ReMediating Nature|Culture Relations through Perspective Storytelling (Poster 10)

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

Abstract

Objectives
Environmental Education centers have opportunities to create hands-on learning experiences with/in lands and waters and imagine possibilities for just and equitable socioecological futures. As part of a larger project working towards developing Justice-Centered Ambitious Science Teaching (JuST) we center the practice of remediating nature|culture relations through perspective storytelling and engagement with more-than-human (MTHs) others in a praxis-oriented graduate program (Bang & Marin, 2015; Luehmann et al., 2023). We leverage storytelling to explore climate justice by engaging with the animacy of MTHs and natural kinds. In this study, we examine how graduate students engage with the JuST framework, and the role of perspective storytelling in their own development as both learners and environmental educators teaching for climate justice.

Theoretical Framework
We draw on theoretical perspectives of learning for social and collective action to frame the tools and approaches for educators to use in processes of critical reflection, speculation and dreaming for just and equitable possible futures (Curnow & Jurow, 2021). We also draw on expansive learning theory to identify the trajectories of educators’ sensemaking and emotionality in relation to their community of practice and larger socioecological systems (Engeström & Sannino, 2010).

Methods & Data
This study takes place in a graduate program affiliated with a large research university in the pacific northwest. In the 10-month residential practicum component of this program, graduate students connect theory to practice as they design and implement outdoor environmental education learning experiences for visiting 4th-6th grade students. Data for this study include discussions and designed curricular artifacts from professional learning community sessions, as well as video data from teaching practice. We used thematic analysis with a combination of apriori and grounded theory codes (Ravitch & Carl, 2021) to examine the trajectory of graduate students’ teaching and learning with a focus on perspective storytelling.

Findings
The design and implementation of perspective storytelling shifted in relation to graduate students’ developmental trajectories within the graduate program. More specifically, the program invited graduate students to engage in a model of community and praxis that was prefigurative, embodying students’ conceptions of storying, living and education for justice and sustainability (Uttamchandani, 2021). We found this mirrored in their teaching practice. For example, over the academic year, the role of perspective storytelling with their students shifted in its role and purpose within each teaching week. While initially it served as a way of deepening relationships with a particular MTH, it also became an activity that led to reimagining the roles and relationships of MTH’s within broader ecosystems and across multiple spatial and temporal scales. We argue that this shift reflects a deepening of systems-level understanding of ecological phenomena, a necessary practice for imagining just and sustainable socioecological futures.

Significance
Canonical western environmental education has traditionally decentered animacy and agency for MTHs and natural kinds which stems from a cartesian approach to dualisms as a philosophical foundation. This work reconnects nature|culture through story to push beyond binaries in our pursuit of justice projects within intersectional environmental education (Thomas, 2022; Vossoughi et al., 2021).

Authors

• Déana A Scipio, IslandWood

• Priya Pugh, IslandWood