Ibali UK Teachers’ Research Retreat, 21-23 August 2023

We are inviting expressions of interest (EOIs) from teachers and education support professionals in the UK to attend a research retreat in Devon, Monday 21st – Wednesday 23rd August, 2023.  

The retreat is organised by a project funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and led by the Open University, UK. The project is exploring how storytelling can be used to develop new understandings of educational inclusion and exclusion in the UK, South Africa and Nigeria. The project is running collective storytelling research retreats with young people and teachers from across the three countries, to gain a deeper understanding of inclusion and exclusion in schools. We are specifically interested in experiences in secondary schools (as this is the age of the young people in the project) but if you have experience in Y5 or Y6 we would welcome an expression of interest from you.  

What can I expect? 

The workshop will take place at the Dartington Estate. You will work with around 11 other teachers from across the UK, and a team of storytelling facilitators and researchers. Over the four days you will work together on a range of creative activities to generate digital and print stories of inclusion and exclusion in education. These will be fictional stories, but written and recorded in a composite style that draws on real life experiences of teaching in the UK. 

You will engage with story crafting techniques, digital storytelling creation, video editing and more. 

At the end of the workshop we will have a celebratory screening of all of the stories. 

Dartington Estate is a beautiful and historic venue, known for its commitment to the arts, and with 1200 acres of grounds to inspire creativity and reflection. 

If you live close to the venue you are welcome to travel in each day, but residential accommodation is available. All travel and accommodation costs will be covered by the project. 

What is collective storytelling? 

A collective storytelling approach brings together individual stories and experiences from group members and supports the process of developing these into a single story narrative that addresses the overarching topic (in our case, inclusion/exclusion in schools), with a key message at its core. 

The narrative can then be developed into a digital story (like a short film) or a story book (your group can choose the format - we will support you to do both). 

Creating stories in this way allows for a multiplicity of stories that include real-life positive and negative experiences, without disclosing personal details about anyone in the stories. 

Why should I take part? 

Recent research has shown that around the world teachers are put in difficult positions to develop and implement inclusive teaching environments.  

We are interested in your experiences as teachers and, with your participation, we have a chance to understand the nuance of what inclusivity means in teachers' daily practices. You will also learn from other teachers' experiences of teaching inclusively, and you will learn new skills in relation to creating and producing digital stories. 

Participants in storytelling workshops tend to learn a lot about themselves and how to improve their professional practice, and take learnings back to their school. They are also fun! 

You will have the optional opportunity to connect with the Nigerian and South African teachers in the study through post-workshop engagement activities – so you can also learn about how inclusion is understood and addressed in different contexts. 

What do I need to do to prepare? 

Not much! You only need to bring yourself, a willingness to share experiences of your teaching, an openness to learning and respect for different perspectives. We do ask that if you attend, you commit to the whole workshop as collective storytelling doesn’t work if people are dropping in and out. 

What about ethics? 

The research has ethical clearance from the Open University in the UK, University of the Free State in South Africa, and the Western Cape Education Department.  

Storytelling requires detailed consent procedures which you will be fully informed about. You can leave the workshop at any time if you are not enjoying it. During our dissemination phase you will be able to choose if you would prefer anonymity or if you would like to be credited as an author of the story you create. 

What did other teachers get out of the process? 

This is a quote from a teacher who attended the Nigerian research retreat: 

“Even up to Masters level a definition of inclusion is forced on us. You didn’t come here to force a definition or reinforce what we had already been told, but helped us to think about how *we* would define it. Our understanding of exclusion and inclusion has never been asked - even by us we have not asked ourselves before – so my biggest take away is that there are so many different ways to think about inclusion and that makes it easier to think which I could work with in my classroom. When someone gives you a definition of something, you are happy… when someone helps you to generate your own definition, it makes you even happier”. 

If I am interested, what next?! 

Please send a brief email to jennifer.agbaire@open.ac.uk outlining your experience and interest in the retreat (around 100 words). We will be holding some online Q&A events, which we’ll contact you with details about soon.