Counting Affects: Mo(ve)ments of Intensity in Critical Avian Education - Abstract and Study Background

Oct 15, 2026

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An educational situation brings together two humans and 33 former battery hens to carry out a two-day cognitive bias experiment under a posthumanist framing. A Deleuzian repertoire is used to track how hens shape the research schedule and influence outcomes through unexpected dynamics of human-avian co-emergence. The experiment ends with an act of animal liberation, moving hens from a research facility to a countryside home, linking research implications to environmental education and activism.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages15

Reading Time38 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Critical Avian Education: Background and Take off

Learning constellation and research context

The Cognitive Bias Project

Counting affects method

Counting Affects: Mo(ve)ments of Intensity in Critical Avian Education Helena Pedersen, Malmö University, Sweden Abstract This article seeks to contribute to the idea of “posthumanist education” by unfolding an educational situation where an assemblage of two humans and 33 former battery hens is gathered to carry out a so-called cognitive bias experiment for two days. A Deleuzian repertoire is set in motion to conﬁgure the dynamics of hens intervening in the research schedule and affecting the results in various unexpected ways, as human-avian subjectivities co-emerge in the context of the ﬁeldwork setting. The cognitive bias experiment ends in an ultimate line of ﬂight; an act of animal liberation: The hens are moved from the research facility, where they were scheduled to be euthanized, to a private home in the countryside. Contained in the research process are two important messages to environmental educators: What are the implicit assumptions about nonhuman animals guiding environmental education practice and scholarship, and what are the connections between research and activism? Résumé Le présent article vise à contribuer à l’idée d’« éducation post-humaniste » endonnant lieu à un scénario éducatif consistant à réunir deux humains et 33 poulesayant été élevées en batterie dans le but de mener une soi-disant expérience par biais cognitif pendant deux jours. Un répertoire deleuzien est établi aﬁnde conﬁgurer la dynamique des poules dans l’horaire de l’étude et ayant denombreux effets imprévus sur les résultats, les subjectivités humain-gallinacé se manifestant simultanément dans ce contexte pratique et matériel. L’expérience par biais cognitif prend ﬁnpar l’envol des poules, un geste de libération de lapart des deux humains : les poules sont transférées de l’établissement de recherche, où elles devaient être euthanasiées, à une résidence privée à la campagne. Le processus de recherche permet deformuler deux messages important à l’intention des éducateurs en environnement : Quelles sont les hypothèses implicites sur les animaux non humains servant à orienter lapratique et la théorie de l’éducation enenvironnement, et quels sont les liens entre recherche et activisme? Keywords: avian subjectivity, assemblage, affects, intensity, bio-choreography 14 Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 16, 2011 Critical Avian Education: Background and Take off How may formal educational knowledge-practices shift or transform in the physical presence of nonhuman animals? What happens when conventions of science are momentarily swept up by the disparate agendas of a learning constellation composed of an activist-student and her experimental subjects—in this case, a number of laying hens? In the following, I will unfold a speciﬁc learning situation where the actors involved are 33 former battery hens, one student (“Emma”) carrying out an empirical study (a so-called cognitive bias experiment) with these hens as part of her thesis work in ethology at the Bachelor of Science (BSc) level, and myself. 1 In my role as educational researcher I participated in Emma’s learning process as well as in the interspecies relations this process relies on and is shaped by. My study develops along with my intense immersion into a part of Emma’s work with the hens for two full days, and sets out with a desire to experience how education practice and posthumanist theory may work together in a closely conﬁned spatial and temporal setting.2 I primarily turn to Deleuze and Guattari (1987) to open up a space of thinking about nonhuman animals, education, and posthumanism—a space open to redeﬁnition of the relationship between thought and affect (Morss, 2004), as well as to the transformational forces of cross-species interventions in an essentially unpredictable situation of education and learning whose outcome is never guaranteed (cf. Biesta, 1998) . My reasons for asking Emma, a BSc student who is also an animal rights activist, for acces

FAQs

What study setting does the article describe for its cognitive bias experiment?

It describes a two-day educational situation involving two humans and 33 former battery hens, where the hens function as experimental subjects in the context of a thesis-related empirical study.

How do the hens influence the research according to the article?

The article emphasizes that hens intervene in the research schedule and affect the results in unexpected ways, producing co-emergent human-avian subjectivities in the fieldwork setting.

What is the outcome after the cognitive bias experiment ends?

The cognitive bias experiment culminates in an act of animal liberation: the hens are moved from the research facility, where they were scheduled to be euthanized, to a private home in the countryside.

Oct 15, 2026

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