How Can Storying be Used to Enhance Student Learning?
Professor Tracey Bunda and Associate Professor Katelyn Barney, The University Queensland
Storying is the process of telling stories. It involves writing about an event or experience creatively. For Aboriginal peoples, “story and storytelling commenced at the beginning”.
As part of a research project, we have introduced storying as a pedagogical approach in the teaching of Indigenous Studies at the University of Queensland (UQ).
With our colleagues, Nisa Richy, Lisa Oliver, r e a Saunders and Stephanie Gilbert, we developed a new five-part reflective storying assessment for a first year Indigenous Studies course. We called the assessment a “Knowledge Basket: Storied Reflections”. Using basket weaving as a metaphor for storying is not new nor is it specific to the Australian context. The innate connection between weaving and story has long been known and put into practice by Indigenous peoples globally.
The assessment involved students writing weekly storied reflections of 200-300 words in response to a topic theme in the course. When writing their storied reflection, students were asked to choose one or more storying principle(s) to ground their work. The storying principles are:
Principle 1: storying nourishes thought, body and soul
Principle 2: storying claims voice in the silenced margins
Principle 3: storying is embodied relational meaning making
Principle 4: storying intersects the past and present as living oral archives
Principle 5: storying enacts collective ownership and authorship.
We then gave students a guide on storying which included examples from students and our own stories, as well providing a lecture on storying and workshops to practice storying during tutorials.
Non-Indigenous students enrolling in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies come to this learning space with highly varied experiences. Indigenous students can find the learning space affirming. First year non-Indigenous students may have benefitted from a committed secondary teacher for a term or a semester in the disciplinary space. International students may be exposed for the first time to Indigenous peoples and knowledges. Such varied experience enriches the storying. We found that, in their storied reflections, students used their “knowledge baskets” to explore their own identities in relation to Indigenous topics. It also created a space for students to consider their expectations and assumptions about Aboriginal cultures, question their understandings of Indigenous history and rethink their initial reflections.
Storying as a teaching and learning approach is being used by university teachers both in Australia and internationally to enhance student engagement through meaningful and reflective learning. For example, we are aware that colleagues in the University of Melbourne teaching team for the core compulsory course in Indigenous Education are using storying as an approach. In addition, our colleagues at UQ in the School of Architecture, Design and Planning, Kelly Greenop and Carroll Go-Sam, are now also using storying in their teaching after attending a workshop we delivered during Teaching and Learning Week at UQ in 2023.
From our perspectives, one of the reasons why storying is so valuable is because it provides a space for lecturers and learners to enter into a dialogue about and with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander topics.
Tracey Bunda (Ngugi/Wakka Wakka) is Professor of Indigenous Education at The University of Queensland.
Katelyn Barney is Associate Professor in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit and affiliated with the School of Music at The University of Queensland.