Abstract
The purpose of this article is to describe the successes and challenges of an innovative community engagement initiative in Bermuda, Education for All, in order to enlarge our understanding of how a community uses storytelling as a catalyst for transformative learning. Sponsored by the Coalition for Community Activism, community members and nonprofit groups united to facilitate an islandwide conversation about the student experience. They aspired to transform how people think about what constitutes an appropriate education and, ultimately, reframe the Bermuda conversation of schooling. We trace the evolution of the project attending to how adults came together around a shared purpose and vision for improving education. In so doing, we illuminate the complexities of using story as a catalyst for transformative learning. We provide a story circle protocol developed to gather stories of public school alumni. This story project for social change has implications for community leaders globally.
People become the stories they hear, and the stories they tell.
Everyday people get involved in community activism all over the world in hope of bringing about positive societal change. An innovative approach to community engagement for social change is happening in Bermuda. While exciting for Bermuda, it is a model that holds promise for community leaders globally.
Rather than lead a charge to reform schools by demanding a world-class curriculum and accountability (these were part of the dialogue and considered important), instead, a community group of volunteers decided to shine light on people’s personal stories of attending school in Bermuda as the basis for engaging the community. By gathering stories in small groups that they called story circles and eventually expanding the circle of conversation so that more and more people could tell and hear them, their ultimate and ambitious aims were to transform how people think about what is an appropriate education and to reframe the Bermuda conversation of schooling. The purpose of this article is to describe the successes and challenges of an innovative community engagement initiative in Bermuda, Education for All. In so doing, we illuminate the complexities and enlarge our understanding of how a community uses storytelling as a catalyst for transformative learning.
Transformative learning, as defined by scholar Jack Mezirow (2000), involves changes in a person’s frames of reference or perspective, accompanied by changes in behavior. This is achieved in active dialogue—with another person, a group, a reader, or as an author—in an effort to more deeply “understand the meaning of an experience” (Mezirow, 2000, p. 14). Opportunities to reflect on experiences and to solve problem are conditions for promoting perspective change. Turning points in life and challenging experiences may become “disorienting dilemmas” (Mezirow, 1991, p. 168), a time when people reflect and reassess their perspectives. The Bermuda community was rocked by a controversial report (Hopkins et al., 2007) commissioned by the Ministry of Education (MOED, hereafter) that exposed the ills of the public education system. This disorienting dilemma offered an opening for a new conversation about schooling and the possibility of transformation. We begin with a brief background of the project in Bermuda and discuss why story.
Background
The Tapestry: Education for All (EfA, hereafter) initiative was designed to provoke an islandwide conversation and reframe how people think and talk about public education. The idea was to creatively open discursive terrains about what is working and not working in schools and to explore possibilities for changing the conversation (Block, 2008) in Bermuda, so that her 1 children and adolescents have the best possible education.
The Tapestry project originated in the Bermuda community with volunteers. It was sponsored by the Coalition for Community Activism in Bermuda (CCAB) and supported with funding by Atlantic Philanthropies. CCAB is “a non-profit, non-partisan volunteer group which serves as a resource for the community to promote democracy-building and active public engagement in an effort to address social justice and sustainability issues” (Education for All, 2011, p. 2). Researchers from Teachers College, Columbia University and Florida Atlantic University were invited to participate in the development and planning process and to assist with early implementation.
Our article focuses on Phase 1 of this important and ongoing change process. We concentrate on the initial period when the education problem was thrust to the top of the public agenda. People were disturbed over the state of education and some were stirred to action.
Literature Review: Why Story?
[Stories] remind one another of our shared humanity, strengthen and build the connections between people, teach the value of listening, and weave into the fabric of our culture the understanding that every life matters. (Retrieved July 2, 2016, from https://blogs.socsd.org/cle/wall-of-listening/)
Storytelling for Meaning Making
We are, by our very nature, narrators and tellers of stories and the story form is a natural sensemaking strategy (Ackerman & Maslin-Ostrowski, 2002). Our personal and collective identities are, for the most part, defined by our capacity to present and represent stories of who we are in the context of our relational networks. Our stories link us to the world we share and explain our transactions and interconnections with the distribution of power and authority that shape our lived experience (Tyler, 2013).
Stories populate our memory and imagination. Stories essentially make us who we are (Brookfield & James, 2014). Baldwin (2005) elaborates, Story is the narrative thread of our experience—not what literally happens, but what we make out of what happens, what we tell each other and what we remember…This unceasing interplay between experience and narrative is a uniquely human attribute. We are the storytellers, the ones who put life into words. (p. xi)
The storytelling traditions of oral history (Vannini, 2012; Vansina, 1985) and anecdote circles (Callahan, Rixon, & Schenk, 2006; Kurtz, 2008; Tyler, 2013) were adapted by the EfA project. The resulting story circles provided an opening for reflective meaning making specific to Bermuda and her people. Still, Block (2008) warns, some stories however can become the limitation to creating anything new…[Therefore] we need to distinguish between the stories that give meaning to our lives and help us find our voice and those that limit our possibility. (p. 35)
EfA sought to harvest stories to strengthen the community, stories that might become communal teaching stories (Block, 2008, p. 35) about education in Bermuda.
Storytelling for Social Change
Scholars have been studying the use of story in community development (Dixon, 1995; Kim, 2001; McKnight & Block, 2010). Ganley (2010), for example, discusses the importance of storytelling to both community planning and community building. She stresses how stories can bring society and communities together in a fragmented age. This approach to fostering community-based change is strikingly similar to Freirean practices in the area of literacy education. Such practices pay particular attention to the design of engagement structures and processes that invert and challenge the dynamic of the relational landscape in which the work is accomplished (Freire, 1996).
In Telling Stories to Change the World, Solinger, Fox, and Irani (2008) provide a comprehensive spectrum of story-based projects taking place throughout the globe “that explore meanings of civic engagement and generate creative visions of justice” (p. 1). They observe …all the projects illustrate how change comes not from outside qualifiers and quantifiers, measures that social scientists recognize, but rather from the creation of a collective will. The community identifies the problem and makes it matter, re-ordering and restructuring key concepts, old stories, relationships. (p. 5)
Their perspective is instructive insofar as it emphasizes the critical role of harnessing the collective will of the community.
Block’s (2008) illumination is equally significant as it draws attention to what is required in order to facilitate expressions of the collective will. Most importantly, Block posits that opportunities for community transformation emerge when particular attention is given to “the structure of how we gather and the context in which our gatherings take place” (p. 75). The premise is that conversations matter and erecting the structures for community conversations is key to establishing the capacity and possibilities for change. This idea is at the heart of the Tapestry project.
Data Sources and Locating the Researchers
This article is based on the collective analysis of five authors who participated in the Tapestry project in varying capacities. It draws on informal observations and interactions with community members in public spaces, board meetings, and project group meetings spanning 2 years. Additionally, there was extensive document analysis.
Author Roles With Tapestry
The article stems from observations by two local members of the community and three visitors. Margaret Hallett, former head of Somersfield Academy, was the coordinator of CCAB. Janet Ferguson, executive director, Seniors Learning Centre at Bermuda College, was a member of the Tapestry steering committee. Each participates in the project and brings an insider’s emic/local perspective. Professors Drago-Severson, Marsick, and Maslin-Ostrowski (from the United States) were invited colleagues to the project—transient participants—and offer the outsiders’ etic perspective. By outsiders, we mean that the three professors did not live in Bermuda and were less familiar with traditions and the community. We believe the complementarity of perspectives strengthened our analysis.
Informal Observations and Interviews
Informal observations and informal interviews were used to help document and understand how community members responded to the brewing education crisis and to track the process of community engagement. These all took place at public events where people do not have an expectation of privacy and at meetings that were open to the community, including town hall meetings, community forums, an information session at the national museum, and board meetings. By informal, we mean there were no standardized protocols or sampling plans. Rather, authors attended and interacted with community members during Tapestry events to develop a better understanding of process and perspectives. Journals and field notes were employed to detail what was learned in the field.
Document Review
Documents associated with the project were scrutinized to help understand how this community engagement model was developed and to identify connections to transformative learning. An extensive set of documents was gathered including government websites, mission statements, reports, agendas, minutes, brochures, flyers, and newspaper articles, along with researcher journals and notes (some documents were retrieved from http://www.bermudamatters.org/ and others collected on-site).
Our team discussed documents, informal interviews, and observations to make sense of what we heard, experienced, and interpreted. The shared analysis was ongoing over 2 years and culminated in this article.
Story of the Tapestry Project: Education for All
We tell the story of the Tapestry project grounded in our observations, experiences, and review of documents. The story begins by describing the setting where the project takes place with emphasis on the public school system. Next, we outline the origins of a local movement to improve the quality of education in Bermuda.
Context: The Island Setting
Bermuda, a British Overseas Territory and former colony of Great Britain, is a major international offshore financial center. Located in the North Atlantic Ocean, it is an island destination for visitors from around the world. Densely populated, there are 65,091 citizens with 54% Black, 31% White, 7% Mixed, 4% Asian, and 4% Other (retrieved June 29, 2016, from http://www.bermuda4u.com/essential/population/). It is important to stress that Bermuda is a jurisdiction engaging in national self-definition against the broader context of global conversations about education and learning.
The MOED leads 38 schools: 10 preschools, 18 elementary, 5 middle, 2 high schools, 2 special needs schools, and Bermuda College (retrieved June 29, 2016, from http://www.bermuda-online.org/educate.htm; schools.moed.bm). Significantly, there is one institution of higher learning, a government community college, and it does not offer academic degrees. There are no 4-year colleges or universities.
The Cambridge International Curriculum was introduced to schools in 2009. The Bermuda Public School System adopted this curriculum, in part, to better prepare students to be successful on the O levels and A levels, international exams that are critical to entering universities abroad.
Scathing Report Sparks Community Tension: Trouble in Paradise
A Review of Public Education in Bermuda—locally referred to as the Hopkins Report (Hopkins et al., 2007)—was commissioned by the government to examine the quality of schooling. In 2007, the MOED contracted with a team of researchers in England led by Professor David Hopkins from the Institute of Education at the University of London to: …Evaluate the effectiveness of public education in Bermuda and identify strengths and areas for improvement; and to provide evidence for a thorough reform of the public education system using a transparent methodology with very clear recommendations for action that will result in rapid improvement of this sector of government with short time scales. (p. 3, Hopkins Report) Only just over one third of public schools in Bermuda are good or better in terms of their effectiveness. A small amount of outstanding work was seen. In contrast, the great majority of schools are satisfactory at best, and four are inadequate and a cause for serious concern. As a group the middle schools are the least effective. There are areas of under-performance throughout the school system, which becomes more evident as students get older. As a result, many do not make the progress they should. The professional leadership of education through the Ministry is inadequate and the Board of Education ineffective. (p. 5, Hopkins Report)
Not surprisingly, an uproar ensued. Upset by the report people tried to come to terms with the future of their schools. There was extensive local debate about the merit of the methodology and some questioned conclusions from the report. Yet, there were reasons why the report was commissioned in the first place; people were already troubled by what was happening in schools. The ministry was courageous in inviting outsiders to expose such underlying problems. As evidence from the report shows, findings indicated there were significant problems that demanded urgent attention. Some community members held the perspective that “Things will not change if we continue to do things the way we have always done them” (Personal Communication W. O., March 17, 2010). The MOED convened a high-profile task force to study the Hopkins Report and to recommend how best to proceed.
Coalition for Community Activism Engages the Community Around Productive Public Dialogue
The CCAB became actively involved with the community and their response to the disturbing results published in the Hopkins Report. This was in keeping with their noble mission to strengthen public engagement through coordinating research and facilitating connections within the community. As such, their mission includes the following objectives: to establish a mechanism for ongoing pubic engagement on education reform as a model for engagement on other issues, to develop popular grass root engagement around education issues as a model for other issues, to provide an opportunity for groups to come together around an issue in the Bermuda community, to model an approach to advocacy and collaboration for other groups, and to enable the public to influence public policy decisions with evidence-based information (italics not in original; Education for All, February 7, 2011, http://www.bermudamatters.org/).
CCAB coordinated three public gatherings in Bermuda with support of the U.S. consulting group, Public Agenda, in order to introduce the concept of productive public dialogues. In the first two sessions, interested citizens considered ideas provided by the consulting group that supports public dialogue and its use to engage the community in the issue of education. These meetings were followed by an interactive public session where Bermudians were provided an overview of the public dialogue process and the opportunity to apply that process to explore how Bermuda could effectively promote active engagement of her citizens. According to people active in CCAB at that time, there was consensus at the third session to go forward and bring people together to understand issues and address problems.
A Community Pauses to Reflect
In April 2010, the seed for the Tapestry project was planted when the task force concluded and a new report, the MOED’s “Blueprint for Reform in Education: Bermuda Public School System Strategic Plan 2012–2015,” was issued. Community momentum for change was further ignited.
Consultants hired
CCAB commissioned Professors Andrew Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley (2009) of Boston College to review the strategic plan. A member of the advisory board told us, They were recruited because of more than 40 years of research in educational reform. In addition to devoting careful attention into understanding effective teaching, they have zeroed in on the vital importance of involving and supporting the community in order to cultivate student success. (Personal Communication D. S., July 17, 2010)
Community forums
With the MOED’s new strategic plan and the consultants’ “An Analysis of the Blueprint” as a foundation for discussion, leaders in CCAB, Margaret Hallett and Janet Ferguson, facilitated four community forums aimed at developing a deep understanding of how to move forward and collaborate to improve the quality of public education in Bermuda. In general, four big ideas emerged from the four community forums, namely:
Values: What does the Bermuda community value about education? How do we understand education and how do our values have an impact on our schools? How does the Blueprint reflect these values?
Communication: What will it take to support the need for clarity and respectful relationships? How can information be strategically communicated simply and clearly and regularly? How can communication go both ways to create a supportive environment for parents and schools?
Measurement: How do we achieve accountability without being demeaning? How will the public know what the measurements mean? Can we trust the measurements?
Parent and Public Involvement: How can the community be more involved? How can we better support parents who are challenged about their involvement? How do we all create a climate of trust and support in contrast to one of doubt and antagonism? (EfA consultation meeting notes, December 2010).
This provided a platform for the MOED to develop a communication plan, but, of equal importance, it provided a basis for the community to take action on the ideas and suggestions bubbling up from formal and informal conversations.
A Community Inspired—Way Forward
Under the auspices of the CCAB, Hallett, coordinator of CCAB, and Ferguson, from the CCAB steering committee, invited community members to engage in deep dialogue about how to build on the big ideas raised at the forums. The intention of the steering committee, according to members, was to provide an alternative to the traditional town hall style of public engagement in keeping with its mission of grassroots engagement and bringing groups together.
An advisory board was formed in 2011 (10–15 diverse members). The structure was atypical in that by design, they did not have a formal leader and rules. Membership was open to anyone in the community who wanted to be involved. Members were free to step in and out of board workings, showing respect for individual needs and commitments. From an outsider’s perspective (the three U.S. scholars), there was a natural leader and consistency in participation by members, even with the inherent flexibility and flat organizational structure.
The board organized a series of small group meetings across the island where volunteers met and engaged stakeholders to grapple with big ideas. Through small group technologies (Block, 2008) attendees, according to board members, followed a framework for reflection, exploration, and meaning making. Importantly, the process sought to promote shared ownership of the process and outcomes. Although during this time the board also consulted with key government leaders, this was not to be school reform per usual. The board cared about ordinary people coming together to be heard, rejecting a top-down government initiative.
Three scholars from the United States were invited by the board to join the conversation. Initially, these scholars met with two members of the advisory board and engaged in dialogue over a series of meetings via extensive conference calls. Eventually, a summit was held at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York (June) with the two board members and three U.S. researchers to explore next steps. Specifically, the project was streamlined to how oral history and storytelling could inform their approach to change and implications for obtaining consent.
Later in October, the advisory board convened to share what they were hearing from people across the island about the big ideas and to reflect on going forward. The two board members shared their insights from the extended conversations and review of methods while in New York. After considerable deliberation, stops and starts, the EfA Advisory Board decided to address pressing educational issues. They determined to launch a project by using story as a vehicle to engage the community in sharing personal experiences of schooling in Bermuda. Project leaders envisioned a model of engagement using storytelling, conversation cafes, podcasts, and dialogue, while visiting community members in Bermuda’s nine parishes (subdivisions) to map communitywide experiences of schooling. The purpose was to build new models of community engagement in the long term, while working toward a shared responsibility for heightening awareness of both common and divergent experiences of schooling. CCAB agreed to provide seed funding for the project, dubbed Education for All.
To offer a competing perspective, one Bermudian citizen affiliated with this project commented, this “ambitious plan,” in her view was, “similar [in some ways] to the previous community wide engagement that characterized the process of Bermuda’s sustainable development plan.” She continued, “There is a generally cynical perception that the sustainable development plan has not produced results.” She concluded, “Large scale community involvement is very likely to ‘plop’ or fizzle out” (Personal Communication P. N., February 17, 2011). Several board members echoed her concerns.
One must consider, in what ways, if any, might these kinds of “cynical” perceptions influence the progress of EfA and other community initiatives anywhere? The construct of “the frightened organization,” a model derived from gestalt approaches to organizational development (Critchley & Casey, 1989, p. 7), might offer insight. These scholars argue that organizations, or in this context a community, like human beings simultaneously want change and resist it. That fits our insider–outsider views of what was happening in Bermuda.
The Story Circle
[A story circle] is less concerned with the group’s opinions and judgments; rather it seeks to elicit anecdotes and experiences. (The Ultimate Guide to Anecdote Circles, www.anecdote.com.au, 2006, p. 23)
Worldwide, we know that a public education crisis can galvanize a community to come together in search of innovative ways to solve complex problems and to tell a different story (Brookfield & James, 2014; Tyler, 2013), as occurred in Bermuda. People involved in EfA became energized by the potential of storytelling to engage the community and construct new possibilities for public education. During Phase 1, described in this article, their project eventually centered on story circles where small groups of four to six people assembled to tell their own and listen to others’ stories. We offer key tenants and an example of a protocol used to facilitate a story circle.
Story Circle Development and Principles
Board members and visiting scholars collaborated to develop a protocol for collecting stories. Careful consideration was given to different methods such as oral history, interviews, and focus groups.
Oral historians (e.g., Ritchie, 2010) have highlighted the benefits of using digital media to creatively represent spoken word recordings and move away from the mediating influence of written transcripts. Interactive installations, listening cafes, and podcasts are examples of these innovative outputs. This aligned with the board and community’s vision, so the project team decided that digitally recorded stories would be gathered and that there would not be traditional question and answer interviews. Various resources were mined by the group, such as The Ultimate Guide to Anecdote Circles (www.anecdote.com.au) and the Digital Storytelling Cookbook by Lambert (2010). Story circles were chosen. These are adapted from anecdote circles and can be traced to Freire’s (1996) literacy circles.
Four principles undergird the protocol: People naturally tell stories and seek meaning; Talking together enables people to connect and collectively build meaning, seek solutions, and take action; People willingly participate when they feel safe, welcomed, honored, and respected; and Wide inclusion and diversity strengthen our ability to make wise decisions for action.
Preparing Volunteers to Be Story Catchers
During the fall of 2011, the project leaders and visiting scholars designed a learning plan to prepare volunteers to facilitate story circles and become “story catchers” (Baldwin, 2005). A 50-page guidebook was written and distributed. Professional development was available during 1 day or a combination of evening sessions to prepare 15 community volunteers to host story circles. The curriculum emphasized active listening, effective questioning, ethics, and confidentiality. There was specific guidance on how to obtain permission from people to be audio recorded. Experiential learning was embedded in the preparation. For example, everyone participated in a story circle.
Mastery of audio digital technology to record stories is a prerequisite to hosting story circles, thus technology was integral to preparation. Participants were able to practice using the same equipment they would have when out in the community. They formulated a plan for how to secure the equipment and share among volunteers.
While not part of the training, the board was well aware of the significance of technology in future phases of the project. The volume of recorded material can be overwhelming. It requires skills and competence in digital media technology in order to work effectively with audio as distinct from transcripts.
Role of Story Catcher
Each story circle has a volunteer story catcher who serves as a host and facilitator. The story catcher is responsible for recruitment and arrangements for meeting, such as in a school or private home. Story circles occur for 90 min to 2 hr.
When a group meets, the role of the story catcher is to: welcome people, provide general guidelines, review confidentiality, manage the recording equipment, get the stories started with a key question, and gently keep the process of sharing stories going.
When facilitating story circles, it is essential to create a safe, trusting, and supportive space that allows for authentic sharing and learning.
Story Circle Protocol
We offer a modified sample protocol used by story catchers in Bermuda when guiding a story circle. A small group of community volunteers and three researchers working together developed a seven-stage protocol that is adapted from anecdote circles.
Stage I: Welcome and introduction
The story catcher is the host. During the first stage, she or he welcomes everyone to the story circle and introduces the session. This includes addressing: appreciation for participation; purpose and goals; Bermuda-specific context; connection to Tapestry: Education for All project; overview of process and timing; procedure for audio recording, confidentiality and obtaining permission to be recorded by signing a consent form; and role of story catcher (facilitator).
Stage II: Warm-up for listening
This stage provides a listening stance and promotes being nonjudgmental. The intent is to inspire people and orient them to the topic.
So, I’d like to start with three examples of stories, just to get us warmed up for listening.
The story catcher tells three sample stories—his or her own story, a local participant’s story from a previous story circle (possibly training session), and a sample story from Story Corps—a national U.S. project aimed at instructing and inspiring people to record each other’s stories in sound (http://storycorps.org/).
I’ll suggest three listening guidelines and please feel free to offer others.
Listening is key—give people a chance to share their experiences without interrupting and with our silence we’ll give permission for the story to unfold.
Watch the person talking.
Be curious and honest and keep an open heart.
Stage III: Warm-up for storytelling
The warm-up for telling is a round-robin activity.
Now that we’ve listened for a bit, we’ll get started talking. Just to get warmed up could we each tell where we attended Primary and Secondary school and, in general, do you have stronger memories of one than the other?
Stage IV: Reflection break
At this point, the story catcher invites people to sit in silence and think. Some people may write notes.
We’re just going to take a few minutes to think quietly about a time when you were a student in school and a particular lesson was being given that made you feel either absolutely inspired and confident or completely discouraged and confused. You might recall the classroom, the teacher, the other students or perhaps the subject. What was happening during the lesson?
When time is up, the story catcher notes that this memory could be the basis for the story they want to share or it might stimulate other stories to share. The particular story told is totally up to the storyteller.
Stage V: Partner stories
This stage of the story circle provides practice, helps people delve deeper in an intimate setting, and supports the teller to understand his or her own story better.
When telling your story, tell your experience with context, make it vivid for the listeners—try not to give opinions, but give actual examples of what happened.
The group is divided into pairs. Each person takes 5 min to tell his or her story to a partner using their reflections as a springboard to the story they want to tell. Listeners are cautioned not to engage in analysis about what happened. Rather, they are encouraged to let stories emerge in the teller’s own words.
Stage VI: Group story circle
Now we have [#] stories about the lived experience of education in Bermuda, thank you! This time, I will invite you to tell your story to the group and we will record it. When you tell your story to the group, please just say your first name and the school that you attended. While recording, I will ask that the group be as quiet as possible.
The story catcher invites someone to share her or his story with the group and this time records it, while the entire group listens. The stories continue until everyone has had a chance to tell a story. Listeners are encouraged to let the stories settle—to avoid too much questioning and to thank people simply for sharing their experiences. After each story, there is a moment of reflection. People may refer to the doodle sheet (scratch paper) provided for notes.
Stage VII: Debriefing and closing circle
In the final stage, people have an opportunity to debrief the story circle experience. The host opens the discussion for people to reflect on what they heard in the stories and what it means to them.
What did you hear? What does it mean to you?
Participants are encouraged to comment on what they learned about themselves and the student experience of others.
The story catcher next invites dialogue about the challenges and opportunities in moving from story circles to engaging social systems in Bermuda to improve schools.
Thank you! Part of this project is actually to gather stories through recordings to be used for podcasts on a website, perhaps for an exhibit, for promoting discussion in conversation settings and perhaps even for creative expression such as a theatre performance or interactive museum exhibit—the possibilities are endless. With that in mind, what did we hear? What does it mean for schooling in Bermuda?
Participants are invited to imagine how the stories can help to address problems in the Bermuda education system.
After debriefing, it is time for a closing circle. The story catcher expresses gratitude to the storytellers. Listeners are thanked, acknowledging that listening can be intense, noting that it takes patience, sensitivity, and heightened awareness.
Thank you all for exercising those skills and much more today! To conclude, I’d like each of you to identify one story that you heard that was particularly impactful or meaningful for you and simply thank the person for sharing his or her experience.
Complexities of the Tapestry Project
Despite the excellent initial response to the call for stories, the momentum slowed, in part, by the project participants’ concerns about the lack of specificity regarding the “ultimate outcome.” This was demonstrated by the frequently expressed wish on the part of some designers/facilitators to establish a link between EfA results and education policy development. The question that arose again and again within the steering committee “How can we get decision makers to accept suggestions and recommendations?” was perceived by some to be premature (Personal Communication M. V., August 14, 2011). This is the conventional, established way of seeking reform in contrast to the grassroots approach promoted through the Tapestry project. The experience of EfA drew attention to ways in which it may seem easy to reach out to the established hierarchy to guarantee a “sure fix.” At one stage, for example, EfA representatives made presentations about the project to the minister to increase the possibilities of success.
In the case of EfA, some designers/facilitators were haunted by the spectre of past initiative failures that litter Bermuda’s educational landscape, as expressed at meetings. According to one board member, the result has been an almost obsessive caution in regard to mistakes and getting it right. Much energy was devoted to avoiding myriad perceived past mistakes and catastrophes (Personal Communication D. E., November 25, 2011). This reduces the capacity of the project to generate innovative opportunities for learning and breaking new ground. Paradoxically, the group rejected conventions and chose a nontraditional, organic approach to change. Yet, all cannot let go of ingrained ways.
Project Results: Slowly Changing the Conversation Through Story
We highlight three learnings from the Tapestry project that are relevant to understanding how story was used by participants for meaning making and how story was used for social change.
First, we learned that the EfA model for community engagement requires the preliminary step of thinking differently about community and ways of working with a community. It challenges the dominant ideology. As the community was reacting to the blistering Hopkins Report, alternative structures for people coming together were organized. EfA created conditions, along with other nonprofit groups, for men and women to meet and engage in a productive public dialogue, similar to practices identified by Freire (1996) and others (Solinger, Fox, & Irani, 2008). Safe structures, such as the community forums and small group meetings, afforded people an opportunity to talk about the persistent problems in their schools and to do so in the company of neighbors and community leaders. One outcome was story circles.
Second, participants in the story circles readily had stories to tell and, in a remarkably short time, were able to frame a story to be audio recorded. Consistent with prior scholarship (Baldwin, 2005; Maslin-Ostrowski & Ackerman, 2004; Tyler, 2013), the storytelling and listening experience was an occasion for reflection and shared meaning making. Currently, the stories represent a treasure trove of postcolonial learning and education themes (listen to select stories at http://www.bermudamatters.org/). The voices of 50 people resulting in 100 discrete stories about the lived experience of schooling in Bermuda were recorded during story circles. A selection of stories was archived and made available for listening. Titles include Beaten Up, Challenge Race and Riots, I Got in Trouble a Lot, I Was Bullied, I Was Never Told the Purpose, I Was Teased, She Just Took It, Best Time of My Life, Same Old Same Old, Life Lessons, Ranked and Separated, Teacher Under Influence, We Raised Ourselves, West F Class, The Reason I Am a Teacher, Social Talk and Stuff Not Discussed (retrieved July, 1, 2016, http://www.bermudamatters.org/). The board met its Phase 1 goal of the first 100 stories.
Third, individuals reported the community forums and story circles were “meaningful” and helpful in terms of “stretching perspectives” as well, suggesting that this approach to community engagement and use of story holds promise for transformational learning as a community. Scholars argue that stories have the power to stimulate communal memories and emotions and that storytelling can be a vehicle for societal transformation (Joldersma, 2013; Wagoner, Jensen, & Oldmeadow, 2012). We observed this power—story provoked a wide range of emotions—both expressed and felt in story circles. Although we did not interview people about changes, conditions were prime for community perspectives to broaden and perhaps, even be altered.
Phases of the project continue, new relationships are forming and unexpected opportunities have arisen, such as board members invited to conduct training with senior MOED leadership on public engagement and communication. The edited audio recordings of the stories were used in a professional development workshop on classroom management for teachers and in a public engagement meeting for inclusive and special education policy development. In both instances, the evaluations showed that participants had insightful observations about the impact of the experience of schooling on the Bermudian community, confirming the value of story work. Like Lambert (2013), a leading authority on digital storytelling, Hardy and Sumner (2014) support the view that a unique attribute of story work is its capacity to generate and distill reflective insights that are particular and personal, while revealing individual and collective truths.
Education for All endures. EfA, a community-based project that focuses on “connecting to the power of people’s personal stories” (bermudamatters.org/), takes an approach similar to Freire’s (1996) perspective on community and change. Similarly, Block (2008) believes, “Citizens have the capacity to change the community story, to reclaim the power to name what is worth talking about, to bring a new context into being” (p. 46).
Conclusions
While small in size, Bermuda is big in diversity of views with citizens of manifold cultural backgrounds. Engaging all voices in authentic conversation is essential to change and learning; however, this is often an elusive goal for even the most dedicated. Story is one way to honor voices and build community engagement. Storytelling can create a safe space for authentic listening and sharing in ways that stimulate memory of the past, while fostering imagination about new futures. Story helps people walk in one another’s shoes and opens the door to empathic understanding of the other (Tyler, 2013). Empathy enables conversation that invites rather than judges and critiques. This gives rise to fresh thinking, questioning of strongly held views, and openness to reframing beliefs about how things were, are, and need be. In other words, story holds promise of learning, perhaps leading to individual and collective changes.
The Tapestry project presents an innovative approach for community engagement (Brookfield & James, 2014; Hallett, Ferguson, Marsick, Drago-Severson, & Maslin-Ostrowski, 2013; Yorks & Kasl, 2002). Transformative learning involves perspective changing, identity, and vulnerability (Brookfield, 2000; Dirkx, 2001; Mezirow, 2000; Tisdell, 2003). Yet, as emphasized, care is necessary for ensuring safe social environments that allow for disclosure, disorientation, and learning. By having critical conversations, community members may better understand the contradictions and commonalities in their schooling experiences.
Implications
Given the emergent, unpredictable nature and scope of this community-based project, there is no blueprint for how the telling of these stories leads to changing the conversation across the community and the educational system. Projects like EfA that draws on an emergent approach to inquiry are characterized by uncertainty, unpredictability, and shifting landscapes and goal posts. Facilitators, designers, and community activists involved in key roles are encouraged to cultivate a disposition that enables them to retain “faith in the process,” while consistently practicing common sense.
In the meantime, questions have emerged. After a project like this has launched, it is imperative to ask how can it be sustained with passionate volunteers who are time constrained and overextended? Importantly, how can the stories be represented to engage the larger community meaningfully—and using what media—without distorting the stories?
Looking ahead, we pose questions for community leaders in Bermuda and leaders seeking social change in the global community as well as scholars: How do we harvest stories to express the community will and strengthen the social fabric? In what ways might the performance of telling and listening to stories lead to insight and agency emerging from shared instances of critical disjuncture, thereby promoting individual and collective transformative learning? What does it take to enable the other to live the experience heard even though that story is not his or her own experience? How might story be a source of inspiration for change?
A vision of possibilities for change may unfold when communities grow capabilities to tell and embrace a new story, in our case a quality education for all in Bermuda. The starting point for this participatory reframing may be the simple act of collective storytelling. We make our stories with others, for others, and for ourselves. We learn from and through our stories and so do our listeners. This is the distinctive, multidimensional, experiential alchemy that informs story making and storytelling. The structure and conditions for storytelling and listening often determine how they are heard and received by listeners, and the extent to which the telling and listening brings absent and underrepresented voices into the discursive arena. CCAB’s Education for All project illustrates this alchemy at work. As we end the story, many inspired community members believe Bermuda is poised to change and begin a new story of education.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.