Plant-Human Relationships as a Source of Innovation for a Computationally Rich Urban Gardening Program

• In Event: Waterways and Pedagogical Entanglements: Teaching, Learning, and Relating to Water and Its Multiple Meanings

Abstract

This paper provides an empirically driven theoretical foundation for the plant turn—a turn that acknowledges the agencies of vegetal life—in the design of computationally rich urban environmental education. I show how relating to plants as agentic and responsive was a source of innovation in the design of a computer learning environment in a midwestern urban public library that sought to connect computer programming education to the library’s urban gardening program. I report on a design process where I treated plants as collaborators with their own unique contributions and ways of being. Relating to plants in this way fostered opportunities for children to learn computing in ways that were grounded in the library’s commitment to urban gardening.

Author

• Michael L. Lachney, Michigan State University