“Storytelling for Understanding”: An Ethnographical Case Study of a Digital Storytelling Service-learning Subject for Refugee Children in Hong Kong

The 24-month project is an ethnographical case study on a novel digital storytelling service-learning (SL) subject titled “Storytelling for Understanding: Refugee Children in Hong Kong”. Offered since September 2022 in a self-financed tertiary institution, the SL subject is designed to enhance tertiary-level students’ language acquisition, cultural understanding, and empathy in a genuine setting. Adopting a multiple-method approach that engages narrative inquiry, field work, and in-depth interviews, the case study collects and analyses personal narratives (in both written and digital forms) from students and refugee children, students’ reflective journals and learning histories, teachers’ teaching memoirs and on-site notes, and interview data to investigate: 1) tertiary students’ learning experience when using English for a meaning-making and identity-forming personal storytelling process; 2) teachers’ pedagogical experience and challenges in a culturally diverse and complex setting that is community-based and not classroom-based; 3) the effectiveness of digital storytelling as a service to minority or marginalized groups in Hong Kong.