Getting “really close”: relational processes between youth, educators, and more-than-human beings as a unit of analysis

In this paper, we explore relational processes between and among three key learning ecosystem actors–youth, educators, and more-than-human beings–as a unit of analysis for understanding a specific type of environmental identity development: a 21st century naturalist. Our conceptualization of these relational processes aims to knit together sociocultural theories of identity formation with Indigenous, new-materialist and posthumanist philosophies. We draw on data collected while conducting a case study of a teen youth program held in an urban park collected as part of an ongoing research-practice partnership. We ask how we, as educators and educational researchers, attend to more-than-human actors as essential agents for youth naturalist identity formation. As two settlers living on colonized lands, we aim to dismantle Eurocentric scientific logic of human hierarchical exceptionalism and denial of the personhood and agency of more-than-human beings in both our educational and research practice. We close with reflections on how we both transform and are transformed by the learning places in which we work.