Relational Learning on Storywalks: More-Than-Humans as interlocutors in Knowledge and Theory-Making

• In Event: Origin Theories of Learning: Recentering Indigenous Strategies of Learning and Life in Comparative and International Education

Proposal

Land has always had an active role in knowledge and theory-making through storywork (Archibald, 2008). As an origin theory of learning, Land enables communities to build shared experiences and interpretations as part of their ‘systemic practices of thinking and learning’ (Meixi & Nzinga, 2023, p. 485) especially in silenced communities in the Global South. In continuing efforts to strengthen Indigenous agency and resilience that emphasize Indigenous and ancestral epistemologies, this work illuminates the deep interconnectedness between humans and more-than-humans (MTHs). Through studying the practice of caminatas comunitarias, this paper explores the origin theory of storying relations (Meixi & Nzinga, 2023) depicting Land’s role as teacher and active interlocutor in human learning and development.

Drawing from Indigenous traditions, we foreground human meaning-making, resilience and thriving as intimately shaped through direct interaction with Land and MTHs (Cajete, 2000; Deloria & Wildcat, 2001; Simpson, 2017; Whyte et al., 2018). We center Land– landscapes, waterscapes, skyscapes and MTHs– as co-designer and interlocutor in learning. We also acknowledge the importance of storywork- storytelling and storylistening (Archibald, 2008)– as critical in maintaining relations that support theorizing about human learning and development. By engaging in storywork, communities form theories dialogically, through a dynamic, relational process.

Data for this paper comes from a collaboration with a self-determination community education project in Chiapas, Mexico, involving intergenerational storywalks, or caminatas comunitarias. During these walks, children, families, and teachers moved along the landscape, forming relations and narrating their Land-based relations. Using iterative coding, we analyze video data from one caminata in the coastal community of El Pacífico, focusing on relational dynamics and pedagogical moves, including human-Land interactions. Through this lens, we ask: How do interactions with Land shape knowledge and theory-making?

We highlight two moments during the caminata where Land emerges as interlocutor and teacher: climbing and tending to a coconut tree and caring of young fish during net fishing. These interactions illustrate relational responsibilities and care that encourage growth and thriving. Relations are dynamic and they emerge by learning to act and interact with Land. As they move about, climbing the tree, and holding and letting go of the fish, adults and children narrate their experience. The storytelling and storylistening constitute ways of continuous and collective theory-building, teaching, and knowledge that a community develops with Land as teacher.

This study contributes to an evolving understanding of learning as relational, place-based, and rooted in community, positioning storytelling and MTH relations as foundational in knowledge and theory-making. Land-based interactions and sensemaking in caminatas reveal situative perspectives of storytellers that demonstrate mental processes as interconnected with Land. This challenges dominant Eurocentric paradigms by foregrounding Indigenous epistemologies and theories of learning. At the same time, this research addresses biases in educational, cognitive, and psychological studies that often exclude Indigenous perspectives, expanding the canon to recenter ancestral “theoretical and methodological lifeways in the study of learning as pathways to collective thriving” (Meixi &​ Nzinga, 2023 p.475).

Authors

• Giselle Caretto, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

• Maria Cecilia Schwedhelm, Independent Scholar

• * Meixi, University of Minnesota

• Erma Fetić Mujić, University of Minnesota Twin Cities