Walking collaboratories: experimentations with climate and waste pedagogies

ABSTRACT

This paper introduces the concept of a walking collaboratory and discusses what researching as a collaboratory offers to education sites. Vignettes from two research sites draw on a Common Worlds framing to explore what it means to walk with young children using experimental, situated, and relational walking practices. In Southern Ontario, a walking collaboratory at a post-landfill naturalisation site invites pedagogies that refigure children’s relations with waste in a landscape profoundly shaped by a history of extraction. In Western Australia, a river walking collaboratory proposes pedagogical interruptions as a methodological tool to disrupt walking routines and attune to a river significantly impacted by human activity and climate crises. This paper does not offer a prescriptive collection of parameters for researching as a walking collaboratory, but instead offers glimpses of everyday moments that counter human exceptionalism and vitalise early childhood pedagogical practices through walking.

KEYWORDS:

• Collaboratory
• walking
• common worlding
• environmental education
• early childhood education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 http://www.climateactionchildhood.net/.

2 Derbarl Yerrigan is the Whadjuk Noongar name for the river which was formed by Waugul, snake or rainbow serpent, who is the major spirit for Noongar people who are one group of Indigenous peoples of South West Western Australia.

3 The authors recognise that Noongar language is specific to the 14 individual language groups of the Noongar Nation, therefore there are multiple spellings widely accepted when written.

4 http://commonworlds.net/.

5 The Zapatistas initiated a rebellion in the twentieth century to protest economic policies that they believed would negatively affect Mexico’s Indigenous population and has resulted in a peaceful political movement that currently still exists (Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Zapatista-National-Liberation-Army#ref286750).

6 https://www.niagararegion.ca/business/tenders/2017-RFP-53.pdf.

7 https://niagararegion.bidsandtenders.ca/Module/Tenders/en/Tender/Detail/3213909b-f2b7-43d8-965f-99170f60b580.

8 Noongar people are the Traditional Owners of the south west area of Western Australia and have been living and caring for Country for more than 45,000 years. https://www.noongarculture.org.au/.

9 Maali is the Noongar word for the Black Swan.

10 Djenark is the Noongar word for the Silver Gull.

Additional information

Funding

This publication draws on research supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada.