The importance of narrative learning and reflexivity at work with foreigners granted asylum and the context of a non-governmental organization

This paper discusses the importance of narrative learning and reflexivity at work with foreigners granted asylum. The discussed data is from 1 year duration fieldwork at NGO working with refugees in Lithuania. In this paper the examples from 4 narrative portraits of NGO workers are presented. It is argued that narrative learning is an interactive and co-constructed process and there is the need of awareness about the narratives and narrative learning, and how storytelling could be used for effective social work practice. The paper discusses the doctoral research data and explores the links between narrative learning and reflexivity. It is argued that reflecting about their practice critically, the workers can create new narrative identities and better understand and analyse their own identities, values, choices, practices and wider local and international contexts. Therefore, it is important to increase reflexivity and awareness of workers about various contextual factors and discourses, which might be influencing their narratives about their work and refugees, and further research on narrative learning and narratives of NGO workers.

Intergenerational Narrative Learning to Bridge the Generation Gap in Humanistic Care Nursing Education

Background: The development of nursing students’ ability to practice humanistic care is extremely important. Methods: This study explored students’ learning experience when providing humanistic care for older adults with chronic diseases while employing intergenerational narrative learning. An exploratory descriptive qualitative study design was adopted. Results: We analyzed evaluations from 35 students who completed the course, in which intergenerational narrative learning was employed. Evaluations contained open-ended questions that asked students to reflect upon their experiences and describe their perceptions, thoughts, and feelings after the course. Three main themes were revealed by thematic analysis: direct interaction supersedes knowledge in books, the framework for improving humanistic caring, and internalization of the importance of humanistic care in nursing. Conclusion: An awareness of patients’ perspectives inspired the students in their development toward a more profound caring attitude. The intergenerational narrative learning teaching strategy could foster professional and humanistic-centered care in nursing students.

Re-narrated Stories: A Reflection on Narrative Learning in a First Year Design Studio

This paper explores the implementation of narrative learning in first-year architectural design studios and how it can amplify the making, communicating and reflecting aspects of the study. In particular, this paper examines the estrangement technique, which enables an objective view of a story and its telling. The technique allows the students to detach an existing narrative from its context to be analysed, and then recontextualise it. We focus on the main studio project for the first-semester architecture and interior architecture students in Universitas Indonesia as the context of this study. This paper analyses their process, final outputs, and feedback to see the lesson learned from their perspective. The study suggests that learning narrative framework in architectural design studio supports the students to think systematically. In the end, estrangement technique provides the students with a way to retain some aspects of a narrative while playing with others, producing a fresh view on telling stories through enhancing their ambiguity and interaction between design author and their audience.

O corpo negro não tem nome: enfrentando o racismo no currículo de Ciências

O artigo propõe-se a refletir sobre as possibilidades de uma educação antirracista, enfrentando a responsabilidade científica na construção do racismo e, para isto, examina as alternativas do currículo de Ciências nesta desconstrução. Tomando a proposição teórica de Ivor Goodson, quando aponta as possibilidades de uma aprendizagem narrativa, o artigo se debruça sobre os relatos de um professor de Ciências que atua em uma escola pública do município do Rio de Janeiro, onde, continuamente, desenvolve um projeto curricular. Este projeto é centrado na disciplina Ciências Naturais, mas envolve outras disciplinas, tendo a Revolta de Vassouras, RJ, no período escravocrata, como pano de fundo. O artigo faz uma releitura de uma pesquisa que analisou o trabalho desse professor (FERREIRA, 2016) e traz suas narrativas sobre a experiência relatada. Esta releitura traça diálogos entre currículo narrativo e linguagem da possibilidade e enfatiza a potência do projeto como modo de interpelação do discurso racista-biológico.Palavras-chave: Currículo narrativo. Educação em Ciências. Racismo. Abstract: The article aims to reflect on the possibilities of an anti-racist education, facing science responsibility in building racism, and for this examines the alternatives of the school curriculum in this deconstruction. Taking Ivor Goodson's theoretical proposition, when he points out the possibilities of narrative learning, the article focuses on the reports of a science teacher who works in a public school in the city of Rio de Janeiro, where he continuously develops a curricular project. This project is centered on the school discipline sciences, but it involves other disciplines, taking the “Revolta de Vassouras”, RJ, during the slave period, as a background. The article re-reads a research that analyzed the teacher's work (FERREIRA, 2016) and uses his narratives about the experience. This reinterpretation traces dialogues between narrative curriculum and pedagogy of possibilities and emphasizes the power of this work as a way to challenge the racist-biological discourse.Keywords: Narrative curriculum. Science education. Racism.

Diversifying the discourse of progression to higher education: Digital storytelling methodology in widening participation practice

This paper commences from a critique of the generalised discourse of individualistic capacities in widening participation to higher education. It examines the potential of digital stories to diversify understandings of progression to higher education as a reflexive learning process for participants and institutions alike, by considering one cohort of students participating in a digital storytelling award at a university in the North of England. The concepts of narrative imagination, narrative learning and reflective referentiality are utilised to advance a theoretically informed argument for the potential of this methodology, given the position set out in the paper that the impact of digital stories such as these is unlikely to be transparent or easily measurable in the positivist language of much widening participation practice. The digital storytelling methodology invites a more nuanced consideration of student voice than usually pertains in widening participation, with potential to diversify a reductive discourse of under-represented groups.

Democracy, Student Movement and Thinking: A Response to Michael A. Peters’ Article

In this essay, firstly I agree with Peters on his point that Dewey’s political democracy reveals his idea of education as a public good suggested in the newly discovered Dewey’s Lectures, and I highlight Dewey’s idea of relationship between political democracy and education. Secondly, for Peters’ puzzle about Dewey’s lack of discussion in this lecture concerning the students’ action in the May 4th Movement, I present Dewey’s such kind of discussion from another lecture series given at Beijing. Finally, with the notion of “narrative learning”, I echo Peters’ comment regarding Deweyan mode of thinking as the only way of understanding about thinking.