No One Is Superfluous in a Living System: Relational Pedagogies in Praxis

Abstract

This research project is interested in the possibility of ontological transformation through investigating the conditions and pedagogical methods that support a shift from fixed, colonial ways of knowing and being toward relational, pluriversal ones. Thirteen Living Systems alumni served as co-researchers across seven collaborative data collection sessions, with the methodology itself enacting the relational ontology under study through emergent, horizontal, co-directed inquiry. The central finding emerged when the co-researchers rejected a traditional data analysis method of articulating the salient data themes in a table. They proposed a co-created poem using the transcripts from data collection, selecting phrases for affective resonance, demonstrating that both cognitive and embodied engagement are required simultaneously for ontological transformation, and that neither alone is sufficient. Specific conditions emerged as necessary for ontological softening: productive disorientation paired with pluriversal capacity, community and belonging as holding environment, exposure to story as a pathway to compassion, and agency through embodied action. Using a methodological lens of post-qualitative inquiry, Baradian agential realism, and ontological design, co-researchers generated a framework of decolonial design principles centered on a proposed relational role-playing game as ontological intervention. This research contributes to decolonial pedagogy by demonstrating that the methodology must perform the ontology — that studying relationality requires enacting it.