what we will do—as it is as yet unimaginable. So, we will work away, striving to create conditions of possibility that may lead us to the unthought.

10.4 A Climate, a Summer It isn’t every day you feel yourself come face to face with an existential threat (although I’ve experienced a couple, such as the 2015 earthquakes of Nepal, but that’s another story...). This threat came infused in the air, drifting to our doorsteps (and through the cracks of our doors). The 2019/2020 bushfires—named the Black Summer—bluntly invaded the lives of many Australians, me included. As I write this now, I see on the news fires in the US, Turkey (followed by horrific floods) and Greece. Bushfire/wildfires aren’t unique to the life of Australians, but considering the existential threat of fires, I consider the Black Summer in Australia. Thinking back now, over a year later, hazy memories float back to me, out of sequence, in no order, through my fingers, keyboard and onto this screen here… It was hot and heavy. The kind of heat that gets you sweating the moment you step outside. There was no sun in the summer sky, just a thick haze. Light streaked through thick smog, dark and oppressive. Smoke filled nostrils, soaked into bodies. Little flecks of ash drifted across the sky—burnt biomass lifted in the heat, floated on the wind. Likely a tree not long before. Or it could be anything really—‘muted embodiments of dead’ as Verlie (2021, p. 25) puts it. When the wind blew the other direction, it took the ash to New Zealand. Some of it settled on glaciers, darkened them, caused them to absorb more heat and melt faster. I considered putting on the air con. A pang of guilt. By extension, such conveniences influence climate, changes in climate and these fires (among countless other influencing factors). I flicked it on anyway. The emergency services app pinged most days (e.g., Fig.  10.1). More being overrun. Places burning—places changing. Flames engulfed forests, houses, anything in its path. They wrapped alpine huts in tin foil to protect them. Bizarre but effective. Later, they dropped carrots and sweet potato from helicopters. They did it for the wallabies and wombats because there was no vegetation left, no food for them. Maybe Pyne (2019) is right, we could be entering the Pyrocene. If we enumerate these events, the fires burnt around 17 million hectares, blazing for months. At one stage, more than 420,000 fires were detected with fire fronts up to 6000 km (Verlie, 2021). Over one billion mammals, birds and reptiles were said to have been killed. Some days people were advised not to go outside because of the smoke. Some started wearing masks. Mask wearing seemed strange back then. Whilst they are burning a virus breaks out. Just after the ash settles the virus hits Australia, along with the rest of the world. Suddenly mask wearing becomes a new norm. For some, the fires were quickly forgotten, with the pandemic the latest unprecedented

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Fig. 10.1  A screen shot from Victorian emergency services app on the 1st of January 2020

emergency. We will soon be taken up by viruses, but for now we will pause and take a divergent path in our writing.

10.5 Hopes I’ve been reading an email Scott sent. The three of us are meeting online tomorrow to discuss the abstract we’re due to submit before the end of the month. I don’t want to talk about post qualitative research. I want to do something and to have something done. Something, what? Impressive? Sadly, perhaps. Ethical? I hope. Career enhancing? I’m not sure. Helpful? The multiplicity of drives is always present, as ever. And actually, do I really want to do this? Whatever this is. Maybe those drives are just some kind of foundation from which I can have a crack at justice? Haha. IDK. Let me tell myself that, so that I can keep it together a bit longer. For just enough. Scott’s writing is full of deadbodyash. And somehow the feeling of burnt fur, claws, sticks, are in my mouth and I feel a bit sick. It’s utterly awful. Reading that back it sounds trite. It’s not meant to be. Of course, those fires feel a million

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miles away from me. Barely registered in my life in Scotland. What is coming into being with this writing thinking project? We can’t force it. But I want to try the affective, pay attention to what is coming into happening as we all go along(ly). Worried about the ethics, as always. But I don’t want to trace. I don’t want to tell you about post-qualitative research. I don’t want to suggest some options. I want to go somewhere new. Human-centred ego trip or ethically inspired hope for a future yet to come? Quite likely both  – though never only ‘human’;) q§CFW – GIL JUST WROTE THAT LAST BIT AND PUT CAPS LOCK ON.

10.6 Doubts Opening up this document this morning, nervously, as I can’t really remember what I wrote and not sure it was anything worthwhile (or even coherent). I don’t know what I want this project to be and it’s hard working with others. Always so much doubt about placing fingers on the keyboard. What will they think about what I write? Using google docs feels so immediate. I’m being pulled away from the keyboard. Being told to play the neoliberal game and listen to the VC address. But Mav is crying now too. Mav doesn’t care about post qualitative research nor what the vice chancellor has to say (I feel the same right now). Better go check on him… Mav’s happy now. Just wanted a warm cuddle. I’m relieved by Dave’s writing that appeared overnight. There is something more real, raw and truthful about it. Can I write that openly? I’ve been thinking about voice again. We (me?—there I go, speaking from some unsituated universalist position—the God trick) always seem to be putting on a voice. What is an authentic voice? Dave’s seems authentic to me. What is an ethical voice? One from a situated position? I feel like my position is always moving anyway. Pushed, pulled, leaping, groping, over it, tired, nihilistic, optimistic, about the world, my sense of it—forces and trajectories. The lyrics of Eddy Current Suppression Ring’s Which way to go keep repeating in my head. I guess I’ll go listen to some music then. Forget deliberating and nod to a rhythm. I pick up A Thousand Plateaus… because that’s what you do when you are confused and need some clarity, right? There’s a bookmark in there, in the refrain chapter. I read the page and it does nothing. I flip over the page and halfway down the next something pops out, something that resonates, that seems to fit the moment: ‘There is a territory when the rhythm has expressiveness. What defines the territory is the emergence of matters of expression (qualities)’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 366). It kind of works on me, it does something... … funny looking back a few days later on this text. I think I was pretty tired! Mood changes my voice a lot. Especially when I let the words come out and don’t try to fabricate a voice. Can we untether voice a little? I’ve got to thinking of the fires again, but in an abstract untethered kind of way…

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10.7 Fires, Identity and Subjectivity Beyond the Self: A Tangle of Life The differentiation that takes place in each encounter, over and over again, is itself life. (Rautio, 2013, p. 398)

I was there but not there. My body—which is always a habitat, an ecology, for other bodies (is it really mine then)—was physically distant. It wasn’t in that place. That place of so much joy. But now it’s a place of suffering and I’m not there. Or so I thought. My memories are there, in that place. They curl on into the present, intruding into my thoughts, pressing on in this moment. Those memories meet this moment, meet these events and shape the present. It’s projecting forward, altering my future too. I’m part ‘in’ that place now. My physical body has been shaped by that place. All that mountain walking, ski shuffling, eustressing muscles, forming postures. The same postures that hold me up and project an empathy, a concern out east. The same postures that are starting to slump now after leaning over this computer too much. So that place—that bio-geographical location—has in part made me. I am of it. But I have part made it. Imagined it. It is material though. And this place matters (to me at least). I’ve thought a lot about place. It’s one of those concepts isn’t it? An abstract idea, a piece of language that performs, that ‘we’ (not all, but some) use to universalise a specific location. Universal but specific all at once. When I write ‘place’, what place do you think of? A sense of place—something someone perceives? To place something—to put it somewhere. Do we put our thoughts in place, co-shaping a place through imaginative, cognitive and material processes? Colonisers of Australia did that. The acclimatisation society brought little pieces (fauna and flora) of Europe across the world to make this strange place (to them) feel like home, to colonise it. To make the unfamiliar familiar. Human exceptionalism at play, imparting a certain collective’s desire upon others. What about place as a bio-geographical location? Does that place it ‘out there’, separate from us/you/me when we aren’t physically there? Whose place is it, then? Does it distance and render it static? Possibly not. Hopefully not. Because the world is alive—even that inert stuff like rock. Lichens chew away at it. Weather wears it. Rock metamorphizes. For example, Uluru has a draw, a certain gravity, and has done for time immemorial. In an animistic or process-relational ontology it all keeps on moving—going along(ly). It may be better to say places, then, to pluralise the concept a little, to keep it going along. I’ve started to think of places as made of lines (for another example, see Jukes et al., 2022). It wasn’t my idea. Dave and Jamie prompted it awhile back (Clarke & Mcphie, 2016). Ingold and Deleuze and Guattari prompted them (I wonder what prompted them… I think Ingold’s father as a mycologist thinking about mycelial networks along with D&G prompted him. I think it was the rhizomes and nomads that possibly did it for D&G? … doesn’t even matter right now, but there is a line there). I have come to think that places are not necessarily geographically bounded. Places have a range of heterogeneous connections, at times geographically distant,

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that shape, move and implicate places. Ingold’s (2011, 2016) meshwork is an idea that helps describe this vision of places. As places are not static, they are really an intermingling of pasts-presents-futures, of lines of life, all overlapping, knotting, implicating. There isn’t one unifying force, but there is ontological commonality. A body multiple, to borrow Mol’s (2002) term—or a singular multiplicity (Law, 2004). Ingold’s meshwork is made up of lines: ‘To describe the meshwork is to start from the premise that every living being is a line or, better, a bundle of lines’ (Ingold, 2015, p. 3). This is where ‘everything tangles with everything else’ (p. 3). Natures, cultures, humans, more-than-human, all bundle together, criss-cross, infuse and create—create the worlds we partially know as places. Paths are a line of sorts. Drawing upon Ingold (2011) and Clarke and Mcphie’s (2016) provocations, places might also be knots, and it is along the paths of our lives that we encounter these knots. Here, in the movement of living, we entwine ourselves with knotted places in various ways that mutually reshape them and us: Every entwining is a knot, and the more that lifelines are entwined, the greater the density of the knot. Places then, are like knots, and the threads from which they are tied are lines… (Ingold, 2011, pp. 148–149)

And… To be a place, every somewhere must lie on one or several paths of movement to and from places elsewhere. Life is lived … along paths, not just in places, and paths are lines of a sort [I just realised I unintentionally plagiarized Ingold’s words above, oops]. It is along paths, too, that people grow into a knowledge of the world around them, and describe this world in the stories they tell. (Ingold, 2016, p. 3)

These textured images of the concept of place have helped me envision the multiple actants present and moving with/through/of places (in their own ways) and was part of the inspiration for the idea of more-than-human stories (Jukes & Reeves, 2020). Dave and Jamie have referred to more-than-human stories as it narratives, commenting that: More broadly, these it-narratives could be communities of microbiota continually pulsating in multiple directions rather than simply responding to things outside of their perceived boxes of taxonomic status, just as humans are not place-responsive in any cause-and-effect linearity. Life is not dot-to-dot. And so, places are not educational of themselves in a unidirectional manner. They cannot teach us as if we were a tabula rasa waiting to receive wisdom from some highly gendered romantically conceived Nature, ‘out there’. We are the ‘there’ itself. We are place/s. We are made of place/s. So what does it really mean to know place/s? There will always be secrets to/in places that hide in differing timelines, outside of our evolutionary heritage, our sensory bandwidth. There are countless narratives happening all the time, that perform at different scales, and temporal, spatial and sensorial frequencies, that we simply cannot perceive or even conceive (even with extra-sensory cyborgian additions like radar or ultraviolet detectors). (Clarke & Mcphie, 2020, p. 1257)

Here they evoked an image of places that I resonate with. As they say (clearly influenced by Deleuze & Guattari [1987] and Ingold [2011, 2015, 2016]), life is not dot to dot. Haraway (2016) made a similar figuration: ‘Tentacularity is about life lived along lines—and such a wealth of lines—not at points, not in spheres’ (p. 32). In other words, life is felt along lines. But importantly, not just my life or your life—no

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human exceptionalism—more-than-human lives feel their way along lines and through meshworks, into bodies, out of bodies. Where lines of life knot are places – ‘everybody lives somewhere’ (Haraway, 2016, p. 31)—and where lines cross are meshworks. A vibrant relational field. Ingold (2016) makes a distinction between two classes of line: the thread (filament) and the trace. I think I’ve stopped making a thread and have started tracing… this all gets a bit messy and abstract doesn’t it. I have to keep asking myself, what does this haecceity do? Deleuze and Guattari (1987) evoke a philosophy of the line, moving away from static points. Their discussions on an ontology of becoming involves the idea of movement. A staticised line is a point, a dot. Movement is a line, a becoming— without a start or destination: ‘A line of becoming only has a middle’ (p.  342). Becoming is the coexistence of movements—lines of life intermingling and meshing or knotting together. What does it do to think of educational contexts this way? I don’t have one answer. Do we think the purpose of education is to learn? Macfarlane (2013) illuminates the etymological trail of the verb ‘to learn’, or to acquire knowledge: Moving backwards in language time, we reach the Old English leornian, ‘to get knowledge, to be cultivated’. From leornian the path leads further back, into the fricative thickets of Proto-Germanic, and to the word liznojan, which has a base sense of ‘to follow or to find a track’ (from the Proto-Indo-European prefix leis-, meaning ‘track’). ‘To learn’ therefore means at root – at route – ‘to follow a track’. (p. 31)

There doesn’t seem to be a terminus to education then. And we have come back to lines. I suppose education is always environmental, happening along transcorporeal more-than-human lines—but definitely not an environment that ‘has been drained of its blood, its lively creatures, its interactions and relations’ (Alaimo, 2010, pp. 1–2). An environment where learners emerge through relational fields (Hultman & Lenz Taguchi, 2010) is more nuanced and accurate, I think. Lines keep returning in my thinking. Circling around prompting me. Sometimes I follow and trace, sometimes I try to create a filament, branch off like a fungal hyphae, embarking into other territory. Let’s wander a little further: To embark on any venture—whether it be to set out for a walk, to hunt an animal or to sail the seas—is to cast off into the stream of a world in becoming, with no knowing what will transpire. It is a risky business. In every case the practitioner has to attend, not just in the sense of paying proper notice to the situation in which he presently finds himself [sic], but also in the sense of waiting upon the appearance of propitious circumstance. (Ingold, 2015, p. 138)

Are you lost in the labyrinth yet? I think I lost myself. Or at least I was hoping to. I think what interests me about this elusive line idea is that it brings me back to a former self (whilst stretching me in new directions away from my ‘self’). My early twenties consisted of a single-minded obsession with skiing and kayaking—spending time in mountains and along rivers. That self is still here, just different. The obsession isn’t so single minded (at least I hope)—it was mostly a hedonistic pursuit. Travelling rivers, constantly scoping the horizon for a line. Scouting a rapid

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visualizing a line—a path of travel. Or in the mountains, observing a face for lines of descent, lines of flight, safe routes of travel, more adventurous routes, or a path less travelled. The scouting view, scoping a line, is always so different from within the line. Living the line, being of the flow and moving with multiple forces was the goal. I’ve since fallen for places, thought beyond myself and my self-centred pursuits. I grew up in a culture full of bounded individualism mixed with plenty of human exceptionalism and privilege. But posthuman ideas (or the composting humusities of Haraway [2016]) fermented and dissolved, blurred the boundaries of my skin and my ‘self’. My ‘I’ has become distributed as I am of a more-than-human world—theory has opened me to a transcorporeal self, which I have tried to decentre through considering a relational ethic. And this all brings me back to where I started this conversation, me thinking about the fires burning through the Alps, up hillsides, along river valleys, and my history, my life, being shaped by those places, emerging from the intensities of such a haecceity. Maybe this has been an ontological symbiography prompted by feelings of solastalgia. But I still have an obsession with lines, and maybe I should write about what this idea might do. Thinking with lines can decentre things and keep thought moving. Thinking lines creates conditions for movement which can stretch beyond the self, beyond the human and into relationality with bodies and affects. Moreover, thinking environments and places as continually made of lines enlivens any stasis and can even erase ideas of the ‘balance of nature’. Material environments might be thought through a realm of lines, as innumerable interconnecting agencies, as relational fields. As the environment—the world—is always changing—becoming. And in our current moment, ‘we’ might do well to forget about saving nature and may do better to cultivate ‘arts of living on a damaged planet’ (Tsing et al., 2017)—a planet that has always changed but is currently changing—hastening—at rates and in ways that are increasingly problematic (to put it lightly). For me, what keeps me going is to not shy away, ignore or positively romanticise, but instead bear witness to the darkness. But also, to be ready for the growth and creativity that always comes from disturbance. There is no nature to save, but a more equitable future we can make. So in the midst, and on the wake, of continual disturbance we can compose a new liveable future… and maybe this is something that environmental education and environmental education research can do? Okay Scott, let’s have a go with something else contemporary, shall we? You mention ‘stretching me in new directions away from my ‘self”. But, as well as ‘where’ is your self, I might ask, ‘what’ is your self?

10.8 Virus: Stream of Conscious Logue: Once, they said I should write ‘it is’ instead of ‘I think it is’. Curious. All academic writing is opinionated. How can it not be? I like the tidal pulls—both ways—and Brechtian performance of peer reviewing. I find it stimulating, if

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sometimes aggravating. The peer reviewers join ‘the thinking’ to become part of the assemblage that was once me, or Dave and I, or (now) Scott, Dave and I (we’re becoming quite a crowd eh?). Some of these opinionated views within the wider assemblage certainly may be more ‘empirical’ than others, but they are still influenced by their cultures thoughts and as such are compressed, within the confines of Enlightenment run-off ... perhaps (they don’t like the ‘perhaps’ either). As I get older, I definitely become more unsure!;-) I’ve also started to become more curious about other ways of writing/thinking/expressing that aren’t so serious. For example, I enjoy and respect the ontologically rooted humour of many First Nations peoples. This humour has a tendency to be condemned to the confines of non-academic writing by some serious-minded scholars (Leddy, 2018; Lopez, 2015). Weird eh? A(n implicit) political move? It has racist over/undertones  – don’t you think? Fortunately, First Nations humour can also be a coping mechanism against racism (Dokis, 2007). I digress. I wanted to tell you that this writing is not at all like that! It’s most certainly ‘academic’. But ... breaking free of the illusory, imagined, invented rhetoric that was designed to favour some people/epistemologies more than others. I do this in order to disrupt the status-quo of privilege (although I am very aware of the privilege inherent in this statement). Having said that, I will now go on to completely ostracise many people by writing inaccessibly about things that are assumed and not questioned enough...in my opinion! Oh, and I make up words too.;-)

10.9 The Coronacene An ancient Mediterranean landscape; an endangered species in the Amazon; the Library of Congress; the Gulf Stream; carcinogenic cells, DNA, dioxin; a volcano, a school, a city, a factory farm; the outbreak of a virus, a toxic plume; bio-luminescent water; your eyes, our hands, this book: what do all these things have in common? The answer to this question is simple. Whether visible or invisible, socialized or wild, they are all material forms emerging in combination with forces, agencies, and other matter. Entangled in endless ways, their “more-than-human” materiality is a constant process of shared becoming that tells us something about the “world we inhabit.” (Iovino & Oppermann, 2014, p. 1)

Many/most people in my field of work romanticise the idea of ‘reconnection to nature’ as something beneficial, pure, Appollonian and pristine. I can’t help but stir the assumptions inherent in this uncritical generalisation. One of my immediate responses is ‘really? You’d like to reconnect to dog poo? Tsunami’s? Earthquakes? Rubbish dumps? Plastic waste (yes, that’s nature!)?—I could go on. Recently, I’ve included a new addition to my running list of provocative examples—the Coronavirus. I doubt many people would deny its authenticity as a part of what they think of as ‘nature.’ Yet, I doubt many people would wish to (re)connect to it. But, we have entered the ‘Coronacene – a geological period in the Earth’s history that is becoming shaped by Corona-creatures—which include us’ [...]

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If human agency is distributed among phenomena, the coronavirus is a very dominant agential influence at the moment. We can’t ‘defeat’ it, we ‘become’ it – or it becomes us, in a very literal and physical sense. The coronavirus is currently (re)shaping both the narrative of our lives and our means of assessing those narratives and the larger one that we inhabit. (Mcphie & Hall, 2020, p. 48)

This got me thinking. Like the zombie-ant fungus, Ophiocordyceps Unilateralis, ‘the merging of the coronavirus with humans produces something altogether different that will have ecological ramifications—trophic cascades—that affect the very structure of human societies around the world’ (Mcphie & Hall, 2020, p.  48). Apparently, the Ophiocordyceps fungus can direct the ant to a certain height and force it to face a particular direction to help it spore. A single-celled parasite called Toxoplasma gondii can encourage rodents to lose their fear of cats, making it more likely that they get eaten and pass on the parasite. Spinochordodes tellinii instructs grasshoppers to drown so that the waterborne parasite can reproduce. Candida albicans may be one of the causes of schizophrenia and bipolar, instructing the host in a particular fashion that modern medical science labels as mentally ill and others label as mad or insane simply because we have compared the new version of the self to a normative model, an older, more populous and perhaps more conservative one. Candida albicans may not have a purpose as such but it certainly changes the behaviour of the host. However, re-reading these italicised examples, they appear very factual, very colonial (using the royal scientised Eurocentric naming of things) and unidirectional. Linear cause→and→effect. Very Linnaeus. Labelling, classifying, essentialising, hierarchising. As if the so-called ‘parasite’ is in control of the intention to act  – the agency. It can’t work this way though. It must be a multi-­ directional co-emergence of events, spread in/of the environment. A distributed environmental agency. In which case, the species aren’t separate, one thing consciously acting upon another to make it other than the norm. The norm ‘is’ this Dionysian complexity always already. The ant was always zombie. And zombie isn’t dead. It’s undead. There is an inorganic life to everything. The evolutionary processes that mingle and merge species create fungus-ant hybrids that are another species, another thing, perhaps more fungus than ant now but also neither solely one or the other (a bit like Scott, Dave and I right now). A his-story of the human is well documented (and historicised). But what of the fungus or the virus? Don’t they have a say? And if they could say, what would they say?

10.10 An It-Narrative (of Sorts) ‘Poison’ in Latin, we viruses are misunderstood creatures that are feared and shunned. There have been efforts to domesticate us for medical purposes – virotherapies  – but attempts to eradicate us dominate conceptions, much like weeds, germs or rats. Yet, we are virus.

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We make up assemblages of other creatures. We are a morphological species that transform our so-called host to become something altogether different—a different species. Not only do we form part of humans, we are humans. All creatures make up assemblages of other creatures, depending on where you decide to draw your lines. After all, taxonomical boundaries are invented just as much as dermatological boundaries. Things are not simply skin-bound. All things leak and stretch, even thought. Viruses can alter a creature’s gait, stature and style. We can be more prevalent in those most oppressed in societies, especially if those societies are socially inequitable. We are a political species. We can aid a government or destroy one. Yet, we all become virus eventually. We inhabit a world between definitions of life and non-life. Some suggest we are life-less and some suggest we are alive. Yet, all things can be articulated in life. [This human, writing with me now, came to that thought after reversing Dema’s (2007, para. 1) comment that ‘life can be articulated in all things’]. If life is defined as an evolving, self-replicating entity, it would mean that viruses are very much alive, but isn’t this also true for rocks? Volcanoes can self-replicate and evolve, can’t they? The Earth, in this case, is very much alive and swarming with virus. Take the human biome or virome. Humans are an assemblage of bacteria, fungi, mites, viruses, etc. Yet, that is only a very narrow understanding of what ‘humans’ are. As well as biological, humans are lithological, hydrological, tropological, topological, and conceptual. They are an assemblage of minerals, plastics, metals, electro-­chemicals and neurons—around their stomachs and hearts, not just their brains—they think corporeally [or as Alaimo (2010) puts it, transcorporeally. Or as Clark and Chalmers (1998) put it, transcranially. Or as this human (Mcphie, 2019) writing with me now puts it, environ(mentally)]. They are water and H2O—these two can exist independently of one another due to their ecological performance as physical concepts (as life-giver or as chemical solution), as well as becoming assemblages of other hydrological creatures, such as ponds, rivers and oceans. And if a river can have legal status, why not a virus? After all, there are trillions of viruses that inhabit/are humans...and rivers. We viruses make up a genome of the planet, we fill your oceans, wind, soil—we are our oceans, wind, soil. We viruses are the most successful species on Earth (I’m bragging now…can you tell?) and we are of every species on Earth, transferring genetic material between species: ‘They are the drivers of evolution and adaptation to environmental changes’ (Moelling, 2020, p. 669). I think we viruses are entirely misunderstood by humans—or should I say ‘by viruses’, as that is what we are. This is a photo of me below, second from the right—I’m smiling (Fig. 10.2). Logue: I guess the trillions of viruses that make us what we are behave like a bulge of kids in a playground, playing, pushing, shoving, some bullying others, some joining Hitler’s youth. This is what viruses do. Some turn bad. But of course, this bad is always already someone/something else’s good, or nothing at all.

10.11 Intermede

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Fig. 10.2 SARS-CoV-2. (Image from Goldsmith & Tamin, 2020)

10.11 Intermede Jamie, it seems even your emails could be infused with viruses, according to the automated responses that come through when you accept meetings: “Viruses: Although we have taken steps to ensure that this email and attachments are free from any virus, we advise that in keeping with good computing practice the recipient should ensure they are actually virus free”. [Sorry Scott, I have to plug in again just here to this assemblage—after this paper has already been accepted for publication now—to respond to this idea of being ‘virus free’, because 2 weeks ago I became one of the Corona-creatures myself—part of the zombie horde – unclean. I think it was the Delta variant (that was initially nationalised/racialized as the India virus—out of the China virus—I didn’t realise viruses could have nationalities!). Not sure. Anyway, the virus that has now become part of me wants me to tell you how it has altered me. It only felt like the back end of a cold. But it made me feel dirty somehow. Degenerate. (Like the artists who were despised so much by Hitler and the far-right). I was infected. My taste has altered, perhaps forever (how would I know?). I haven’t kissed Jane properly since I had it. Not sure why. Maybe, I still think I can pass it on to her, even though a fortnight has passed. My proprioception has altered. I am a part of a new species. And now the online virus of this addition is infecting you too, Scott and Dave—oh yes, and you too…yes, you. Part of me, these physical thoughts that I’m having right now, also altered by the virus, are now part of you. This is ecological. It’s a trophic cascade in action, right now. This is environmental writing verbatim. Okay, now I can plug out again. Back to the pre-­ reviewed story. Sorry for the intrusion.]

Something to add in the mix Jamie?—old/new virus being released from melting permafrost—a link between climate change and the agency of viruses—maybe a previously frozen virus can write an it-narrative as a response? … http://www.bbc. com/earth/story/20170504-­t here-­a re-­d iseases-­h idden-­i n-­i ce-­a nd-­t hey-­a re-­ waking-­up

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• Yes, that’d be good. Do you want to be the virus that responds? • I can have a go, but equally happy to leave it to you if you like. I need to go back and work on some of what I started above, and might do that first. So by all means, go for it if you like. • It seems this was a stream that became a bit of an oxbow lake, eh Scott? Jamie, above you mentioned how plastic waste is also ‘nature’. I think many in our field get caught in the dualistic categorisation as they haven’t engaged in documentaries such as this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLgh9h2ePYw. The Youtube documentary ‘The majestic plastic bag’ describes the nature of the wild plastic bag, and the perils it faces in its migratory journeys. The bag in this video is very much alive. The agency of the plastic bag is often subjugated, as it is thought of as an inert individual object, only with one purpose of carting some groceries home. Such domestication (and anthropocentric utilitarian purposing) removes the bag from the assemblages that it emerges from and through. It makes me think of Ingold and his kite-flying… no thing acts alone… (more to tease out and play with here?) … a bit of ‘thing power’ from Bennett (2010) might also be relevant. • Like this!!! [It’s Attenborough as a flat ecologist!] It also reminds me of the video of the plastic bag in the film American Beauty, and its liveliness (it’s also been mocked in an episode of Family Guy). • “Do you have any idea how complicated your circulatory system is?!” • Kites—also Maori kites as animistic extended limbs? Another thing about nature (and maybe you wrote about this elsewhere?), but Alaimo (2016) highlights how the term is weaponised by homophobic perspectives. Specifically, to be straight is ‘natural’, whereas to be queer is ‘unnatural’. There is a supposed purity in straightness, akin the purity of nature, and something wrong if one isn’t that way inclined. But Alaimo notes numerous examples of queerness in animals, as examples of homosexuality in ‘nature’. This could be an interesting point that may resonate with your views on unequal and unjust uses of the concept, Jamie. This is just some quick notes, another thread to follow maybe… Jamie will have more on this for sure—we’re using a bit of Queer Ecology in a chapter for a Rewilding Handbook—what’s happened with that Jamie? Is it still with reviewers? Yep. Here are a couple of quotes from it Dave: Concepts like nature and wilderness are subject to the same forces of cultural invention as everything else. Therefore, they are gendered and sexed, usually in a heteronormative binary fashion (Mcphie & Clarke, unpublished…as yet). ‘“Nature” and the “natural” have long been waged against homosexuals, as well as women, people of color, and indigenous peoples’. (Alaimo, 2010, p. 51) The ‘ontology-axiology of reproductive heteronormativity’ contributes to the global environmental crisis ‘because the world is imagined to have this great capacity to reproduce itself infinitely’. (Anderson et al., 2012, p. 85)

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I know these are only short extracts that might feel out of context, but it also might nudge the reader (the new author) to seek out our chapter – Queering Rewilding: Ecofascism, Inclusive Conservation, and Queer Ecology (Mcphie & Clarke, unpublished…so far)—for further context. [This was how things happened during the process of inquiry. Some sentences set up conditions for new sentences, others trailed off. There could be more to explore in the unfinished threads above, but that is for another day] – another oxbow lake Scott?

10.12 Writing with Scott’s Lines and Jamie’s Viruses: Practising Political Ecologies Last week I heard a student say it as well. We are the virus. The context was all wrong though. They weren’t being literal. They were meaning it in the same way as Agent Smith in The Matrix. Not in a good way, but a bad way... Now it’s this week, and Jamie is late for the meeting so I give him a call. No answer. Scott and I look at each other on the screen. Small talk evaporating. I call Jamie again. Nope. Nothing. What do we do? We…we meet what’s going on with a dance of intimacy. We talk work, life and project through each other. Scott is in lockdown still. I loved Scott’s new writing. I’m wearing a ridiculous woolly orange jumper. Scott is too polite to say anything about it. [Sorry to interrupt Dave. I thought your jumper was fantastic. I was about to say something but got distracted by the leaky roof!] We’re strangers grappling to get somewhere and, save writing some of the abstract and turning up, I haven’t contributed much to our google doc. So, I’m wondering what to do, but I’m not sure if I say this or not. Scott is an ethical guy, and he asks me what I’m interested in at the moment. The question might have nothing to do with the project. But it’s a helpful question. I do the thing where I don’t look at the screen while I talk, and I start saying something hazy about political ecology. Neither of us know what I’m getting at. At least, Scott might know what I’m getting at, but I’m not sure. I decide I want to follow this. Last week, she said we are the virus. The day before she said this, the group of students and I had been looking for liminality on the Cairngorm plateau.1 We’d wandered out of Rothiemurcus Lodge, above the recently harvested tree crop. The endless silvery broken stumps and smashed wood leaving a landscape reminiscent of Mordor, echoed by the grey Scottish sky. We’d veered away from that site of extraction, ducking off the gravel track and through young trees—out into rough ground and through the last of the blaeberries. We walked a line beneath the plateau, through sparse copse of Scots Pine, towards the wide-open mouth of the Lairig Ghru. The trees hunkered on low

 Looking for liminality in the landscape is a pedagogical technique developed by Dave’s colleague, Robbie Nicol. 1

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island mounds above the bog, clutched together for fear of being swallowed, ignoring social distancing on the high blanket heather. We’d stopped at the edge of the tree line, remarking on the difference we felt emerging from the homely sheltered stand and onto the wide laid windy spread of bog; rising open land, coalescing moraine and crags, and far off high rounded tops. We discussed liminality on this forest-edge, and the students were asked to find something liminal around them. To find a space where something became something else. There was much to look at. Above, speeding clouds became wind as vapour condensed in and out of perception. Below, a crafted mound of Scots pine needles and earth heaved several feet above the heather as wood ants went about wood-anting. Cotton-grass raged on brakes in the mire. Rain had us gripped with its threatening absence. That’s an odd way of writing, Dave. Isn’t it a bit…romantic. Scott and Jamie both veer away from this. And you know it’s a problem. What are you getting at? Hold on. I’m setting a scene. And besides, it’s nice. We are the virus. After 10 min of sitting and thinking, watching the students roam the bog-edge, I went over. We gathered, and started our liminality-trail at a tree. At first the young Scots pine held our focus as we discussed its obvious difference to the world around it. It stood there, an individual making its way upwards in the world. Someone notices that the tree is solid compared to its surroundings—but of course this is only a matter of perspective. The tree is, by its own terms, going as fast as it can in a completely normal register which remains alien to us. Further, as we looked at it, and placed our hands on it, the tree became the-world-around-it. As Ingold (2008) notes, it’s difficult to actually say where a tree begins and ends. Do the creatures living under its bark see a tree? Or something else? It seemed the tree could be many things and nothing depending on the practices of wording and attention at play (Mcphie & Clarke, 2015). What might this do, pedagogically? Multiple perspectives might imply humility—great—but they also might not. What they cannot escape, however, is politics. Actually, this isn’t really about different perspectives. It’s about different worlds. This is cosmopolitics, in which ‘there is not a single world revealed through a multiplicity of perspectives; instead, there are a multiplicity of worlds each entwined with one another, and made present by different sets of practices’ (Robert & Mickey, 2013, p. 2). This isn’t relativism either— these worlds are all present together. Practices matter in both senses of the word matter—they have consequence. Living in one world, where the tree is an object in a landscape, has different manifestations to practising the tree as a ‘gathering together of the threads of life’ (Ingold, 2008, p. 4). There’s something else here. With this cosmopolitics stuff. I can’t quite pin it down. We are the virus. Keep going. We moved along our liminality trail. To a dead stick. But, all things can be articulated in life (Jamie). So not only dead, then. To a small patch of ground. Tiny in comparison to this open plain. But, the patch is a lithological, hydrological, tropological, topological, and conceptual universe (Jamie). Indeed, several universes. So not only tiny, then. And then our trail took us to a line of water, concrete in its liminality in the landscape. A solid line. And yet, where does the

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water end? Are there really banks to this narrow ditch? Or rather, networks of roots, filaments, growths, seething beings all muddling multiple worlds together? So, not only a line then. Or all lines. All movement (Scott). One thing’s liminality is another thing’s whole. Wording, attending, living these plural worlds is a political act—you decide who you bring into life—which worlds get noticed in your making—which realities gain credence—and which are ignored, trampled, subjugated. This is cosmopolitics. The politics of the cosmos. Wait, who decides? Things do. And we’re things. So we do. Jamie, Scott, me, are each worlding different worlds—attempting to gain access to a different politics. We are the virus. But neither of them, of us, did it alone. We all constitute each other. Viruses and all got this going. You might be waiting for the big reveal of why I keep repeating we are the virus. There’s no reveal, I’m afraid. But there is this dual thing going on. She said we are the virus. And in its context it was a practice of speech that worlded a particular world at the very same time in which it relied on a particular world. There are far right politics to the we are the virus idea. Not Jamie’s idea—that we are literally viruses—but the idea that a mass ‘we’ of humanity can be grouped together and viewed in a negative way in terms of using Earth as a host. It implies a certain misanthropy, one that views over-population of non-white others as the primary environmental problem (I also don’t think she has far right leanings). It also implies a pristine body of Earth. A transcendent nature to which we are mere visitors—at least some of us. It’s a certain political ecology, among and within a multiplicity of political ecologies. An ecology of political ecologies. A practice of the natural that wraps up ideas of the social, and vice versa. Thinking with Scott, I like the idea of political ecologies as lines of movement. Jostling, fusing, speeding in and out of life through worldly practices of being. Knotting under tension. Appeals to the natural tangle within both egalitarian and far-right politics. For instance, there is a capitalist far-right ‘conspirituality’ (Ward & Voas, 2011) seeping into/out-of online wellbeing influencers who promote ‘wellness, natural health, and organic food’ alongside a world where ‘big Science is evil, supplements help, you can boost your immune system, vaccines don’t work…’ (Wiseman, 2021). This view is not only difficult for appeals for mask wearing, social distancing, and vaccination, it also has a conspi-­ racist aspect. Whilst cosmopolitics makes us aware that practices pluralise the cosmos in these sometimes difficult ways, it also means taking these multiple practices seriously—handling them with a sort of serious care and attention, whether they are the coming into being of viruses, a Scots pine or a wellness influencer. This is not the same as tolerance, it is instead creating spaces for gathering, which circumvent the damage of modernist critique (Latour, 2004; Stengers, 2008). One way to do this is through immanent, or creative critique, in the performance of alternative practices and worlds. I think posthuman political ecology is what is going on constantly in the play of a life. These political ecologies infuse our writing in environmental education research all the time, whether we know it or not. So how do we tangle with political ecologies? Who/what/when/where/which gets to count? We don’t have mastery in

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deciding here—we can’t know what driving lines move through us—we can’t know what we don’t know or practice what we haven’t already practised—we aren’t in control of what happens to us. Really, we are the happening to us, with everything else. This isn’t space to tweak, just space to follow what you find coming up for you, with you, of you, as you (the bundle, spreading, knotting, untangling) continue along the lines. This. This writing, is what I’ve found myself doing. The track I’m following (Scott). I had a say in it, but it was really a conversation that got me/us here. And I’m not trying to sound grand, I don’t think we’ve/I’ve arrived (here) anywhere particularly impressive! It was a throw away phrase, but it might seal up a world, unless we open it up. We are the virus. My colleague is walking over to us as we look at the shallow ditch. Our group has taken longer than his to finish our liminality trail. My gaze falls to the copper light spilling through the golden huddle of Scots pine behind him. Wait, what worlds am I wording?

References Alaimo, S. (2010). Bodily natures: Science, environment, and the material self. Indiana University Press. Alaimo, S. (2016). Exposed: Environmental politics and pleasure in posthuman times. Indiana University Press. Anderson, J. E., Azzarello, R., Brown, G., Hogan, K., Ingram, G. B., Morris, M. J., & Stephens, J. (2012). Queer ecology: A roundtable discussion. European Journal of Ecopsychology, 3(1), 82–103. Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant matter: A political ecology of things. Duke University Press. Clark, A., & Chalmers, D. (1998). The extended mind. Analysis, 58(1), 7–19. Clarke, D.  A. G., & Mcphie, J. (2016). From places to paths: Learning for sustainability, teacher education and a philosophy of becoming. Environmental Education Research, 22(7), 1002–1024. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2015.1057554 Clarke, D. A. G., & Mcphie, J. (2020). New materialisms and environmental education: Editorial. Environmental Education Research, 26(9–10), 1255–1265. https://doi.org/10.1080/1350462 2.2020.1828290 Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia (B. Massumi, Trans.). Bloomsbury. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1994). What is philosophy? (H. Tomlinson & Burchell, G., Trans.). Columbia University Press. Dema, L. (2007). “Inorganic, yet alive”: How can Deleuze and Guattari deal with the accusation of vitalism? Rhizomes, 15. Retrieved from http://www.rhizomes.net/issue15/dema.html Dokis, D. (2007). Racism against first nations people and first nations humour as a coping mechanism. Totem: The UWO Journal of Anthropology, 15, 58–66. Foucault, M. (1973). The order of things: An archaeology of the human sciences. Vintage Random House. Goldsmith, C. S., & Tamin, A. (2020). SARS-CoV-2. ID#: 23591, CDC. Retrieved from https:// phil.cdc.gov/Details.aspx?pid=23591 Halsey, M. (2007). Molar ecology: What can the (full) body of an eco-tourist do? In A. Hickey-­ Moody & P.  Malins (Eds.), Deleuzian encounters: Studies in contemporary social issues (pp. 135–150). Palgrave Macmillan.

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Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press. Hickey-Moody, A., & Malins, P. (2007). Introduction: Gilles Deleuze and four movements in social thought. In A.  Hickey-Moody & P.  Malins (Eds.), Deleuzian encounters: Studies in contemporary social issues (pp. 1–26). Palgrave Macmillan. Hultman, K., & Lenz Taguchi, H. (2010). Challenging anthropocentric analysis of visual data: A relational materialist methodological approach to educational research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 23(5), 525–542. https://doi.org/10.1080/0951839 8.2010.500628 Ingold, T. (2008). Bindings against boundaries: Entanglements of life in an open world. Environment and Planning A, 40(8), 1796–1810. Ingold, T. (2011). Being alive: Essays on movement, knowledge and description. Routledge. Ingold, T. (2015). The life of lines. Routledge. Ingold, T. (2016). Lines: A brief history (Routledge classics edition). Routledge. Iovino, S., & Oppermann, S. (2014). Introduction: Stories come to matter. In S.  Iovino & S. Oppermann (Eds.), Material ecocriticism. Indiana University Press. Jukes, S. (2020). Posthuman insights for environmental education. A review of mental health and wellbeing in the Anthropocene: A posthuman inquiry, by Jamie Mcphie. 2019, Singapore: Springer Nature. €69.99, ISBN 978-981-13-3326-2. The Journal of Environmental Education, 51(5), 395–398. https://doi.org/10.1080/00958964.2020.1813678 Jukes, S., & Reeves, Y. (2020). More-than-human stories: Experimental co-productions in outdoor environmental education pedagogy. Environmental Education Research, 26(9–10), 1294–1312. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2019.1699027 Jukes, S., Stewart, A., & Morse, M. (2022). Following lines in the landscape: Playing with a posthuman pedagogy in outdoor environmental education. Australian Journal of Environmental Education., 38(3–4), 345–360. https://doi.org/10.1017/aee.2021.18 Kendi, I. X. (2017). Stamped from the beggining. Nation Books. Koro-Ljungberg, M. (2015). Reconceptualizing qualitative research: Methodologies without methodology. Sage Publications. Latour, B. (2004). Why has critique run out of steam? From matters of fact to matters of concern. Critical Inquiry, 30(2), 225–248. Law, J. (2004). After method: Mess in social science research. Routledge. Leddy, S. (2018). In a good way: Reflecting on humour in indigenous education. Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies, 16(2), 10–20. Longxi, Z. (1988). The myth of the other: China in the eyes of the west. Critical Inquiry, 15(1), 108–131. Lopez, J.  D. (2015). Native American identity and academics: Writing NDN in edumacation. Teachers College Record. Retrieved from https://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp? ContentId=18216 Macfarlane, R. (2013). The old ways: A journey on foot. Penguin. Mcphie, J. (2019). Mental health and wellbeing in the Anthropocene: A posthuman inquiry. Palgrave Macmillan. Mcphie, J., & Clarke, D. (2015). A walk in the park: Considering practice for outdoor environmental education through an immanent take on the material turn. The Journal of Environmental Education, 46(4), 230–250. https://doi.org/10.1080/00958964.2015.1069250 Mcphie, J., & Clarke, D.  A. G. (unpublished). Queering rewilding: Ecofascism, inclusive conservation, and queer ecology. In I. Convery, S. Carver, R. Byers, & S. Hawkins (Eds.), A handbook for rewilding. Routledge. Mcphie, J., & Hall, J. (2020). The coronacene: The metamorphosis of humans into corona-­creature. In A. Blackmore, E. Chaney, J. Hall, D. Kelly, & J. Mcphie (Eds.), Softdrive: The 2019–20 artspace project on mediators of communal memory. Artspace. Moelling, K. (2020). Viruses more friends than foes. Electroanalysis, 32, 669–673. Mol, A. (2002). The body multiple: Ontology in medical practice. Duke University Press. Pyne, S. (2019). Fire: A brief history (2nd ed.). University of Washington Press.

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Rautio, P. (2013). Children who carry stones in their pockets: On autotelic material practices in everyday life. Children’s Geographies, 11(4), 394–408. https://doi.org/10.1080/1473328 5.2013.812278 Riddle, S. (2018). An experiment in writing that flows. In S. Riddle, D. Bright, & E. Honan (Eds.), Writing with Deleuze in the academy (pp. 61–71). Springer. Robert, A., & Mickey, S. (2013). Cosmopolitics: An ongoing question. Paper presented at the Political theory and entanglement: Politics at the overlap of race, class, and gender. The Center for Process Studies. Sheldrake, M. (2020). Entangled life: How fungi make our worlds, change our minds and shape our futures. Penguin Random House. St. Pierre, E. (2019). Post qualitative inquiry in an ontology of immanence. Qualitative Inquiry, 25(1), 3–16. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800418772634 Stengers, I. (2008). Experimenting with refrains: Subjectivity and the challenge of escaping modern dualism. Subjectivity, 22(1), 38–59. Timofeeva, O. (2018). Animal. In R.  Braidotti & M.  Hlavajova (Eds.), Posthuman glossary (pp. 34–36). Bloomsbury Academic. Tsing, A., Bubandt, N., Gan, E., & Swanson, H. (2017). Arts of living on a damaged planet: Ghosts and monsters of the Anthropocene. University of Minnesota Press. Verlie, B. (2021). Learning to live with climate change: From anxiety to transformation. Routledge. Ward, C., & Voas, D. (2011). The emergence of conspirituality. Journal of Contemporary Religion, 26(1), 103–121. Wiseman, E. (2021, October 17). The dark side of wellness: The overlap between spiritual thinking and far-right conspiracies. The Gaurdian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/oct/17/eva-­w iseman-­c onspirituality-­ the-­dark-­side-­of-­wellness-­how-­it-­all-­got-­so-­toxic

Chapter 11

Responding to Climate Change Through Outdoor Environmental Education: Pedagogy for Confronting a Crisis Scott Jukes

Abstract  This chapter looks to address the fact that OEE has not responded in any significant way to the climate crises. Thus, this chapter confronts the issue of climate change by exploring some of the climate change education literature that may provide useful insights for OEE pedagogy. I then offer four examples of practice where climate change education is delivered through OEE. These examples include taking advantage of pedagogic moments, planning activities and experiences with climate change education in mind along with an example of tertiary curriculum development for climate change education within OEE. The chapter highlights that conceptualising and bearing witness to climate change are steps towards collective action and fostering response-ability.

11.1 Outdoor Education and Climate Change Thus far throughout this book I have mentioned the looming spectre of climate change as part of the problematic environmental conditions the planet is currently facing. However, I have not yet grappled with climate change education and how outdoor environmental education (OEE) may act as a vehicle for climate change education. Hence, this chapter explores some pedagogical potentials for tackling the topic of climate change in OEE. I draw upon some of my own practices and broader ideas from the climate change education literature to offer some pedagogical possibilities, including some specific examples.

S. Jukes (*) Federation University, Berwick, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Jukes, Learning to Confront Ecological Precarity, International Explorations in Outdoor and Environmental Education 13, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34200-4_11

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As mentioned in Chap. 1, OEE is (unfortunately) well placed to feel the effects of climate change. I have had to cancel fieldwork programs due to catastrophic bushfires, floods and other extreme weather events. These have been specific enactments of climate change and have influenced fieldwork programs in significant ways. Outdoor educators across Australia (and likely around the world) are now having to reconsider the suitability of locations and time of year that outdoor education programs run due to changing climate and resultant heat, flood, fire, snowfall and other extreme weather risk. Fox and Thomas (2022) echo my sentiments, stating: Climate change impacts have resulted in shorter time frames or windows in which to run OEE activities and venue accessibility has also become an issue. Additionally, environmental safety concerns are escalating with climate change increasing the exposure to the risk of injuries, loss of life, mid-program evacuations, and the postponement and cancellation of programs. (p. 4)

Most of the places in which I work as an outdoor environmental educator are experiencing the effects of climate change. This has become more noticeable the longer I have been an educator in specific places like the Australian Alps or rivers in the Murray Darling Basin. However, as Alistair Stewart observes, climate change has been the ‘elephant in the room’ for outdoor educators (Quay et al., 2020). Stewart’s point is that despite the increasing impacts of climate change, OEE has been slow to respond in any significant manner. Moreover, Fox and Thomas (2022) further highlight the ‘elephant in the room’, stating: Given Australia’s increased concerns regarding the real and present threats and impacts of climate change, combined with the pedagogical intent of outdoor learning and tertiary OEE programs, it is not clear if outdoor environmental education in Australia is leveraging or fulfilling its moral imperative to enact its curriculum, educate students about climate change, equip them with climate adaption [sic] and resilience skills, and instil in them the motivation to advocate for climate action. (p. 3)

Is OEE suffering from climate inaction, as with broader Australian society? Possibly. As Stewart states, ‘climate change disruptions require considerable re-thinking of OEE pedagogy and curricula’ (Quay et al., 2020, p. 111). However, to again quote Fox and Thomas (2022): There appears to be a paucity of literature describing how OEE can enact a climate change pedagogy which supports young people and adult learners to build the knowledge, skills and capability needed to participate in and contribute to a climate-resilient future. (p. 4)

It is this concern I will address in this chapter, presenting a pedagogy for confronting the crisis of climate change. Notably, I do not wish to only adapt program timings or venues so I can continue business as usual. Instead, I aim to tackle the issue of climate change head on through OEE pedagogy. With outdoor educators such as myself being able to see and experience changing climates, I believe we are well placed to focus our attention and pedagogical practices on climate change and its impacts in ways that foster response and action.

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11.2 Methodological Considerations: Praxiography and Thinking with Theory In Chap. 3, I presented the concept of immanent praxiography that guides the methodological approach to this book. Throughout subsequent chapters, I have further described methodological dispositions relating to new materialism and posthumanism, and the way those theoretical orientations can be enacted in OEE research and practice. For this penultimate chapter, I will circle back to this notion of praxiography and highlight how I am enacting such a methodological orientation for the purposes of this chapter. As I have suggested, the praxis of praxiography helps signify that theorising is a practice and that we practice theory. Furthermore, the suffix -graphy involves recording and description (Bueger & Gadinger, 2018). Hence, in this chapter I start by exploring climate change education literature and examine theory relating to climate change education practices. This process investigates and highlights useful and relevant insights from the literature that may inform OEE pedagogy—this initiates a practice of thinking with theory within my disciplinary context (Jackson & Mazzei, 2013). Following this, I explore OEE climate change education practices— pedagogy for confronting the crisis. In doing so, I describe and examine four examples of enacting such pedagogical orientations in my teaching practices within tertiary OEE. Within the examples, I draw upon a range of empirical materials for analysing practice and to help aid discussions. Specifically, I use a short, edited video from fieldwork situations, photographs and curriculum documents. I elaborate on the empirical context of these materials with descriptions and think with theory to analyse and discuss the pedagogical affordances. As Gough and Gough (2021) state, ‘climate change education, like other forms of environmental education, has proved challenging to implement’ (p. v). Thus, presenting this chapter as praxiography aims to overcome such challenges in implementation by offering an example of theoretically informed OEE climate change education practice.

11.3 Climate Change Education Earth’s mightiest forces have forsaken geological time and now change on a human scale. Changes that previously took a hundred thousand years now happen in one hundred. Such speed is mythological; it affects all life on Earth… (Magnason, 2020, p. 9)

There is a growing body of literature on climate change education, pressing the urgency to educate for action. However, as Verlie and Flynn (2022) highlight, education faces a reckoning in the face of climate change. Verlie and Flynn’s special issue on the Youth Strikes for Climate indicate that currently, education is failing to adequately equip young people with the knowledge and capacities to respond to climate change. Furthermore, young people know this and are revolting, striking

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from school and standing up to the structures and forces that are failing to respond adequately to catastrophic conditions. Reimers (2021) for example, notes that many practices of climate change education utilise a didactic approach focusing on climate change facts and Verlie (2021) emphasises that scientific understandings of climate often fail to engage larger portions of society because they are not relatable. Furthermore, Rousell and Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles’ (2020) systematic review of climate change education literature suggest that didactic approaches to climate change education have been largely ineffectual. Verlie and Flynn’s (2022) special issue on the Youth Strikes for Climate highlights the need for more progressive approaches to climate change education. In this section I will explore some of the literature on climate change education, focusing on pedagogical possibilities that may help inform OEE pedagogy, keeping in mind Verlie and Flynn’s reckoning. Climate change education is seen by Reimers (2021) as something that encourages more sustainable ways of relating to the world, including reducing impact on climate change and the impacts of climate change on people’s lives. He suggests this can be through individual actions relating to lifestyle and consumption habits, but also collective responses through democratic processes, influences on corporate actions and attitudes and societal values. For me, this second aspect of focusing on collective responses, that also attends to political, social, economic and justice elements of climate change, needs particular attention. This is also advocated through Waldron et  al.’s (2019) research with educators and students. In relation to an emphasis on collective responses, Reimers (2021) highlights: Government policies such as caps on emissions are essential to slowing global warming, and they are subject to influence and preferences by citizens, educated to understand the scientific consensus on climate change and with the capacity to exercise influence as citizens. (p. 2)

This indicates the important role of education for climate action that encourages a collective response. Yet, Reimers (2021) states there is a need for new strategies for climate change education to further enable such possibilities. Educational responses to climate change do not have to be confined to facts and figures or individualistic responses. For me, I see the importance of collective responses that challenge structures that perpetuate climate change and climate injustice. For example, Rylie (2017) highlights that there are just 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions between 1988–2017,1 which suggests that education for collective responses that encourage and enable people and communities to speak up against corporate power may offer an influential climate change education strategy. As part of this, developing and fostering political agency—the ability to influence change—is an important element of climate change education  In addition to such corporate impacts, Verlie (2021), in discussing climate justice, observes that ‘those that contribute least to climate change tend to experience the worst of it’ (p. 10). As Reimers (2021) states, the ‘impact of global warming of 1.5 °C and beyond will be greater on disadvantaged and vulnerable populations, indigenous peoples, and communities whose livelihood is dependent on agricultural or coastal activities’ (p. 2). These are important acknowledgments for education that addresses climate justice. 1

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(e.g., see White et al., 2022). However, as Verlie (2021) notes, one of the barriers to climate action is disempowerment and anxiety, which reduces capacities to act. As a pedagogical strategy for climate change education, Verlie (2021) suggests a relational approach that starts with acknowledging our entanglement with climate. To do this, Verlie (2021) embraces posthumanist philosophy to consider ways of living-with climate, highlighting an embodied and affective relationality that recognizes our more-than-human entanglement with ‘climate and the wider ecological world’ (p. 6). I believe these are pedagogical notions particularly suitable for OEE, where we aim to learn through embodied experiences in particular places. Such an approach, following Verlie, encounters, bears witness to and stories climate change impacts, working through the emotive felt aspects—the potential eco-anxiety—of the climate crisis. As a compliment to Verlie’s (2021) process of living-with and storying climate through embodied and affective attunement, I find Lock’s (2019) work on climate response-ability helpful. Lock draws upon Haraway’s (2016) notion of response-­ ability, which seeks to cultivate an ‘ethical and open approach where responses are mutually engaging’ (p. 349). This idea differs from responsibility, which has a focus on duty and accountability. To further this work, Lock works with Barad’s (2007) agential realism to argue that agency is not something exclusively human, but rather the universe is a constant reconfiguring of innumerable agencies beyond the human. This highlights that no person or thing acts alone, eroding notions of individualism and again highlighting the idea of collective and distributed agencies that I have discussed in different contexts throughout this book. Thus, the idea of fostering response-ability involves recognising the collaborative and co-constitutive nature of agency, and that any response to climate change involves ethical relationality. Which is to say, response-abilities are fostered by attending to the specific relations we find ourselves encountering in an open and ethical manner. Obviously, there is a much greater body of climate change education literature emerging then presented here. However, what I have presented offers some of the pedagogical orientations I have moved towards and put to work in my OEE practice. The following section presents four examples where I have put some of these ideas to work, whilst elaborating further on the pedagogical orientations that may be generative for OEE.

11.4 Conceptualising OEE Climate Change Education Pedagogy: Examples in Practice Within the contexts of these examples, I have made efforts to enact some of the previously discussed theoretical orientations for climate change education within my tertiary OEE practices. The first example looks at responding to climate change events as they have occurred. The second example explores arts-based pedagogy as a practice of grappling with changing climate and climate futures. The third looks at

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a practice of mapping relations to configure where agency is located and might be enacted. The final example looks at curriculum development practices, where I have purposefully embedded climate change pedagogy in my tertiary OEE curriculum.

11.4.1 Bearing Witness: Conceptualising Climate Change Through Embodied Encounters with Flooding One of the challenges for climate change education is conceptualising climate change and its impacts. For example, Magnason (2020), in his book On Time and Water, grapples with the complexity of climate change, suggesting that the size and scale of climate change makes it hard for us to comprehend and register: We see headlines and think we understand them: ‘glacial melt’, ‘record heat’ ‘ocean acidification’, ‘increasing emissions’. If scientists are right, these words indicate events more serious than anything that has happened in human history up to now. If we fully understand such words, they’d directly alter our actions and choices. But it seems that 99 per cent of the words’ meanings disappear into white noise... [or] a black hole. (p. 10)

Which is to say the language of climate change has created a material-semiotic divide, where the happenings, and possible future happenings, are hard to represent in and comprehend through language. Furthermore, Morton (2013) coined the concept of hyperobject, referring ‘to things that are massively distributed in time and space relative to humans’ (p. 1), using it to describe climate change. Which is to say hyperobjects like climate change are entities that cannot be fully grasped. Maybe it is too big to grapple with climate change as a whole, or complex scientific language, and OEE might be better placed by starting with specific enactments of climate change. For example, the recent floods in NSW were climate change happening in real time (Verlie & Rickards, 2022), or as discussed in the last chapter, the Black Summer bushfires offer another real time enactment of climate change. However, in this section I will draw upon an example of encountering rising water levels during a river journey on the Lower Goulburn River (Video 11.1). Video 11.1  Paddling the Lower Goulburn River video. (https://doi.org/10.6084/ m9.figshare.21818049) The video linked above involves paddling Gaiyila (the Lower Goulburn River) with tertiary OEE students.2 For context, this river journey was originally planned for the Murray River but flooding caused a change in location. The plan changed from one longer journey to two consecutive shorter journeys. This enabled us to monitor water levels and ensure quick egress from the program was possible. Furthermore, it enabled the affordance of students repeating the same section and developing their place-specific knowledge (a learning outcome of the subject). At the time, there was widespread consistent rainfall across much of south-eastern  Note, this is a different subject and fieldwork from that drawn upon in Chap. 7.

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Australia and Murray Darling Basin. Gaiyila had suitable water levels when we departed for the journey but Lake Eildon, which feeds this river, reached capacity and large amounts of water were released from the dam. The river rose progressively and was quite noticeable, especially as we set off for our second consecutive journey down the same section of river. Dry billabongs had now flooded, ephemeral waterways were quickly rising, more debris and litter were in the water and the character of the river was changing. Students were tasked with learning place-specific topics before the journey, where they would later facilitate a learning experience for their peers on the topic. One topic included climate change impacts (which I will elaborate more on in example four below). The relevance and reality of this topic hit home to students as the river rose towards minor flood levels. Students were encouraged to observe river height data via mobile phone apps and learn about the flood plain river environment that is often controlled by upstream dams in contemporary times. Staff shared photos of previous trips with significantly lower water levels to provide context for the current event. We also met locals and heard stories about what the river was ‘normally’ like, about past flood events and concerns for potential impacts of the peak of this impending flood. We received a warning via our emergency services app that the end point where one of our vehicles was parked was at risk of flooding, which resulted in us terminating the journey, retrieving the vehicle and heading home. I should note that historically flooding is common on the Murray and Goulburn rivers. The sections we visit are riverine floodplain environments, with flooding being an important ecological function. Yet, over the last half a century, following the construction of dams, locks and levees, flooding has become a rarer occurrence. The irony is that flooding was normal and even healthy from an ecological perspective, but dams regulated flow for humanistic purposes. The paradoxical abnormal flooding due to full dams as a result of three consecutive La Niña weather cycles (another rarity, Jones, 2022) is what led to us experiencing the river rising towards minor flood levels. In the following weeks after we left, the area experienced major flooding. Although undesirable from numerous perspectives, many of the unplanned elements made the reality of climate change and its impacts real for the OEE students and staff. Seeing climate change in real time (Verlie & Rickards, 2022) prompted us to acknowledge some of the impacts on human and more-than-human communities. Experiencing such an event shifted climate change from being statistics, a hyperobject (Morton, 2013) or just something heard on the news impacting far off places, to something impacting and implicating the lives of students and communities to which they have a connection. In this sense, thinking with the floods become thinking with climate and climate change. And from this, climate change become relatable and relational in the lives of the students. Hence, a pedagogical responsiveness is valuable for engaging with such educational possibilities. For the students, embodied encounters with flooding became a way to conceptualise climate change. Moreover, with the tertiary OEE curriculum in this instance designed to include student explorations of climate, there was already space for such pedagogical discussions. Thus, despite this example focusing on a climate

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change event, a curriculum does not require such an event to address the issue. This is something I will elaborate further in the fourth example below. What I acknowledge is further scope for is critical discussions on climate justice in such a context. For example, we might explore some of the following questions. Who is impacted? The already vulnerable? Are some impacted more than others? Who bears the cost? Does anyone benefit? These questions are just the tip of the iceberg. An important orientation for pedagogy here is an ethical responsiveness to that which emerges in our educational contexts.

11.4.2 Becoming Affected: Sculpting Climate Learning Through Arts-Based Practices As I have mentioned several times throughout this book, OEE has a history of romanticising nature. Taking students to outdoor environments, often in remote places, can bring with it a habit of seeing this new environment with new eyes. What could be a damaged place might be seen through a romantic lens and appreciated as pristine nature if students and educators bring an uncritical approach. Outdoor educators who adopt uncritical approaches may perpetuate what ecologists call shifting baseline syndrome. Shifting baseline syndrome occurs when the health or state of an environment is deemed normal for each preceding generation, despite continued lowering of environmental health (Soga & Gaston, 2018). This can occur through an absence of past information or no experience with historical conditions. I am concerned that if OEE does not acknowledge climate change and the impacts it is having on landscapes and communities, it may be at risk of producing shifting baseline syndrome where students and educators are oblivious or numb when it comes to weather and climatic conditions, and the ramifications these have for environments. A focus on negative impacts and loss can have its challenges. However, Affifi and Christie (2019) argue that loss is a central concern of our ecological predicament, and educators should face loss through what they call a pedagogy of death. Through an acknowledgment of death, loss and the precariousness of life, they argue, we can help foster an ethic of care. Impermanence is a fact of existence and loss can come in multiple forms, yet it may teach us entwined aspects of joy and sorrow that bring meaning to life. Moreover, as Verlie (2021) explains, climate change is ‘a systemic issue that is progressively killing more and more people, species, ecosystems and livelihoods’, however, ‘if we face up to and engage with these issues, climate change could be the teacher we need to help us learn how to live’ (p. 14). Both Affifi and Christie (2019) and Verlie (2021) signal story and arts-based practices as methods to help work through, understand, address and transform the potential loss of ecological precarity and the damage of climate change. Thus, story and other arts-based practices have become pedagogical tools for me to use when attempting to address climate change in my OEE practice.

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I find arts-based educational practices enable students time and space to think through concepts, issues and their own experiences. Furthermore, following Stewart (2020) and Morse’s (2021) development of imagination in OEE pedagogy, arts-­ based practices allow for imagination and speculation, such as possible climate pasts, presents and futures. Specifically, a practical application of these ideas involves asking students to conceptualise climate change and imagine possible impacts to the place we are currently travelling through (see Figs. 11.1 and 11.2). Figures 11.1 and 11.2 are examples from ski touring journeys with tertiary OEE students where the task of sculpting or creating a mural or artistic piece to help story their learning, understandings and/or reflections on the topic. Students work with materials in their surroundings and use them to help express their thoughts and emotions. After everyone has had the space and time to think and sculpt, we then have a walking gallery where each student shares their piece and reflections whilst creating it. I have implemented such a learning activity towards the later stages of a multi-­ day ski touring journey following earlier discussions and explorations of weather, climate and climate change in the alpine environment. To elaborate on the two examples in Figs. 11.1 and 11.2, they both depict the precarious and ephemeral nature of snow in the Australian Alps. Earlier layers of the experience include looking at snowpack and historical records of snowpack.3 This offers an insight into the average progressive decline over the last half a century or more. Here, thinking with snow involves thinking with climate, which, in turn, involves thinking with climate change. To spread and make further relational connections, we also explore the endemic flora and fauna that call the Alps home and face the precarity of climate change. Skiing is our vehicle for exploring this winter landscape and gaining an embodied connection to its elements and vulnerabilities. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to delve further into the details of the Australian Alps and the place-based content we engage with throughout such a ski tour. However, the intention is that this offers a snapshot of an OEE climate change pedagogy that looks to avoid romanticising the environment, but instead acknowledges the changes in/of the landscape already underway. The key practical aspect I want to emphasise is the ways an arts-based reflective activity can prompt an experiential and collaborative student led learning for climate change. Such learning does not just involve facts and figures but also an exploration of the affective and speculative aspects, with affects being precognitive and visceral (Hickey-Moody & Malins, 2007). In my context, this opens space for students to be vulnerable, share concerns and discuss the possibilities. In recognising vulnerability in the face of climate change, we (my students and I) can learn to understand how everyone is mutually implicated, with all humans and more-than-­ humans facing a changing climate, whether conscious of this or not.4 The  For a great visual of snowpack over time in Kosciuszko National Park, see https://www.sbs.com. au/interactive/2015/kosciuszko-snow-depth/ 4  Notably, as Alistair Stewart has mentioned to me (personal communication, January 10, 2023), although the predicament may be shared in one sense, the sharing of the responsibility is not necessarily equal. Especially in the west, where those in privilege can too easily ignore the issue and 3

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Fig. 11.1  A students sculpture showing the precarious position of skiing in a changing climate

affirmative aspect of this approach is when we recognise our shared predicament, we may start to explore our capacities for acting and the possible collective responses in the places and contexts we live. However, these responses are not conclusive or universal. As Lock (2019) explains: Trying to reach conclusions about how to teach response-ability does not in itself cultivate response-ability. Response-ability is an open-ended process which occurs spontaneously and through specific relations. As Barad stated, it is not a ‘thing’ which can be bought in or

continue life/business as usual. This further hints to the important ethical and justice orientated aspects needed in climate change education.

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Fig. 11.2  Shorter winters with greater weather extremes are becoming the new norm in the Australian Alps, as depicted in the above mural a method that can be implemented rather it is a state to be practised through enactment. (p. 360)

Thus, there is an open-ended aspect of such pedagogical approaches that leaves open possible ways to respond.

11.4.3 Analysing Relations and Fostering Response-ability: Mapping Assemblages and Agency with Students Reimers (2021) highlights that not only humans are feeling the effects of climate change, using the example of polar bears in relation to rising temperatures, loss of ice, habitat changes and their risk of extinction. Climate change is not a thing ‘out there’ separate from different human and more-than-human beings. It is not always easy to point to a particular instance or event as climate change, however a relational view can reveal a multiplicity of implicating and overlapping relations that can be linked to climate change. Such an approach can help uncover the more-than-human aspects implicated in the issue. In this example I draw attention to a collaborative/relational learning activity that can be deployed in OEE (see Fig. 11.3) exemplified by a bushwalk in central Victoria

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Fig. 11.3 Anlaysing relations through a collaborative mapping activity

(Dja Dja Wurrung Country). Prior to this walk, tertiary students engaged with theory of relational materialism and used the idea as a concept to help attune to and examine the environment they were traversing (National Park and neighbouring residential areas to their university campus). As the group of tertiary OEE students walked, we paid attention to various aspects of the landscape and discussed the local environment as an assemblage of relations. From habitat for native species, water storage areas for the City of Bendigo, relics from mining, dumped rubbish and more, we discussed the various relations and what shapes the conditions of this place. Such a focus enables many links to be made and structures to be analysed as part of a collective assemblage. Dry landscape, low water storage levels, poorly maintained aqueducts can be linked to rainfall levels, climate change and the possible futures of the landscape and community. Furthermore, structures such as colonial and extraction legacies, problematic values and anthropocentric utilitarianism can be linked to unsustainable practices and impacts visible in the land. The activity depicted in fig. 11.3 involves students creating an assemblage of relations based on what they encountered during their walk. They were tasked with making something to prompt discussions within the group. Discussions analysed the relationships, and they were encouraged to make as many heterogenous links as

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possible. This required students to pay attention to local surrounds, the transition from national park to suburban residential areas before we walked onto our university campus to finish the journey. Relational materialism as a lens helps students to explore influences and impacts, conceptualising an assemblage of relations (Jukes et al., 2019). Although not obvious in the image above, climate change impacts are a focus that I have made efforts to embed within such learning activities. For me, thinking with relations can purposefully involve thinking with climate impacts, influences and the numerous threads of relation. Specifically, educators can facilitate mapping and discussion of agential forces and can help to reveal power structures at play in the local area. The fact that the journey was through local areas where the students live and study helped make connections, and avoided the sometimes problematic OEE practice of travelling to distant unknown places. As I discuss elsewhere (Jukes et al., 2019), exploring agential forces and what has the power to act can be a valuable pedagogical attunement for OEE. I believe that seeing what forces are at play can help us learn where and how we may have influence. As Riley and White (2019) advocate, attuning to assemblages of relations and the politics of particular locations can help to situate learners and issues within the broader ecologies of the world. Furthermore, this can help break binary logics that may perpetuate perceptions that we are separate from the world, or some distant ‘nature’. We (humans and more-than-humans) are always entangled with and part of more-than-human worlds, and, through this, always already configuring and re-­ configuring worlds, whether cognisant of this or not (Riley & White, 2019). Rather than a didactic teacher telling a student how to live more sustainably, such a pedagogical approach (as I have tried to express here) shows that young people already have agency, choice and power as they are already entangled with and acting in a vibrant world. Furthermore, as Lock (2019) states, for both ‘educators, and the educated, it is necessary to attend to the specific enactments we are involved in and relate them to our collective knowledge’ (p. 351). Understanding where and how we are tied up in such ecological predicaments may encourage people to act.

11.4.4 Efforts at Developing Climate Change Curriculum Within Tertiary OEE This final example, charts some of my efforts at thinking climate change education into the curriculum of an OEE tertiary subject called Journeys in Outdoor and Environmental Education. One of the intended learning outcomes of the course is for students to learn to apply place-responsive approaches to planning and facilitating an educational journey5 (Jukes, 2022a). This outcome is assessed through the

 Note that this aligns with Thomas et al.’s (2019) third threshold concept for tertiary OEE studies: ‘Outdoor educators are place-responsive, and see their work as a social, cultural and environmental endeavour’ (p. 177). Aspects of this subject also align with other threshold concepts, such as the 5

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following two tasks: (1) planning to facilitate a place-responsive teaching activity and (2) facilitation of the place-responsive teaching activity on an outdoor journey. For this task, I provide students with a range of place-specific topics for them to choose from, based on the location of their journey (either the Bogong High Plains or the Murray River). Over the last few years, I have included climate change impacts to the place-specific topics. Below is an example of the climate change topic overview I provide in the subject assessment guide (Jukes, 2022b): Climate Change Impacts on the Australian Alps • The alpine area of Australia makes up such a small percentage of Australia’s landmass and is a bioregion particularly at risk from climate change. This topic will explore the impacts of climate change on the alpine areas of Australia, especially the Bogong High Plains. What is happening? What are the trends? Who is most threatened? What is being done about climate change in the alps? Climate Change Impacts on the Murray Darling Basin • The Murray Darling Basin is known as Australia’s food bowl. However, drought and issues over water are becoming more and more concerning. Explore how climate change is reshaping the Murray Darling Basin. What and who is at risk from climate change? What are some of the tensions? There are a number of other place-specific topics loosely ranging from native and introduced flora and fauna, Indigenous history and contemporary relationships, colonial history, floodplain river features, river regulation, hydroelectricity and more, whilst also offering the students freedom to create their own topic as well. Through such topics, I encourage students to grapple with environmental problems specific to the place and contend with politically relevant issues. When students chose a place-specific topic, they research it whilst developing an experiential teaching activity to deliver to their peers on the journey. In this planning phase, we had a series of tutorials and workshops in which we elaborate on the topics and support students in their research. However, for me, authentic learning emerged and ‘clicked’ for students during the fieldwork journey. Here, the topics students researched became more relevant now they are in context. As each student shares their activity and relational links are made across the topics and particular features and events in the landscape. What emerges is collaborative teaching and learning, where ideas, understandings, insights and debate bounce between students, lecturers and, of course, the place. Stewart (2020) refers to a similar process as rhizopedagogy, and I have regularly called it a mosaic of place-based learning. From this, students (as future educators themselves) learn a range of connected topics but also experience a range of different learning activities that may be used to engage such topics. This practice helps build the pedagogical toolbox of future

first (which relates to experiential learning) and fourth (which relates to social and environmental justice).

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educators to approach place-responsive learning and tackle environmental problems in their teaching. An important aspect is that each of these topics link to the land but also link and implicate each other mutually. Furthermore, each of these topics are transdisciplinary and learning is socio-ecological. Climate change is not just a topic to be studied in isolation, but relates to ecological, social, historical, economic and political aspects crossing human and more-than-human life. As the places in which we conduct OEE are increasingly affected by climate change, a critical pedagogy should respond. For me, place-responsive pedagogy is well positioned to include climate change as a broad topic that has specific and nuanced relevance. Changing climates are changing places, and anthropogenic influences are exacerbating the problem. Drawing from Verlie (2021), we are becoming with climate, whether we choose to take notice or not. Posthumanist and relational orientations, as I have drawn upon throughout this chapter and book, can help us learn ways that people, places, communities and climate are commonly implicated and mutually constitutive. There are multiple actants and agential forces at play in more-than-human worlds and, I believe, outdoor environmental educators and students are well placed to attune to and learn from this. Lastly, the time and space afforded by outdoor journeys allows students to not just learn about climate change in an hour-long class; it allows students to sit with a place, learn slowly, attune with the world and become affected (Riley & White, 2019). As Verlie (2021) demonstrates, when people engage with the climate crisis it can be distressing, exhausting and difficult. But for me, the communal context of OEE can provide a nourishing collective space to work through the challenges of the climate crises.

11.5 Limitations and Future Possibilities for Research In writing this chapter I feel I have only scratched the surface of the climate change education literature and the pedagogical possibilities for climate change education in OEE. There is much more work that can and should be done! Nonetheless, as Stewart (in Quay et al., 2020) and Fox and Thomas (2022) have highlighted, there have been very few pedagogical responses to climate change in the OEE literature thus far. Hence, I hope that this chapter offers a provocation for further theoretical and empirical explorations of climate change education embedded within OEE. As a limitation, I have largely focused on bearing witness and acknowledging climate change impacts. What needs further development is fostering actions, actionoriented pedagogies and explorations of climate justice. Lock (2019) states that ‘if agency is about cultivating mutual responses it is necessary to collectively press for response-able change by attending to those in power’ (p. 359). How might OEE further foster response-abilities? How might OEE provide a socio-critical education that attends to those in power? How might OEE develop positive change in the communities it is conducted? How might OEE challenge extractive and consumptive mindsets

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seeped in anthropocentric hubris? These questions, and likely many more, would provide further avenues for research and pedagogical development. There is also scope for curriculum discussions and policy work beyond the limited tertiary examples I have provided. I also acknowledge that my empirical materials only offer a brief glance at some of my practices, and do not delve into the complexities of student experience or the more-than-human worlds of the research context. Nonetheless, no data or set of empirical materials is exhaustive, and those presented here have offered an opening of discussions that have rarely occurred in OEE research literature.

11.6 Education as Activism Learning to live with climate change acknowledges that ‘the’ world is not ending, but ‘a’ world is, and that some worlds need to end in order to allow others room to breathe. Which worlds we nurture matters. (Verlie, 2021, p. 12)

To close this penultimate chapter of the book, I wish to draw attention to the quote from Verlie above. As Verlie is suggesting, the innumerable happenings and transformations that we call climate change shifts the worlds we know into the past. Our pedagogical attention has the ability to both highlight and silence particular worlds (Jukes, Stewart & Morse, 2023), and the worlds we nurture matter. OEE can move from a practice that largely ignores climate change to a form of educational activism. What I mean by this is that our actions matter. By increasing our awareness of the worlds at risk and the worlds that are slipping away, we can build a collective consciousness that can lead to collective response. I have offered a few small examples of what this might look like, but I am sure there is much more to explore, and this is something important for OEE to pursue. To close this chapter, I offer a few guiding suggestions (as hinted above) that others may find helpful for their implementations of climate change education in OEE contexts: • Consider by starting with where you are conducting your OEE programs. What is the normal expected weather and climate? I observe weather forecasts but also climate trends and averages. Does the forecast match the expected weather for that time of year? Has there been any significant or extreme weather events recently? I invite students into this inquiry process, and even set this as a pre-trip planning task. • This can lead to a discussion or research into whether climate change is impacting this place. If so, how? What is at risk? What changes may visible? • I often use signs or noticeable evidence that I can use to open discussions with students whilst on fieldwork (e.g., signs of distress in a tree or a weather event etc.). I ask, what is the story here? What is going on? What is impacting, impacted and implicated within this? Uncovering this story might require research, so studying the places I teach is important in the planning process (and can also be

References

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something students are tasked with). This can help us bear witness to climate change in particular places. • As I demonstrated in example two above, I use arts-based practices to help students story understandings, responses and thoughts about climate, climate change and the possible implications. This involves students collectively reflecting on the issue through their outdoor experiences. • Other learning experiences, such as offered in example three, aim to grapple with the various relational aspects of the issue. In particular, I aim to invite students to identify and explore some of the dominant structures, worldviews, injustices and actions that shape the politics of climate change. This can get political, so I am conscious to facilitate such discussions in an ethical manner. • I am alert to the fact the climate change can be a difficult and anxiety inducing topic, therefore I allow time to sit with the issue but also avenues for response. I tend to encourage exploration of possible collective responses and fostering of response-abilities. My hope is that this helps empower students to act in their own ways. Of course, these are just suggestions. As with all educational work, it is up to the educator to think through how they might grapple with topics and issues with their students. Hopefully, the ideas presented in this chapter are helpful and might encourage more to pursue pedagogy that engages topics such as climate change in outdoor education.

References Affifi, R., & Christie, B. (2019). Facing loss: Pedagogy of death. Environmental Education Research, 25(8), 1143–1157. Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press. Bueger, C., & Gadinger, F. (2018). International practice theory. Palgrave Macmillan. Fox, R., & Thomas, G. (2022). Is climate change the ‘elephant in the room’ for outdoor environmental education? Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education, 1–21. Gough, A., & Gough, N. (2021). Series editors’ foreword. In F.  M. Reimers (Ed.), Education and climate change: The role of universities. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/ 978-­3-­030-­57927-­2_1 Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press. Hickey-Moody, A., & Malins, P. (2007). Introduction: Gilles Deleuze and four movements in social thought. In A. Hickey-Moody & P. Malins (Eds.), Deleuzian encounters: Studies in contemporary social issues (pp. 1–26). Palgrave Macmillan. Jackson, A. Y., & Mazzei, L. A. (2013). Plugging one text into another: Thinking with theory in qualitative research. Qualitative Inquiry, 19(4), 261–271. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800412471510 Jones, N. (2022). Rare ‘triple’ La Niña climate event looks likely — What does the future hold? Nature, 607, 21. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-­022-­01668-­1 Jukes, S. (2022a). OEEDU2100: Journeys in outdoor and environemtal education course outline. Unpublished document, Federation University. Jukes, S. (2022b). Assessment guide for OEEDU2100: Journeys in outdoor and environemtal education. Unpublished document, Federation University.

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Jukes, S., Stewart, A., & Morse, M. (2019). Acknowledging the agency of a more-than-human world: Material relations on a Snowy River journey. Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education, 22(2), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42322-­019-­00032-­8 Jukes, S., Stewart, A., & Morse, M. (2023). Learning landscapes through technology and movement: Blurring boundaries for a more-than-human pedagogy. Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Learning, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/14729679.2023.2166543 Lock, R. (2019). From academia to response-ability. In W. L. Filho & S. Hemstock (Eds.), Climate change and the role of education (pp. 349–362). Springer. Magnason, A. S. (2020). On time and water (L. Smith, trans.). Serpents tail. Morse, P. (2021). Flowing magma bodies: Towards a relational understanding of imaginative pedagogical possibilities. Environmental Education Research, 27(8), 1229–1244. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/13504622.2021.1926432 Morton, T. (2013). Hyperobjects: Philosophy and ecology after the end of the world. University of Minnesota Press. Quay, J., Gray, T., Thomas, G., Allen-Craig, S., Asfeldt, M., Andkjaer, S., et  al. (2020). What future/s for outdoor and environmental education in a world that has contended with COVID-19? Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education, 23(2), 93–117. Reimers, F. M. (2021). The role of universities building an ecosystem of climate change education. In F.  M. Reimers (Ed.), Education and climate change: The role of universities (pp.  1–46). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­030-­57927-­2_1 Riley, K., & White, P. (2019). ‘Attuning-with’, affect, and assemblages of relations in transdisciplinary environmental education. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 35(3), 262–272. https://doi.org/10.1017/aee.2019.30 Rousell, D., & Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, A. (2020). A systematic review of climate change education: Giving children and young people a ‘voice’ and a ‘hand’ in redressing climate change. Childrens Geographies, 18(2), 191–208. https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2019.1614532 Rylie, T. (2017). Just 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions, study says. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://amp.theguardian.com/sustainable-­business/2017/jul/10/100-­ fossil-­fuel-­companies-­investors-­responsible-­71-­global-­emissions-­cdp-­study-­climate-­change Soga, M., & Gaston, K. (2018). Shifting baseline syndrome: Causes, consequences, and implications. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 16(4), 222–230. Stewart, A. (2020). Developing place-responsive pedagogy in outdoor environmental education: A rhizomatic curriculum autobiography. Springer Nature. Thomas, G., Grenon, H., Morse, M., Allen-Craig, S., Mangelsdorf, A., & Polley, S. (2019). Threshold concepts for Australian university outdoor education programs: Findings from a Delphi research study. Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education, 22(3), 169–186. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42322-­019-­00039-­1 Verlie, B. (2021) Learning to live with climate change: From anxiety to transformation.. Routledge Focus. Verlie, B., & Flynn, A. (2022). School strike for climate: A reckoning for education. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 38(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1017/aee.2022.5 Verlie, B., & Rickards, L. (2022). Make no mistake: These floods are climate change playing out in real time. The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved from https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-­change/make-­no-­mistake-­these-­floods-­are-­climate-­change-­playing-­out-­in-­real-­ time-­20220302-­p5a11y.html Waldron, F., Ruane, B., Oberman, R., & Morris, S. (2019). Geographical process or global injustice? Contrasting educational perspectives on climate change. Environmental Education Research, 25(6), 895–911. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2016.1255876 White, P., Ferguson, J., O’Connor Smith, N., & O’Shea Carre, H. (2022). School strikers enacting politics for climate justice: Daring to think differently about education. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 38(1), 26–39. https://doi.org/10.1017/aee.2021.24

Chapter 12

Bookend: Outdoor Environmental Education in Precarious Times Scott Jukes

Abstract  This final chapter brings an inevitable end to the book, but not necessarily the project. I tie together the many of the ideas touched upon throughout by noting the two main contributions the book offers. Namely, more-than-human pedagogies as an educational offering and immanent praxiography as methodological approach. I present a condensed articulation of the idea of more-than-human pedagogies, linking to the various other chapters and examples. Following this, I discuss immanent praxiography, including some guiding principles for enactment. This chapter ends with a coda that reflects on the project.

12.1 Attending to Problems In 2019, Andri Snaer Magnason, an author, activist and film maker, undertook the task of writing a eulogy for a glacier. Okjökull was the first of Iceland’s glaciers to completely melt, with hundreds more predicted to be lost due to climate change (Magnason, 2020). For Magnason (2020), saying goodbye to a glacier was an absurd task. In his eulogy, Magnason conveyed a deep sense of loss and foreboding, mixed with a glimmer of hope—something I see as resembling Haraway’s (2016) idea of staying with the trouble. The eulogy, titled ‘Letter to the Future,’ is on a plaque where the glacier once crawled and is also reproduced in his book On time and water: ‘Ok’ is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier. In the next 200 years, all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument acknowledges that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it. (Magnason, 2020, p. 176)

The preface and opening chapter of this book highlighted ecological precarity as a problem that acted as a prompt for this project. The Okjökull glacier is just one S. Jukes (*) Federation University, Berwick, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Jukes, Learning to Confront Ecological Precarity, International Explorations in Outdoor and Environmental Education 13, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34200-4_12

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entity the world has lost during the writing of this book. As you will have read, the focus of this book has been situated in Australian educational contexts. In Australia, we have not had any glaciers to lose for a long time. Ghosts of some glaciers still exist, within some of Australia’s fragile alpine landscapes. But the current Australian landscape does have a lot that may be lost due to anthropogenic influences. I have included Magnason’s eulogy in this final chapter because I like it—it did something for me.1 But Magnason’s eulogy includes a level of certainty that I cannot claim for myself. I might know some of what is happening, but I am still not sure what needs to be done—I do not think there is a universal answer to the problems of ecological precarity or climate change. This book has helped clarify things, for me at least, whilst not resorting to reductive simplification. Then again, ‘clarify’ might be the wrong word choice, as complexity seems necessary and helpful in a world of flux. Maybe this project has assisted me to filter, blur and live with messiness in order to process events, helping grow capacities to act and abilities to respond. As Braidotti (2019) explains, ‘despair is not a project; affirmation is’ (pp. 3–4). As an outdoor environmental educator, through this project of exploring and enacting more-than-human pedagogies, affirmation has been my preference over nihilism. From the politics of my location, I haven’t found a transcendent, universal or certain answers to the problem of ecological precarity and anthropogenic influences, but I have found pathways of possibility for myself as an educator to travel that allow me to attend and respond. For me, this is what education can do—attend to the problems without necessarily having the answers.

12.2 Contributions: What Does This Book Offer OEE? To close the book, I have decided I will highlight the contributions I believe I have made to the field with this work. But how do I sum this all up? This body of work cannot really fit into a neat package, can it? Well, not exactly, but upon reflection I do see two contributions that this book offers. The first is summed up by the idea of more-than-human pedagogies—a refinement and enactment of posthumanist inspired pedagogy for outdoor environmental education in precarious times. The second contribution is the methodological enactment of immanent praxiography— an emergent process of inquiry for educational research, without a strict research design or structure set in advance. The following two subsections elaborate a little further on these two contributions.

 For one, hearing the eulogy encouraged me to buy Magnason’s book. But it also did more than that—there was an affective echo in his words than rang in my thoughts well after first hearing them. It provoked me to consider what entities of the world we are losing or might lose. It provoked me to consider the places I will never get to see. It also provoked me to think of the places I love that are changing forever. It also provoked me to think of the power of a few carefully chosen words. I have returned to the short eulogy again and again, and I still cannot fully articulate why. 1

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12.2.1 More-than-Human Pedagogies as a Contribution for OEE in Precarious Times Within the introduction, I wrote that more-than-human pedagogies was a touchstone and guiding heuristic for this project—it was the vague idea I started with, lingering on the horizon. The notion of more-than-human pedagogies was where I started, not necessarily the end goal or a thing in itself—it was more so a prompt. Which is to say, rather than try to define more-than-human pedagogies and tie it down to a single practice, I have tried to enact the pedagogical orientation in multiple different ways/directions (mostly on different outdoor journeys with higher education students). I envision more-than-human pedagogies as a concept of multiplicity that might be put to work to challenge hierarchical anthropocentrism. As I have continued through this project, I have been making efforts to enact my pedagogy differently in response to ecological precarity and times being labelled the Anthropocene, with a hope of staying with the trouble. As Riley (2021) notes, there has been an environmental turn in outdoor education and, as with her, I situate my work within such a turn. Furthermore, my work has been variously influenced by place and a place-responsive turn in outdoor and environmental education. However, place-responsive approaches are not all the same and I do not envision place-­ responsiveness in any linear cause-and-effect manner (Clarke & Mcphie, 2020). Within outdoor educations environmental turn, I have added to the discourse on place-responsive approaches by drawing upon and enacting new materialist and posthumanist theory. The enactments I have made, and will continue to make in my practice, are to offer more-than-human pedagogies as a contribution that branches from environmentally focused outdoor education influenced by place-responsive sensibilities. To articulate this contribution further, I have enacted pedagogies that pay more attention to the entangled more-than-human aspects of environments and acknowledge that places are always more-than-human. This ethical move also acknowledges that OEE can sometimes be an anthropocentric practice where humans (or more specifically, certain groups of humans) have a dominant and privileged position. My attempts have challenged hierarchical anthropocentrism, individualism and human exceptionalism as problematic cultural ideas by enacting relational modes of thought in practice. Following on from authors such as Stewart (2020), I have sought to decolonise OEE practice by challenging anthropocentrism in specific contexts. Within this closing section I am going to trace a little bit here, but in these tracings, I hope to highlight some through lines that exist within this body of work whilst showing how I now envision more-than-human pedagogies. I will do this to offer some orientations for such thinking/practice. As you will have read, I have given/ used/borrowed other labels for similar thinking/practices/orientations, such as: engaging with more-than-human stories, thinking with a landscape, following the matter-flow, diffractive pedagogy, following lines in the landscape, relational and posthuman pedagogy. Nonetheless, I use more-than-human pedagogies here as the umbrella term to briefly capture what I have produced in this body of work and offer

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below some orientations for others to think with. These offerings come with the caveat that pedagogy and research inquiry is always situated somewhere and practiced in particular places/ways. Responsiveness to the particulars of different worlds and communities is key. Think of the brief paragraphs below as conceptual maps that may be used as a reference: Rethinking Relations—Mutual Constitution within Assemblages The material turn (and the new materialisms) has/have influenced my (re)thinking of relations and relationships. Conventional discourses in OEE discuss human-­ nature relationships, however, theoretical movements such as new materialisms flatten relationships across all matter and look to dispel categorical divides between humans and any separate nature/s. My explorations in this book have engaged with and enacted such modes of thinking to reconsider relations in my OEE contexts. I have embraced mutual constitution and assemblage as concepts that help reorient the ways we consider relationships. Furthermore, a key element in my enactment of more-than-human pedagogies is to conceive that we are of and constantly shaped by a more-than-human world. We might not know it, or it might be pre-cognitive or pre-conceptual, but there is always any manner of forces in the world that we are of. Opening our attention and engaging with such forces can be a pedagogical strategy for helping rethink relations. Chapters 4, 5, 7, 9, 10 and 11 are particular examples of me rethinking relationships in these ways. More-than-Human Worlds—Worlds within Worlds—Worlds that Overlap When acknowledging/conceiving that we are of a more-than-human world, it is important to remember there are also multiple worlds continually being made within this more-than-human world—different worlds overlap and are always worlding in relation. For example, the world of a mountain pygmy possum is not the same as an introduced deer’s world or an outdoor education student’s world. These worlds are different yet implicate one another at the same time. This is to say, these worlds all interweave in a common world (to use Taylor’s (2017) phrasing2). As Dave highlights in his section in Chap. 10, there are political ecologies always at play (cosmopolitics) within the enactments and practices of worlds.3 For me, within these overlapping worlds within worlds, a pedagogical strategy I find useful is to unearth a world and follow it along to see what might emerge (e.g., Chap. 7). In other words, attune to more-than-human worlds and attend with care and responsiveness (keeping the politics vital). A pragmatic example, could be an outdoor education  As a side note here, I acknowledge that the theoretical foundations of Taylor’s (2017) common world pedagogies have similarities to my conceptions and enactments of more-than-human pedagogies. However, there are also a few key differences. For example, Taylor’s (2017) work with common world pedagogies is framed in early childhood education, and thus is quite different to the OEE contexts I work, which predominantly involve journeys/journeying with higher education students. 3  To quote Dave, ‘Wording, attending, living these plural worlds is a political act—you decide who you bring into life—which worlds get noticed in your making—which realities gain credence— and which are ignored, trampled, subjugated. This is cosmopolitics. The politics of the cosmos’ (Jukes, Clarke & Mcphie, 2022, p. 342). 2

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student engaging with the world of the mountain pygmy possum, looking for bogong moths in rock crevices, considering how they were once abundant and why they are now hard to find. Or by closely examining mountain plum pine and noticing how long they take to grow, along with the ways introduced species, alpine ski resorts and changing climates might influence them (and mountain pygmy possum by extension). When we see such an organism, we ‘catch a single moment in its continual development’ (Sheldrake, 2020, p. 60). We are also catching a moment in that organism’s history. A useful question for inquiry is to ask how the organism’s development and history is/becomes interweaved and connected to the things around it? Chapter 4 exemplifies this process with Ya’s engagement with the snow gum. Chapter 7 also offers an example of this through Cam’s poem about the mud and the river. I also follow this process myself in Chap. 8, when looking at the piece of mountain ash timber. Such examples involve students and educators thinking beyond immediate concerns (such as numb fingers, annoying mud or the task of crafting a paddle) and engaging with alternative narratives that do not privilege uneven human stories. Thus, this practice leads to storying and wording worlds. Storying Worlds—Worlding Worlds It matters how we word worlds. For example, in Chap. 6 I make efforts to avoid the political tangle of names given to introduced horses in the Australian Alps. Names such as brumby carry romantic conceptions, whereas feral horse carries the scientific perspective. In an effort to sidestep these naming politics I used the strike through, calling them horses. Recently, on an extended walk in the alps a student with a fondness for the horses said they thought the strike through was a sign of my belief that they do not belong. The point I am making is that all acts of wording and storying carry weight and influence, both intended and unintended. Traditional outdoor education has been guilty of an over reliance on reflecting on personal experience, with a focus on the bounded individuals experience of ‘nature’. Human-nature relationships, or humans connecting with nature—soaked with varying degrees of romanticism—is the common dualistic trope for describing outdoor education and its purpose. Wording outdoor education in such a way has consequence—it creates a particular world. For me and this project, a more responsive and urgent approach to wording/worlding OEE curriculum and pedagogy is to consider the entangled worlds and contemporary issues of ecological precarity with/in the particular settings I teach. To do so, I have found inspiration in the work of Haraway, van Dooren and Tsing (among others) for taking care in the way we story entangled worlds. Telling/sharing stories is important but the way we tell stories is equally important. Tsing, in a recent interview (see Tsing & Bazzul, 2021), notes that: …the biggest challenge of trying to tell students about the Anthropocene, and tell the public in general, is that we have to learn new ways to tell stories that are simultaneously about human histories, and also about histories of the natural world. Because of the way particular structures of knowledge have dominated the last several centuries, people have managed to separate these histories. The result is that there are particular ways of story-telling about humans, and then there are wholly different ways of storytelling about plants and animals, or rocks and climate, and we don’t know how to mix these up very well. They have different

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genres, different expectations, and so most of the time we tell stories about humans as if we humans lived in a vacuum. And, in the same way, when we tell stories about plants and animals, or rocks and climate, it’s as if they lived without humans. So somehow, the challenge of the Anthropocene is to figure out how to bring these ways of understanding the world together. (pp. 309–310)

As Tsing highlights above, new ways of telling these entangled stories are needed—and this is something I have aimed to offer OEE throughout this book. Stories that Flow—Stories that Confront In addition to telling these entangled stories with care, I find it instructive to explore stories that flow and confront. In other words, affective stories—stories that elicit emotion and evoke a response. To further elaborate, when I refer to stories, I don’t necessarily mean sitting around in a circle reading or telling stories (although I do sometimes do this in my practice). Rather, I am hinting to the fact that the land holds stories and has stories to tell—the land is full of storied matter. Reading such stories in the landscape requires attentiveness to the land. For me, attentiveness means not positively romanticising nature but acknowledging that the landscapes I spend time in with students are damaged (Chaps. 6 and 7 exemplify this acknowledgement of damaged landscapes and can also be seen in different ways within Chaps. 4, 8, 10 and 11). Bearing witness to damaged landscapes involves confronting dominant settler narratives (in my Australian context), challenging neo-colonial perspectives and other anthropocentric or hegemonic views seeped in human exceptionalism. This can be confronting for some students but is truthful to the conditions of this continent (and other places in the world) and is needed within these times we live. A key for my practice is to not dwell too long on a depressing story but to continue by engaging with stories that flow. Following these flows involves reading relationships. For example, in the story of my canoe paddle in Chap. 8, rather than dwell on the timber as paddle, the story flowed from plank to tree to the life of the tree to the broader landscape. As I also discussed, fostering response-ability is part of the story, bringing in an affirmative element to such pedagogy (also discussed Chap. 11). For me, drawing upon Deleuze and Guattari’s as well as Haraway’s different philosophies (among others), fostering response-ability and affirmation involves striving to enhance one’s capacity for acting, which might open new possibilities for flourishing. In the words above are some hints towards pedagogical strategies others may choose to follow, along with some examples of my enactments. As a pedagogical orientation, this also influences my ideas for a post-anthropocentric curriculum— curriculum and pedagogy that adjusts and adapts, that stays with the trouble. This vision of a post-anthropocentric curriculum is where students, educators and the multiple more-than-human actors always present meet in an encounter and ethically follow where the forces of the world take thought. Such an approach is not teacher-­ centered, student-centered or really centered anywhere—it is a process of relations, where the path of inquiry is (the) education (as alluded in Chap. 10). For me, this is a pedagogical approach I enact through outdoor environmental education, mostly during journeys. As Chap. 9 touches on, journeys utilise different technologies and modes of travel, and are performed with/in particular landscapes. The mode of travel and the landscape also play a part in the enactment of the strategies described

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above. But this is a snapshot—a partial summary—of how I envision more-than-­ human pedagogies as I tie this book together. More can always be written, but now I transition into a discussion of methodology.

12.2.2 Doing Educational Research Differently: Immanent Praxiography as a Contribution As I reflect on this project for this closing chapter, I have been asking myself what else this project has done? In addition to a series of experiments in more-than-­ human pedagogies, I believe I have also opened some alternative pathways for research in my field of OEE. Furthermore, I see that I have contributed to a broader opening of research approaches in environmental education and education. This project has become an immanent praxiography that explores the enactment of more-­ than-­human pedagogies. As I noted in Chap. 3, I have tried to experiment and play within my practice, but my goal has not been to create a strict practice or list of rules to follow. Instead, I have attempted a non-teleological view of more-than-human pedagogies. The project has been an emergent one, inspired by post qualitative dispositions. I have learnt to sit more comfortably in not knowing, in not having a plan and to be more responsive. As my writing in Chap. 10 suggests, my approach to inquiry involves smoothing things out and living with a curious groping mentality. Each chapter that makes up this book has attempted an innovative and original research approach. The overall process has been a nomadic one, never staying solely on myself, my students or one bio-geographical location. Events, more-than-human encounters, moments of provocation have all been the catalysts for the various chapters. Humans have not been the ground for knowledge production, nor a rigid paradigmatic structure. In Chap. 7, I made a list to provoke some possibilities for practice (see Fig. 7.1). To paraphrase, I wrote that some possibilities could be to: • Think data differently and create empirical materials that researchers can think with (exemplified in different ways for each of the chapters) • Study encounters with more-than-human worlds and follow where they may lead and be open to what they might provoke • Attend to material and affective dimensions in analysis • Write research in non-conventional formats4 (Chap. 10 is the most prominent example of this I can point to) In addition, a few more possibilities include: • Avoiding having humans as the center or ground for knowledge production • Pay attention to the remarkable, the fascinating and the moments/events/ encounters that demand some attention, that matter in some way  Mannion (2020) writes that ‘all “representations” (such as written texts, maps, or artworks) are really better understood as presentations that coalesce to enact a world’ (p. 1364). Writing research in different ways enacts different worlds and produces conditions for new possibility. 4

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As discussed in Chap. 3, I have brought this book together with the methodological label/concept immanent praxiography. But this is not a methodology with an unyielding design I have set out in advance. And in my list above my use of ‘might’ or ‘could’ is deliberate, as I do not want to say any practice must be followed. As I have let things emerge, I encourage others to take the risk and wait for the propitious circumstances where new possibilities might emerge for them. Granted, we must always walk a path, but we can choose our own, given the conditions we are currently faced, and I embolden others to take the path less travelled, as the unexpected may just come about. The methodology of immanent praxiography was an enactment—multiple generative practices that have created this book. Practices are what run through my research. OEE as a practice. Research as a practice. Writing as a practice. Theorising as a practice. Concept creation as a practice. Canoeing, skiing, walking, spending time outdoors all as practices. Methods as practices. Thinking as a practice. All of these are practices, and practices that may be performed in multiple ways, worlding different worlds as they go. Furthermore, these are all practices of inquiry5 and are some of the many practices that have flowed through the development of this project. These practices, these enactments, have made a difference in this research but have made a difference in the world—they have interfered. From my perspective, looking back upon the project, I see this is what I have offered—some original possibilities for OEE research practice.

12.3 Coda We live with/in changing landscapes (considering all the multiplicities the word landscape can signify). The task I have set myself is to continually respond. And as I put the finishing touches on this project, I find myself in a different landscape that has started changing rapidly. I write this in my research journal up on the Bogong High Plains on an extended journey (14-days). I love it up here—it is one of my favourite places. But I write this with a feeling of sadness. This will be my last extended journey with students for a while, maybe forever. Extended journey programs have been a passion of mine since I first started working as an outdoor educator. From my experience, the duration and intensity of them come together to create some of the most powerful and transformative educational experiences I have been a part of. I love the slow time, the opportunity to explore, to create a community and to really feel the ebb and flow of the landscape. But this is the last one. Budget cuts are slashing extended journey programs at multiple institutions—impacts of COVID-19, the financial climate at Australian universities and (possibly?) a flow on effect of neo-liberal decision  I see these as practices of inquiry because they ask something of the world and the world answers (acts) back. In this sense, the practices of inquiry are relational in various ways (therefore also always unique). 5

References

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making. Long journeys have been a big part of my work and this project (e.g., Chaps. 5, 6 and 11 stemmed from extended journeys). With the university landscape (and the fieldwork landscape at universities) changing, I am finding myself on the verge of new terrain. But this new terrain is the future and I have not quite left the Bogong High Plains or this writing of this project… yet. Earlier in the trip, through a student activity, the group and I learned of the longicorn beetle larvae that is attacking snow gums in the high country. The migration of these ravenous beetles into the alps is speculated to be an effect of climate change—shortening winters, drought and changing temperatures are possibly making these alpine regions more inviting for longer periods of time for the beetle. The woodboring beetles’ larvae have recently been ringbarking the iconic snow gum, causing dieback and killing them. With our attention drawn to the beetles and their ringbarking, we soon saw signs everywhere and were shocked and despaired at the widespread dieback and loss of the trees in the areas we travelled. A quote penciled a few pages back in my research journal, by Hickey-Moody and Malins (2007), reads that ‘bodies enfold that which surrounds them and, at the same time, they fold out into the world to shape the spaces they encounter’ (p. 12). These beetle larvae are shaping the snow gums—these places we are encountering—which in turn has an affect that shapes us. The mood was sombre in the moments of learning about the beetle. We mourned the loss of particular snow gums and worried about the future yet to come—a possible future without abundant snow gums in the alps. But at the same time, we were there, the care was there, we inquired into what we could do, how we could act. The group formed an affective bond with the snow gums and the alpine area. The snow gums, the beetles, climate change, all became interwoven into our own stories. For me, that is something—a response to ecological precarity in these particular places—an acknowledgment. But what would happen and what could we do if we were not there, did not encounter this landscape, the snow gums or the beetle? In the Anthropocene/Capitalocene, in times of increasing neo-liberal pressures for educational institutions, outdoor environmental education must find a way to hold its place, resist and allow educators to respond in the ways that they can. This project is my small effort, my way to contribute. But there is always more to do…

References Braidotti, R. (2019). Posthuman knowledge. Polity Press. Clarke, D. A. G., & Mcphie, J. (2020). New materialisms and environmental education: Editorial. Environmental Education Research, 26(9–10), 1255–1265. https://doi.org/10.1080/1350462 2.2020.1828290 Hickey-Moody, A., & Malins, P. (2007). Introduction: Gilles Deleuze and four movements in social thought. In A. Hickey-Moody & P. Malins (Eds.), Deleuzian encounters: Studies in contemporary social issues (pp. 1–26). Palgrave Macmillan. Jukes, S., Clarke, D., & Mcphie, J. (2022). The wisp of an outline ≈ storying ontology as environmental inquiry↔education :–). Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 38(3–4), 328–344. https://doi.org/10.1017/aee.2021.31

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Magnason, A. S. (2020). On time and water (L. Smith, Trans.). Serpents tail. Mannion, G. (2020). Re-assembling environmental and sustainability education: Orientations from new materialism. Environmental Education Research, 26(9–10), 1353–1372. https://doi. org/10.1080/13504622.2018.1536926 Riley, K. (2021). Postcolonial possibilities for outdoor environmental education. In G. Thomas, H.  Prince, & J.  Dyment (Eds.), Outdoor environmental education in higher education: International perspectives (pp. 225–234). Springer. Sheldrake, M. (2020). Entangled life: How fungi make our worlds, change our minds and shape our futures. Penguin Random House. Stewart, A. (2020). Developing place-responsive pedagogy in outdoor environmental education: A rhizomatic curriculum autobiography. Springer Nature. Taylor, A. (2017). Beyond stewardship: Common world pedagogies for the Anthropocene. Environmental Education Research, 23(10), 1448–1461. Tsing, A., & Bazzul, J. (2021). A feral atlas for the Anthropocene: An interview with Anna L. Tsing. In M. Wallace, J. Bazzul, M. Higgins, & S. Tolbert (Eds.), Reimagining science education in the Anthropocene (pp. 309–319). Palgrave Macmillan.

Index

A Actor, ix, 12, 36, 39, 57, 88, 106, 107, 152, 162, 179, 228 Agency, 4, 11, 13, 35, 43, 44, 55–57, 59, 60, 67, 68, 70, 77, 80, 88, 89, 94, 107, 116, 117, 119, 128, 130, 140, 142, 172, 174–176, 178, 179, 193–195, 197, 198, 208–210, 215–217, 219 Agential realism, 172, 209 Alpine, 43, 45, 51, 60, 62, 63, 69, 70, 77–79, 82, 94, 96–98, 101–104, 147, 187, 213, 218, 224, 227, 231 Anthropocene, vii, ix, x, 2, 14, 26–30, 55, 61, 71, 78, 80, 83, 104, 129, 225, 227, 228, 231 Anthropocentrism, ix, 15, 17, 34, 43, 58, 60, 68, 89, 94, 138, 225 Assemblages, 3, 12, 15, 25, 26, 35, 36, 43, 44, 49, 54–63, 71, 88, 106, 107, 121, 125, 128, 129, 159, 173–179, 194, 196–198, 215–217, 226 Australian Alps, vi, 15, 51, 67, 75–83, 85, 87, 88, 91–105, 206, 213, 215, 218, 227 B Barad, K., 9, 36, 39, 55–57, 63, 87–89, 91, 95, 116, 119, 129, 138, 141–143, 145, 150, 153, 164, 172, 177, 178, 209, 214 Barmah, 166–170, 172, 175 Becoming, 2, 10, 12, 26, 35, 40, 56–62, 67–70, 76, 91, 119, 123, 142, 144, 145, 147, 153, 160, 162, 171, 172, 174, 179, 184, 186, 192–194, 196, 212–215, 218, 219

Bennett, J., 55–58, 60, 67, 71, 95, 141, 176, 198 Bogong, 68, 227 Bogong High Plains, 51–52, 70, 93, 218, 230, 231 Braidotti, R., 2, 6, 34–36, 38, 52, 55, 60, 61, 63, 64, 71, 88, 89, 104, 141, 155, 160, 224 Brookes, A., 22, 23, 29, 125, 163 Bushfires, vi, 2–4, 6, 14, 29, 102, 150, 151, 187, 206, 210 Bushwalking, 43 C Canoeing, 16, 117, 161, 162, 165, 166, 168–171, 230 Canoes, 120, 124, 166, 168 Chiasm, 177 Climate, v–vii, 3–6, 14, 17, 26, 45, 56, 78, 187–188, 206–209, 211–215, 217, 219–221, 227, 228, 230 Climate change, v–vii, ix, 2–5, 17, 45, 52, 55, 61, 76, 78, 94, 97, 129, 160, 197, 205–221, 223, 224, 231 Colonial, 13, 25, 81, 88, 90, 92, 98–101, 195, 216, 218 Colonisation, 2, 24, 77, 86, 100 Concept, vii, 10, 12, 14, 15, 22–29, 36, 37, 39–43, 46–49, 54–56, 58, 59, 61–63, 67–70, 76, 83, 85, 89–105, 116–118, 129, 137, 143, 164, 166, 173, 177–179, 184, 190, 191, 196, 198, 207, 210, 213, 216, 217, 225, 226, 230

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Jukes, Learning to Confront Ecological Precarity, International Explorations in Outdoor and Environmental Education 13, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34200-4

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234 Coole, D., 51, 52, 55–57, 59, 141 Crutzen, P., ix Culture, 25, 27, 38, 39, 57, 58, 81, 100, 117, 142, 172, 175, 178, 191, 193, 194 D Deleuze, G., 6, 7, 10, 13, 14, 23, 35–38, 40–42, 47, 54, 55, 58, 63, 71, 92, 117, 119, 145, 147, 154, 173, 174, 178, 179, 186, 189–192, 228 Deterritorialization, 41 Diffract, 9, 121, 144, 150, 154 Diffractions, 16, 44, 48, 49, 76, 143, 145–153 E Ecological precarity, v–vii, 10, 13, 17, 25, 44, 83, 156, 160, 166, 212, 223–225, 227, 231 Ecology, ix, 2, 30, 44, 45, 53, 57, 77, 88, 96, 103, 127–129, 190, 198–202, 217, 226 Education, vi, vii, xiii, 5–7, 9, 12, 14, 16, 17, 22, 26, 28, 29, 34–37, 39, 45, 51–71, 75, 85–107, 114, 115, 120–122, 126, 129, 130, 136–138, 144, 160, 162, 168, 172, 175, 178, 184–186, 192, 193, 201, 205–221, 224–229, 231 Emergent, 8, 11, 17, 24, 28, 38, 45, 46, 58, 63–70, 91, 113–130, 152, 153, 224, 229 Encounter, 15, 16, 37, 39, 44, 47, 58, 60, 61, 76–78, 81, 82, 88, 91, 92, 94, 107, 114, 117, 118, 121–129, 138, 144, 153, 165, 170, 171, 190, 191, 209–212, 228, 229, 231 Entanglement, 16, 27, 44, 54, 57, 63, 123, 126–129, 143, 172, 177, 209 Environment, ix, 5, 6, 14, 22, 25–28, 30, 45, 53, 55, 62, 63, 69, 70, 75, 77, 78, 88, 90, 91, 96, 97, 99, 103, 104, 116–122, 124–129, 136, 137, 155, 156, 161, 162, 164, 166–169, 172, 174, 175, 178, 192, 193, 195, 211–213, 216, 225 Epistemology, 8, 11, 29, 55, 172, 194 Ethics, 29, 88, 94, 101, 103, 115, 160, 165, 189, 193, 212 Event, vi, 1, 10, 14–16, 29, 30, 45, 47, 63, 91, 92, 114, 119, 122–129, 150, 151, 153, 159, 162–164, 170–172, 178, 184–187, 190, 195, 206, 209–212, 215, 218, 220, 224, 229 Extinction, ix, x, 2–5, 22, 24, 26, 61, 62, 78, 82, 90, 97, 98, 104, 151, 160, 170, 176, 215

Index F Fauna, 24, 78, 99, 151, 190, 213, 218 Feral, 2, 69, 86, 87, 94, 97, 102–104, 106, 227 Fire, vi, ix, 3–5, 14, 16, 29, 30, 45, 68, 69, 96, 102, 149, 174, 176, 183, 185, 187–193, 206 Flood, vi, 2, 4, 35, 168, 183, 187, 206, 210, 211 Flora, 24, 78, 99, 190, 213, 218 Frost, S., 51, 52, 55–57, 59, 141 G Gaiyila, 124, 128, 152, 210, 211 Gough, A., 55 Gough, N., 8, 10, 22, 23, 26, 34, 37, 38, 46, 53–55, 58, 60, 63, 70, 89, 117, 122, 126, 143, 145, 146, 153, 160, 166, 179, 207 Goulburn River, 124, 126, 128, 152, 210, 211 Guattari, F., 2, 7, 10, 13, 14, 23, 35–38, 40–42, 54, 55, 58, 63, 71, 92, 119, 145, 147, 154, 173, 174, 179, 186, 189–192, 228 H Haraway, D., vi, vii, 1, 3, 7, 26, 27, 33, 34, 36, 37, 62, 81, 96, 104–106, 137, 141, 143, 145, 147, 152–154, 160, 162, 163, 168, 169, 171, 178, 191–193, 209, 223, 227, 228 History, vi, 3, 14, 16, 23, 25, 36, 39, 40, 43, 44, 53, 62, 67, 69, 70, 77, 82, 86, 89–91, 96, 99, 105, 106, 117, 125, 126, 129, 135–156, 171, 172, 176, 193, 194, 210, 212, 218, 227 Human exceptionalism, 11, 12, 27, 33–35, 43, 55, 60, 77, 89, 103, 115, 116, 127, 160, 190, 192, 193, 225, 228 I Immanence, 26–27, 35, 41, 42, 45, 60, 61, 121 Immanent praxiography, 8, 9, 14, 17, 33–49, 122, 207, 224, 229–230 Intra action, 57, 68, 91, 153, 177 Invasive, 78, 81, 86, 87, 100, 104, 167 J Jackson, A., 59, 88, 114, 122, 141, 207 Journey, 14–16, 23, 24, 37, 43, 44, 62, 63, 75, 77, 82, 95, 114–122, 124–129, 135, 156, 162, 163, 165, 172, 176, 198, 210, 211, 213, 217–219, 225, 228, 230, 231

Index L Landscape, xiv, 3, 4, 9, 12, 13, 15, 16, 24–26, 28, 29, 38, 43, 44, 54, 70, 75–83, 85–107, 114, 116–119, 121, 123–129, 151, 155, 160–163, 165, 166, 168–171, 173, 174, 176, 178, 179, 194, 199, 200, 212, 213, 216, 218, 224, 225, 228, 230, 231 Law, J., 8, 39, 40, 42, 122 Lines, 7, 12, 14, 16, 21–30, 45, 49, 63, 88, 91, 105, 107, 115, 116, 121, 123, 125, 126, 145, 149, 150, 152–153, 184, 185, 190–193, 196, 199–202, 225 M Materialism, 57 Matter, vii, 27, 33, 35, 39, 54, 56–59, 62, 63, 70, 76, 86, 87, 89, 91, 98, 99, 105, 107, 117, 118, 128, 136–138, 140–145, 150, 152–156, 164, 172, 189, 190, 194, 200, 220, 226–229 Methodology, 7, 9, 14, 28, 33–42, 46, 47, 51, 54, 55, 89, 92, 121–123, 142, 143, 154, 186, 229, 230 More-than-human, 1, 8–13, 15–17, 22, 25, 27, 42–46, 51–71, 75–83, 88, 89, 91, 98, 103, 107, 115–119, 122–123, 125–130, 135–156, 160, 165, 166, 171, 173, 174, 176–178, 191–194, 209, 211, 215, 217, 219, 220, 224–226, 228, 229 Morse, M., 7, 9, 15, 16, 54, 62, 70, 77, 88, 113–130, 140, 160–179, 220 Mountain ash, 96, 147, 149–152, 227 Movement, 12, 15, 16, 34–36, 39, 44–46, 59, 60, 79, 115, 117, 119, 122, 128, 129, 150, 160–168, 170–172, 176–179, 191–193, 201, 226 Murray River, 24, 95, 124, 172, 174, 210, 218 N New materialism, 55, 207 O Onto epistemology, 107 Ontology, 8, 16, 27, 29, 34, 35, 41, 42, 45, 55–57, 70, 89, 107, 119, 127, 147, 159, 160, 162, 164, 172, 177, 178, 185, 190, 192 Outdoor, v–vii, x, xiii, 5–9, 14–16, 22, 24, 25, 28, 29, 34–36, 40, 44, 47, 51–71, 75,

235 82, 85–107, 114, 115, 118–122, 126, 129, 130, 135, 136, 140, 160–162, 166, 172, 174, 177, 178, 205, 206, 212, 217–219, 221, 224–228, 230, 231 P Paddle making, vi, 16, 44, 135, 136, 143–145 Paddles, vi, 44, 46, 124, 126, 135, 136, 140–142, 144–156, 165–167, 176, 177, 227, 228 Pedagogy, v, vi, 2, 6–15, 17, 22–25, 34, 37, 39, 42–46, 49, 52–55, 60, 61, 70, 71, 90, 91, 105, 118, 122, 126, 127, 135–141, 153–156, 161, 165, 171, 176, 206–219, 221, 224–229 Philosophy, 11, 14, 23, 27, 34, 38, 56, 68, 88, 105, 115, 117, 177, 186, 192, 209, 228 Place, vi, vii, ix, 2, 4, 7, 9–11, 15, 16, 22–25, 28, 29, 35, 42, 43, 45, 53–55, 58, 60–62, 67–71, 75–79, 82, 86, 90, 91, 96, 103, 104, 106, 114–119, 121, 124, 125, 127, 129, 130, 147, 149, 152–154, 161, 164, 166–172, 174, 176–178, 186, 187, 190–193, 206, 209, 211–214, 216–221, 225, 226, 228, 230, 231 Place-responsive, v, vi, 14, 15, 22–25, 43, 52–55, 85, 89, 92, 161, 172, 178, 191, 217–219, 225 Politics of location, 2, 35, 38 Posthuman, 2, 14, 34–36, 43, 54, 59–62, 64, 86, 88–89, 91, 105, 160, 185, 193, 201, 225 Posthumanism, 34, 35, 88, 107, 160, 164, 207 Post qualitative, 15, 16, 27–28, 30, 36, 45–49, 52, 64, 77, 115, 117, 129, 130, 144, 184, 186, 188, 189, 229 Poststructural, 143 Practice, v, vi, xiii, 2, 3, 5, 7–10, 12–17, 22–25, 27, 29, 33, 35, 37–43, 45–47, 49, 53–57, 59, 62, 68, 75–77, 80, 82, 89–92, 98, 102, 104, 106, 107, 114–123, 125, 127, 129–130, 136–139, 141, 143–145, 151, 152, 154, 155, 160–166, 175, 176, 178, 179, 186, 197, 200–202, 205–221, 225–230 Precarity, vi, 1–3, 5, 7, 8, 55, 61, 62, 160, 170, 176, 213 Q Qualitative research, 16, 46, 141, 163, 188, 189

236 R Relational, 9, 35, 38, 40, 45, 55, 57–60, 71, 81, 86, 89, 94, 97, 104, 106, 107, 119, 141, 150, 155, 162, 170, 171, 175, 178, 183–184, 192, 193, 209, 211, 213, 215, 218, 219, 221, 225, 230 Relational materialism, 35, 39, 141, 216, 217 Rhizocurrere, 23, 24 Rhizomatic, 14, 22, 126 Rhizome, 23, 63, 68, 190 River, vi, 15, 30, 44, 45, 57–59, 77, 81, 87, 96, 99–101, 114, 116, 117, 120, 121, 124–129, 135, 136, 140, 147, 152, 153, 155, 156, 162–164, 166, 168, 170, 174, 176, 192, 193, 196, 206, 210, 211, 218, 227

Index St. Pierre, E., 10, 13, 35, 36, 40, 41, 46, 47, 56, 59, 61, 63, 64, 77, 92, 115, 117, 121–123, 141, 142, 144, 163, 164, 184 T Technology, 11, 16, 44, 58, 60, 136, 140, 141, 149, 156, 159–172, 174, 176–179, 228 U Ulmer, J., 85, 88, 89, 92, 105, 115, 142 V Virus, 185, 187, 193–202

S Snow, 43, 56, 60, 67, 98, 125, 213 Snow gum, 43, 67–70, 227, 231 Stewart, A., vi, 2, 7–9, 14–16, 21–25, 40, 53–55, 59, 75–77, 82, 89–91, 99, 100, 105, 113–130, 136, 143, 169, 206, 213, 218–220, 225 Story, v–vii, 12, 14, 15, 25, 33, 37, 43, 44, 46, 49, 51–71, 75–83, 87, 91, 100, 114, 124–129, 136, 138, 142, 144, 145, 147, 149, 153, 154, 170–172, 174–175, 183, 186, 187, 191, 197, 209, 211–213, 220, 221, 225, 227, 228, 231

W Waste, vi, ix, 16, 105, 136–141, 147, 151, 154, 194, 198 Water, v, vi, 2, 4, 11, 57, 96, 97, 103, 124, 125, 127–129, 152, 154, 166–168, 170, 185, 194, 196, 200, 210, 211, 216, 218, 223 Y Yorta Yorta, 124, 126, 128