Date of Award
2024
Document Type
Thesis
Publisher
Edith Cowan University
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
School
School of Education
First Supervisor
Mindy Blaise
Second Supervisor
Jane Merewether
Third Supervisor
Jo Pollitt
Abstract
This Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) research study was motivated by the need for ways of responding affirmatively with the climate crisis, ongoing colonialism, and human exceptionalism for recuperative futures. Six publications are included in this Thesis With Publication, making up the primary body of work for this PhD. Situated in early childhood education, this feminist project experimented with ways of doing research and pedagogy otherwise and generated five practices: caring citational practices, relational reading practices, responsive walking practices, emergent writing practices, and diffractive analysis practices. Guided by common worlds and feminist new materialisms as theoretical frames, this study took both a methodological and pedagogical focus to bring attention to experimentation with practices while walking with a local river. Derbarl Yerrigan/Swan River is located on Whadjuk Noongar boodjar (Country) near Boorloo/Perth in Western Australia and this research involved weekly walking with a small section of this river. The walking project was designed as a water and walking collaboratory which included river, preschool aged children, four early childhood educators, and two researchers with intentions of generating climate pedagogies from paying attention to and responding with river-child relations. Central to experimenting with practice in this research was focusing on non-representationalism, more than human relations, forgoing binaries through an interest in multiplicity, and doing away with universalisms and individualism by situating the knower and knowledges and creating collective ways of doing methodology and pedagogy. Feminist and anticolonial ethics encouraged caring citational practices and relational reading practices to be generated in this study. Frequent and recurring walks with place, an experimental orientation, and a research blogging practice helped to generate responsive walking practices and emergent writing practices. The study included a period of time where the researcher walked by herself with Derbarl Yerrigan/Swan River as a way of experimenting with research analysis practices, resulting in the study taking a diffractive approach to analysis. The five practices generated in this study contribute to doing climate action otherwise by responding with climate change in situated ways rather than typical early childhood and environmental education approaches that are heavily invested in human exceptionalism. The publications and thesis offer insight into feminist, multispecies, and affirmative approaches to thinking-with more than human relations and experimenting with methodological and pedagogical practice in times of rapid environmental change.
DOI
10.25958/jqv9-jd62
Access Note
Access to this thesis is embargoed until 1st November 2025.
Recommended Citation
Wintoneak, V. (2024). Walking-with Derbarl Yerrigan/Swan River: Experimentations with methodological and pedagogical practices in early childhood education. Edith Cowan University. https://doi.org/10.25958/jqv9-jd62