Rudy and Me: A Man and Dog's Joint Exploration of Their Neighbourhood and Implications for the Transformation of Schooling and Education Research

Abstract

If we begin with the premise that learning opportunities are not confined to classrooms, then we open up a new way of thinking about education. Most research in qualitative inquiry explores humans and their complexity, based on interviews and observations. However, if we shift our focus to the context itself and, more specifically, to the objects that we see and experience in the world around us, these sights and experiences can be incorporated more fully into the ever developing and deepening reflective memories that connect our present to our past. In this article, I used daily walks with Rudy, our family beagle, as a field of data that could transform the commonplace sensory experience of objects into new perspectives for education and education research. While the human explorer in this study focused on the past, current, and future meanings of objects encountered during the fall and winter of 2017, his canine collaborator focused on everything sensory. As it turned out, Rudy enlarged the experiences and appreciations of the human because dogs, like children, are more concerned with the present than with memories of the past or concerns about the future.