Research Through, With and As Storying

Research Through, With and As Storying explores how Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars can engage with storying as a tool that disassembles conventions of research. The authors explore the concept of storying across different cultures, times and places, and discuss principles of storying and storying research, considering Indigenous, feminist and critical theory standpoints. Through the book, Phillips and Bunda provide an invitation to locate storying as a valuable ontological, epistemological and methodological contribution to the academy across disciplines, arguing that storying research gives voice to the marginalised in the academy. Providing rich and interesting coverage of the approaches to the field of storying research from Aboriginal and white Australian perspectives, this text seeks to enable a profound understanding of the significance of stories and storying. This book will prove valuable for scholars, students and practitioners who seek to develop alternate and creative contributions to the production of knowledge

Research Through, With and As Storying

Research Through, With and As Storying explores how Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars can engage with storying as a tool that disassembles conventions of research. The authors explore the concept of storying across different cultures, times and places, and discuss principles of storying and storying research, considering Indigenous, feminist and critical theory standpoints. Through the book, Phillips and Bunda provide an invitation to locate storying as a valuable ontological, epistemological and methodological contribution to the academy across disciplines, arguing that storying research gives voice to the marginalised in the academy. Providing rich and interesting coverage of the approaches to the field of storying research from Aboriginal and white Australian perspectives, this text seeks to enable a profound understanding of the significance of stories and storying. This book will prove valuable for scholars, students and practitioners who seek to develop alternate and creative contributions to the production of knowledge

Embodiment and social distancing: Practices

A collection of five video essays on embodiment and social distancing, with a focus on practices. RAFFAELE RUFO, “Dancing Together Alone: What Can Be Learnt About Connection When Touch is Forbidden?” (00:10): This video essay reengages the experience of leading a dance improvisation practice on Zoom during the Coronavirus lockdown. As a tango and contact improvisation dancer confined at home, I felt urged to ask: what can be learnt about embodied connection when we are not allowed to physically touch each other? ANAT BEN-DAVID AND CATHARINE ANNE CARY, “What’s the Matter?” (05:54): Performers, scenographers, musicians and wordsmiths Anat Ben-David and Catharine Cary improvised via ZOOM every Tuesday from March to May 2020. Embracing latency, zoom’s affordances, limitations and distortions, they show here excerpts of a transformed body of work. Separated by 5218 km, given the Covid-19 situation, it could have been 200 meters. DEANNA BORLAND-SENTINELLA, LOUISE GWENNETH PHILLIPS, AND ALICE OWEN, “Virtually Embodied: Remembering the Sensations of Connection” (12:04): This film is an exploration of the body: Being present to place and time; being aware of connection with others, whether that be in reality or through virtual connection and sensorial memory. NATHALIE S. FARI, “Notes from a zoom 5Rhythms® session” (17:10): By using a three-hour 5Rhythms® online workshop as basis, this video sheds light into the ways in which the practitioner interacts and engages with both one’s own bodily awareness and the new technology of zoom. AMBERBECKYCREATIVE, “Sheltering in Spacetimematterings: Audiovisual Considerations of Social Distancing” (22:42): Two socially distant authors glitch audiovisual intra-actions through embodied (dis)orientations of space, time, and matter in past/present/future collapsed to (re)present what it’s like to shelter in place during the COVID-19 pandemic

Young children’s active citizenship : storytelling, stories, and social actions

This thesis inquires into possibilities for young children‘s active citizenship as provoked through a practice of social justice storytelling with one Preparatory1 class of children aged five to six years. The inquiry was practitioner-research, through a living educational theory approach cultivating an interrelational view of existing with others in evolving processes of creation. Ideas of young children‘s active citizenship were provoked and explored through storytelling, by a storytelling teacher-researcher, a Prep class of children and their teacher. The three major foci of the study were practice, narrative and action. A series of storytelling workshops with a Prep class was the practice that was investigated. Each workshop began with a story that made issues of social justice visible, followed by critical discussion of the story, and small group activities to further explore the story. The focus on narrative was based on the idea of story as a way knowing. Stories were used to explore social justice issues with young children. Metanarratives of children and citizenship were seen to influence possibilities for young children‘s active citizenship. Stories were purposefully shared to provoke and promote young children‘s active citizenship through social actions. It was these actions that were the third focus of the study. Through action research, a social justice storytelling practice and the children‘s responses to the stories were reflected on both in action and after. These reflections informed and shaped storytelling practice. Learning in a practice of social justice storytelling is explained through living theories of social justice storytelling as pedagogy. Data of the children‘s participation in the study were analysed to identify influences and possibilities for young children‘s active citizenship creating a living theory of possibilities for young children‘s active citizenship

I want to do real things: explorations of children's active community participation

Framed within communitarianism, this chapter explores possibilities for young children’s active participation in the sustainability of Earth and its inhabitants, via attention to the interdependence of natural, social, economic and political systems. How embedded social and political structures limit and control the scope of children’s participation is brought to the fore, with insights from two studies offering possibilities for adult practices to work with children to circumnavigate barriers to children’s participation. In particular, possibilities for innovations in pedagogy in early childhood education for sustainability are discussed. One study explored a living theory of storytelling pedagogy, whilst another study investigated the scope of public pedagogy to cultivate shifts in social perceptions of children and citizenship. Data from both studies demonstrate that children want to be active citizens. They want to do ‘real things’, which challenges the metanarrative of young children existing in worlds of play, domesticity, and school. The ideas discussed alert educators, policy makers and community workers to the complexities that surround notions of young children’s active citizenship and provide guidelines for practice to open doors to the breadth of possibilities for young children’s inclusion in civic participation for sustainability

Retribution and rebellion: Children's meaning making of justice through storytelling

Contemporary social theory and the United Nations (1989) Convention on the Rights of the Child have forged current interest in the concept of children's citizenship. However, what citizenship is and can be for young children is surrounded by much debate and ambiguity. This article discusses explorations of possibilities of children's citizenship from a study of the author's practice of social justice storytelling as pedagogy with a class of children aged five to 6 years of age. The study sought findings to what active citizenship is possible for young children; and who young children might be as active citizens, from children's responses to performed social justice stories. Aesthetic encounters with story provoked affective responses. Retribution and rebellion, though paradoxical to metanarratives of young children and citizenship, were two significant themes amidst these responses. The significant nature of these themes is explored and explained through identification of possible narrative influence and identification of children's initiated actions and comments as life stories of citizenship practice

Research through, with and as storying

Research Through, With and As Storying explores how Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars can engage with storying as a tool that disassembles conventions of research. The authors explore the concept of storying across different cultures, times and places, and discuss principles of storying and storying research, considering Indigenous, feminist and critical theory standpoints. Through the book, Phillips and Bunda provide an invitation to locate storying as a valuable ontological, epistemological and methodological contribution to the academy across disciplines, arguing that storying research gives voice to the marginalised in the academy

Child-led tours of Brisbane's Fortitude Valley as public pedagogy

Contemporary social policy and practices pertaining to children have seen a trend towards increasing surveillance under the premise of child protection. Growing from the awareness of this social trend and the limitations imposed on children’s demonstration of active citizenship in public spaces, the arts project Walking Neighbourhood: Hosted by children was developed by artists from the community cultural development organisation Contact Inc. The project operated in the urban public space of Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley (a place known for being child-unfriendly) in order to problematise and expose issues pertaining to child safety and active citizenship by engaging with children as collaborators and facilitators in the production of live art. Amongst the outcomes of the Walking Neighbourhood were child-provoked urban geographies and demonstrations of active citizenship mediated by walking as an arts experience. Drawing from the findings of a research project that accompanied the Walking Neighbourhood this paper will explore the nature of the child-led tours as public pedagogy, and the dynamics of inter-generational interaction between adults and children as sites of civic learning

What emerges in playing in The Corner of artist-curated and created matter

We offer poetic, pictorial and storied accounts of artsworkers, children, family members and matter in an arts-designed play/making space called The Corner for 0-8 year olds in the State Library of Queensland, Australia. The two authors bring differing theoretical readings (agential realism and ecological psychology) of what happens in the intra-actions/ transactions between artsworkers, children, family members and the materiality and spatiality of The Corner to come to know it’s ontologies, epistemologies and ethicalities

Civic action and learning with a community of Aboriginal Australian young children

Civics and citizenship are increasingly used in early childhood education policy, but what citizenship and civic learning can be for young children is under-researched and lacking definition. Drawing from the Australian findings of the major study Civic action and learning with young children: Comparing approaches in Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, this article shares evidence of civic capacities that a community of young Aboriginal Australian children demonstrate in an early childhood education and care centre. Communitarian citizenship theory provides a framework for citizenship that is accessible for young children by focusing on families, communities and neighbourhoods. Cultural readings of illustrative examples on how young Aboriginal children express civic identity, collective responsibility, civic agency, civic deliberation and civic participation are discussed, highlighting how cultural values shape civic action. Links to state and national early childhood curricula are provided to guide others to further support civic learning in early childhood education