Place-Based Design for Joyful Transdisciplinary Socio-Ecological Sensemaking: Emerging Stories and Expanding Possibilities (Poster 7)

• In Event: Attending to Climate and Environmental Hope, Despair, and Repair Through Storytelling

Abstract

Objectives
Socio-ecological relationships have been storied since time immemorial; the kinds of stories we tell can expand (or narrow) how we imagine and enact our responsibilities to and relationships within the rest of the natural world. Indeed, the stories we hold, tell, and nurture are deeply consequential in informing what forms of action are considered valuable, as well as whose values are considered.
Connecting multiple layers of pedagogical practice and socio-ecological possibly, this study elevates our work in supporting educator learning around expansive possibilities for socio-ecological sensemaking alongside emergent transdisciplinary artifacts developed by youth as they engage in routine outdoor sensemaking with people, places, and more-than-humans.

Framework
This work is grounded within the Learning in Places project where we have designed a model activity system to support place-based socio-ecological sensemaking and ethical changemaking rooted in the noticing and wonderings of youth, families, and communities (Learning in Places Collaborative, 2021; Tzou et al., 2021; Sherry-Wagner, 2023; see also Vossoughi et al., 2024). As a model of field-based climate education, Learning in Places is aimed at remediating, repairing, and remaking nature-culture relations grounded in interdependent models which start from the assumption that human beings exist as a part of the rest of the natural world (Bang & Marin, 2015; Bang et al., 2012).

Methods & Data Sources
Our work weaves together methods in participatory design-based research (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016), place and land-based education (Bang et al., 2015; Tuck et al., 2014), and critical ethnography (Barton, 2001) to study the mediation of learning and emergence of more just nature-culture imaginaries within moment-to-moment pedagogical interaction and across extended timescales of inquiry. In this study, we draw upon analysis of data collected from one educator’s first implementation of the Learning in Places “Seasonal Storyline”, including routine reflective interviews and artifacts of implementation.

Findings
The results of this study suggests that routine outdoor engagement, supported through materials in the Learning in Places ecosystem, presents powerful possibilities for nurturing more ethical relationships between humans and the rest of the natural world. For example, we draw on poetry authored through partnerships between youth, places, and more-than-human beings as evidence of transdisciplinary sensemaking which braids together forms of perspective taking, multimodal literacies, and expanded affective landscapes in which wonder, awe, hope, and joy are recognized as central to ethical socio-ecological sensemaking.

Significance
Through detailing shifts in what educators consider pedagogically possible, alongside emergent artifacts of storyline implementation and routine engagement with places themselves, this study contributes towards developing expansive and ethical stories of teaching and learning through open-ended field-based inquiry. Resonating with author and activist Arundhait Roy’s contention that "Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing" (2014), this study presents insights, artifacts, and stories-so-far (Massey, 2011) as glimmers of such a world and as seeds of possibility that can cultivate more just and reciprocal socio-ecological relationships in times of great global challenge and possibility.

Authors

• Jordan D. Sherry-Wagner, University of Washington - Bothell

• Carrie T. Tzou, University of Washington - Bothell

• Shirin Vossoughi, Northwestern University

• Anna Lees, University of Washington

• Megan Bang, Northwestern University