Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Thesis Format

Alternative Format

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Program

Education

Supervisor

Pacini-Ketchabaw, Veronica

Abstract

In the small Andean town of Racar, Ecuador, plastics are deeply woven into land and culture. Within postqualitative framings, this dissertation puts into conversation research-creation and curriculum-making to invent pedagogical responses to plastics with children and early childhood educators at a local school named Santana. This pedagogical project interferes with prevailing Euro-western visions of the human in education that separate children in the Ecuadorian Andes from their relations with place and plastics. Together we think with material/conceptual contradictions and possibilities proposed through Andean weaving techniques as minor, but important, entry points to figuring the child within increasingly synthetic worlds in the Ecuadorian Andes. The dissertation takes shape as a collection that interlaces five key threads of inquiry: two articles, a research blog, the project’s Exhibit, and a series of websites that speak to the ongoing trajectories of the work. Woven together, these threads inhabit and further activate the ebbs and flows of the first year of an ongoing pedagogical project with Santana. Opening to the toxic/life-giving natures of plastics that figure this community, this research seeks to cultivate orientations to curriculum and pedagogy that enable children, educators and researchers to weave together a life with plastics in Racar.

Summary for Lay Audience

In the small Andean town of Racar, Ecuador, plastics are deeply woven into land and culture. Within postqualitative framings, this dissertation puts into conversation research-creation and curriculum-making to invent pedagogical responses to plastics with children and early childhood educators at a local school named Santana. This pedagogical project interferes with prevailing Euro-western visions of the human in education that separate children in the Ecuadorian Andes from their relations with place and plastics. Together we think with material/conceptual contradictions and possibilities proposed through Andean weaving techniques as minor, but important, entry points to figuring the child within increasingly synthetic worlds in the Ecuadorian Andes. The dissertation takes shape as a collection that interlaces five key threads of inquiry: two articles, a research blog, the project’s Exhibit, and a series of websites that speak to the ongoing trajectories of the work. Woven together, these threads inhabit and further activate the ebbs and flows of the first year of an ongoing pedagogical project with Santana. Opening to the toxic/life-giving natures of plastics that figure this community, this research seeks to cultivate orientations to curriculum and pedagogy that enable children, educators and researchers to weave together a life with plastics in Racar.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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