Down-to-earth ecological literacy through human and nonhuman encounters in fieldwork

Abstract

This study explores how fieldwork can contribute to the development of ecological literacy and draws on actor-network theory and science studies which imply an understanding of agency as being distributed. The aim is to explore the consequences of the human-nonhuman encounters in fieldwork practice for the growth of ecological literacy. The explorations employ Bruno Latour’s concept of “the terrestrial attractor” and its potential contributions to environmental education. The study is based on a field trip to experience black grouse lekking in Östergötland, Sweden. The empirical material consists of video- and audio-recordings. The results show two dimensions of encounters: (1) ways of initiating encounters, and (2) the human-learner actant configurations involved. The dimensions of encounters afford contributions to ecological literacy.

Keywords:

• ecological literacy
• ethology
• fieldwork
• new materialism
• nonhuman-human encounters
• Sweden

Introduction

As we are witnessing global ecological breakdown—with the climate crisis and mass extinction of species as two of the most pressing concerns—questions of education are brought to the fore: How might the ongoing and human-made crisis be dealt with in education, and environmental education in particular? How might we rethink and redefine environmental education in an era of ecological breakdown? What are the responsibilities and possibilities available to teachers and students? To rethink definitions of humans, nature, science, and the social in environmental education we turn to the work of Bruno Latour. Gleason (2019, p. 984), who has previously proposed that it might be fruitful to draw on the work of Latour, argues that “the terrestrial signifier brings humans and non-humans together as agents responsible for our collective survival and well-being.” In this study, we turn to educational ecological fieldwork and the in-situ emergence and unfolding of nonhuman-human encounters to expand how we understand ecological literacy in environmental education.

Ecological literacy and fieldwork from a Latourian point of view

In the book, Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime, Latour (2018) constructs a model of contemporary political trends. Latour calls one direction an “out-of-this-world attractor” (p. 34), where societies in denial of climate change and planetary boundaries build future visions like castles in the air. The opposite, terrestrial attractor, represents the down-to-earth alternative which recognizes the intertwined entanglement of humanity and biophysical life on Earth. Thus, the terrestrial “is no longer the milieu or the background of human actions” (p. 41). Instead, the terrestrial attractor points to how Earth participates and reacts to human actions. From a Latourian perspective we may ask what implications the terrestrial attractor can bring to environmental education. The notion of the terrestrial attractor urges us to reflect upon the ways environmental education provides young people with experiences of getting to know and connecting with place and the inhabitants of a place, a land. Is it possible to teach ecology in a down-to-earth way and avoid “decontextualized ways of interacting with nature” (Furtak & Stroupe, 2020, p. 103)? To what extent may environmental education provide opportunities for young people to spend time in a place, to connect with other species, and to prepare them, both intellectually and emotionally, for a life in the Anthropocene? For environmental education, the questions arising from a Latourian point of view concern what it is that students should learn in order to develop an understanding of ecology in a down-to-earth way and how educational practices affording such understanding may emerge.

This study focuses particularly on how ecological fieldwork can contribute to supporting an ecological literacy based on a recognition of the entanglement of humanity and biophysical life on Earth. According to McBride et al. (2013), the notion of ecological literacy was first used in 1986 as a response to the decline in American students’ school performance. The genealogy of the concept dates to the 1960s and the public concern about environmental issues following Carson’s (1962) Silent Spring. The concept environmental literacy was used by Roth (1968) in Curriculum Overview for Developing Environmentally Literate Citizens. Ecological literacy was developed as a critique of environmental literacy which primarily focused on individual behavior. Orr (1992) argued for a holistic notion of ecological literacy to address the ecological crisis—a crisis which he considered a crisis of education. Capra (1997) later coined the concept ecoliteracy to better capture the notion of a sustainable society organized on ecosystem principles. In this article, we seek to contribute to a continued discussion around the possibility of expanding the notion of ecological literacy by drawing on a Latourian understanding of humans as entangled with nonhumans and of agency as distributed between humans and nonhumans.

Snaza (2013) writes about the posthuman project as a way of “communication in general” (p. 47) where literacy is not just a human capability. Instead, ecological literacy needs to include a sense of what Pickering (2005, p. 30) describes as “mutual becoming,” where humans and nonhumans contribute to knowledge production in the dance of agencies. Despret (2016) gives an example of how the ways scientists interact with birds affect the birds’ responses. She describes how a zoologist interacts with the Arabian babbler when studying its behaviors in the Negev desert. She compares the observation methods to those of an anthropologist. For example, the zoologist calls the birds by whistling and greets them with food, while observing and interpreting their behavior. The birds go about their business, interpreting behaviors of others in their social flock. Despret (2004) explains this as anthropo-zoo-genesis. Similarly, other notions have been proposed to recognize the mutual becoming of humans and nonhumans, for example, zooliteracy (Pedersen, 2015), and plantification and vegetalization to account for how ecology education phytomorphizes the students, or transforms the ways they are able to “get inside the problems that plants encounter in their environments” (Myers, 2015, p. 59).

Ecology fieldwork may offer contingent place-specific experiences which, compared to in-classroom teaching, have potential for privileging more contextualized—or down-to-earth—ways of interacting with nature (cf. Bowen & Roth, 2007; Gannon, 2017; Mannion et al., 2013). Thus, ecological literacy is inevitably entangled with participation in educational practices at specific places and times.

Theorizing place-specific human-nonhuman entanglements

According to the theoretical framework of actor-network theory and science studies research, organisms and materials are to be conceptualized as agential (Latour, 1999; Pickering, 1995). The actants are connected to each other in a network and form alliances in a certain place and time (Harman, 2009).

A Latourian perspective implies a recognition of both human and nonhuman agency. Based on an anthropological study of natural science fieldwork, Latour (1999) describes the science practice of bringing the world into words. In a field expedition to the border of the Amazon forest and savanna, a group of scientists try to understand contradictory indications of whether the forest is advancing or retreating. Latour explains how the scientists structure and discipline the forest-savanna border step by step, from the real forest to a two-dimensional diagram, a transect of the soil. This is a process of transformations and representations where the scientists lose sight of the forest but gain knowledge: “The sciences do not speak of the world but rather, construct representations that seem always to push it away, but also to bring it closer.” (Latour, 1999, p. 30). The transect reveals features of the forest that were previously hidden and which can be shared across the world with no limitations of space and time. To a scientist, the chain of transformations and reductions is functional. The forest and the diagram are not the same, but both mean something, and you can look at the diagram and think about the forest. From an educational perspective, it is different. In education, it is possible to look at the diagram and not see the forest. At best, students will have sufficient experience of forests to recognize the diagram as a representation of a forest. However, it is not unproblematic even to scientists; a skillful interpretation of any graph depends on familiarity with the phenomena represented (Roth, 2004). To understand the world through an interpretation of a diagram, you need to understand the scientific production of the diagram, in this case the transect of the soil, and know the main actants of the Amazon forest and savanna, otherwise the transect can appear more real than the reality. In classroom practices, there may be a risk that students regard the diagram as more real than the forest. To consider a model more real than the reality it represents is called ontological reversal (Harvey, 1989). This has been discussed in relation to education by Østergaard et al. (2008). To avoid ontological reversal, the chain of transformations as well as the forest—not only the diagram of the forest—must be made explicit in education.

The importance of place has been extensively researched and theorized in environmental and outdoor education. For example, Mannion et al. (2013) theorize place-responsive pedagogy in line with ontological considerations of sociomaterial relations and show that teachers, while planning excursions in environmental education, try to prepare for being responsive toward contingent events and to drawing attention to the role of places and relations between humans and nonhumans (Mannion et al., 2013). By drawing on the notion of “common worlds” (Latour, 2004), researchers in the Common Worlds Research Collective (https://commonworlds.net) have directed attention to children’s relations with the more-than-human world. For example, Taylor and Pacini-Ketchabaw (2015) describe learning when children, ants, and worms encounter each other in their common worlds, drawing on multispecies ethnography within early childhood education. Their research investigates ethical responses to the Anthropocene thorough animal-child encounters by revealing the multispecies’ vulnerability emerging in those relations. In this case, the mutual vulnerability involved the risks of the children being bitten by the ants, and the ants being killed by the children.

Pickering (1995) suggests that science may be seen as a way of handling material agency and introduces the concept of “tuning” as central to science practice. When a scientist meets nonhuman agency there will be an intertwined process of resistance and accommodation. Pickering calls this a “dance of agency” where human and nonhuman are tuning in to each other. Science practice is a performative process of tuning, a mangle of practice, to capture the agency of nonhumans. The tuning requires accommodation and therefore actually changes, transforms, the participants. Hardahl et al. (2019) emphasize that tuning is to be seen as part of scientific inquiry, that “students’ bodies need to be educated” (Hardahl et al., 2019, p. 1) and that tinkering with materiality cannot be neglected as part of learning science. In parallel, we may consider how relational aspects can also be seen as part of the growth of ecological literacy. Influenced by actor-network theory, Watson (2011) explores the importance of materiality in field birding; more specifically, the hybridization of birds, humans, binoculars, bird books, the internet, and digital cameras. He concludes that digital objects hold the capacity to redefine relationships with birds and the larger natural world. The material encounters involved in doing science or doing ecological fieldwork can, in line with Pickering (1995), be conceptualized as a performative dance of agencies which may encompass many possible learners—both human and nonhuman.

Within the field of environmental education research there has been a debate regarding the “newness” of posthumanist theory and new materialism (see the special issue of The Journal of Environmental Education, Vol. 51, Nr. 2). For example, Payne (2020) raises several concerns regarding posthumanism and new materialism in relation to environmental education, including tendencies to misrecognize the contributions of previous research on environmental education and a risk of abstractionism. Another line of criticism concerns how favoring human-nonhuman relating, in attempts to decenter humans, may in fact hide animal suffering and exploitation (Kopnina, 2017). In this study, we do not take a stance on newness; our interest instead concerns the growth of ecological literacy and how ecological fieldwork may provide opportunities for student learning. Here, posthumanist theory is helpful for recognizing how students develop as part of dances of agencies and how they become transformed as actants in various configurations in ecological fieldwork. Albeit, zooming in to ecological literacy as it is produced in the human-nonhuman encounters in fieldwork, we hold—in line with Hasse (2020)—that material-conceptual collectives of ecological literacy take form over time in a zone of preceding collective learning “for new learning within phenomena” (p. 12).

Research on ecological literacy and fieldwork

In Sweden, there is a long tradition of direct encounters with the natural environment in education (Sandell & Öhman, 2010; Sandell & Sörlin, 2008). Based on an analysis of Scandinavian outdoor and environmental history, Sandell and Öhman (2010, p. 124) have pointed to the potential value of nature encounters including the value of an experience‐based appreciation of nature where “sensual and experienced‐based meanings about nature […] form an important complement to scientific descriptions” (cf. Bonnett 2007). Other potential values of nature encounters include, for example, the development of a relational ethical perspective and a sense of the quality of a simple life.

Magntorn (2007) proposes the concept reading nature as an aspect of ecological literacy. Reading nature explicitly connects ecological literacy to a certain place, a certain ecosystem. Magntorn’s results suggest that participants develop an ecological language and the ability to discern organisms and abiotic factors in fieldwork. However, an understanding of the human impact on nature does not develop to the same extent, and the students in Magntorn’s study experienced difficulties with transferring theoretical knowledge about matter cycles to real ecosystems. From the perspective of actor-network theory, we interpret this problem of transfer to be a consequence of the detachment between fieldwork and ecology education—where the problems of transferring the theoretical knowledge of ecology education to practical settings remain invisible when education is mainly theoretical.

Bowen and Roth (2007) discuss the emergent and contingent character of field research in ecology. They emphasize that fieldwork is very context-specific, not easily replicable, and includes a lot of time “just walking around” (p. 117). While walking around, the researchers adapt to the contingency of the place, and ecological research variables emerge. They argue that authentic ecology practices may give students opportunities to understand ambiguous relations, that designing studies and suitable tools and drawing conclusions cannot be separated from the production of data.

Carlone et al. (2016) show that fieldwork stresses qualities other than the rational, individualistic, and abstract values commonly associated with science in science education classrooms. They describe how fieldwork can function as an invitation to ecology for youth with little experience of fieldwork. Ecological fieldwork becomes a site for identity boundary work, providing access for youth to a new world of ecology, a new kind of identity. Challenges such as holding animals, wearing waders, and taking care of captured turtles are examined. Scaffolded by leaders and peers, the youth develop. Fear and other emotional challenges are often seen as obstacles to doing fieldwork (Dillon et al., 2006), but Carlone et al. (2015) discuss how a small dose of fear, handled with empathy, can foster a connection to the animals and be a resource for learning science. Similar observations have been made by others—negative feelings such as fear, pain, disgust, discomfort, and frustration can be transformed, affording a positive learning situation, and challenging the learners’ values and attitudes (Jakobson & Wickman, 2008; Roth, 2008; Winks, 2018).

In a study of ecology teaching in primary school, Hammarsten et al. (2019) investigated the development of ecological literacy among children. The aspects discerned include “practical competence, learning how to coexist and care, and biological knowledge and ecological understanding” (Hammarsten et al. 2019, p. 227). In another study on plant blindness, Häggström (2020) explored people’s connection with forests and trees through esthetic experiences. She claims that the development of ecological literacy is based on repeated authentic meetings with the natural environment. The results from Hammarsten et al. (2019) and Häggström (2020) align with the observations made by Barthel et al. (2018) where close interactions between students and salamanders seemed to foster care, concern, and connection to nature. The students’ behaviors seemed to persist even two years after their participation in the salamander project.

The narrative of child connecting to nature has, however, been problematized as positioning the child as separated from nature. Malone (2016) questions assumptions of human exceptionalism and risks of reproducing narrow and nostalgic views of child and nature. By examining child-dog-place relations in La Paz, she argues for a more diverse approach to education around co-becoming in a shared place.

In two recent research articles, fieldwork practice has been explored from a posthumanist perspective. In line with the work of Latour, Rousell (2021), argues that the scientific practices of environmental science studies cannot be disentangled from a process of becoming-ecological in the field. He uses the concept becoming-ecological when examining “living and learning in more-than-human worlds” and suggests that “techniques of slowing down and attuning to the affective dimensions of multi-species encounters can generate alternative ways of sensing the ‘becoming-ecological’” (p. 13). Based on a study of teachers planning field excursions, Lynch and Mannion (2021) emphasize the importance of time and place for human and more-than-human relations to develop. They argue that place-responsive attunement in educational practice is “a skilled and material process linked to human and more-than-human relations developed over time—time spent in places” (p. 12). Lynch and Mannion (2021) emphasize that planning outdoor teaching may require teachers to work less with predefined learning objectives and more with ideas or hunches growing from the more-than-human encounters outdoors.

Aim and research questions

The aim of this study is to explore the role of materiality for the growth of students’ ecological literacy in upper-secondary school fieldwork. We do this by exploring students’ encounters with place, material, and other species in ecology fieldwork. The study thus adds to previous research on fieldwork and nature encounters in environmental education (e.g., Bowen & Roth, 2007; Carlone et al., 2015; Magntorn, 2007; Sandell & Öhman, 2010) and to the growing body of literature that uses relational ontology in education research. Since previous research has primarily focused on early childhood education (e.g., Malone, 2016; Taylor & Pacini-Ketchabaw, 2015; Weldemariam, 2020), this study contributes to the body of research by highlighting the role of the materiality of fieldwork for the growth of ecological literacy in the later school years.

The research questions are

• How do encounters among humans (teachers and students) and nonhumans emerge in fieldwork practice?

• What ecological literacy is produced through the human-nonhuman encounters?

Methodology

This is an ethnographic study of ecological fieldwork in a nature guide course in a Swedish upper-secondary school (the students are approximately 17–18 years old).

The nature guide course

This nature guide course was an elective where the group consisted of two teachers and 10 students who came from different programs with specializations in science, technology, or social sciences. The overall course goals were to develop students’ capability to organize a guided tour in a nature area, to develop knowledge about ecosystems, and to observe phenomena in nature. The course included several field trips. The teachers had extensive experience in conducting different kinds of fieldwork, both inquiry- and experience-based, as part of a variety of types of ecology education. When asked, the students expressed different reasons for attending the course: doing something “more practical”, enjoying the outdoors, having had positive experiences of the teachers, and hopes of getting a higher grade without too much work.

The study is based on an analysis of encounters during one overnight field trip in May 2018 to a nature reserve in Östergötland (a province in the south of Sweden), to experience black grouse lekking and the ecology of a bog. Beforehand, the students had had indoor lessons about nature reserves, the ecology of bogs, and black grouse lekking. The field trip started with a gathering in the schoolyard during the afternoon after which the students and teachers drove off to the bog. The afternoon and the evening were spent on teaching and learning about the ecology of the bog and its inhabitants and socializing around the campfire. In the morning, the group rose at sunrise to observe the grouse lekking.

Reflections on ethnographic methodology

As a participant researcher, the first author (Persson), became entangled with those being observed during the field trip. The place was new to Persson although she was familiar with bogs in general from teaching biology for many years and from a lifelong interest in outdoor activities. Persson participated in the activities and engaged in informal conversations to balance the act of participating and observing (cf. Gunnarsson & Bodén, 2021). Drawing on Haraway (2008), we recognize the role of the researcher as affecting and being affected by the knowledge production (cf. Gunnarsson & Bodén, 2021). As a participant researcher doing observations, there is a challenge of not placing too much emphasis is on predetermined research methods and that of doing “proper science” (i.e., the risk of methodocentrism, Weaver & Snaza, 2017). Weaver and Snaza (2017) argue that the researcher should enter as a beginner and carefully “listen to the world” (p. 1056, italics in original)—listen to the actants in the research setting. So, we should raise questions about how to attune to the entanglement. In this study, the ambition has been to listen carefully—at the fieldwork location and in the analysis of the video- and audio-recordings—to the actants present. To use the vocabulary of Haraway (2016), Persson visited the fieldwork at the bog with students, teachers, black grouse, and others. Here, the notion of visiting is used to refer to the “subject- and object-making dance” in which Persson engaged in research with the other actants at the bog (Haraway, 2016, p. 127).

Using an approach that aims to decenter the human, viewing the human as one actant among others, raises methodological questions. Multispecies ethnography has striven to decenter the human through a methodology that helps researchers to attune to shifting assemblages of agentive beings, where the human is understood as coming “into being relative to multispecies assemblages” (Ogden et al., 2013, p. 6). Multi-species ethnography has been developed within the common-world-framework for research in education by, for example, Pacini-Ketchabaw et al. (2016) and Lloro-Bidart (2018), who emphasizes the importance of seeing participating animals as subjects and of shifting toward learning how to be affected. Our approach aligns with the multispecies ethnography ambition to engage with animals as subjects in the research process. Our research aim, however, centers on human learning, and our study is therefore mainly a story of human engagement with nonhumans. Given that multispecies ethnography is a methodology for following and acknowledging multispecies relations where humans are decentered, we see the ethnography reported here as too narrow in scope to be considered multispecies ethnography.

Data and analysis

The data consist of film- and audio-recordings made during the field trip. Ten audio recorders were distributed among the students. Some students recorded everything, whereas others recorded only when they felt they were engaged in something of relevance to the research. Oral interactions in the video- and audio recordings were transcribed verbatim and physical interactions noted in the transcripts.

The analysis focused on the human-nonhuman encounters involving students that could potentially contribute to the growth of ecological literacy. The notion of encounter was operationalized according to the Latourian version of agency, where the actants have the capacity to affect and change the scene (Despret, 2013; Pearson, 2017). To visualize agencies and resist de-animating the world (cf. Despret, 2013) we used Pickering’s (1995) notion of tuning. Pickering proposes tuning as a notion to capture the “dance of agency,” which is a process of actants’ tuning in to each other in a dance of resistance and accommodation. The encounters are seen as emergent and stretched out in time. We traced how the different actants encountered one another, interacted, and established relations. In the fieldwork context of this study, encounters, for example, involve students and birds. A bird attracts attention and makes students notice its vocalizations, flight, movements, and other sounds which are followed by students’ actions such as gestures and words. During the analysis, we traced encounters that produced ecological literacy, which generated a pattern of reoccurring encounters. Emerging ecological science facts, which in a broad sense belong to the ecology curriculum, transform the relating.

Ethics

The research follows Good Research Practice (Swedish Research Council, 2017). The teachers and students were informed accordingly and signed written consent to participate. In accordance with the Act concerning ethical review of research in Sweden (The Ethics Review Act (SFS 2003:460), 2003), the research has not been subjected to ethical review since this is not required for data of this nature.

Results

During the fieldwork practice, there was a flow of encounters in two main dimensions which reflect the fluid and dynamic character of encounters: ways of initiation, and human-learner actant configurations. The first dimension, initiation, spans from planned to impulsive, including initiation of both human and nonhuman actants. Initiation concerns the ways in which encounters emerge from the teachers’ organizing and planning and the ways in which encounters emerge from in-situ impulses. The second dimension regarding human-learner actant configurations of the human-nonhuman encounters spans from collaborative to scaffolded encounters. The configurations emerged in spaces of attunement between humans (teachers and students) and nonhumans in different combinations where human actants were positioned as learners entangled with what was learnt.

Dimension of initiation—plans and impulses

This section presents examples of ways of initiation along the dimension of planned to impulsive initiation. The black grouse lekking was a main theme of the fieldwork and the encounter was planned within the context of uncertainty that comes with excursions. There are also encounters initiated from impulse (from a human point of view)—for example, chance encounters between students and a lizard and between students and a methane bubble bursting on the water surface.

Planned encounter with posturing grouse

The teacher, Anders and student, Herman discuss the formation of the grouse posturing and displaying of their tail feathers. A configuration of grouse-lekking behavior-student-teacher-binoculars emerges (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Herman, Anders, and binoculars tuning in to the grouse.

Herman notices the posturing and the displaying of the grouse: “They are, like, standing in a circle… there is one, Anders, one that is a little bit outside the group.” Anders confirms Herman’s observations and asks what the grouse are doing: “Are they walking toward each other?” Anders notes that it would be nice to see a hen. He says: “If you are lucky, you could find a hen that sits…” Herman completes the sentence, suggesting the activity of the imagined hen: “… and observes them.” Here, Herman tunes in to the grouse—he observes, asks questions, engages with the lonesome rooster, and makes suggestions. Herman and Anders notice the agency of the roosters and speculate about the agency of the hen. Herman and Anders tune in to the grouse, narrating a story about their lekking behavior, noticing and bringing different aspects of the lekking to the fore. The teacher, the student, the grouse, and facts about the lekking behavior become actants in the production of ecological literacy. The facts, the teacher, the student, and the binoculars become entangled in an ecological inquiry into grouse behavior.

Preparedness to encounter Labrador tea

Here, we present a Labrador tea-scent of Labrador tea-’Labrador tea facts’-teacher-students encounter. The encounter with Labrador tea was not necessarily a planned activity, but this plant commonly grows near nutrient-poor lakes and in bogs. The teachers know Labrador tea as a common plant in this habitat, so when they encounter Labrador tea growing along the boardwalk, they introduce it to the students. The Labrador tea plants, require scaffolding by the teachers to become part of the students’ encounters on the bog.

Due to the essential oils they contain, the Labrador tea emits a strong characteristic scent when Anders, the teacher, moves his foot among the plants. The emissions increase when he bends down to rub the leaves with his fingers. Immediately, some of the students imitate him (Figure 2). Herman exclaims: “Oh, it smells good!” and Anders encourages other students to smell the leaves. The student, Fredrik scaffolds Linus to get closer to the Labrador tea and smell the plant. Linus is not that impressed by the scent, but Fredrik does not give up and encourages him to smell more carefully (Figure 3). Anders points out ecological facts such as the name of the plant, its habitat, and that Labrador tea is characteristic in this “nutrient-poor area.” Anders states that the scent is “good”, and most of the students agree. The students are thus invited into the encounter through the teacher’s actions, to join the human-learner-actant configuration and tune in to Labrador tea. Fredrik picks up the scaffolding strategies which he uses with his peer, Linus.

Figure 2. The leaves of Labrador tea touch human hands and the plant emits the scent.

Figure 3. Fredrik helps Linus to smell the plant.

When the students and teacher tune in to Labrador tea and the scent, they experience some of its defense strategies, and they enjoy it. Labrador tea has been used historically in ethnomedicine to treat various ailments and is also widely known as an insect repellent (Dampc & Luczkiewicz, 2013). Browsing animals occasionally feed on the firm and leathery leaves, but mostly avoid it since the plant has low palatability and is slightly toxic. The flowers are an important source of nectar for insects. The encounter provides a space for tuning between the different actants. The students did not notice Labrador tea beforehand, but the teacher did. One way of looking at this is to say that Labrador tea and the teacher are allies. He is prompted by his ally, Labrador tea, and introduces it to the students. This encounter may thus be understood as somewhere between planned and impulse. The encounter presupposed the teacher’s flexibility and sensitivity—entangling the students with the Labrador tea in a dance of agencies (human, plant, and fact) and growth of ecological literacy, the production of which here encompasses dimensions of emotions, esthetic judgments, ecological facts, and reciprocal bodily tuning.

Impulsive lizard encounter

The following is an example of how a chance encounter with a lizard sparks a human-learner actant configuration: lizard-students-teacher-boardwalk-’lizard facts’. The group is walking out on the bog, along the boardwalk. Suddenly—from a human perspective—a small lizard appears on the boardwalk. The encounter is entangled with emotional expressions and actions and lasts for an extended time (Excerpt 1 provides three short glimpses). A student captures the lizard and holds it (Figure 4). It tries to hide under the shoe of another student, which arouses agitated feelings that the lizard may be stepped on.

Figure 4. Ellinor encountering and capturing the lizard.

Excerpt 1: Oh, a lizard!

Simon: Oh, a lizard!

Sara: Ohh, cool!

Students in chorus: Ohh! Aaa!

Sara: A lizard!

[…]

Anders: Sure, it was cute!

Herman: Yes, it was very cute.

[…]

Sara: No, it could not have been a slow worm.

Kristin: Didn’t it have legs?

Herman: Yes, it had legs.

Kristin: Yes, I thought it had legs.

Herman: A slow worm is like a snake.

Here, the students display emotional engagement with the lizard. When the teacher, Anders comments: “Sure, it was cute!” and the student, Herman answers: “Yes, it was very cute,” together they establish the lizard as a cute creature. At the end of the excerpt, the discussion transforms into a more scaffolded fact-oriented conversation where the first author (Kristin) engages with Sara and Herman to establish “lizard facts” (is it a lizard or a slow worm?).

Both the students and the teacher express affect in relation to the lizard. Some of them touch it and say that they want to protect it and keep it safe (which is ironic since the lizard is trying to escape). Figure 4 exemplifies the bodily tuning of the students in to the lizard and the attempts to “care” for the lizard. Here, however, the expressed care prioritizes the human position over the lizard’s. The lizard is captured but is then released. The configuration of actants is an ongoing entanglement of affects and actions. To the students, the encounter with the lizard brings about joy and excitement and actions intended as respectful (for example, seeking to protect it by picking it up). To the lizard, however, the encounter is threatening and something from which to escape.

The students recognize the lizard as a being that deserves care and protection. Similarly, to the affects and esthetic judgments attached to the lizard in this situation, the group also attaches science facts. Affects, esthetics, and facts become entangled with the human-learner-lizard configuration. The lizard encounter thus contributes to fostering a collaborative attunement space with human and nonhuman actants. The bodily, affective, and verbal tuning in to the lizard actualizes care, affect, and ecological facts as dimensions of ecological literacy.

Dimension of human-learner actant configuration—scaffolded and collaborative encounters

This section presents examples of human-learner actant configurations along the dimensions of scaffolding and collaborative encounters. Examples of the scaffolding actant configurations include students tuning in to grouse and binoculars where the tuning is scaffolded or supported by other actants—peers, teachers, and binoculars. The scaffolding is directed toward supporting students to discern and tune in to other actants of the bog. The configurations seamlessly transform along the dimension scaffolding-collaborative. The episodes of collaborative actant configurations emerge as a space of joint experimentation and attunement.

Scaffolding configurations at daybreak

In the following, examples of scaffolding actant configurations are provided. The first example is a grouse-lekking sound of the grouse-binoculars-students-teacher-sunny weather-clear daylight configuration (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Students encountering grouse and binoculars in the early morning light.

In the beginning, Johanna says: “I can’t see any,” Fredrik answers: “Here, come and see,” and the teacher, Anders follows up with: “Come here,” describing where and what to look for. Scaffolded by the binoculars and with support from Fredrik and Anders, Johanna sees the birds: “Yes… there they are…” Anders continues, asking Johanna if she can hear the special sound, the murmur, illustrating the sound with a wave gesture, and she confirms by nodding and answering. The classmate and the teacher suggest she should use the binoculars and direct her gaze. The sunny weather conditions and the clear daylight afford an easy handling of the binoculars. The weather also affects the possibilities for the students and teachers to see the lekking, as the grouse prefer calm weather without rain or snowfall for lekking. The grouse are occupied with tuning in to each other, going about their business uninterrupted by the humans. In the sequence, Johanna encounters the grouse, the binoculars, the lekking sound, and facts about the lekking sound. She tunes in to these actants, scaffolded by her classmate, teacher, and the binoculars.

Figure 6 exemplifies the growth of ecological literacy with its practical dimensions of bodily tuning entangled with facts. The configuration binoculars-technical facts about binoculars-teacher-students-grouse-sunny weather-clear daylight emerges.

Figure 6. Humans and binoculars.

The teacher, Anders, introduces the field binoculars, explains some technicalities, and invites the students to use them. The students accept the invitation but express uncertainty about how to use the binoculars: “No, I can’t see them” and “I can only see my own eyes.” Anders makes a point about using them: “It requires some training to get a good view with the field binoculars.” However, the students do not abandon tuning in to the binoculars and eventually succeed in seeing the grouse. Finally, Stina shouts: “I can see them” and “there they are!” In this encounter, the binoculars function as a form of nonhuman scaffolding, enabling the encounters with birds. However, the teacher also participates as a facilitator, enabling the binoculars to become the students’ ally. The students’ reward for their efforts is a new ally—the binoculars. The scaffolded tuning with the binoculars and its technical features supports the growth of ecological literacy since binoculars are useful allies in fieldwork practice.

The examples above encompass different forms of scaffolding. The configurations of actants are almost the same, but the direction of tuning is different. The first example is directed toward noticing the grouse. The second example is focused on handling the binoculars to facilitate the encounter with the grouse. In both examples, the favorable sunny weather conditions and bright daylight afford the experiences. Through the scaffolding, new alliances are formed; the configuration of actants is expanded to include grouse, students, and binoculars, and consequently growth of ecological literacy is enabled.

Peer scaffolding spider web-students-sun-bench configuration

The following example illustrates peer scaffolding and how tuning in to different actants (the sun and spider web) afford ecological literacy concerning esthetic experience; in this case experiencing the beauty of a spider’s web in the sunlight (Figure 7, Excerpt 2).

Figure 7. Students experience spider web in backlight.

Excerpt 2: “Shield the sun”

Ellinor: Oh, in the sun you can see that…

Ida: Oh, God!

Ellinor: Shield the sun, then you will see the spider web (giving instructions to two friends) and you will see…

Ida: Yes…

It is an impulsive encounter in that it happens due to the circumstances of the sunny day and the perfect timing of taking a break on the bench. The configuration of the actants in the encounter become scaffolding when Ellinor explains to her two friends how to shield the sun to experience the beauty while they are tuning their bodies in to the sun and the spider’s web (Figure 7). Here, the bodily tuning, with hands shielding the sun, is entangled with an esthetic and emotional dimension of ecological literacy. The students share an esthetic and emotional experience of the spider web in backlight and exchange expressions such as “Oh” and “Oh, God.” The esthetic and emotional experience is entangled with the students’ bodily tuning toward the spider web and the sun. Here, esthetics and emotions become attached to the ecological literacy produced.

Collaborative methane-’methane facts’-boardwalk-water-students configuration

The following is an example of a collaborative impulsive encounter with methane. The encounter emerges with a joke and the collaborative sharing of thoughts which are framed by misunderstandings, but also agreements. The students are standing on the boardwalk when they hear a distinct “plop” from a methane gas bubble.

Excerpt 3: “It is methane that wants to surface”

Joel: But Ida! (giggles).

Sara: Hey, why is it bubbling in…?

Herman: It is methane.

Stina: Is it methane because…?

Herman: Yes, it is.

Sara: What did you say?

Herman: It is methane that wants to surface.

Sara: Methane, what is methane?

Stina: Is it because we are walking… [referring to the boardwalk].

Herman: Methane is farts.

Sara: Herman, it is because we are walking…

Herman: But he [the teacher] said it could be methane.

Sara: Oh, well.

Simon: We are pushing [it] up as we walk…

Sara: But what is methane?

Stina: Methane is a gas

Sara: Well, yes…

Stina: But it is like this, methane, ethane…

The students hear the methane bubble burst on the surface of the water which evokes a discussion on what caused the gas bubble to emerge. It starts with Joel saying: “But Ida” and then giggling as if implying that the sound of the gas bubble bursting was Ida farting. The students, Sara and Stina respond by asking why there was bubbling in the water and what could cause it. Herman contributes with information about methane, suggesting that it “wants to” surface. The student, Simon sums up the discussion saying: “We are pushing [it] up as we walk…” Stina attaches science facts: “Methane is a gas” and begins to rehearse the methane series as if reading a rhyme.

In this configuration, the students are concerned with the science facts related to methane—what it is and what it can do. The interactions of the students walking on the boardwalk, the water bringing the methane to the surface, and the bursting of the bubbles afford a situation of tuning in to characteristics of methane. The ecological literacy produced is thus entangled with science facts but also with affect (giggling) and giggly metaphors (“methane is farts”).

Discussion

This study provides examples of human-nonhuman encounters emerging in fieldwork that contribute to the production of ecological literacy. The teachers participated as the more experienced actants when introducing their bog-allies and ecology equipment. Many of the encounters, planned as well as impulsive, were dependent on the teachers’ experiences, and their allies and relations with the specific ecosystem. In the forming of human-learner actant configurations, the readiness, openness, and sensitiveness to nonhumans was pivotal. We have illustrated how the emergence of encounters, both with and without prior planning, enhanced the contingent experiences of the fieldwork. The human-learner configuration of actants oscillated between collaborative and scaffolded. The collaborative encounters were characterized by joint explorations where the actants shared a common object of inquiry and contributed to the joint exploration. In the scaffolded encounters, one or more actants acted as more experienced or knowledgeable in supporting students to direct their attention or capacity for discerning something specific. Hence, the production of ecological literacy follows different paths and becomes entangled with various human and nonhuman actants.

Collective agency

The humans—teachers and students—were not alone in taking on scaffolding responsibilities at the bog and could, to some extent, rely on the other actants (the inhabitants of the bog, the weather, the tools). The students and the nonhumans contributed to forming the configurations of the actants. Ecology fieldwork, thus, became a shared practice (cf. Bowen & Roth, 2007; Carlone et al., 2015). However, compared to human-centered notions of shared practice, we argue for the importance of extending the notion collective agency to account for the importance of allies and the distributed responsibility for scaffolding. The results are in line with what Rousell (2021) describes as “practices of collective attunement” (p. 12) and his suggestion that ecology “cannot be disentangled from what it actually feels like to be in the field together” (p. 2).

Entangled ecological facts

In the practice of ecology fieldwork, the encounters between humans and nonhumans become entangled with ecological facts. Haraway (2016) reminds us that science facts are forceful and vivid actants. Facts direct, shape, and enact agency in the encounters. Teachers and students bring, and attach ecological facts about Labrador tea, the characteristics of the bog, the lizard, and the grouse to the encounters. The encounter with methane prompts requests for facts. Tuning in to the lizard affords affective and esthetic learning as well as learning facts about lizard characteristics. The facts, thus, become part of the production of ecological literacy in the field. The naming of nonhumans may be seen as a way of achieving intimacy with the more-than-human world (cf. Bell, 1997). When the facts are animated, and in relations with other actants of the bog, the risks of ontological reversal are hopefully minimized (cf. Østergaard et al., 2008).

The importance of place, pace, and tuning

The contributions of nonhumans explain the importance of the time spent at a location when “familiarity with the phenomena” is established (Bowen & Roth, 2007, p. 178; cf. Lynch & Mannion, 2021). However, familiarity with phenomena is not just a matter of identifying or discerning objects. Rather, it is about “cultivating the sensitivity to see and hear in the first place” (Bell, 1997, p. 137). One example of familiarity with the phenomena from this study, was when the group passed by Labrador tea without noticing until the teacher introduced the plant. The event exemplifies how informal social interactions between humans participating in fieldwork are important (cf. Bowen & Roth, 2007; Bell, 1997) and that a field trip is an entangled event, where human and nonhuman actants contribute to a process of tuning in a dance of agencies (cf. Pickering, 1995).

In science studies, the importance of entangled relations between human and nonhuman actants in the production of knowledge has been underscored (Latour, 1999; Pickering, 1995). In this study, we have used the concept tuning to account for the reciprocal interactions and adaptations between nonhumans and the human learners in ecological fieldwork. Our results show different constellations of tuning. An encounter between a human learner and a nonhuman, such as the Labrador tea, a place, and a presence is pivotal. Encounters in a classroom, through a text, a picture, or even a piece of the plant are different and not comparable to experiencing and tuning in to Labrador tea in its place on the bog. The tactile experience of Labrador tea—the touch of leaves and hands and the sensation of the scent provides a bodily understanding of the capacities of the plant and is not replaceable. Similarly, using the binoculars to capture the lekking behavior of the black grouse provides a glimpse into their lives on the bog which is different than watching a video or reading a text about the lekking.

We argue that encounters between agential nonhumans and humans need to be acknowledged as part of ecological literacy and not be neglected in the planning of ecological education. In other words, the practical, hands-on, and time-consuming pre-data practice also needs to be part of ecology education and recognized as foundational to ecological literacy. This might seem obvious but considering previous research that points to insecurities among teachers (Scott et al., 2015), we as researchers have a responsibility to make the potential contribution to ecological literacy explicit. The sensitiveness of tuning requires time and practice (Hardahl et al., 2019). In fieldwork, there is a similar adaption to equipment and biophysical surroundings. Tuning in to Labrador tea is comparable to what Hardahl et al. (2019) call “the education of students’ bodies.” When the students learn how to experience the scent of the plant, they also become entangled with ecological facts about the plants and habitats—the bodily and material practices are inseparable from learning ecology in a down-to-earth way. The practical adaption, the resistance and accommodation, the process of nonhuman-human tuning should be considered part of ecological literacy and more explicitly addressed in environmental education.

We concur with Rousell (2021), that environmental education cannot be disentangled from becoming ecological in the field, where practices of slowing down and cultivating affective attunement in encounters between species can be useful. In studies of teachers planning field excursions, researchers emphasize the importance of time and place for human and more-than-human relations to develop (Lynch & Mannion, 2021; Mannion et al. 2013). This study, conducted in-situ, provides examples of how the human-nonhuman relations emerging during fieldwork become entangled with ecological facts and emotions in various encounters. This is important since there are barriers to ecological fieldwork in secondary school—for example, confidence in teaching outside the classroom, a non-conducive school culture, as well as risk aversion and financial considerations (Scott et al, 2015). That experienced and knowledgeable teachers can make the most of both planned and serendipitous moments are not a revelation. This study, however, contributes to making explicit and exemplifying how teaching in the field may unfold and contribute to the production of ecological literacy, involving the introduction of allies and the work of knitting facts, emotions, students, and nonhumans together. As such, the study adds to the previous research of Mannion et al. (2013) and Lynch and Mannion (2021) on the planning of excursions.

Conclusions

Our results show that the contingent experiences of fieldwork provide opportunities for students to encounter nonhumans in a way that is impossible to achieve in a classroom and contribute to the understanding of context and prevention of ontological reversal in science education (Østergaard et al., 2008). Returning to Latour’s (1999) description of scientists transforming a forest-savanna border into a diagram—a representation of the world divorced from the nonhumans at the location, and the problems of interpreting such representations (cf. Roth, 2004)—it is easy to lose sight of the forest or the bog, or difficult to imagine a world one has never seen. Providing opportunities for students to become familiar with ecosystems during ecology fieldwork promotes ecological literacy and can ease the problem of representation in science education.

Considering the current ecological crisis, there is an urgent need to explore ways to rethink ecological literacy. Bringing practical tuning aspects of ecology education to the fore and exploring the importance of sensitiveness toward nonhumans and the nonhuman-human relation could be a way. Fieldwork has the potential to play an important role in bringing environmental and ecology education down to earth. The story of fieldwork on a bog in Sweden is inevitably entangled with the backdrop of the ecological crisis. During the reported fieldwork there were comments from teachers and students on the devastating wildfires, the attrition of popular natural areas, and plastic pollution, to name a few. Teachers and researchers have a responsibility to avoid decontextualizing ecology education from the predicaments of our time. Tuning counteracts decontextualization and literally brings participating actants down to earth. The educational potential of co-becoming in a shared place (Malone, 2016) or mutual becoming (Pedersen, 2015) as well as the question of how to manage emotional distress and cognitive dissonance linked to the ecological crisis needs to be scrutinized and explored further. In this study, we have focused on the human learner. This does not imply an exclusion of nonhuman learners, rather that we take seriously the role of ecology education in the contemporary ecological crisis. In response to the initial question regarding how the ongoing and human-made crises might be dealt with in education, this article has sought to explore what opportunities fieldwork offers for the forming of human-nonhuman alliances. The gain in forming a greater multitude of human-nonhuman alliances could be an increased awareness among students of the human ecological dependence and belonging to the earth, a terrestrial awareness—or, in other words, an environmental education for more than humans.