Mixed reality (XR) environments combining real-to-virtual immersive experiences provide unprecedented potential for reframing educational pedagogy and practice. XR environments provide scaffolded learning points accommodating individual needs, while enhancing sensorial and embodied experiences. XR environments can facilitate self-determined (heutagogical) experience-based learning and esthetic visualization of wicked problems, making complex knowledge more accessible. Here we report on a study exploring the design of mobile learning with education outside the classroom (EOTC), heutagogy, and free-choice learning to enhance marine ecological literacy, based on a bring your own device (BYOD) XR intervention at a marine educational center in Aotearoa New Zealand. Findings indicate that XR affordances can enhance the understanding of complex marine conservation science, facilitating ecological literacy knowledge, attitudes and behavior change. Implications include pedagogical rethinking of EOTC with self-determined mobile learning; haptic, sensorial and embodied XR design considerations for environmental education; and epistemological speculation on learning phenomena in real-to-virtual immersive environments.

In this article, we present a theoretical framework for mixed reality (MR/XR) self-determined learning to enhance ecological literacy in free-choice educational settings. The framework emerged from a research study in New Zealand which aimed to explore how learning experiences which incorporate mobile technologies within free-choice learning settings can be designed to enhance learner development of marine ecological literacy. An understanding of how mobile technology can be integrated into the teaching and learning of sustainability education that incorporates free-choice learning contexts, such as visitor centres, is of strategic importance to both education outside the classroom and adult learning. Following a design-based research methodology, the framework is presented in the form of a set of design principles and guidelines, informed by key theories in ecological literacy and free-choice learning, heutagogy, bring your own device and self-determined learning. We briefly describe how the framework provided the foundation for an educational intervention. This paper aims to assist researchers and developers of MR/XR immersive learning environments to consider design principles and processes that can enhance learning outcomes within free-choice settings, such as museums and visitor centres. This article is part of the special collection Mobile Mixed Reality Enhanced Learning edited by Thom Cochrane, James Birt, Helen Farley, Vickel Narayan and Fiona Smart. More articles from this collection can be found here.

Current global challenges of the 21st century promote STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) education and digitalization as a means for humans to be the central actors in the construction of a sustainable society that favors a sense of worth and global wellbeing. In this scenario, new educational technology tools and immersive learning affordances (possibilities), offer unprecedented potential for the design of smart and dynamic learning systems and contexts that can enhance learning processes across varied audiences and educational settings. However, current STEAM education practice lacks attention to equipping all citizens with the necessary skills to use digital technologies in an ethical, critical and creative way. This gap calls for attention in design processes, principles and practices that are attentive to ethical considerations and values-based approaches. On the other hand, in its formulation STEAM as an educational approach is framed in four fundamental pillars: creativity, inclusion, citizenship and emerging technologies, which also put attention on the inclusion of disadvantaged and underrepresented social groups during STEAM education design. Following an apparent need to explore ethical and inclusive design in STEAM education, and inspired in the 4E cognition framework, ethical enactivism and embodied and ecosomaesthetics experience design, here we propose a theoretical framework grounded on systems thinking for the design of smart and dynamic STEAM learning systems and settings. The framework is aimed at STEAM educational psychologists, educational technologists, learning designers and educational practitioners who wish to address the global challenges of 21st century education by means of creative, innovative and inclusive education design.

One of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic has been restrictions on mobility and thus the closure of schools. This has had consequences on the teaching strategies of primary mathematics educators who were not familiar with online education. Most schools in Chile have adopted virtual and hybrid classes to continue educational processes. From a quantitative approach with a sample of n = 105 primary school educators and through an online survey, we analyzed how educators implemented the mathematics curriculum during the pandemic using various didactic strategies and educational resources, as well as their respective contexts. The results show that there is a relationship between the level of technical knowledge of teachers, the years of experience, and the types of teaching strategies they use. Likewise, differences were found between educators in rural and urban sectors according to the use of teaching strategies and the types of educational resources used. Regarding the didactic strategies, it is shown that the emerging strategies most used are metaphorical and analogical, whereas in traditional strategies the automation of procedures is imposed. The implications for practice include suggestions and guidelines for improving the training and professional development of mathematics teachers including increasing and strengthening the number and quality of teachers’ didactic strategies and online pedagogical management skills and promoting metacognition through virtual forums. Finally, we discuss the context of the use of didactic strategies in mathematics during the pandemic, analyzing its challenges and opportunities.

In its ontological presuppositions, epistemological interests and methodological deliberations, critical theory of environmental education research (EER) is simultaneously scientific, normatively (and reflexively) critical, and non-idealistically practical. It is, therefore, a theory of practice, or praxis. Critical EE and its research aim for personal, social and ecological forms of justices achieved transformatively through the de and reconstruction of pedagogical, curriculum, policy and research practices that reconstitute various injustices. Missing from this reconstructive critique is the crucial role of aesthetics and the importance of affectivity in generating meaning about the agency of the researched by the researcher/actor. In this small scale self study of aesthetics and affectivity, we report on the deliberations of a workshop spread over two days about the aim of framing EER as a triad of environmental aesthetics - environmental ethics - ecopolitics. We emphasize how sensuous ethnography in walking provided a methodological means within the mobility genre of interpretive research. We aim to generate meaning about the concept of ecosomaesthetics needed in a new language and images of environmental education. Some key images are included in the following text while others are referenced and available on-line (see footnote7).

The importance of community learning in effecting social change towards ecological sustainability has been recognised for some time. More recently, the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools to promote socio-ecological sustainability has been shown to have potential in community education for sustainable development (ESD). The effective design and use of technology for community learning implies an understanding of a range of cross-dimensional factors including: socio-cultural characteristics and needs of the target audience; considerations of available and culturally responsive types of technology; and non-formal pedagogical ESD strategies for community empowerment. In addition, both technology itself and social communities are dynamically evolving and complex entities. This article presents a case study which evaluated the potential of ICT for promoting ecological literacy and action competence amongst community members in southern Chile. The case study addressed the ecological deterioration of a lake, which is having deep social, economic, recreational and cultural implications locally. The authors’ research involved developing a theoretical framework for the design, implementation and use of ICT for community learning for sustainability. The framework was based on key ideas from ESD, ICT and community education, and was underpinned by a systems thinking approach to account for the dynamism and complexity of such settings. Activity theory provided a frame to address overarching socio-cultural elements when using technology as a mediating tool for community learning. The authors’ findings suggest that the use of an ICT tool, such as a website, can enhance ecological literacy in relation to a local socio-ecological issue. Promouvoir la viabilité socio-écologique locale grâce à la technologie : étude de cas au Chili – L’intérêt de l’apprentissage communautaire en vue d’un changement social favorisant la pérennité écologique est établi depuis un certain temps. Plus récemment, les technologies de l’information et de la communication (TIC) utilisées dans l’optique de promouvoir la viabilité socio-écologique démontrent leur potentiel dans l’éducation en vue du développement durable (EDD) au niveau local. Une conception et une utilisation efficaces de la technologie dans l’apprentissage communautaire impliquent la connaissance d’un ensemble de facteurs multidimensionnels tels que : caractéristiques et besoins socio-culturels du groupe cible, prise en compte des types de technologie disponibles et adaptés à la culture, stratégies pédagogiques non formelles d’EDD visant l’autonomisation de la communauté. Par ailleurs, à la fois les technologies et les groupes sociaux sont des entités complexes qui connaissent une évolution dynamique. Cet article présente une étude de cas qui évalue le potentiel des TIC à générer des compétences et des actions écologiques chez les membres d’une communauté dans le sud du Chili. Cette étude s’est penchée sur la dégradation écologique d’un lac, aux profondes répercussions sociales, économiques, récréatives et culturelles de cette communauté. Le travail des auteurs consistait à élaborer un cadre théorique pour la conception, la mise en œuvre et l’utilisation des TIC dans l’apprentissage communautaire en vue de la pérennité. Ce cadre se fonde sur des concepts clés de l’EDD, des TIC et de l’éducation populaire, et repose sur une approche systémique qui tient compte du dynamisme et de la complexité de ce type de situation. La théorie de l’activité a fourni un cadre permettant de traiter les éléments socio-culturels généraux dans l’usage de la technologie en tant qu’outil de médiation pour l’apprentissage communautaire. Les résultats des auteurs suggèrent que l’utilisation d’un outil TIC tel qu’un site électronique peut promouvoir la sensibilisation écologique en relation avec un problème socio-écologique local.