Stories for Change: Storytelling as a Strategy for Critical Action Education

• In Event: Using Storytelling as an Approach to Researching, Teaching, and Learning About Complex Community-Based Socioscientific Problems

Abstract

Objectives or purposes
This paper describes a two-year design-based research project in which we have developed the Critical Action Learning Exchange (CALE), a professional learning community for educators around the world who seek to develop and exchange critical action curriculum, share resources and empower students in responding to issues including: climate change, social and environmental justice, pandemics, and the economy. This paper reports our research of how to help teachers develop understandings of critical action, and guide their designs of new critical action curriculum.

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
Our project applies critical pedagogy (Freire, 1970) within a modern context of empowering teachers to empower their students.

Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry
Within CALE, teachers participate in synchronous and asynchronous professional development activities to develop understandings of critical pedagogy and engage in design of new curriculum. In the first meeting, storytelling was featured as an example of critical action curriculum, with explicit connections made to our CALE design framework (Author et al., 2021). Each group engaged in a series of 3 synchronous meetings (90 minutes each) over the course of 3 months, with teachers working in small design teams during the periods between meetings. We applied the Change Laboratory model (Engeström et al, 1996) to capture the shifts in teacher discourse that occur over the course of the 3-month period. After engaging in such activities during the summer months, the teachers stay in contact using the CALE online community, and share their experiences enacting the new designs.

Data sources, evidence, objects or materials
In Spring, 2021 we organized two teacher cohorts: (1) 60 elementary and middle school teachers in Bangalore India, coordinated by local partners, and (2) 45 teachers in Canada who focused on climate change education. Teachers worked collaboratively to design and implement critical action-oriented storytelling curricula, using the CALE professional development intervention.

Results
Over the past two years, we have designed the CALE activities, resources, and technology environments in close concert with our teacher programming, testing design ideas and continuously improving our various frameworks and design guides to help CALE become a sustainable community of practitioners (Author et al., 2021). Our presentation will begin by detailing the CALE professional development intervention, together with an analysis of teachers’ learning progressions as they designed storytelling curriculum. We will present several case studies of teachers who produced storytelling lessons, analyzing how these designs reflected teachers’ new understandings.

Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work
The CALE project contributes to the body of scholarly literature concerning critical pedagogical practice and storytelling by offering: 1. a new professional development intervention; 2. analyses of educators’ processes of developing and enacting a critical action stance toward teaching; and 3. steps toward making such critical orientations sustainable.

Authors

• Renato Carvalho, University of Toronto

• Erfane Ghasempour, University of Toronto

• Preeti Raman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• James D. Slotta, University of Toronto