Learning by a river: a narrative inquiry of place and nature-based experiential outdoor learning, teaching and educational leadership informed by more-than-human engagements

Learning by a River: A Narrative Inquiry of Place and Nature-based Experiential Outdoor Learning, Teaching and Educational Leadership Informed by More-than-Human Engagements is autopoietic. This research draws from the experiential place and nature-based learning that becomes possible through the researcher's lifetime of experience as teaching administrator at a culturally informed field education centre in coastal Southwestern British Columbia, Canada. The research is structured through the three-dimensional narrative inquiry context articulated by Jean Clandinin and Michael Connelly -- place-consciousness, temporality, and relationality. The research is situated along the Cheakamus River (Chi'yákmesh), where stories unfold and enfold as layered encounters among learners, educators, and more-than-human mentors and teachers including; River, Salmon, Cedar, Eagle, and Hummingbird. Spanning decades, the study traces experiences that braid past, present, and future within lived educational ecology. Relationality extends beyond human interaction to include ethical and pedagogical relationships with land and more-than-human presences as co-teachers, guided by Jo-Ann Archibald's Indigenous Storywork and William Doll's 4 Rs. Narrative inquiry informs this study as both methodology and phenomenon, centering lived experience as storied knowledge, and positioning educators and learners as co-composers of meaning. Through this approach, richly contextualized narratives resist reductive accounts of learning, illuminating the complexity of experiential, place-based education. This study builds on other scholarly contributions by drawing on direct lived experience over decades from an educator-researcher perspective. Drawing on those lived experiences, the study advances a complex, integrated framework that weaves narrative inquiry with Indigenous-informed relational pedagogies. It introduces the concept of "kindred co-learners," expanding understandings of who and what participates in teaching and learning. Empirical evidence from longitudinal narrative accounts, spanning decades of practice in outdoor and forest school contexts, demonstrates enduring impacts on identity formation, ecological consciousness, leadership development, and ethical orientation toward the natural world. The findings, within this journeying of narrative inquiry, provide guidance for educators and leaders by articulating pedagogical practices that foreground attentiveness to place, relational accountability, and experiential learning. The study offers a compelling model for educational practice that invites all educators to engage with land and more-than-human beings as vital partners in teaching, learning, and leadership