This dissertation is aimed at articulating and empirically characterizing an expansive orientation to field-based socio-ecological systems learning that elevates participatory and ethically-engaged approaches to teaching and learning. Grounded in relational ways of knowing, this dissertation works to expand and transform normative educational paradigms towards the realization of more just and healthful ways of being through recognizing the agency and dignity of youth, places, and more-than-human beings. Elevating the role of wonder as central to scientific sensemaking, ethical deliberation, and the creation of new forms life and learning, this dissertation contributes to scholarship, practices, and the construction of life-worlds critically engaged with the increasingly pressing challenges and possibilities of the 21st century. Situated within a space of problem and possibilities, this dissertation addressed the need to shift nature-culture relations through analysis of design and interactions situated in the Learning in Places project. Across five chapters I situate and develop three related papers which characterize and empirically ground a framework for "ethical wondering with people, places, and more-than-humans." The first chapter situates this work in transdisciplinary approaches to science education and begins to construct a framework for how we have taken up the role of wondering in our context of work. The three following chapters represent the primary papers in this dissertation. In Chapter 2, I analyze materials designed in the Learning in Places project to explicate key dimensions and commitments of our work and build out an empirically-grounded conceptual framework for ethical wondering with people, places, and more-than-humans. In Chapter 3 I conduct a deep case study analysis of knowledge and interaction to examine how dimensions of ethical wondering with people, places, and more-than-humans were manifest and mediated within wondering walk data gathered from the pilot year of Learning in Places implementation. Complimenting this deep qualitative focus, Chapter 4 shares findings from a broad statistical analysis of over 98 hours of wondering walk data collected in our first full year of school-based storyline implementation to identify significant correlations and comparisons between descriptors of interest. By way of synthesis and conclusion, Chapter 5 closes out this dissertation through offering up principles of design to guide work in similar spaces alongside reflections salient strengths, limitations, and pathways for future work. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]