Literacies in the more-than-human world: A thesis through autobiographic and post-qualitative inquiries
Date
2026
Authors
Waliszewska, Aleksandra Krystyna
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Abstract
This thesis is composed of two related studies. First, I reflect on the past decade as an educator and graduate student to highlight the joy that accompanied my shifting understanding of literacy. Through an autobiographical narrative inquiry, I use selections from blog entries and graduate coursework to reflect on my “moments of turning”. I begin with a logocentric understanding of literacy as a white settler in two Indigenous communities, but over time embrace a multimodal, embodied, emergent, place-based, and more-than-human conception of literacies within a context of the climate and nature emergency. In a second, post-qualitative inquiry I explore what kinds of literacy practices do learners in an elementary outdoor program engage in, and how are they shaped by the more-than-human world? I situate my research within the context of a socially and ecologically precarious world, from a posthuman theoretical perspective in conversation with Indigenous literacies, to build an argument for an embodied, sensory, multimodal, emergent, relational, and more-than-human conception of literacy. The study focuses on the experiences and literacy practices of fifteen elementary aged children in a multi-grade, forest school program in southern British Columbia, Canada. Using photographs and field notes, this study interrogates logocentric literacies and employs literacy as event, a process-based concept with meaning-making and sense-making occurring relationally, often in surprising ways that defy prior predictions, and therefore contain multiple possibilities. Meaning and sense-making interact to create powerful literacy experiences that transcend language. With these two studies, I argue that more-than-human literacies bring joy and open possibilities in a precarious world.
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Keywords
Literacy, Literacy as event, More-than-human, Nature-based education, Post-qualitative inquiry, Autobiographical narrative inquiry, Forest school, Outdoor education, Education, Climate crisis