Riverspeaking: Transformative Learning within a Relational Ontology
Abstract
The co-authors perturb the modernist ontology of rationalism, cognitivism, progressivism, and the view of the self as autonomous that is predominant in current transformative learning theory. Entering into a co-learning relationship, one author as a scientist and the other as a social scientist, we have been exploring radical relationality as a new ontoepistemology. Through our stories of social and environmental transformative learning that we have had in relation to the rivers of the Rocky Mountains, we use the term Riverspeaking to explain this relational ontology and its importance for theorizing transformative learning. Informed by Indigenous ways of knowing and the work of physicist Karen Barad to further understand a relational ontology, we suggest that transformation is not just about ‘form’ but also about matter, process, and making meaning in (be)coming of the world. That is the meaning of the concept Riverspeaking.
Subject
transformative sustainability education
relational ontology
indigenous philosophy
new materialism
agential realism
post humanism
Permanent Link
http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1793/82264Type
Article
Description
XII International Transformative Learning Conference • Tacoma, Washington, 2016 • Proceedings
Citation
Lange, E.A. & O’Neil, J.K.P. (2016). Riverspeaking: Transformative Learning within a Relational Ontology. Proceedings of the XII International Transformative Learning Conference, Tacoma, WA: Pacific Lutheran University, October 21-23.