#61: Worlding With Bees: iPad Readings and AR Explorations as Multispecies Pedagogies

This study examines how children’s encounters with bees, mediated through different digital assemblages, opened distinct possibilities for inquiry, affect, and ethical orientation. Fifty-two Grade 5–7 students from various schools in urban British Columbia, Canada, either read informational texts and graphics about bees on iPads or used an augmented reality (AR) Bee Explorer app featuring 3D Bee models triggered by flower recognition, with both activities taking place in community garden parks as situated child–bee–technology encounters. Afterward, students responded individually in writing about their feelings toward bees and questions they still wanted to pursue. A diffractive reading of these students’ responses, informed by posthumanist concepts of learning-with and becoming-with, traced how different child–bee–technology encounters enacted divergent pedagogical openings. Responses in the iPad engagement centered on factual knowledge, exemplifying a “learning about” orientation that positioned bees as objects of study. By contrast, the AR engagement prompted ethical and ecological questions alongside affective expressions of care, joy, and responsibility. These differences point to how AR, by staging more immersive and interactive encounters, can amplify affective and ethical orientations that remain less visible in text-based engagements. The study contributes to multispecies pedagogies by illustrating how digital technologies can invite children to think, feel, and inquire with more-than-human life.