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Abstract

This inquiry explored the natureculture of schooling with regard to the Anthropocene, a new geological epoch brought on by human-induced destruction of the planet. Specifically, this study aimed to respond to the ecological crisis through an approach to art education pedagogy that fosters a heightened sense of attunement to nature as understood through the lens of feminist new materialism. Fifth-grade students and I, a veteran art educator in a public elementary school setting, employed a series of Reggio-Emilia inspired ecologically-responsive provocations as an apparatus to experiment with theoretical concepts and materials. Grounded in concepts from feminist new materialism, each provocation was designed as a diffractive pairing of concept and material, including: attunement-natural objects, concrete-space, cardboard-time, movement-plastic, and trash-wonder. The provocations allowed space for generative intra-actions and the mutual constitution of entangled agencies. The ecologically-responsive provocations were documented through photographs, audio recordings, and field notes, and the resulting documentation was used to construct vignettes of affective attunement. The writing of the vignettes became an analytical tool for articulating the differences, overlaps, and becomings that emerged through diffractive practices. By thinking and writing with Karen Barad’s concepts such as agential realism, intra-action, diffraction, and timespacemattering, new understandings of the natureculture of schooling emerged. Human entanglement within the natureculture of schooling became evident through caring relations with human and nonhuman matter, curatorial practices, and a heightened sense of attunement. These practices involved thinking through materiality and prompted a (re)thinking of the boundaries of schools, highlighting the viscous porosity of social, cultural, and material relations. As art educators are (re)produced through these relations, they also produce student bodies within school spaces via pedagogy and implementation. A key finding was that the Reggio Emilia-inspired practice of provocation as a pedagogical tool allowed students to follow their curiosity and have space to wonder through ecologically-responsive intra-actions, thereby (re)producing caring bodies exhibiting behaviors that have the capacity to attend to the ecological crisis for years to come. The results of this study give hope to future generations of students and art educators for implementing ecologically-responsive approaches to art education that address the ecological crisis.

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