Educators unplugged: working and thinking in natural environments

Abstract

This study investigates the cultural experiences of higher education educators/academics while working outdoors in natural environments, ‘unplugged’ from technological and institutional systems. a) That disconnection from institutional/technological systems would catalyse re/connection with natural systems—the natural environment, our colleagues and ourselves; and (b) That disconnecting from institutional/technological systems would generate psychological, emotional and social margin in our work and invigorate our teaching. Collective autoethnography with structured methods–problematising, data assemblage, data analysis and reporting. By deliberately disconnecting from institutional and technological systems for two days we hoped to find social and emotional margin in our work. However, what we did not anticipate, but was a very welcome outcome of this project, was the development of a way of knowing, an epistemology, of being unplugged in nature. This epistemology prompted us to wild our pedagogies and reconsider sustainable ways of learning and working.