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.