Relational Learning through Feminist Pragmatist Praxis in Place: Learning in and through Relationship

This essay offers a vision for teaching-learning that seeks to support relational thriving (Escobar et al.; Felten and Lambert; Udoewa and Gress) and participatory place-making across generational and cultural divides. My story alongside the stories of others and findings from a four-year mixed method study offer critical hope that feminist pragmatist methods can cultivate connections and spur actions on a micro-level that support significant changes across social systems. The essay concludes by suggesting that this approach encourages a teaching-learning praxis that can be life-giving while supporting inclusive and systemic place-based change.A placed, relational approach to education aligns with core feminist pragmatist commitments. Feminist pragmatists have long argued for the merit of shifting the central locus of education from the academic text, to the con-text of our place and time (Addams; Boggs; Haddock Seigfried, “Missing Perspective”; Haddock Seigfried, Pragmatism and Feminism). As an ongoing process of situated, relational, and action-oriented inquiry (Lake and Whipps), feminist pragmatism encourages an approach that is critically reflexive, relationally connected, embodied, plural, fallible, and politically active (Lake, Heenan, et al.). While there has been significant scholarship emphasizing the value of an experiential, relational, and activist approach to learning, much of it has focused on past figures and times (Fischer; Lake, “Jane Addams and Wicked Problems”; Lake and Whipps, “Feminist Pragmatist Praxis”; Lowe, “Complementary Theory”; Lowe and Fenton; Haddock Seigfried, Pragmatism and Feminism). Less has been written about the value and challenges of practicing a feminist pragmatist approach today. In response, Contemporary Feminist Pragmatism, edited by Hamington and Bardwell-Jones, created an opening to explore the application of this approach in current times. In addition, Hypatia, one of the leading feminist philosophy journals, published a cluster of articles in 2021 (vol. 36, no. 2) focusing on current applications of this approach to philosophic-activism, extending this work. Both pieces, alongside other emerging scholarship, have been cultivating visions and opportunities for educators and activists interested in feminist pragmatism (Clough; Hamington and Bardwell-Jones; Whipps and Lake, “Validating Feminist Pragmatist Activism”; Lowe, “Right to Belong”; McHugh; Meagher; Varner).This essay seeks to add to this growing body of work, sharing my story of this approach to education. As a narrative case study (Pinnegar and Daynes), the paper explores my partnership with the Power + Place Collaborative, an evolving place-based, relational, and action-oriented community-education partnership situated in Alamance County, North Carolina (Lake, Drew-Branch, et al.). Beginning in 2018, the Collaborative includes the County's African American Cultural Arts and History Center, the parks and recreation department, community centers, local schools, the public libraries, the Center for Design Thinking (which I oversee), and a growing list of university faculty and courses. The goal is to build bridges of dialogue across lines of racial, religious, geographic, and generational division, examine the power-laden place design process, and create spaces of understanding, healing, and action. Thus far, the community-education projects emerging from the Collaborative address critical issues of history, race, discrimination, and segregation, while they simultaneously highlight stories of love, leadership, and activism. Initiatives and projects began with the collection and archiving of oral histories, the creation of digital stories, and yearly public screenings, and have evolved to include intergenerational community dialogues, the creation of K–16 curricular materials, public poster campaigns, storywalks, and more.After sharing the story of the Collaborative, the essay explicates the strategies implemented, highlights the ways in which these strategies are aligned with feminist pragmatist practices, and explores the evidence gathered thus far about their value. Analysis of the Collaborative along these dimensions visualizes its potential power and limitations. Findings also emphasize that this place-based (Semken et al.), relationally driven, and action-oriented approach can prompt shifts in individual and institutional practices, resources, relationships, and perceptions (Lake, Marshall, et al.).In order to situate the reader, I next briefly document the context surrounding the emergence and evolution of the Collaborative, including my own positionality and that of the institution, and the county.The ideas contained in this essay are shaped by my lived experiences as a white, settler, straight, cisgender, and able-bodied first-generation associate professor and director at a private liberal arts undergraduate institution in the southern United States. I am still wrestling with unlearning various aspects of my academic training. For instance, many educational practices and norms reinforce colonial and extractive frameworks that exclude and cause harm. As someone born and raised within colonialist systems and structures, I am trying to stay aware of the hypocrisy that comes from working within university and civic systems while trying to resist and remake them. For instance, as I strive to remake hierarchical and oppressive teaching and learning structures (through relational, co-creative learning projects), I also reinforce these structures (through end-of-semester grades). I welcome critique as I seek to continue to find more inclusive and just ways of being in and contributing to the world.Elon University is a private, mid-sized, liberal arts, and largely residential institution known for its commitment to engaged, experiential undergraduate education (including global and local, community-based, project-based learning, and “relationship-rich” learning). The university's student population is approximately 75% white, 5% black, 6% Hispanic, 2% Asian, and 7% American Indian (Elon University). Over the past five years, the university has committed to telling a more inclusive institutional history and taking accountability for past harms. In 2020, we published a history and memory report to begin documenting many of these past stories. We've also established committees and designed new, university-wide advancing equity curriculum.Alamance County in North Carolina offers a highly relevant example of the divides that currently exist across the United States. According to the 2020 census, the County is 73.6% white, 20.9% black, 13.1% Hispanic, 1.7% Asian, and 1.5% American Indian (Pattman). A highway and railroad tracks separate the black and Latino east side of the county from the predominantly white west side of the community, which includes the campus. A 2021 health assessment of the County showed that there is an eleven-year life expectancy gap between the east and west sides of the community (Health Assessment). The County has been growing twice as quickly as the country average (given lower cost of living in comparison to its neighboring cities) (Health Assessment). Long histories of racism and oppression, alongside rapid growth and demographic shifts, have increased tensions and conflict across the community. In 2020, counter-protests to the Black Lives Matter protests emerged. The protests centered around a Confederate monument in front of a county courthouse. The statue is placed near the site of an 1870 lynching of Wyatt Outlaw, the first black town commissioner and constable of the area. In 2021, a large nonprofit organization conducted community conversations across the county and engaged local leaders in order to better understand the divides and opportunities for the community to live “healthy and fulfilling lives” (Harwood and Conroy 1). The resulting report highlighted the divides and mistrust, but also the mutual desire to heal and hope for a different future. In 2024, PBS featured the County in their “America at a Crossroads” segment, highlighting how this is one of the most divided places in the country (Woodruff). Few histories documenting the racial struggles of the County's past have been written. In response, Power + Place is committed to visualizing historically marginalized stories of resilience and community activism in the County and creating space for dialogue across differences.How did it start? The Power + Place Collaborative was formally launched in 2020 through an expansion and re-imagining of a community-engaged oral history and digital storytelling course project. It began through a 2018 partnership between a new faculty member in Geography and the Founding Director of the African American Cultural Arts and History Center. Together, they created and piloted a public history digital storytelling course project, capturing the stories of seven community members in 2019. I arrived at Elon the following year with a commitment to create sustainable place-based, community-engaged partnerships. Positioned in a unique hybrid director-faculty role, I had the time and resources to cultivate this initial partnership and began to reach out to diverse members of the on- and off-campus community. We helped to bring together community members and faculty passionate about capturing untold stories and connecting disparate communities.It is important to note that this expanded community-engaged partnership was being imagined as the COVID-19 pandemic was emerging. Despite concerns about how to safely and ethically move the project forward, community partners were committed to finding ways to continue the work. Indeed, concerns about preserving the stories of older members of the community and connecting diverse people now in isolation were driving forces of the partnership. In the first semester, we designed a remote oral history interviewing project that situated community engagement opportunities both through Zoom and outside in the community. We held historical walking tours, gathered in outdoor meeting spaces, and connected via Zoom for online dialogues and planning meetings. The project culminated with a virtual story screening and county-wide dialogue. The project provided crucial opportunities for connection during isolating and challenging times. This emergent and relational approach to place-based learning planted seeds from which a wide variety of projects and partnerships blossomed.What has happened to date? With this first semester under our belt and feedback from the community highlighting directions for projects and partnerships, we extended our partnerships to include the County's public libraries and local school district, the parks and recreation department, the Dream Center (an organization representing the county's large and diverse Latinx population), historic black and white churches as well as the Burlington Masjid mosque, and a number of other community-based organizations. A range of university centers and programs have also been involved alongside diverse courses from Core Curriculum, Communications, Arts Administration, Videography, Geography, Human Service Studies, and Global Studies. Projects ranged from the creation of digital videos, to website design, art exhibits, social media campaigns, a digital archival site, community member poster campaigns, booklets of community stories, K–12 lesson plans, engagement with summer youth camps, and more.As momentum and recognition has grown, so have our engagements. In the Fall of 2023, we gathered over two hundred residents from across the county for historic walking tours, a county-wide book club, a public screening of community stories, and a community dialogue. Our culminating 2023 event screened nine new community stories and was organized into three thematic storytelling dialogues on “Cultivating Community,” “Faith in Action,” and “Learning across Difference.” The stories were co-designed by Elon students and the community storytellers out of oral history interviews. They worked together to select themes from the interview, create a script, and select images and music before the public unveiling. Participant insights from these conversations and recommendations for next steps were compiled into a report that was shared with the community. Building on our findings, we gathered in the Spring of 2024 to visualize the ways we feel stuck across the county (e.g., How do teachers feel stuck in current realities? How do high school youth? Local officials? Faith leaders?). Using Social Presencing Theater, we explored what it might feel and look like to get “unstuck” and what opportunities for building connections might emerge. These relational learning activities leveraged the wisdom within the community's lived experiences and visualized opportunities for participatory community-building.This project is a part of a longitudinal mixed methods study designed to explore how this approach to engagement facilitates changes at individual, relational, and/or systemic levels. The study seeks to understand if, and how, Collaborative projects shift participants’ sense of place and community, their relationships, and their awareness of power and oppression. We designed a mixed methods explanatory research process (Creswell and Clark) supported by a diverse team of five researchers. The overarching study included ethnographic participant observational analysis, a review of initiative materials, pre- and post- project surveys administered across the initiative, and semi-structured interviews with diverse collaborative stakeholders. Material review included the analysis of student assignments, written reflections, and community projects. Over fifty Collaborative participants, including students, faculty, county partners, and community storytellers, completed thirty-minute interviews. Interviewees were asked about how their experiences with the Collaborative (i.e., co-creating their story, completing course projects, teaching, etc.) informed their subsequent civic, professional, and personal goals, reshaped their sense of place, and/or developed capacities for complex systems change. Data analysis from the study affirmed that the structure and processes undergirding the Collaborative, particularly its efforts to engage in relational design and participatory place-making fostered core feminist pragmatist commitments to situated pluralism, fallibilism, and critical reflexivity (Lake, Heenan, et al.). Given that the participants consistently recognized and deeply valued these approaches to Collaborative efforts, these practices will be explored in more depth.Place, in the context of this work, is understood as space imbued with meaning (Semken et al.). 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