"Look It, This is how You Know:" Family Forest Walks as a Context for Knowledge-Building About the Natural World

Walking pedagogy, Community-based design, Observation, Subjective Evidence-based Ethnography

In this article, the authors theoretically develop a methodology of walking, reading, and storying land. Using interaction analysis and a case study approach, the article looks at a Native American family's experience on a walk in an urban forest. The authors analyze the video and transcript data to explore how learning takes place.

Respectful relations are embedded throughout: the relation between humans, nature and more-than-human life; familial relations.

This study recognizes the current global context of complex ecological challenges which demand that humans evolve towards a more sustainable way of being. The process of walking, reading and storying land is offered as a way for people to understand their position within and in relation to land and the more-than-human world.

Video and transcript data

This study looks at the relationship between mobility and knowledge making, contributing (methodologically and conceptually) to a walking pedagogy, and offering a framework for walking, reading and storying land.

"Although walking, reading, and storying land is indeed an assemblage of practices that has existed across time scales and human history, that we suggest shapes cognitive development, it is also one in which people work to understand and story their position within and relations with the [more-than-human] world" (p. 112)

"A core interest of this work is how the contours of land structure movement, attention, and experience, which in turn impacts what becomes observable and present for meaning making" (p. 112)

Education & Pedagogy