Hetherington, Lindsay; Brandt, Harald; Chappell, Kerry; Dillon, Justin; Malmierca, María; (2025) Exploring the use of digital technologies for ocean literacy education using a material-dialogic theoretical framework. Environmental Education Research 10.1080/13504622.2025.2512974. (In press).

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Abstract

Digital technologies, including Extended Reality (XR) can benefit learners by making the inaccessible, accessible. In Ocean Literacy, XR can enable children to connect with the ocean differently. We use a material-dialogic theoretical perspective which sees the material world as dialogically entangled with human understanding to explore the role of digital technologies in ocean literacy education in the context of an ocean literacy project in Denmark, England and Spain. Data included interviews with 12 pupils (aged 8-15) and 6 educators, alongside photographs and field notes from 18 field visits, analysed using hybrid thematic analysis. Findings suggest that the tools facilitated collaboration and dialogue, yet teachers raised concerns about the lack of real-time interaction with pupils using the digital tools. The paper’s key theoretical contribution is to show how the conceptualisation of dialogic learning can be extended to consider both material and virtual intra-actions within dialogic space which expands across space and time through asynchronous digital environments. The analysis raises questions about how teachers can guide learning in such expanded material-dialogic spaces. It points to how teachers’ concerns might be addressed through seeing the pupils’ interaction with the virtual, digital environment as an extension of a material-dialogic space in which teachers participate.

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