Elementary students’ ‘outdoor – digital’ explorations in ecology - learning through chains of transduction

Abstract

This article illustrates a research project in a Swedish elementary school where young students are engaged in a project on ecology. Species, digital resources and nature contribute to place-based exploration of ecological issues, relevant in learning for sustainability. Since children grow up in a digital era, their meaning-making is transversed by oral, digital and physical modes. By launching the terms relations, gaps, stand fast and chain of transduction as an analytical apparatus and connecting video ethnography to pragmatic theory and multimodal analysis, we contribute to the body of knowledge on students’ participation and meaning-making featured in digital and physical representations. Specifically, ecological and sustainability learning takes place in the transduction displaying students’ drawings, texts, digital images and biological arrangements. The article concludes with several education concerns: the teacher’s responsibility in supporting agency-processes, the growth of ecological literacy in a blurred ‘digital-ecology’ environment and the educational need to support students’ attachments and care for the living and nonliving.

Keywords:

• participation
• ecology explorations
• digital tablets
• digital sign-making
• transduction
• ecological literacy
• agency

Introduction

Living in the Anthropocene raises questions on humans’ responsibility for the planet’s wellbeing and future. As pointed out by Latour (2018, p. 41), earth can no longer be treated as a passive milieu, ‘kicking back’ on human actions. Accordingly, due to human ways of living, earth’s ecological systems and the richness of biodiversity are unquestionably at risk (Gibson, Fincher, and Rose 2010; Díaz et al. 2018). In response to the persistent sustainability challenges, an education of care for species and places has been proposed in the climate crisis context of the 21 first century (Lloro-Bidart 2017). Similarly, Scott (2020, 1987) looks back on the last 25 years’ work in Environmental Education Research, reminding us not to “lose sight of the need for learning about our dependence within the biosphere” as social and ecology issues are deeply intertwined. Now, more than ever, transformative learning shifts seem vital to achieve when ‘wicked problems’ loom large globally and locally (Churchman 1967; Weber and Khademian 2008). Furthermore, Bennett (2016) contemplates the role of education, suggesting that the ultimate concern is to wrestle with and understand our place in cosmos. However, to depart from ‘the greater ecological whole’ is not just about exploring which ecological relationships students establish and the learning consequences. Many students of today create meaning in a blurred landscape where the digital and physical merge.

In this paper we try to pinpoint young students’ authentic problems and the ‘configurations of relations’ young learners constitute. These relations cross-cut through digital and physical outdoor contexts. To support students’ sustainability engagement and commitments is a matter of addressing intellectual, practical and emotional aspects in the teaching process (Öhman and Sund 2021), implying a broad analytical focus, where meaning of signs, through linguistic and nonlinguistic modes, are considered. Worth pointing out is that emotions, aesthetics and bodily actions are not always visible through oral communication. As stated by Hannigan et al. (2022), signs of engagement must be attended by researchers when the purpose is to grasp a complex learning route where emotions and aesthetics are involved. When the research interest is learning for sustainability, educational shifts are needed in order to cope with rapid changes in the local and in the global society (cf. Jickling and Blenkinsop 2020). Less supervised places and spaces seem vital to explore as potential learning environments in which students might be in charge of their meaning-making process to a larger extent. Teaching for sustainability is a challenging educational task, a balance act of teaching young citizens specific knowledge, facts and values simultaneously inviting them to creatively influence and impact both the process and content – to support ‘new beginnings into the world’ (Biesta 2015; Hedefalk et al. 2021).

In light of Latour’s (2018) questions: “What must we do to find a place?”, and “how are we to orient ourselves?” (p. 16), it seems important to contribute with empirical knowledge on young students’ processes where in particular, place and all its inhabitants, materialities and forces partake. Supporting students to grow a sense of belonging, in a ‘down-to-earth-way’ (without neglecting the digital impact in human life, our remark), resonates with the call for education supporting students cultivating care, connectedness and concern for multispecies and engagements with natural environments (Häggström and Schmidt 2020; Barthel et al. 2018; Jickling and Blenkinsop 2020; Beery 2013; Persson, Andrée, and Caiman 2022). In order to excavate the situated, contingent process where students encounter imagined and living animals, we draw on pragmatic theory of learning and meaning-making highlighting what oral relations, which are construed in the ecological literacy process, are in focus. Furthermore, we introduce what we call a chain of transduction, something that has also been called transmodal translation, in chains of semiosis or transmodal semiotic chain (Newfield 2014, p. 103). Rooted in a social semiotic perspective (Kress and van Leeuwen 2001; Kress 2010; van Leeuwen 2005), the chain of transduction is an analytical tool suitable for operationalising the analysis of the non-linguistic sign-making modes where materialities and non-humans agency partake and transact.

Ecological literacy – highly topical in Anthropocene?

Although sustainability issues are interdisciplinary in nature, the ecological dimension should not be underestimated or dismissed as sustainability issues often relate to injustices and struggles surrounding nature resources, land and territories, ecosystem services and energy sources (Steffen et al. 2015). When introducing ecological literacy in the 1990s, different arguments on what specific ecology knowledge citizens need to know are specified. Knowledge in ecology is considered as a prerequisite for taking well informed decisions on public interdisciplinary issues. Another argument emphasises the value of increasing awareness of ecosystem services and ecology dynamics – humans and human systems are in mutual ecological dependency (McBride et al. 2013). Other core aspects of ecological literacy underline conceptual ecological knowledge important to master such as ecosystem, materials cycling, energy flows and competition (Cherrett 1989; Casper and Balgopal 2018). Education for ecological literacy also includes citizens’ ability to identify the entanglement of the social and biophysical, an approach aiding citizens to get an ecological overview implying a need to learn systems thinking (Cutter-Mackenzie and Smith 2003). An ecology literate citizen also knows how to practice care for the habitats and the inhabitants in the biosphere as human engagement and concern for earth’s ecosystems is what profoundly matters (Wilson 1992). The idea of teaching and learning for increased ecological attunement and awareness of our place in ecology, corresponds with the ecocentric idea – all inhabitants and the non-living are mutually reliant and consequently, all are vulnerable (Atkinson 2015; Barthel et al. 2018; Häggström 2020). Likewise, Rousell (2021) underlines the value of teaching ecology practices where collective attunement can emerge. The notion of ecology literacy can also be seen as a critique of environmental literacy as the latter foremost puts an emphasis on individual ecology behaviors and the importance of mastering science inquiries (Capra 1997; McBride et al. 2013). Orr (1992), the originator of the term ecological literacy, does not fully seem convinced that scientists’ rational inquiry work is the gateway to ecological learning:

[…] is it that our scientific methods are in some way flawed? Is it that we have forgotten things we need to remember? or perhaps is it that we have forgotten other ways of knowing that lie in the realm of vision, intuition, revelation, empathy, or even common sense?”

(Orr 1992, p. 155)

Ecology in education for sustainability – young learners’ voices and participation

Highlighting the intergenerational aspect, living is a continuum from early childhood to old age. Consequently, a critique holds that marginalized voices such as young citizens ethically and rightfully should be considered countable as they are the generation that will stay longest on the planet (Hägglund and Pramling Samuelsson 2009). Due to this democratic right, a lifelong education calls for teaching affordances where students can live through authentic experiences and develop “plastic habits” (Östman, Van Poeck, and Öhman 2019, p. 53). Accordingly, young students’ voices and their particular concerns are vital to embrace when striving for a growth of a sustainable culture (Duhn 2012). Similarly, Wals et al. (2016) call for new epistemologies to purposefully achieve transformative learning in the domain of sustainable development. We like to respond to this call in this study by contributing with knowledge on how students explore and design through physical and digital modes and what consequences this brings in regard to the growth of ecological literacy. Rooted in the pluralistic idea of learning as participation (Van Poeck and Vandenabeele 2012) democratic processes are constituted and situated in the learning process (Öhman and Östman 2019).

The purpose of this study is twofold: to explore and contribute with knowledge on how young students of today design and produce meaning in ecology in an intertwined ‘nature-digital’ interface, and to introduce the analysis method, intertwining relations and chain of transduction to deepen the understanding of young students’ transformative learning taking place in a ‘down-to-earth-way’ (Latour 2018). The two questions that follow are:

1. What configurations of relations are established, visualised in the process of transduction when students develop aspects of ecological literacy?

2. How do students explore and learn ecology with digital and physical resources?

Childhood of today

Research studies reviewed between 1995-2018, where environmental and sustainability issues are in focus in early childhood education and the early years in elementary school, showed that two research interests dominated – children spending time in nature and children taking actions for the environment (Ardoin and Bowers 2020). However, childhood of today challenges romantic ideas of childhood as a protected space where nature is always accessible and present. As stated by Sandell and Öhman (2010), experiences of human encounters with nature are always “culturally filtered” (p. 128). Moreover, making universal claims on the benefits of spending time and learning in nature is not always valid since nature is not accessible nor safe for all children depending on context and where on earth children live their lives (cf. Duhn, Malone, and Tesar 2017). As stated, children today often live in urban milieus, navigating simultaneously through physical and virtual worlds spending a considerable amount of time in the extended digital interface (Kjällander 2011). These children have been called for example digital natives (Prensky 2001) iGeneration or the smartphone generation (Twenge 2018) and in this article we will show how these children navigate with digital and physical material that coexist and facilitate their learning in an outdoor environment. It has been argued before (Manches, O’Malley, and Benford 2010) that physical material provides distinctive affordances for learning since material can be, for example, grasped and moved. Today, when mobile digital resources with touch screens and multimodal affordances have been introduced, new, unexpected and sometimes bold possibilities for learning occur.

Learning as participation – to enter a ‘problematic field’

When discussing human impact on earth, the role of education is foregrounded. In this context, learning is stressed as a matter of participation in regard to what is at stake (Van Poeck and Vandenabeele 2012). Furthermore, participation appears in/through students’ representations (van Leeuwen 2005; Kress 2010; Selander 2008), such as, what they say, their gestures and what they draw, viewed as the visual interactive, meaning-making and sign making expressions they make to communicate understanding of ecology and sustainability related issues.

Students often communicate with other modes than for example words and text and according to Kress (2010, p. 1) multimodality is now “the normal state of human communication”. Students make gestures to indicate pace, sighs or mimic to show motivation, they choose a colour or an emoji to present a feeling and an image to tell others about an experience and they can choose layout or music to represent a sequence. Given the choice, they prefer to position themselves as producers, rather than consumers and they spend considerably more time designing, producing and transforming texts than on consuming them in the digital interface (Kjällander and Moinian 2014). Students often challenge teachers’ or app designers’ didactic design by doing other things than what was intended (Kjällander and Moinian 2014). Children’s learning processes can, “…be understood through focusing on sense production and question and problem construction – that is, on their production of knowledge, incorporating also their reproduction of knowledge” (Olsson 2013, p. 233). What sometimes can be seen as smudging, can instead be understood as a meaning-making process, when a child’s new understanding of his or her surroundings is portrayed (Selander and Kress 2010). In order to do so, all modes to create meaning must be highlighted and taken seriously, even those that at a first glance were dismissed as uninteresting or banal (Bezemer and Kress 2015), such as for example children creating meaning and communication with emojis, which adults often seem to dismiss although children put a lot of effort and time in finding the right ones to represent the nuances in what they want to communicate. While children produce knowledge, they can be understood as problem solvers making use of the modes presented on the screen. Olsson describes that:

“Learning is here considered to consist of the entering into a problematic field (see also Mozère, in press). Rather than clinging on to and reproducing what we think we already know about what is true or false, we need to reverse the logic so as to be capable of seeing that each sense production has its proportional relation to the formulation of questions or problems and likewise to what is true or false.”

(Olsson 2013, p. 245)

Change the world with agency and engagement

The Swedish curriculum states that students must learn to understand the world in order to change it, meaning that students need to understand how digitalisation affects the world and our everyday lives, as well as gaining knowledge of how the technology works, for them to be able to apply it. Education for sustainability is also a question of democracy, to support student’s concerns and authentic problems. “Digital competence is essentially a question of democracy” (The Government 2017, p. 3). When working for sustainability and sustainable development, agency has been introduced as a way to support children’s perspectives and concerns in regard to sustainability matters – children as agents taking actions (Davies 2014; Ärlemalm-Hagsér and Sandberg 2017). Nursing children’s agency though, requires dynamic educational context-for actions. Hence, students’ growth of agency is dependent on temporal, relational and contingent aspects where subjects and objects, humans and non-humans, transact (Biesta and Tedder 2007). Based on this pragmatic perspective on agency where the analytical focus is in the situated process, Caiman and Lundegård (2014) have developed a methodology in order to analyse how the context-dependent process of agency takes shape in the field of education for sustainability. The result showed that children’s hands-on activities and dialogues taking place in the surrounding with its fauna and flora, resulted in improvements for tiny pea plants and rearrangements of a bird-nest in the pre-schoolyard. Students’ engagements and concerns for species and nature has also been addressed in Barthel et al. (2018) longitudinal research project on elementary school students participating in a project involving conservation of salamanders in their natural environment. The result revealed that the students through sensory contact developed agency, affective connections and relationships to nature and the amphibians. This result is in accordance with scholars claiming that ecology care and ecological learning could be a fruitful foundation for students to connect to the biosphere (Moore 2014; Chawla 2015; Chawla et al. 2014). In doing so, students can positively contribute to different social-ecological resilience-systems on earth (cf. Schultz and Lundholm 2010). Another study conducted by Atkinson (2015) explores how young children connect to mushrooms, bees and wasps in a nearby forest park. Based on the different encounters between the children and the various species, a call for multispecies ethics of environmental vulnerability is suggested. Similarly, Taylor and Pacini-Ketchabaw (2015) expose how various encounters of children, worms and ants reveal the multispecies’ vulnerability, the ants might be killed and the children might be bitten by the insects. As a conclusion, there is a risk involved for all species inhabiting the place. Taking a stance in a post humanist perspective, Smith (2011, 2013) stresses the human responsibility in caring for other species and creatures and to get to know their uniqueness and interests. Hence, new ecological narratives are required where ecology attunement and entanglements are foregrounded decentralizing human position (cf. Haraway 2016).

Pragmatic theory on learning and meaning-making

From a pragmatic Deweyan perspective, learning takes place when humans face a problem of concern (a purpose comes into play), calling for new actions to cope with the new situation (Dewey 1925/1958). Hence, learning comprises practical, emotional and intellectual aspects closely linked and equally important, enclosed by aesthetics (Dewey 1934/1980). In light of this multifaceted view on learning, Dewey further explains learning as an aesthetic experience taking shape in the process of life when encountering a problematic situation/a problem. When humans live through these vital, aesthetic experiences, there is always ­anticipation and desires involved concerning what is yet to come. Furthermore, in the learning and meaning-making processes, human continuously establish relations reaching for closure (Dewey 1934/1980). This naturalistic account regarding how humans live and experience to cope with problems at hand, is elaborated as growth (Dewey 1938/1997), further explained as a dynamic rhythm of an experience in terms of a beginning, development and fulfillment. Accordingly, continuity and change (Dewey 1934/1980) is always present in the rhythm of growth further developed in the principle of continuity: previous experiences are reconstructed, transformed having consequences for the actual situations as well as the future ones (Dewey 1938/1997).

PEA – a pragmatic analysis of the process

Based on Wittgenstein’s (1953/1996, 1969) ideas of language games and Dewey’s pragmatic theory (1938/1997), the methodology Practical Epistemological Analysis (PEA) was developed (Wickman and Östman 2002). PEA contains four operational concepts applicable when analyzing meaning-making processes: stand fast, encounter, relations and gaps. When humans encounter people, materials and non-humans, they make distinctions through language as well as other forms of actions. Those distinctions open up gaps between what is said to stand fast (meaning not being questioned). The meaning-making process is then analytically described as gaps being discerned and filled with new relations to bridge them – always in relation to a purpose. In this study, we make use of the terms relations, gaps and stand fast when analyzing how ecological meaning-making develops and expands in accordance with the overall purpose of this study. The relations are elaborated as configuration of relations.

Transduction – a design analysis of the modes

To deepen the analysis further, we apply the construct of chain of transduction as students’ representations can be analyzed as signs (both linguistic and nonlinguistic ones) important for how the learning route develops (Selander and Kress 2010; Selander 2017). The child chooses, selects and assembles the physical and digital material which is given shape through the process of design (Selander and Kress 2010). Human communication is multimodal and we make meaning by different modes such as speech-actions, gestures, mimicry, writing and bodily actions. Hence, modes hold possibilities for meaning-making and communication of meaning (Kress 2009; Kress and van Leeuwen 2001), and today, when digital resources are being integrated with human communication, also modes such as sound and image are simultaneously used when creating meaning. Different modes are of different importance in different situations (Kress and van Leeuwen 2001) and students choose the modes that seem to fit the situation best when forming and representing their knowledge – afforded by, for example, the teacher’s didactic design and the framing of the educational setting (Kress 2010). Bezemer and Kress (2015) explain that modes have precise affordances. In the learning situation students aim their engagement in different directions – they can for example be interested in acquiring new knowledge in ecology, but they can also be interested to solve an assignment to be able to go on with the next. In the learning process anticipation (Dewey 1934/1980) plays an important role when students design their learning multimodally in a transformative process (Selander 2009). When meaning is “dragged across” one mode to another (i.e. a word can be transduced into a symbol) a transduction occurs and logic is changed (Kress 2010) – a remaking of meaning across modes. The sign maker makes meaning by the use of materials that support the representation and convey meaning. Mavers (2011) claims that children’s everyday representations such as drawings often are understood as ordinary, unserious and uninteresting, but with a situated, multimodal analysis they can be seen as remarkable and intriguing representations.

The notion of transduction is widely used in multimodal literacy studies (Newfield 2014). This is expressed by Newfield (2014, p. 103) as “…a transmodal semiotic chain is made up of links in different modes, which ‘punctuate’ the process of semiosis.” According to Newfield (2014) the notion of transmodal explicitly frames meanings that are manifested materially and externally in different representations. In this article we use the notion of chains of transduction as an analytical tool. We mean that such a chain is made up of sign making in which the sign-makers represent their meaning making in different modes in for example a game that is transformed to a drawing that is transformed to a film and so on. With support by Newfield (2014), we mean that these different ‘sign-making relations’, exposed as representations, are linked in for example subject, theme or topic and the link can be either close or distant. The concept of transmodal moment (Newfield 2014, p. 101) is here understood as the intersection between two representations in different modes. Further she means that the transmodal moment focuses attention on the relational aspect of the transmodal chain, on the way in which a modal shift impacts on meaning as well as on the way in which the links are connected (or disconnected) with one another (Newfield 2014).

The transmodal moment is the interface between the two modes in the transductive process where a modal shift is happening. It can be described as a new idea that is materialised in a new mode, different from the one where meaning was made and the idea arose. This moment can be shorter or longer and although common in human communication it is a complex moment that involves advanced choices and design.

PEA and transduction in analytical use

The young elementary students’ oral communication is wordy. We are well aware of the fact that dialogues in young students’ communication is quite difficult to capture and describe systematically. Therefore, we guide the reader by describing the events as fully and ‘thick’ as possible (Ponterotto 2006) and capture them in an outdoor setting description as well as 1) adopting relations, gaps and stand fast from PEA and finally, 2) draw on the transduction chain (Figure 1) in order to better capture and analyse the processes taking shape through students’ different signs and modes. To take these two analytical steps, we can target both the linguistic signs visible through the established relations in the process (the oral communication) and the non-linguistic modes and signs (i.e. gestures, bodily arrangements, photographing) shaped and remade in the transduction chain.

Method: elementary students’ learning in biodiversity and ecology

Biodiversity and ecology learning in elementary school science was documented during three days in a row, of 24 students at the age of 6-7 (Swedish grade 1). The empirical material consists of field-notes and photos along with students’ own drawings, screen shots and digital photos. One teacher and an assistant participated. The school is located in a large suburb of Sweden. Data reported in this study are part of a larger study entitled “Elementary ­students’ learning in biodiversity and ecology”, a network between 3 suburban schools. They conduct a one-year project where teachers are striving to create opportunities for students to jointly make science explorations and co-construct their science problems and questions. Additionally, the use of pedagogical documentation was used in order to capture the learning process as well as making a retrospective and prospective account of the situation (Olsson, Dahlberg, and Theorell 2016). In this study we present results from one school, visited at 3 occasions during three days in a row. The empirical material from this selected school consists of totally 5 h and 25 min of audio recordings, students’ drawings and field notes. The audio recordings were transcribed verbatim.

Ethical considerations

All ethical guidelines for research with human beings (Swedish Research Council 2020) were followed. Before the empirical phase of the study, the project was granted ethical clearance by the regional Ethics Committee (Ethics Committee at the Karolinska Institute www.epn.se/Stockholm/). Teachers and children as well as parents were given information letters and informed consents have been given by them beforehand. All caregivers have signed informed consents (Robson 2011) and attention was given to children’s and teachers’ participation and sensitivity and multimodally communicated informed consent (by gaze, gestures and facial expressions) was a continuous process. Researchers were keen on giving special attention to children’s own multimodal consent giving, as presented in words, gestures and bodily actions. No personally sensitive data has been collected and the overall purpose and research questions do not exceed the limit of the students’ personal integrity (Swedish Research Council 2020).

Results and analysis

Children are developing agency and aspects of ecological literacy concerning animals’ welfare through configurations of relations and by means of physical and digital transformations, transductions and representations. In this part of the article, we will present the configurations of relations that are orally established in the process and apply the concept chain of transduction where children’s meaning-making emerges by means of different modes. We will illustrate this by ‘zooming in’ on the various links in the chain.

Process feature: drawing and communication

At a lesson a week ago two students, Alex and Binja, have specifically paid attention to preys’ protection and defense represented in a joint drawing (Figure 2). In science class, the students sit close together exploring and discussing the different details of what they have drawn: “the leaf must have the right nuance, otherwise it will not camouflage”, Binja points out. Notice the green caterpillar sitting on the green leaf. The children have also drawn high grass in which they say small bacteria can hide in to escape the predators. In the right corner of the drawing, some bacteria are hiding in an eagle feather. Alexander points at the eagle feather and comes up with a suggestion:

Figure 1. A transduction chain.

Figure 2. The students’ drawing.

Alexander: “We figured out… we can gather old feathers, from perhaps a magpie…. a craw feather or from a mallard…. and from eagles! We can collect and then place them in the woods for the small ones, to spiders and also for the small bacteria so they can hide. Binja: There is a need of more feather-nests and also such shelters for small animals. We can make such things happen.

Analysis of the process

In the dialogue, a first narrative where ecological interactions comprising consumers and producers, is shaped by the students. A notion of environmental conservation related actions emerges among the students. Alexander’s engagement in hiding strategies, “so they can hide”, stand fast to Binja shown in the utterance: “need of more feather-nests“.

A configuration of oral relations is established: ‘old feather - a magpie - a craw - feathers-mallard and eagles - the woods - spider - bacteria - feather - nest and shelters’ in the process.

The (semiotic) starting point takes its departure from an ink-drawing on prey’s various hiding strategies. In the first link of the transduction chain (Figure 3). Alexander specifically initiates a conversation on “small bacteria’’ and extends the ecological arrangements on prey-predator relationship by introducing functional bird species - feathers as potential nests and shelters for “small animals”. In the end of Binja’s utterance, “we can make such things happen” - the student unites the engagement and anticipation for the vulnerable, small animals.

Figure 3. The drawing inserted in the first link.

The central mode here in the first link, i.e. the drawing (Figure 2), children develop dedication and engagement within the frame of aesthetic learning. Meaning is transduced from one mode to another (Kress 2010): a movement from the first mode, the visual picture, to another mode, the on-going verbal communication, jointly enriches the meaning-making of ecological attachments.

Process feature: physical arrangement

In the next link in the transduction chain, the children take a tangible grip on the events of the small animals’ possibilities for protection and defense. The student’s meaning-making, as they physically move the place into nature, is widened when their drawings are transformed to a ‘physical-nature-arrangement’ designed in the rich moss environment (Figure 4).

Figure 4. The students’ recycled feather arrangement outdoors.

Alexander: Here, here, we placed those old feathers… Binja interrupts: …for small animals to crawl in under. We made it for the bacteria. It will be warm and cosy. We thought that the feathers, they can be good hiding places …and also nests. We also took a photo with the iPad, perfect!

Analysis of the process

In the progressing dialogue, the experience of nature arrangements and its purpose stand fast visible in Binja’s utterance “for small animals”.

Several relations broaden the narrative, where ecological interactions are further explored. The notion of environmental conservation is still in focus, exposed in a configuration of relations established: ‘old feather - small animals - bacteria - hiding places - nest’. Anticipation and concern for ‘small animals’ and ‘bacteria’, and how to support them in the outdoors is shown in the dialogue.

In the second transduction link (Figure 4), verbs such as “placed” and “crawl in” in Alexander’s utterance are reconfigured as spatial outdoor arrangements (cf. MODE 2012). Here, the move from one mode to the other has profound implications as it supports the children to ‘hands-on’ explore their ecological question concerning the role of old eagle feathers’ affordances in nature (MODE 2012).

Thanks to the feathers, the animals have been given both hiding places and nests. The students move, turn and twist the feathers, but the transduction moment is here the interface between a detail in the drawing (the eagle feather with bacteria) and the physical arrangement of feathers in the outdoor environment (Figure 4). Student’s growth of agency is in its first phase, a consequence of their anticipation (Feature: Drawing and communication) and care for small animals is transformed into hands-on science exploration in nature. Furthermore, the digital resource is of high value as the nature arrangement has been successfully captured in a photo visible in Binja’s aesthetic judgment “perfect”. The digital resource affords instant imaging (the photo) making it possible for the young learners to document their new insights simultaneously while keeping their focus on ecology labor supporting “small animals” and “bacteria”. Ecological and digital literacy, in terms of exploring preserving wildlife conservation actions, comes into play. In the process, the digital and material in the outdoors is blurred.

Process feature: extended digital interface arrangement

The next link of the transduction chain is characterized by the physical arrangement combined with digital elements along in an exploration where play and seriousness as well as reality and fiction are intertwined in humor. The two students’ exploration continues.

Binja: Look, it’s like this… She points at the photo of the eagle on the iPad. Yes, and then we took the iPad. We figured out, let’s download a huge eagle! So, it is actually an eagle and we placed the old feathers also, close to the iPad, yes, almost on it. Look at the image here! She points again at the image. Now, now other eagles can come here… they will see the iPad eagle and then, they want to fly there, but then they will see, you know, it wasn’t a real eagle! Alexander starts to laugh and Binja joins in.

Analysis of the process

In the progressing dialogue the students suddenly take another turn. The ecology interest is overshadowed. A third configuration of relations is established: photo of the eagle - download a huge eagle - old feather - other [real] eagles - iPad-eagle - flying [eagles] - real eagles. In the oral communication, the digital and material outdoors is blurred and humor and playfulness fertilizes the whole narrative. Binja’s flow of imagination stands fast to Alexander – both children are in agreement. Accordingly, no lingering gaps occur in the humorous exploration of eagles.

In the third link of the transduction chain (Figure 4), student’s engagement in arranging the different resources is here understood as “a complex punctuation” (Newfield 2014, p. 103) – it is a complex representation with several aims expressed in modes such as gestures, arrangement of objects and speech. The digital tablet holds many affordances (Kress 2010) for students to choose to act on. The possibility to photograph natural objects afford them to analyse and discuss their own arrangements and the process of agency, elaborated as ‘relational-contexts for action’ (Biesta and Tedder 2007; Caiman and Lundegård 2014) dealing with the ecological, yet contradictory aims of acting as shielding small organisms while luring larger ones. Hence, the digital affords something that could not be accomplished by physical means (Kjällander 2019). The photo affords their exploration further by discussing how their arrangement can be protective and simultaneously luring (pray- and predator arrangement, Figure 5). The possibility to download an authentic photo of an eagle, modally coherent concerning colour and size, in the moment of interest while on excursion in the nature, is here an important part of the transductive process – which is a combination of time and space (Newfield 2014) and presumably only made possible in the extended digital interface. By extending the arrangement, children grow digital literacy as they design new, creative and virtual traces in the process. Furthermore, in the third link, children navigate with ease through both play and seriousness. Since the tablet is portable it also affords children to easily move it around and aesthetically arrange it in the grass and moss in order for it to blend into the outdoor environment (Figure 5). This material feature of the transductional process (cf. Newfield 2014) includes arrangements with both physical and digital resources where features such as colour and form are used by the children to make meaning.

Figure 5. A down loaded eagle on the iPad, surrounded by real feathers, arranged by students in the nature milieu.

Process feature: photo

The children’s previous science question in transduction link one, on the potentiality of old feathers as ‘warm’ and ‘cosy’ hiding places for small animals and nests for prey are in this phase of the process transformed and conducted as a scientific inquiry – the children are in charge.

Binja: Look at this picture, look, then some ants came and climbed up in the old feathers! Look! It worked! The ants also wanted to crawl in… and perhaps make some nests? Alexander: So good! I managed to take the photo in time with the iPad… it was… He is mumbling… a little hard because ants are so quick. I thought only small bacteria would like to live in feathers. But no, no. Also the ants wanted to be there… the ant hills… it’s so very crowded in there. Binja: The eagles might also come later and land there…. I hope… Do eagles eat ants if they are super hungry? Alexander: Most of all eagles want to hunt mice and perhaps a squirrel… Now, the ants got a, a… well a feather shelter. I was so fast and I took the photo of those two ants!

Analysis of the process

In the progressing dialogue the students’ science inquiry gains an empirical answer supported by visual evidence (Figure 6). Binja’s suggestion, “ants make some nest”, stand fast to Alexander’s utterance visible in the positive aesthetic judgement “So good”. A question is posed by Binja about eagles prey (ants), a gap not fully bridged since the question is unanswered.

Figure 6. Suddenly ants appear the real feathers outdoors.

Figure 7. The chain of transduction with four filled links (to possibly be continued with more links).

A fourth configuration of relations is established: ‘climbing - crawling ants - feathers - nests – iPad - bacteria - ant hills – eagles - super hungry - mice - squirrel - feather - shelter - photo of two ants’. The joy in succeeding to document the event is orally expressed and the previous experience of the eagle surrounded by students’ humor, is reactualised and transformed into a potential predator for ants although the students are not really sure. Ecology prey-predation relationships gain interest in the oral communication presumably due to the presence of ants in the recycled feathers.

In this last link of the transduction chain, the camera app of the digital tablet is an apt resource (Kress 2010) and the digital image is an apt mode (Kress 2010) for Alexander to capture the quick ant. Children’s anticipation of the bacteria is here lost in the transductive process, presumably for two reasons. First, the unexpected instant presence of ants entering the arrangement noticed by Binja, changes the initial focus. Second, since bacteria is not visible to the human eye, nor visualised by means of the digital tablet’s camera – the fascination of bacteria is no longer in the center. The photo of the small ants on top of the large feather, affords Binja to suddenly take into account that their multimodal arrangement might actually attract a predator to its prey visible in the utterance “Do eagles eat ants if they are super hungry? “Hence, multi-layered aspects of ecology emerge due to unexpected affordances in nature. When Binja and Alexander live through both digital and nature encounters, the process of agency and ecological literacy progresses. The process where attachments and concern for the smallest animals developed, now comes to a closure in the outdoor environment – perpetuated in a physical arrangement and in a digital image. The designed science inquiry outdoors resulted in a new insight – the ants ‘using’ the feather arrangements (Figure 7).

Results summary and final commentary

The particular modal features, drawing and talking, about a feather in link one are transduced into the second link, where real feathers are designed in a nature arrangement. The multimodal engagement with the feathers is now transduced into a digital image in the third link. In the fourth and final link, the science question posed in link one gets an empirical answer as a result of the students’ own inquiry: the feathers function as protecting shelters/nests. All along the transduction chain, children’s engagement and care for small animals are continuous with learning ecology – the ecological literacy is in growth.

In order to carry out an analysis of young students’ multidimensional meaning-making through different signs, we argue that the analytical tool chain of transduction and PEA’s analytical terms can grasp the complexity of sign-making and its consequences for what and how students learn and create meaning in a blurred ‘physical-digital’ landscape.

Discussion

The purpose was to explore how young students of today create and produced meaning of ecology in an intertwined ‘nature-digital’ interface. In accordance with the notion of learning as participation (Van Poeck and Vandenabeele 2012), the learners were in charge of the process throughout - aspects of ecological and digital literacy took shape (McBride et al. 2013; Häggström and Schmidt 2020; Persson, Andrée, and Caiman 2022). As students in this study are young, new ecological beginnings came into the world (cf. Biesta 2015), new narratives where physical and digital modes fertilized the meaning-making process. We suggest applying this combined methodological approach, when the interest is in new learning insights on how students of today navigate, explore and produce meaning. The analytical apparatus, containing relations, gaps, stand fast and chain of transduction, unfolded both the situated oral process and representations through physical and digital signs and modes students made use of. As an empirical result, four configurations of relations were orally construed where anticipation of prey guided the young learners forward to engage in prey-predator relationships, hiding strategies and shelters for animals and bacteria imbued with imagination and humor (cf. research question 1). Analytically, the four process features exposed, show the importance of detecting the relations students established when involved in hands-on and digital explorations. In this study, there were no substantial gaps, instead the configurations of relations construed contribute to the ecological meaning-making process. The explorations can be seen as a result of deliberate design (Selander and Kress 2010) and relate to what is multimodally represented in external signs and in motivated signs (Selander and Kress 2010). In this example, the motivated signs are for example the different ways in which the feathers are used in a photo, in a physical arrangement, as shelters or depicted in a drawing.

A detailed drawing in pen and colour (Figure 2) highlights the possibilities for protection of ‘small animals’ and ‘bacteria’ and is used as a sketch for such a construction which is, in the next link remade and arranged with physical objects from nature. An arrangement created to protect the small vulnerable animals (Figure 4) - a moment of fixing, a complex punctuation (Newfield 2014, p. 103). In the next link, students advance their physical nature arrangement with digital features. The problem is solved since the small animals are protected by means of being feather-sheltered outdoors. As follows, the students are aware and proud of their digital-physical solution to their authentic problem as excitement and affect is visible in the positive aesthetic judgment “so good”, a judgment expressed when Alexander comments on the documented event by taking digital photos (cf. research question 2). Due to the explorations in- and outdoors, attachments and attunements to the non-living were developed. Unsupervised spaces and places seemed to promote the students’ nature and digital engagements. The students broaden their science and digital knowledge repertoire: learning as actions towards a purpose visible thorough sign (cf. Dewey 1925/1958; Selander and Kress 2010). Previous experiences of other consumers (a squirrel and mice) are reactualised and transformed in the end of the course of action (cf. Feature: photo). Hence, practical, intellectual and emotional aspects are enclosed by aesthetics in the dynamic rhythm of experience (Dewey 1938/1997). Consequently, the ecological web expands and a new feather-solution for small animals is designed and shaped outdoors. This empirical result resonates with Barthel et al. (2018) research on how students develop engagements and connections to nature by creating nests for salamanders during winter. In all four process features in this study, ecological notions of prey-predation competition, and ecological relationships were explored – all relevant for developing ecological literacy (Atkinson 2015; Barthel et al. 2018; Häggström 2020; Mcbride et al. 2013). Those ecological relationships established are visible in students’ preserving related actions for animals. These features, as a whole, hopefully relate to Latour’s (2018) call for new ways of living ‘down to earth’ in Anthropocene.

This process, which derives from students’ anticipation (Dewey, 1934/1980), concerns the well-being and survival of the smallest animals. This particular interest, in terms of students’ developing taste for ecology (cf. Bourdieu 1984; Anderhag et al. 2013), can be seen as another important part of the growth of ecological literacy. Students’ careful tuning to inhabitants outdoors are in the center of the ecology event – learning and becoming with ecology takes place (Taylor and Pacini-Ketchabaw 2015; Weldemariam 2020; Persson, Andrée, and Caiman 2022). Furthermore, this explorative approach, where students manage to conduct their science inquiry in the outdoor milieu, is also an important part in the growth of ecological literacy (McBride et al. 2013). To emphasize, the high degree of freedom afforded by the teachers, made it possible for students to install themselves in the ecology field and hence, allowed the learners to design their course of actions.

The students ‘messed up’ the ecological cycle transforming it to a “problematic field” (Olsson 2013, p. 245), where animals are protected and a larger animal (the eagle) is lured. Play and seriousness as well as fiction and fact are afforded in the oral-physical-digital interface, when for example, a downloaded image of an eagle is used to try to lure real eagles from the sky. Here, when joking about luring, meaning-making is fertilized by humor and new potential questions are posed (Feature: photo). In this oral-digital/physical process, imagination, sense and nonsense are all vital parts:

“Listening to children’s questions, taking them seriously and appreciating their taste for creative thought demands a lot of us today as we seem to live in a time where creative thought, production of sense, invention and construction of questions and problems are considered an absolute waste of time”.

(Olsson 2013, p. 231)

Living requires new forms of participation and examination of questions related to ecology, biodiversity loss, human responsibility and our impact on the biosphere (Öhman and Östman 2019). Nature and digital have in common that the unexpected often occurs. Nature affords vital physical transactions when, for example, insects suddenly come running to the place. The digital tablet serves as an important resource as it allows students to perpetuate the arrival of the animals by means of digital photos. The digital resources afford multimodal and advanced representations and improvisation in the moment, allowing students to keep their focus on the ecology jointly with the on-going oral communication. Students of this age are brought up in a digital environment (Prensky 2001) and do not separate the digital from the physical, instead they use the mode that is most apt in the moment (Kress 2010) unconcerned if it is digital or physical. However, not all children have the same level of access to digital content or nature surroundings.

“We can make these things happen” says a child in the empirical example. This statement embraces what education for sustainability with the particular interest ecology can enable - giving children opportunities to develop agency and empowerment, a transactional process where objects, subjects and digital features and forces partake (cf. Biesta and Tedder 2007; Caiman and Lundegård 2014).

When the purpose is to contribute with knowledge on how students design and produce meaning in ecology and sustainability, taking shape in an extended oral-physical-digital interface, five intertwined aspects constitute an educational synthesis:

students’ authentic problem and anticipation throughout the process – physical and digital affordances – multimodal sign making through transduction – humor as a fertilizer – learning as an aesthetic experience

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.