Casting Shadows

Abstract

This research output is a resource for teachers and students in Scottish schools working at 4th Level in English, Media and Social Studies. It is made with the Scottish development Education Centre (ScotDec), which delivers professional learning in Global Citizenship, Learning for Sustainability and Rights-based learning for teachers and youth workers across all sectors.

The research explores the legacies of Robert Louis Stevenson's Pacific writing (c. 1893), investigating the relevance of his work to contemporary readers in Sāmoa, Scotland and Hawai'i.

Research Questions: 1. What legacies has Stevenson’s Pacific writing, and his residency in Hawai ‘i and Sāmoa, left for contemporary Pacific communities? 2. In what ways can an engagement with RLS’s Pacific fiction inform the creative practices of our project poets and workshop participants? 3. In an era in which educators around the world are seeking to ‘decolonise the curriculum’, what does it mean, within the structures of our project, to ‘decolonise’ Stevenson’s work, given his keen observations on the consequences of western colonial incursion into the Pacific?

As methods, it utilises narrative drawing, creative writing, movie, literary criticism, community-based participation and pedagogy in English, Hawaiian and Samoan languages.