Curriculum as narration: tales from the children of the colonised

Abstract

This article will explore the centrality of narrative in both the process and the content of enquiry-based learning, as a formative process which does not predetermine either its starting point or its outcome. Rather, it takes as its starting point the agency and life narrative of the learner and builds from this to a formally assessed outcome. It will argue for the importance of what one of us has coined ‘narrative learning’ (Goodson 2006, 2009). The article will draw upon a research project in New South Wales in which this archaeological pedagogy and curriculum were studied and evaluated with, and by, a cohort of previously disengaged students. These students are from an Indigenous community devastated by dispossession and colonisation. Their stories and those of their mentors will be used to explain, expand and ground our argument. They demonstrate how the curriculum becomes a ‘narratable pathway’ towards the formation of identity and agency when ‘knowing as storying’ is valued, promoted and represented. Narratives provide and create space for ‘pedagogic moments’ in which people can connect with themselves, their own culture and tradition, their hopes and aspirations and ultimately with an intentional, mentored construction of knowledge which serves their personal and public trajectories. The article makes use of Bateson's three levels of learning and builds on concepts of learning how to learn, by linking this with the ‘person’ who is learning, their selfhood and agency, and their need for meaning-making and purpose as a foundation for engagement.

Keywords:

• context-driven enquiry
• curriculum
• Indigenous education
• narrative
• personalised learning

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the Wanaruah people, traditional owners of the land in the Hunter Valley where this research was conducted, and particularly Deirdre Heitmeyer, fellow researcher, whose contribution to the Indigenous ‘voice’ in the research project has been crucial.

Other members of the research team to whom we are grateful include Jenny Campbell, Michelle Nicholson and Kath Grushka, as well as the teachers, students and aunties in the KaWul Centre.

Notes

1. The ‘Learning Place and Identity’: an investigation into the affordances of a pedagogy of place among Indigenous Australian students was a research project undertaken by the University of Bristol, UK, the University of Newcastle, Australia, and Singleton High School. It was generously funded by Xtrata Coal.