Learning Designs for Literacies to Support Students Navigating and Thriving in More-Than-Digital Contexts and Encounters: A Holistic and Ecologically Attuned Perspective

This article discusses what learning designs should look like to match the complex entanglement of human and non-human actors that characterises the educational realities of today. Drawing on postdigital scholarship, higher education curriculum design literature, and indigenising perspectives from Aotearoa New Zealand, the article suggests a move away from learning designs for literacy development that focus mostly on cognitive changes and the learning of strategies in a disciplinary context. Instead, critical thinking and judgment are foregrounded as key components of literacy, and the article argues that these skills cannot be meaningfully developed without attention to the affective domain in learning designs. To support the development of literacy suited to postdigital realities, the role of the affective domain, for example higher education students’ and educators’ emotions in their encounters with non-human actors, must be recognised. Building on this premise, the article contributes a holistic, ecologically attuned perspective on learning design that integrates affective, relational and material dimensions to support literacy development in more-than-human contexts.