Abstract
ABSTRACTThis article discusses the process of negotiating the storyline for videos developed as part of an online Arabic language course. The project was guided by a social-justice-through-education agenda, explicitly aiming to redress the high unemployment rate of language graduates in the Gaza Strip. We illustrate how the international team designing the course gradually moved from talking about intercultural communication to doing intercultural communication during the process of creating the course materials. We also explore the meanings that the stories of the language course carry from the distinct perspectives of the teams based in Scotland and in the Gaza Strip.
Highlights
This article reflects on the role of narratives in the design of the Online Arabic from Palestine (OAfP) language course
Collaborating across borders to the design, development and promotion of an online Palestinian Arabic course, during which an international team based at the University of Glasgow (UofG, UK) and at the Arabic Center of the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG, Palestine) collaboratively developed an Arabic language course for beginners
[...] more than two-thirds of the population is made up of refugees; 70% live in poverty; 20% live in ‘deep poverty’; just about everybody has to survive on humanitarian hand-outs; adult unemployment hovers around 50% give or take a few percentage points; 60% of the population is under the age of 18. This is the Gaza where on a good day there is not electricity ‘only’ 20 hours a day; where, before the latest Israeli military operation, in summer 2014, there was already a shortage of 70,000 homes; where 60% of the population suffers from food insecurity; where 95% of piped water is below international quality standards; where every child age 8 or [older] has already witnessed three massive wars. [...] Gaza – the city and the Strip – today is hermetically-sealed: the flow of people, goods, as well as medicines, fuel, and electricity is tightly controlled by Israel, all the while subjected to various forms of military and political violence
Summary
This article reflects on the role of narratives in the design of the Online Arabic from Palestine (OAfP) language course. The volunteer learners identified the creation of materials grounded in and illustrative of Palestinian ways of life and identity as central to increasing motivation for potential students, and for increasing uptake of a course taught online from the Gaza Strip From these considerations, the Impact of Language project proposal – to be developed collaboratively by the UofG and IUG – took shape. The team’s emphasis on the capabilities approach as a core element of the learning process, and the wish to create a narrative that would help learners understand life in the Gaza Strip, ensured that history, memory and emotions remained central to the course (the Douglas Fir Group, 2016; Levine & Phipps, 2011; Swain, 2013). For the teachers in Gaza, this is a way to practice Sumud, by refusing to be victims and by demanding a place in the world as a people and a land with much to offer
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