Wonder and Power in Outdoor Learning: Iterative Storying and Changemaking with Nick and the Charger

• In Event: Storywork as a Generative Model for Educator Attunement and Learning Toward Justice and Well-Being

Abstract

This paper describes how we have designed storywork engagements to support educator learning around dynamics of joy, wonder, power, and historicity as lived within moments of unfolding pedagogical mediation. Grounded within contexts of field-based socio-ecological sensemaking (i.e. the Learning in Places project), this paper explores how we have worked to cultivate educators’ interpretive power (Rosebery et al., 2016), dignified pedagogical decision-making (Espinoza et al., 2020), and identity as change-makers through critical analysis and reflection with video and transcript data. We trace our approaches to mediating educator learning through iterative development–storying and re-storying–of “Nick and the Charger'', a data-grounded narrative we have developed and refined to orient educators to key dimensions of designing more ethical learning environments.

We draw on analysis of video and transcript applied to two inter-related datasets. The first is in the analysis and design of the story “Nick and the Charger''. We use methods of discourse and interaction analysis (Derry et al., 2010) to understand the significance of pedagogical practices that can remediate (or reintrench) powered hierarchies and open up opportunities for onto-epistemic heterogeneity in unfolding pedagogical interaction (Warren et al., 2020). Following Nick, a second grade boy of color engaged in field-based noticing and wondering, our analysis makes visible the ways in which routine outdoor activity can offer opportunities for experiences of wonder and awe (Sherry-Wagner, 2023). Nick also invites us to consider multimodal forms of observation when he notices a “charger” on the ground which, hands full, he examines with his feet.

Nick’s story also serves as an example of how the sensemaking of boys of color is often left unengaged, especially when it deviates from narrow “settled” norms (Bang et al., 2012). This interaction with the charger becomes a focal point in our analysis as Carly, a white student, calls out Nick’s behavior and Ms. River, the white female librarian, mobilizes her power to assert physical and intellectual compliance to police Nick’s behavior. Our analysis makes clear how both implicit and explicit dimensions of power become mobilized by both Carly and Ms. River, reifying racialized and gendered hierarchies. We close Nick’s story with his exuberance and curiosity persisting beyond this onto-epistemic enclosure.

We also trace how we have mediated educator engagement with the story of Nick and the Charger over five distinct iterations. We draw upon video and transcript data from each iteration to describe shifts in how we have framed and reflected upon Nick’s story with educators. As reflective analysis on our own pedagogical design and discursive practices, we critically consider what ideas are elevated within a given story arc, and how certain storylines structures can cultivate expansive engagement with data and nurture educators’ collective pedagogical imaginaries.

Weaving together multiple strands of design, implementation, and educator learning, the guiding focus of this work is aimed at questions of how we can share complex, and sometimes unsettling, stories in ways that can cultivate educators’ critical reflexivity (Thompson & Pascal, 2012), relational responsivity (Shotter, 2015), and identities as change-makers within everyday interactions with young learners.

Authors

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

• Carrie T. Tzou, University of Washington - Bothell

• Megan Bang, Northwestern University