Children's emotional experiences in and about nature across temporal–spatial entanglements during digital storying

Abstract

In this study, we investigate how digital storying creates opportunities for children to attend to their emotional experiences in and about nature. Following relational ontology and socio-cultural theorising, we focus our analysis on the temporal–spatial entanglements of children's emotional experiences. Our inquiry draws on a case study of two children at a Finnish primary school. Liam and Vera engaged in digital storying in their local forest using an augmented storycrafting app, MyAR Julle. The data were collected during two storying workshops by means of observational field notes, video recordings, interviews with the children and digital artefacts. The results illustrate how engaging in the narrative plot of a fictitious augmented character invited the children to create necessary open-endedness in the activity which further stimulated their storying. The children's experiences were imbued with emotions and distributed across human and non-human actors. The children's digital storying not only communicated their personal emotional experiences in local surroundings, but was also grounded in broader societal narratives, such as climate change and forest conservation, with considerations of the future of the planet. The results suggest how digital storying offers a pedagogical method for early environmental education that builds on children's emotional experiences.