More-than-human theorising – Inclusive communities of practice in student practice-based learning

Abstract

How might deeply embodied student experiences and nonhuman agency change the way we think about learning theory? Pushing the conceptual boundaries of practice-based learning and communities of practice, this chapter draws on student experiential fieldwork ‘on Country’ with Indigenous people in the Northern Territory (NT), Australia, to explore the peculiar silence when it comes to more-than-human ¹ features of situated learning models. As students engage with, and learn from, Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies, they become open to the ways their learning is co-produced in and with place. The chapter builds a case for an inclusive conceptualisation of communities of practice, one that takes seriously the material performativity of nonhuman actors – rock art, animals, plants and emotions in the ‘situatedness’ of socio-cultural contexts. As a co-participant in the students’ community of practice, the more-than-human forms part of the process of identity formation and actively helps students learn. To shed light on the student experiences we employ Leximancer, a software tool that provides visual representations of the qualitative data drawn from focus groups with students and field diaries.

Citation

Hodge, P., Wright, S. and Mozeley, F. (2014), "More-than-human theorising – Inclusive communities of practice in student practice-based learning", Theory and Method in Higher Education Research II (International Perspectives on Higher Education Research, Vol. 10), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 83-102. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-3628(2014)0000010010