Developing African oral traditional storytelling as a framework for studying with African peoples

Abstract

Oral traditions have played and continue to play a critical role in the lives of African peoples albeit changes in context and usage. In this article, I discuss the development of what I term the African Oral Traditional Storytelling (AOTS) Framework as an ethical and culturally centered approach to studying with African peoples. Akin to narrative inquiry methodology, the AOTS Framework is developed as an alternative approach to studying or working with African peoples by centering African oral storytelling, African philosophies and worldviews, languages, and cultures as relevant and essential to understanding the experiences of African peoples. The collaborative philosophical underpinnings of the AOTS Framework rest on the communal and the collaborators’ engagement in the study not just as people who provide information but as co-creators in the narratives, meanings, and understandings that are brought to bear.

Are we still Shona? An AOTS framework approach to navigating immigration-related identity

“…The collaborative philosophical underpinnings of the AOTS Framework rest on the communal and the collaborators' engagement in the study not just as people who provide information, but as co-creators in the narratives, meanings, and understandings that are brought to bear. Therefore, relationship building and communal engagement with the collaborating community is an ethical foundation of the emergent AOTS Framework (see Osei-Tutu, 2021;2022). Consequently, in this article, I share the experiences of an African family in the U.S. using oral techniques and perspectives centered in their cultural understandings in echoing McDermott and Varene (1995) on recognizing how much our collaborators know in their own terms.…”

“…I have the privilege of sharing the experiences of a Shona family in the U.S. Midwest as they navigate native language and cultural maintenance and transmission to their children while pursuing graduate education. Working within the framework of postcolonial and decolonial theoretical perspectives, the experiences are shared through the African Oral Traditional Storytelling Framework -AOTS Framework (Osei-Tutu, 2021;2022) as culturally and linguistically centered methodology for understanding the nuanced experiences Africans navigate in the U.S. This article contributes to the conversation on African immigrant experiences with specifi c focus on identity and heritage as families live the nuances of their colonial heritage, postcolonial present, and imperialist globalization.…”

International perspectives on media disinformation: Critical media literacy as antiracist pedagogy

“…As Poncian (2015) explains, many racial and racist theories “were expounded to explain Africa's perceived backwardness, barbarism, and incapacity to develop until after they came in contact with supposedly superior races that brought them development and civilization” (p. 72). This view is prominent in research and other academic spaces, where knowledge that centers African worldviews is either deemed unscientific or completely ignored (Chilisa, 2017; Osei‐Tutu, 2021, 2022; Smith, 2012; Tuwe, 2016; Waita, 2014). The West's negative outlook on Africa is not an aberration—it is a direct result of a history of negative rhetoric.…”

“Telling the story of telling the story”: capturing intangible heritage storytelling on the origins of malt whisky in the Cabrach

“…, 2022), in Asia and in Africa. In the context of the latter, Osei-Tutu (2022) has outlined meaningful methodological approaches for storytelling methodologies in oral history.…”