Learning with environments: Developing an ecological psychology inspired relational pedagogy

ABSTRACT

A disconnect from environments has largely dominated educational discourse and policy. Attention to place and environment in education has gained momentum recently through several relational theories. Application of these theories in education notes the materiality and relationality of pedagogy, though often without specificity as to what the pedagogy is – how it is enacted and what guides such pedagogy. For pedagogical direction in enlivening learning with environments, this paper looks to the potential of ecological psychology theories of affordances and developing specificity via perception and action with environments. To illustrate such, we offer reflections on the pedagogical gap from a teacher education project that attunes preservice teachers to the potential for learning by engaging with spaces produced for children by artists. We then look closely to the pedagogical practices of an artist working with children in a primary school maker space-oriented program. Inspired by ideas from ecological psychology, we identify four pedagogical principles in practices of responsive learning with environments and suggest these as a possible pedagogical framework for eliciting embodied, emplaced, relational, and integrated learning with environments.

KEYWORDS:

• Affordance theory
• Ecological Psychology
• learning environments
• Artists as pedagogues

Acknowledgments

We graciously thank Professor Beryl Exley who provided feedback on an early version of this paper and the anonymous reviewers who’s feedback strengthened the cohesion and clarity of the article.

Ethical Clearance for the study was approved by Human Research Ethics Committee of the University Southern Queensland as noted in the article. Participants gave permission for images to be published.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. A personal name given to the sculptural figure.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Louise Gwenneth Phillips

Louise Gwenneth Phillips Louise is an Associate Professor of Education at James Cook University, Singapore, where she coordinates the early childhood education degree. She has more than 30 years of experience working with children across various settings, as an early childhood educator, storyteller, consultant, researcher and tertiary educator. Louise’s research interests include children’s rights and citizenship, arts and rights-based pedagogies and methodologies, storytelling, and creative learning environments. See http://louptales.education

Roxanne Finn

Roxanne Finn has worked in education (early childhood, primary, and higher education) for over twenty five years. Her research interests include bringing an ecological psychological stance to learning. This requires increased attention to active, dynamic, situated and spontaneous moments for learning that can increase success for more students making school more inherently inclusive, better engage parents as pedagogical partners, and support teachers to focus on learning within their highly constrained roles to ‘teach’. Roxanne currently works into the teaching program the University of Southern Queensland.