Three Ecologies of Practice: An Intra-active Account of Learning by Doing

The thesis presents three methodologies of research-creation that enact ecology in relational ways. In order to move through the text in an ecological way, I attend to a: 1) Propositional Methodology; 2) Diagrammatic Methodology; and 3) Diffractive Methodology. With the use of wearable technologies, the three ecologies of practice produce on-going questions about nature and culture through experimental practices in an urban school. The three methodologies will be discussed in relation to the planning, designing, and engagement with an urban school garden. Concerned with the materialization of practices, the thesis emphasizes embodied experiences and more-than-human relationships that activate critical and imaginative modes of engagement that do not separate matter from perception. The thesis begins with the concept of ecology, shifting emphasis from learning about principles of ecology to enacting ecologies of practice. In so doing, I draw on feminist new materialist frameworks to develop an understanding of pedagogy and learning as 'intra-active' events (Barad, 2007). Intra-actions are ontological and epistemological co-constitutions of material and discursive knowledge. Karen Barad's (2007) attention to process (or intra-action) is key to the methodology of research-creation and the ecologies of practice, as learning is understood as that which happens in-the-making or through compositions of material environments and discursive practices. Enacting research and performing learning is at the core of both new materialist research practices and research-creation events. Performance is understood as that which does not solely belong to the performance of the human subject and/or student. Such an understanding requires the enactment of ecologies of practice that are attentive to how more-than-human matter and meaning shape knowledge about environments. From this perspective, performance provokes future practices through ongoing questions and embodied explorations that dismantle limited conceptions of nature and culture as well as deficit approaches to urban schools and environments. Ecologies of practice are pedagogical events of creation that are uniquely specific and that resist instructive models that have already shaped what the student will become and come to know.Ph.D