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Walking Pedagogies and Indigenous Resurgence in Learning Environments

Mon, April 8, 12:20 to 1:50pm, Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel, Floor: Lower Concourse, Osgoode Ballroom

Abstract

1. Objectives

This paper examines the design and implementation of walking pedagogies in two Indigenous land and water based science learning environments in Native communities. One is focused on a program for 1st through 12th graders, what we call Indigenous Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (ISTEAM). The other is focused on an early childhood program. We explore the ways in which walking pedagogies enabled resurgent forms of Indigenous learning. We analyze how walking methodologies manifested in both the design of programs and how these practices emerged and impacted learning young people. We consider the forms of meaning making and dynamic learning that emerged though human and more-than-human relations.

2. Perspective(s) or theoretical framework

We draw from Indigenous scholarship and scholarship in the learning sciences to attend to the ways in which space and time are constructed and narrated in unfolding interaction as we walk with lands and waters. We examine the ways in which dynamic relations between humans and the natural world are constructed, shape cultural practices, and impact knowledge, reasoning, and learning about, in, and with the natural world (e.g., Author, 2015; Lee, 2008; Rogoff, 2003). As Linda Smith (2012) writes: “Different orientations towards time and space, different positioning within time and space, and different systems of language for making space and time ‘real’ underpin notions of past and present, of place and of relationships to the land” (p. 113).
We extend these bodies of work to make the ontological claim that land itself, though never fixed and always becoming, is a relevant semiotic field in meaning making (Author & Author, 2018). More specifically, we are interested in understanding the ways in which knowledge construction and sense-making unfold in cultural practices of walking, reading, and storying the land. These are routine practices in which individuals make and enact human-nature relations and apprentice children into epistemic, ontological, and axiological stances in human-nature relations.

3. Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry

We conduct micro-ethnographies utilizing both knowledge analysis and interaction analysis (e.g., diSessa, Levin, & Brown, 2015). We take a microlongitudinal and microlatudinal approach to characterize how sense-making evolves over time and reiteration (longitudinal), as well as in moments of interaction across settings or in movement during walking (latitudinal) (DeLiema, Lee, Danish, Enyedy, & Brown, 2015).

4. Data sources

The data for this work consists of audio recordings, video recordings, transcriptions, and field notes (or minutes) from both programs. In this analysis, we examine 3 walking activities in each learning environment and then conduct a comparative analysis.

5. Results and/or substantiated conclusions

We highlight several key findings including,
1) Walking pedagogies enable a kind of coordination that draws learners into the land.
2) Walking pedagogies afford inquiries about the changes and cycles of natural phenomena.
3) Youth routinely attend to evidence or traces of activity in the land about more-than-humans.
4) Youth routinely connect insights in their current experiences to other spatial and temporal locations as part of sense-making. We believe these may be important moments for identity development.

Authors