Stories Make the World Go 'Round: But Whose Are Shared, Silenced, or Erased?

• In Event: Enhancing Educational Equity Through Digital Learning

Abstract

Story telling is embedded within human experience. Stories challenge our understanding of the real, reality, imagination, and (re)imagining. They entice, excite, confuse, expand, challenge, bring us happiness, hope, fear, and more. They present us with a sense of possibility of being and becoming. Storying is deeply embedded within indigenous narratives. Storying is an embodied encounter not just a cognitive experience (Kilteni et al., 2012). Being by the fireside or seated by their knee brings a closeness to the encounter with the storyteller and the story being told (Bruner, 1987).
The aim of this project is to explore the use of virtual reality (VR) to communicate issues of equity and cultural competency within the storying of indigenous knowledge. It provides an opportunity to use innovative means to reposition indigenous knowledge within the curriculum and enhance engagement with alternative narratives. Research questions include:
• How can embodiment be used within VR to engage with stories outside of our usual realm of experience?
• How can immersive storying within VR enhance practitioner/professional cultural responsivity?
This project draws on posthumanist philosophy informed by Deleuze (2014), who identifies how encounters with difference provide potential for new ways of seeing and thinking. Within this project immersive narratives from indigenous practitioners provide such ‘encounters with difference’ as alternate and new onto-epistemologies. This project involved the creation of a VR ‘story globe’ for sharing narratives from interviews with indigenous practitioners regarding child and youth wellbeing. Within VR, the ‘story globe’ repositions the user from passive listener to active agent as interactor. Autonomy is achieved through user manipulation of the ‘story globe’ to select both a location and the stories associated with that location. Users also have autonomy in terms of pathways through the narrative. The immersive experience was created using Unity software for application on Oculus Rift, incorporating iterative design processes (Stone et al., 2005).
The use of VR simulations for complex and sensitive learning events is gaining traction where familiarity with new social contexts is required. Immersive storying within VR provides opportunities to raise the profile and access to indigenous knowledges through embodied and richly contextualised means. Thereby enhancing opportunities to engage with indigenous knowledge as something of the present and future and not relegated to the past. Voice is given to indigenous narratives in a way that brings the stories closer through contextualised and embodied experiences of immersion. For the non-indigenous, such experiences provide opportunity to take a different position within the story, one who is invited to be alongside the narrative as it unfolds as a live, living, and lived experience.
The ‘story globe’ supports opportunities for culturally responsive teaching and learning, which value indigenous experiences as legitimate and valid within the curriculum. Equity is promoted by giving respect to knowledge that may be different but also complementary (Rātima et al., 2022). Thereby raising the critical consciousness of users to the issues embedded within the narratives to inform practice and ongoing learning.

Authors

• Nicola Dunham, University of New England - Australia
  Presenting Author

• Lisa Chant
  Non-Presenting Author