Education and Disadvantage

Digital Storytelling Project

Australia's education system is internationally known as an OECD country with 'high quality but low equity'. The Melbourne Declaration, signed by Australian Education Ministers, still aspires to serving excellence and equity equally but is a somewhat watered down version of previous declarations' equity aims. Whilst it is encouraging to know that such national declarations recognise the problem, it is difficult to discern where any concise action to address this problem might originate and indeed which sectors have the actual capacity and will to generate the necessary research evidence and cultural work required to start us on this journey of addressing the achievement gap and many other forms of discrimination and inequities suffered.

Esther's Voice has been engaged in research and advocacy work in the area of educational disadvantage since 2009. Esther's Voice considers educational disadvantage to be a broad term, encompassing cost-barriers, (non-)participation, curriculum design, teacher quality, pedagogy, assessment, student engagement and learning abilities, home-school relationships and the structural settings of school and education policies. At this point in time, Esther's Voice thinks the biggest task is still that of educating ourselves as a community (including the professional communities) as to what educational disadvantage looks and feels like. Whilst there is plenty of evidence stating the inequities there is not enough understanding of it and access to such evidence also remains an issue. Esther's Voice decided that it should start from the evidence base it can communicate best: the real life experiences of clients who use the three service organisations united in the Esther's Voice collaboration. Thus visual methods were deemed the most appropriate research methodology given the pervasive and persuasive nature of visual media and its appeal to the young people themselves.

In order to not divorce the ends from the means, digital workshops will be run (with one on one help) for the young people in such a way that they learn digital storytelling whilst telling their stories of schooling. The workshops will be held at an Arts Studio and be staffed professionally. The stories will be elicited within a narrative approach and ideally be generated by the young people themselves but will obviously reflect the intention of telling stories about educational disadvantage and therefore restrict the stories broadly but not exclusively to school stories. Prompts will only be offered sparingly and if necessary. The workshops will be offered only to particular partnering programs within the three organisations that represent Esther's Voice.

Whilst the stories will vary widely, it is anticipated that they will reflect some of the following in both negative and positive ways:

  • Teacher role, relationship and quality (positive or boredom, lack of genuinely relating to students, (not) being listened to)
  • Pedagogy/curriculum/school policies and approaches (alienation or resilience)
  • Lack of support and resources (disengagement, learning or other needs (not) met)
  • Experience of the school as a social system (i.e. not just the dynamics inside but also outside of the classroom, the interaction between the biography of the student and his/her school)

A pilot will establish the actual process of the digital storytelling workshops. Ethics applications are in place.