Literacies in the More-Than-Human World: Elementary Aged Learners in an Outdoor Learning Community

Abstract Through this post-qualitative inquiry, I explore what kinds of literacies do learners in an elementary outdoor program practice, 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 an 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.