In an era where digital technologies increasingly mediate children’s daily experiences, the rise of artificial intelligence (AI)-generated ecological simulations raises critical questions about how young learners perceive, embody, and understand the natural world. While virtual environments offer accessible alternatives to outdoor learning, they may also restructure children’s sensory engagement and ecological awareness in ways that remain insufficiently examined. Grounded in Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of embodiment and Gibson’s theory of affordances, this study investigates how primary-school children experience ecological learning differently in real natural environments compared to AI-simulated ecological spaces. Using a qualitative phenomenological design, the research involved participatory observation, children’s motion-path tracking, semi-structured interviews, and video-elicitation sessions, conducted across two contrasting learning contexts: a tropical rainforest field site and an AI-generated ecological installation. The findings reveal that natural environments elicit expansive bodily engagement, multi-sensory activation, spontaneous exploration, and heightened affective attunement to living elements. These features are strongly associated with ecological consciousness and embodied learning, underscoring the unique role of real natural settings in fostering meaningful ecological understanding. In contrast, AI-generated environments, while visually immersive, tend to produce more task-driven, visually dominant, and sensorily limited behaviors, with reduced affordance variability and diminished perception of environmental vitality. The study argues that artificial intelligence (AI) simulations cannot replace nature’s dynamic affordances and phenomenological depth but can serve as complementary tools when carefully designed to enhance uncertainty, interactivity, and bodily agency. These insights contribute to growing debates on AI in education by highlighting the irreplaceable role of embodied encounters with real ecosystems and offering a framework for integrating technology with environmental pedagogy.
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Zang, Y. (2025) Embodied Ecological Learning in Natural and AI-generated Environments: A Phenomenological Study of Children’s Environmental Awareness. Global Education Bulletin, 2(6), 59-74.