Negotiating the family in unfamiliar terrain: mobile technologies and ecopedagogic guardians

Dunkley, R. A. and Smith, T. A. (2022) Negotiating the family in unfamiliar terrain: mobile technologies and ecopedagogic guardians. In: Smith, T. A., Pitt, H. and Dunkley, R. A. (eds.) Unfamiliar Landscapes: Young People and Diverse Outdoor Experiences. Palgrave Macmillan: Cham, pp. 133-158. ISBN 9783030944599 (doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-94460-5_6)

Abstract

This chapter explores how interactions occur in the outdoors between parents and children, and the consequences for our understanding of encountering and negotiating unfamiliarity. Specifically, it draws on empirical data from video recordings of a family, with two young children, following a heritage app guide of a Roman Fort in the Brecon Beacons National Park. Our focus is on the family’s interactions, which manage the negotiation of unfamiliarity, particularly how adults draw on their own familiarity to introduce children to heritage features, as well as navigate the family visit across difficult terrain. Within these negotiations, feature the device and digital heritage app, an increasingly ubiquitous and familiar facet of family interactions, and here the chapter focuses on the skill displayed by both children and their parents of managing the place of the mobile device, and app instructions, in ‘unfamiliar’ terrain. This chapter therefore explores the intersubjective work that occurs between children and their parents to jointly negotiate unfamiliar heritage, landscapes and technology, to explore how the familiarity of ‘family’ gets done in unfamiliar terrain.

• Item Type: Book Sections
• Status: Published
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Dunkley, Dr Ria
• Authors: Dunkley, R. A., and Smith, T. A.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Education > Pedagogy, Praxis & Faith
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• ISBN: 9783030944599
• Published Online: 17 June 2022