Promoting Student Learning through Diasporic Foodways: Community-Oriented Pedagogy through Films

This case examined five students' experiences of participating in a film-mediated community-based discourse about local Asian Canadian communities, where students viewed and created documentary films in a fourth-year English course that focused on diasporic foodways. Phenomenographic perspectives guided an analysis of the students' experiences; data sources included semi-structured interviews, recordings and notes of classroom lessons, students' films, and course notes. Findings illustrated different ways the students learned as they engaged with course materials, films, guest speakers, and interviewing local community members: They (1) developed increasingly complex understandings of local Asian Canadian culture and issues; (2) experienced transformative learning as they reframed understandings of select experiences, place, and people; and (3) were motivated to participate in social action to promote greater inclusion and give voice to the historically silenced. Findings also extend place-based perspectives by challenging a monolithic treatment of 'history', urging for greater reflexivity of one's relationship to community members.