School of Education Lecture Series: Professor Kristiina Kumpulainen (University of British Columbia)

Playful research on children’s ecological imagination with augmented storying

In this talk, I will be sharing my ongoing research on children’s ecological imagination in and through augmented storying. Augmented storying couples culturally-based nature stories embedded in augmented storytelling technology with children’s own mobile and multimodal storying activities outdoors in nature. During augmented storying that entails children walking, reading and storying with places, digital and physical realities of the past, present and future can intertwine, potentially supporting children's ecological imagination and learning with places. I will be highlighting our emerging research findings in the context of our work in a Finnish elementary school and its neighbourhood. I will end my talk by considering the possibilities and tensions of augmented storying as a playful means to research and enrich children’s ecological imagination by becoming entangled

Kristiina Kumpulainen is a Professor and Head of the Department of Language and Literacy Education in the Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia. She received her PhD in education from the University of Exeter, UK. 

Professor Kumpulainen’s research is grounded on relational and cultural-historical inquiries into communication, learning and education to better understand how social, historical, political, cultural and material contexts open and/or disclose educational opportunities for diverse learners. Her research has also illuminated how digitalization is transforming young people’s communication and learning in formal education and informal settings. She has actively engaged in interdisciplinary research to co-develop playful, imaginative and participatory pedagogies and curricula for early childhood, K-12, and teacher education that affirm human, linguistic, and epistemological diversity and equity. She has researched and developed pedagogies for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) learning, multiliteracies, health literacies and for children’s ecological literacies and climate change education. She has also developed methods for visual, participatory, and multimodal research, and researching with children and teachers, increasing knowledge of democratic and ethical forms of inquiry.   

Professor Kumpulainen is the Co-Editor of Elsevier’s journal Learning, Culture and Interaction.

Kristiina will presenting online via zoom to a gathering of colleagues and students in South Cloisters SC 2.13, St Luke's Campus. Staff and students are encouraged to attend the gathering for the lecture if possible to engage in lively discussion following Kristiina's talk.