The way of the (s)word : emerging research methodologies

• Main Author: Josephs, Caroline
• Other Authors: University of Western Sydney (Host institution), College of Arts, Education and Social Sciences (Host institution), School of Education and Early Childhood Studies (Host institution), University of Western Sydney. College of Arts, Education and Social Sciences Research Conference (Event place)
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: Bankstown, N.S.W, University of Western Sydney 2005
• Subjects: stoytelling; research; methodology; inuit
• Online Access: http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/40529

The thesis proposition (completed in January 2005) is Sacred Oral Storytelling Invokes Limen in the Transformation of Reality. I worked with four particular ancient ‘traditional’ stories from four different cultures: Zen Buddhist, Judaic, Inuit, and Yolngu Australian Indigenous. The four stories are many-layered, and could be termed ‘sacred’. I focussed on what transformations may occur in the context of storytellings (and story listenings) in a contemporary setting, while paying attention to the cultural contexts in which the stories had evolved. I focussed on the oral aspect of storytellings. ‘Limen’ was a word I chose because it is now obsolete. It carried few previous connotations. It is the threshold, the smallest point at which change is perceived to take place. I applied it both to the storytelling ‘event’, as well as to particular points in the telling-listening I termed ‘resonant moments’. I was interested in the transformative possibilities of storytelling and listening. I discuss the emergent nature of my methodologies and how they are not separate from the topic itself of transformation -- of liminal qualities being lived and experienced. I tell a story. I also tell of an actual storytelling event in which I experienced a significant leap in my own learning during the research process. The story is one of facing death. It is called The Teaching. I will be presenting a storytelling methodology at the same time as refracting it through other lenses. The research methodologies emerged in the way a story does, unfolding, and beginning to have pattern, cumulatively making meaning, I frame the storytelling event with the work of theorists whose ideas impinge on my own work and articulate what my own practice was -- being in tension between the 'molten lava of experience' and the 'hardening into igneous theories', languaged by Bakhtin. I show how methods of drawing, dreaming and writing were embedded in emerging research practices.