This paper examines how two university educators at Southern Cross University in Australia applied Karen Barad's theory of agential realism to teaching an online environmental education course to pre-service teachers. The researchers documented their process as they "defied the apparent irony of online teaching of environmental education" by exploring how digital learning environments could still foster meaningful connections and agency.
The researchers applied four key tenets of agential realism to environmental education: (1) fracturing binary thinking through recognizing interconnectedness, (2) providing theoretical grounding for interdisciplinary praxis, (3) working with agency as an inherent potential in all entities, and (4) questioning existing understandings of the world.
Their diffractive analysis revealed several insights. First, they found that despite efforts to create interdisciplinary, non-linear learning materials in the Blackboard platform, the technology's inherent linearity created limitations. Second, when they attempted to enhance students' sensory experience by switching from Blackboard Collaborate to Zoom (allowing for more visual connection), students unexpectedly preferred the more limited platform with cameras off. This helped the researchers realize that agency isn't something teachers can "give" to students but exists already as potential within all participants and elements.
A particularly successful component was an assignment called an "Eco-Biography" where students explored their personal connections to nature and synthesized these with their emerging teaching philosophies. This assignment demonstrated how even in an online environment, students could engage meaningfully with environmental concepts on a personal level.
The study concluded that teaching through an agential realist lens helps educators question fixed educational structures and binary oppositions while highlighting the inherent interconnectedness of all phenomena in the learning environment. The researchers suggest that environmental education should serve as an interdisciplinary foundation across the curriculum rather than being confined to a specific subject area.
The Bottom Line
This 2025 collaborative autoethnography explores how two university educators designed and implemented an online environmental education course for pre-service teachers through the philosophical lens of Karen Barad's agential realism. The researchers documented their planning, teaching, and evaluation journey as they applied posthuman concepts to the digital classroom environment, exploring the "entanglements" created among educators, students, learning platforms, and course materials. Through a diffractive analysis of three teaching apparatuses—the e-learning platform, the online classroom, and a course assignment—they examined how concepts of intra-action, agency, and response-ability manifested in their teaching practice.