Research Project Info: Summary, Questions, Objectives, Tools, Literature, and Results

Summary of Research

The proposed research will seek a better understanding of the roots of place-responsive educational pedagogy among educators in British Columbia K-12 schools. To this end, I am interested in how the stories and experiences of educators and their students demonstrate how place matters to them and is entangled with their identity, experience as educators, response to curriculum, and development of pedagogy. Surveys will be used to gather stories of place as it relates to educator’s motivation to engage in place-responsive teaching, how their lifeworlds relate to their pedagogies, the dynamics of practice that emerge in this work, and the extent to which they feel their efforts have been productive. Using a Participatory Narrative Inquiry framework and a process of storywork informed by Indigenous methodology, educator focus groups in five regional locations in North Central British Columbia will conduct shared qualitative analysis of the gathered stories. Domains or ‘terrains’ of theory and literature that guide this research include identity of educators, experience of place, place-responsive education, geographies of education, and decolonized practice. In order to further situate and interrelate the storywork, the research will be crystallized through narrative self-inquiry, mapping and experiential activities, vignettes of place-responsive practice in North Central British Columbia, and basic demographic analysis of participants. This research will be of value to the participants themselves, other place-responsive educators, teacher training programs, curriculum development committees, and will contribute understanding to methods for Participatory Narrative Inquiry, place-oriented phenomenological inquiry, and storywork.​ABSTRACT (from research proposal)
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Photo: Derk Zimmer, 2020
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Impressions at Flatbed Creek, separated by 115 million years. Photo: Glen Thielmann, 2019

Research Questions

Exploring why place matters to educators through their own stories and the experiences of their students, both philosophically as a way of understanding the world, and practically as a means of teaching others to become whole selves rooted in community, evokes my central inquiry of how, why, and where educators encounter and develop pedagogies of place. The central method of learning about these encounters will be through the stories of educators themselves. This ‘tracing of the roots’ is expressed in three research questions:
  1. Given the complex demands placed on educators, why are they committing teaching time and energy towards place-responsive pedagogy and what do they hope to gain from this effort? 
  2. How do the lived experiences of educators – their lifeworlds – relate to their engagement with specific iterations of place-responsive pedagogy?
  3. What dynamics of practice emerge when educators shift focus to place-responsive learning, and how are they responding to these dynamics?

Research Objectives

​​A key objective of this research is to offer support for educators as they situate pedagogies of place within modern challenges and demands on their practice such as the evolving socio-emotional needs of students, Indigenous reconciliation, climate change, and the new competency-based BC K-12 curriculum, among other motivators for their work. The support I have in mind is both theoretical and practical. In terms of theory, my intention is that this research adds understanding to place-based contexts for decolonized methodologies and expands the potential uses and accessibility of Participatory Narrative Inquiry and storywork, including their use by practitioners in the K-12 system. This research may have immediate practical implications for teacher education programs, particularly in northern BC, help develop and provide testimony and recommendations for ongoing cycles of curriculum revision in BC, and will ideally result in ongoing discussions, professional development, and writing that will build pathways for existing place-responsive educators in BC and open up horizons for new (or newly engaged) educators that are looking to connect themselves and students to learning in and from place.

Research Tools

​The core study uses a methodology known as participatory narrative inquiry or PNI. Developed by researcher Cynthia Kurtz, PNI draws on participatory action research, narrative inquiry, mixed methods research, and oral history. The narrative aspect of PNI insists on raw stories of personal experience as the main basis for sense-making, especially when values, beliefs, and perspectives are being considered. The participatory aspect of PNI invites participants to work with their own stories and those of others, meanwhile the role of the researcher is to facilitate collective inquiry rather than decide what the stories mean. The inquiry aspect of PNI refers to the intention that participants will learn something new in the process, and rather than simply reading or listening, will engage in discovery.

PNI involves three phases: Collection, Sensemaking, and Return. The Collection phases is the gathering of stories by any means; the Sensemaking phase can take place in a variety of settings and sequences following collection, and is conducted in groups, and the Return phase is a chance for participants to review what happened in the first two phases and engage in dialogue or reflection about their experience with the project. In my study, the Collection phase will involve gathering stories of place-responsive practice by K-12 educators from North Central BC and beyond; the Sensemaking phase will take place in focus groups made up of educators in North Central BC, and the Return phase will be an optional zoom-based follow-up with the focus group participants.

The PNI process will provide me with collectively constructed perspectives on my research questions in the form of participant notes and field notes from the focus group sessions and follow-up.  In addition to PNI, I will triangulate these findings with three to five vignettes on place-responsive programs that exist in North Central BC, as well as some personal activities to explore my own relationship to place as an educator.

Domains of Literature

  1. Identity of educators describes a spectrum of understanding that starts with notions of the self and flows out to the diverse relationships between teachers, curriculum, and the education system, in particular the interaction with students and colleagues, but also with parents, school officials, community stakeholders, and sites of practice.
  2. Experience of place includes concepts of how place is constructed through language, story, sense, and standpoint, and how, why, and where people attach to place.
  3. Place-responsive education includes pedagogical contexts, goals, and strategies for place-based learning and the impact of place on pedagogy. Place-responsiveness, as a term, encourages more reciprocity with place and land than the traditional term place-based. Place-responsive education activates experience of place in sites of learning beyond the classroom.
  4. Geographies of education refers here to critical approaches to place in education, and attention to how the experience of place plays out in educational spaces.
  5. Decolonized practice, in the context of this study, is a meeting place for land-based teaching, situated worldviews informed by traditional ecological knowledge, the need for Indigenous reconciliation, Indigenization of learning spaces, and the decolonization of education, pedagogy, and methodology.

Recruitment

The following groups have been invited to participate in Part One of the study – Storygathering
  • Educators in SD27 Cariboo-Chilcotin
  • Educators in SD28 Quesnel
  • Educators in SD57 Prince George
  • Educators in SD91 Nechako Lakes
  • Members of the BCTF group "EEPSA" – Environmental Educators Provincial Specialist Association
  • Teacher Candidates in the UNBC Teacher Education (B.Ed) Program
  • Members of BC Retired Teachers' Association (pending approval from BCRTA)
  • Twitter/X users tagged in my group as "place-responsive educators" in BC and other personal contacts that have shown an interest in the research topic
  • Others that see and respond to the recruitment poster
When interested participants complete the research consent and information survey, they can indicate interest in Part Two (Sensemaking Focus Groups) and Part Three (Vignette Interviews). To qualify for these parts, participants need to be educators in North Central BC (the area served by SD 27, 28, 57, 91). This may included pre-service teachers, active educators, and recently retired educators (within 5 years).