Place-based “Wondering Walks” to Translanguage in/with The Land’s Semiotic Resources for Science Education

• In Event: Cultivating Caminata Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning while Walking with Emplaced and Embodied Knowledges in Texas

Abstract

Purpose
Science education in U.S. schools has historically centered anthropocentric approaches that privilege colonial onto-epistemologies and upheld standardized language modalities for sensemaking (Bang et al., 2017; Suárez, 2020). While the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) promote multimodal, practice-based learning, they still overlook diverse ways of knowing and “languaging” (i.e. what learners do with language resources; Gonzalez-Howard et al., 2024)—limiting meaningful student participation, particularly for culturally and linguistically diverse learners (Rodriguez, 2015). Research shows that achieving transformative equity requires ‘desettling’ these norms by expanding what ‘counts’ as science (Bang et al., 2013) and what ‘counts’ as language (Grapin et al., 2025). For example, Pierson & Grapin (2021) have challenged semiotic mode hierarchies that privilege English texts by positioning all semiotic resources (e.g., gestures, models) as having different—yet equally important —scientific meaning-making potentials. However, this research often remains confined to classroom settings, missing opportunities for embodied modes of meaning-making in nature. Since most translanguaging research focuses on increasing students’ “access” to dominant science and language norms, rather than transforming the discipline (Grapin et al., 2025), teacher educators (TEs) need support in operationalizing translanguaging’s decolonial potential (Wei & Garcia, 2022) for embodied, place-based sensemaking.

Modes of inquiry & Data Sources
Using data from a larger translanguaging project, this testimonio examines how one TE engages preservice teachers (PSTs) in “Wondering Walks” (Learning in Places Collaborative, n.d.), which centers land and more-than-human beings as knowledge holders by inquiring into how the land itself serves as a semiotic resource for multimodal sensemaking (Marin, 2020). These walks challenge human-centered views of language and knowledge where translanguaging supports desettling dominant communication norms, showing how learners can engage in meaning-making with the land and more-than-humans. Specifically, we deductively coded the TE’s interview transcripts drawing from the New London Group’s (1996) multimodality lens to examine how “Wondering Walks” engage PSTs in land-based investigations across linguistic, visual, spatial, gestural, and embodied modes.

Warrants for Point of View
Our analysis uncovered what “modes of meaning” were made available during the walk, reframing the land as a semiotic resource. Findings revealed that (1) the “Wondering Walk” activity attends to the interconnectedness of beings as integrated semiotic resources, prompting PSTs to move across multiple modes beyond human speech to sensemake—such as observing non-verbal behaviors, spatial relations, and sensory features (sounds, colors, textures) and (2) regular returns to the same site uncover how time functions as a semiotic resource, enabling PSTs to notice seasonal ecological patterns and shifts otherwise missed in one-time visits.

Perspective
This iterative engagement, or translanguaging with the land (Thraya & Takeuchi, 2022), fosters relational sensemaking and desettles fixed, Eurocentric views of nature (Bang et al., 2013). Multimodality, then, should include bodies-in-motion interacting with land/waters and more-than-humans (Marin, 2020) alongside traditional modes (e.g., diagrams, graphs), enabling a holistic meaning-making process.

Scholarly Significance of Work
This testimonio recommends exploring how decolonial place-based frameworks can expand what counts as semiotic resources. It also provides strategies for educators to support students in building meaningful relationships with the land, which can inform their ethical decision-making on socioecological issues as they work towards envisioning sustainable futures through STEM.

Author

• Leticia Garza, University of Texas at Austin