Aleksandra Waliszewska

Topic

Literacies in the More-Than-Human World: A Thesis Through Autobiographic and Post-Qualitative Inquiries

Department of Curriculum and Instruction

Date & location

• Friday, January 16, 2026
• 11:00 A.M.
• Clearihue Building, Room B017

Examining Committee

Supervisory Committee

• Dr. Lyndze Harvey, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Victoria (Supervisor)
• Dr. Ruthanne Tobin, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, UVic (Member)

External Examiner

• Dr. Sean Blinkinsop, Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University

Chair of Oral Examination

• Dr. Lara Lauzon, School of Exercise Science, Physical and Health Education, UVic

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.