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Katrine Bergkvist Borch defends her PhD dissertation Caring and Aesthetic Science Education in Nature-Based Learning Environments: A Monstrous Investigation on Wednesday, April 22, 2026.

In this context, she will give a lecture titled: From Monstrous Method to Didactic Value: Aesthetics, Care, and Nature-Based Learning Environments in Science Education?

How can science education in nature-based learning environments be rethought and further developed through aesthetic and caring approaches?

This question is central to Katrine Bergkvist Borch's dissertation, which is rooted in science education research and combines it with Science and Technology Studies (STS), pragmatic philosophy of experience, and posthumanism. The overarching ambition is to rethink science education in nature-based learning environments so that teaching more fully considers the relationships between humans, nature, materials, and technologies. Particularly, biology education in Danish primary and secondary schools forms the framework for the investigations, which contribute new theoretical, methodological, and empirical perspectives on teaching practices and fieldwork in science education.

Aesthetic Experiences and More-Than-Human Agency

Theoretically, the dissertation draws on John Dewey's understanding of aesthetic experience, where learning is seen as a bodily, affective, and meaning-making process, and where teaching is understood not merely as the transmission of knowledge but as something that arises through sensory and experience-based encounters with the world.

At the same time, posthumanist perspectives contribute an understanding of agency as distributed—something that arises in the interplay between humans and more-than-human actors such as landscapes, technologies, and other species. Inspired by, among others, Donna Haraway, Karen Barad, Andrew Pickering, and Robin Wall Kimmerer, the dissertation explores how knowledge can be understood as situated, relational, and produced through practice.

Science Education as Worlding

Inspired by Donna Haraway's concept of worlding (in her dissertation, Katrine Bergkvist Borch uses the term in Danish: “at verdne”), the dissertation analyzes how science education not only takes place in nature but actively helps create worlds and relationships. In this context, Bergkvist Borch incorporates Karen Barad's understanding of ontology and epistemology as coinciding—a so-called onto-epistemology (an understanding that knowledge arises in the interplay between humans, nature, and materials).

The dissertation thus positions itself at the intersection of pragmatic philosophy of experience and posthumanist thinking and proposes a rethinking of science education didactics that promotes aesthetic engagement and caring relationships in a post-Anthropocene context, that is, a context where humans are seen as one among many actors, including plants, animals, microorganisms, materials, and technologies.

Monstrous Methods and Experimental Research Practices

Methodologically, the dissertation contributes to developing and applying so-called monstrous methods. These are composite, fragmented, and hybrid methods anchored in a performative research paradigm and use post-qualitative and artistic approaches in research.

Through experimental, bodily, and aesthetic research practices, knowledge is created in new ways that challenge more traditional methodological approaches to science education didactics and posthumanist educational research.

Fieldwork in Nature-Based Learning Environments

Katrine Bergkvist Borch has gathered her empirical data through extensive fieldwork in nature-based learning environments, including follow-up research at Geo and Bio Science Center Syd and the NAFA summer school Species, Experiences, and Aesthetics. Additionally, she has incorporated performance-based experiments and reflective writing processes.

Through monstrous analyses, the empirical data shows how technologies, landscapes, and species contribute to shaping science education and how aesthetic and caring dimensions can open up new didactic possibilities.

A Significant Contribution to Science Education Research

The dissertation represents a significant theoretical and methodological breakthrough in Danish science education research and contributes to both national and international discussions on posthumanist pedagogies, aesthetic learning, and learning with more-than-humans.