Singing into Language: Sudanese Australian young women create public pedagogy

Abstract

This article examines the ethnocinematic research project Cross-Marked: Sudanese Australian Young Women Talk Education, and its relationship to the evolving notion of public pedagogies. The project explores the potential of alternative pedagogies, which include popular culture, especially audiovisual forms, to engage teachers and learners with one another in collaborative pedagogical methods. The author's collaborative work with students from refugee backgrounds involves what Giroux calls a ‘spectrum of social practices’ utilising a variety of media platforms. This article draws from the lived experiences of one particular co-participant, Achol Baroch, and her 15 Sudanese Australian co-participants. Their experiences of secondary education are traced through this arts-based participatory project using the emerging practice of ethnocinema, a type of ethnographic documentary film which is generative, interculturally collaborative and aligned with the transformative goals of critical pedagogy.

Keywords:

• public pedagogy
• ethnocinema
• Sudanese diaspora
• women
• education

Notes

1. These films are available for online viewing via YouTube (total running time 62:20 minutes): Slowly By Slowly, co-created by Grace Mabor and Anne Harris, 5:06 minutes; Neir Chi Puj (Educated Girls), co-created by Lina Deng and Anne Harris, 9:04 minutes; Chick Chat at the River Nile, co-created by Anne Harris and Nyankir (Margaret) Ajak, Jalab Beet, Amani Deng, Noura Douka, Diana Dyagai Eli, Sarah Kut, Grace Mabor, Arillette Murekezi, Nyayany Thong, Lizzie Tung-Marua and Naomi Wei, 14:40 minutes; Singing into Language, co-created by Achol Baroch and Anne Harris, 9:28 minutes; In Transit/ion, co-created by Angelina Aluel Kuol and Anne Harris, 6:03 minutes; Still Waiting, co-created by Nyadol Nyuon and Anne Harris, 10:14 minutes; EthnocineME, co-created by Nyankir (Margaret) Ajak, Achol Baroch, Lina Deng, Anne Harris, Angelina Aluel Kuol, Nyadol Nyuon, Ruth Redden and Maria Vella, 7:45 minutes.

2. Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institutions provide vocational education and training.

3. ‘The group most at risk [experience the impact of racism in schools] are female migrants in the senior years of school (years 11 and 12)’ (Mansouri, Jenkins, Morgan, & Taouk, 2009, p. 3); and ‘further research should be undertaken to understand this complex gendered aspect of the connection between racism and wellbeing’ (p. 6). LaTrobe's RHRC Good Starts Arts longitudinal study provides additional methodological and youth-focused data (Refugee Health Research Centre, 2007).

4. In the end only one former student collaborated on the first film of my doctoral research, after which snowball sampling generated other co-participants who had been previously unknown to me, and me to them. I recognise the integrity of those school leaders at my school who recognised the problem and had the commitment to social justice to put it on the agenda, and devote funds to making it a more democratic school. However, not all schools are so inclined, and Achol and others like her fiercely defend her right to ‘out’ schools who have less-than-supportive systems and practices in place in working with students from refugee backgrounds. Ethnocinematic, film-based and other non-anonymous research methods present a new ethical challenge around this issue of the impossibility of de-identification, one which my colleagues and I continue to productively grapple with.