Place, Stories and Emotions: The Ethical Becoming of Affective Landscape(s) Supported by Formative Assessment Systems

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

Abstract

Our paper elevates the development of storywork and affective landscape(s) between young people, community members, educators and the natural world in a field-based science participatory research (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016) project in ISTEAM (Indigenous Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics). Affective landscapes encompass the relationships between place and emotion where they function as a praxis of earth-shaping with the natural world aiming towards ethical, dignified and sustainable forms of formative assessment systems. ISTEAM is based in Indigenous knowledge systems that reason about the natural world while simultaneously realizing cultural, onto-epistemic heterogeneity, (Warren et al, 2020) and, self-determination. Across Turtle Island, ISTEAM creates the conditions for storywork, transdisciplinary learning, and teaching that are held together by emotions and pedagogies of place (Tuck & Mackenzie, 2014; Bang et al, 2014).

Our novel theoretical framework of affective landscapes is informed by the cultural process of storywork (Archibald, 2008), science learning (Bang & Medin, 2010), organization of human language, cognition and social organization (Goodwin, et al., 2001) and more-than-human personhood (McDaid Barry, 2023) in concert with land and water. This framework is constructed by both quantitative and qualitative data sets working in tandem with one another. Our quantitative data sets are geographically bound to include survey measures that are phenologically and culturally designed and aligned with the natural world with three disparate Indigenous communities in north america. Similarly, qualitative data collection tools consist of audio-video (Tripod and GoPro) recording of various activities that occur throughout ISTEAM educational programming. Through these recorded engagements, we primarily use interactional and discourse analysis.

Building on the activities that are documented in our data sets, our findings demonstrate that the learning ecologies of storywork in field-based science learning within the ISTEAM framework transforms participants' ecological sense-making and decision making. First, the practice of storywork functions as an ethical and emotional foundation. This foundation, and supported by formative assessment systems, motivate learners’ ability to collectively engage with participants and more-than-humans underscoring the significance of emotions and ethical science learning. This approach contrasts sharply with conventional formative assessment models when attempting to support transformative learning. Second, the dynamic construction of affective landscapes facilitates complex reasoning about the natural world. This invites an interactional attunement towards transformative learning, emotions and the environment. Furthermore, our paper emphasizes the value of embedding storywork and affective landscapes into educational practices. Engaging deeply with the natural world and its cultural and cognitive dimensions through storywork lead to more ethical and transformative educational experiences.

Our work offers families, educators, and researchers an invitation to deeply engage with storywork and their construction of emotions that are tied to place when making sense of the natural world. As storyworking crafts affective landscape(s) that lead towards ethical and dignified ways of being, it opens up a new sustainable relationship with formative assessment systems. Exploring these efforts affords the complexity of emotions and how they are tied to place in ways that are culturally informed, dynamically constructed, and transformative.

Authors

• Miguel Angel Garcia-Bocanegra, Northwestern University

• Cecelia Hoffman, Northwestern College

• Megan Bang, Northwestern University

• Aaron Golding, Northwestern University

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