Intercultural Engagement between Pre-service Teachers through Walking Video and Community Mapping

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to understand how pre-service teachers critically conceive themselves and their community through walking video making and community narrative mapping. Another aim of this study was investigating how they engage with other cultures through walking video and community narrative map. This research supported pre-service art education to integrate individual’s daily lives and culture into the educational programs and expand cultural perspectives of pre-service teachers through intercultural engagement.This research was designed as a case study combined with walking methodologies and arts-informed research. The participants for this study were 9 pre-service teachers in one southwestern US university and 13 pre-service teachers in one university for teacher preparation in Korea. Based on walking experience around their neighborhoods or campus, pre-service teachers recorded walking videos and created community narrative maps. Following the stages of “GENESIS” model, they had several discussion sessions and live-online joint-class sessions. All pre-service teachers kept reflection journals throughout the semester, while selected pre-service teachers had additional interview after the project. Arts-informed data, verbal data, and written data collected from pre-service teachers were analyzed qualitatively. This research shared findings about walking videos, community narrative maps, and intercultural engagement. Based on the reshaped perception of walking and mapping, per-service teachers found the meanings from their lived experience. As they expressed their individual voices as well as community culture and issues in the walking videos and community narrative maps, they cultivated not only self-consciousness but also critical sociocultural consciousness. This project also contributed to expand pre-service teachers’ cultural perspectives through authentic intercultural dialogue and experience initiated from their walking videos and community narrative maps. In the field of art education, researchers admitted the necessities for critical art education and intercultural engagement. Considering the need in the field, the findings from this research support intercultural per-service art education for raising the critical consciousness. By highlighting the achievements of incorporating walking videos and community mapping as pedagogical tools, this study will open a new realm of art education to enlighten the ways for prepare pre-service teachers to have critical mindsets as well as intercultural competences for future classrooms.