Storytelling project plans ‘critical exploration’ of its own methods

Storytelling is gaining popularity as a methodology in the field of international education and development.  But does storytelling research resist or reproduce coloniality?

This is a question being asked by the Ibali project team as they begin a storytelling research study with young people and teachers in Nigeria, South Africa and the UK.  The two-year UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) -funded study will look at how inclusion and exclusion are experienced across education systems in these three countries.  Ibali: storying new discourses of educational inclusion/exclusion in the UK, Nigeria and South Africa, is a £610k study which includes a digital storytelling strand with young people and teachers; a critical ethnography of the storytelling research process; and a storytelling knowledge exchange hub.

The international research team, based within the School of Education, Childhood, Youth and Sport at The Open University, is led by Dr Alison Buckler, working with Research Associate and Project Manager Dr Jennifer Jomafuvwe Agbaire and project advisory panel member Dr Kris Stutchbury.

Research using storytelling approaches over the past few decades has seen evidence of positive potential, but the Ibali team are aware that it also carries risks in relation to ethics and participant and facilitator well-being and that the idealisation of storytelling research can reinforce inequality rather than challenge it.

The team plan to address this issue with a parallel ethnographic analysis, as Dr Buckler explains:

“The Ibali project is developing a storytelling research study that is empirically focussed on ideas and experiences of educational inclusion/exclusion. However, in parallel we are planning a critical exploration of this storytelling work, undertaken by three ethnographers trained in the UK, South Africa and Nigeria respectively.

“The ethnographers will individually and collaboratively document and analyse the storytelling process in each country. They will explore how researchers and participants from different contexts and in different contexts make sense of storytelling as a meaningful approach to researching and articulating people’s lived experiences.”

Dr Agbaire introduces the Ibali project and storytelling approach in a video recorded for the launch of the OU Centre for the Study of Global Development.

The team are part of the Ibali Network, an AHRC/GCRF (Global Challenges Research Fund)-funded initiative that has brought together storytelling academics and practitioners from across the world, with a particular focus on Sub-Saharan Africa).

Read more about the Ibali project and the proposed ethnographic work in this blog, written by the team for UKFIET.