Our Story
Our story begins in the classroom of Dr. Mona Ghali where we (Gauravi and Laurel) were both taking the Introductory course for the Comparative International and Developmental Education (CIDE) specialization within their Master’s of Education programs. As international students at the University of Toronto, we connected through our mutual need for building our own sense of community in a place that was new for us as well as through our mutual interests in comparative studies and decolonial practices. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit North America, Laurel was in Houston visiting family while Gauravi was still in Toronto. After they announced they would be closing international flights, Gauravi made the difficult but necessary decision to fly home to Mumbai to be with her family. Neither of us assumed that we would be still in our hometowns going on six months later.
As the pandemic continued and worsened in our respective countries, we stayed in touch and supported each other. When we found out about a grant being offered by the University of Toronto for students to design and carry out a project that fosters a global-community oriented mindset in response to the Coronavirus pandemic, we decided to design a podcast that would explore how similarities and differences in structures of privilege, prevailing ideologies, and sociopolitical context have influenced the living and learning experiences of people in Mumbai and Houston in the wake of this global crisis. We spoke with a variety of people in Mumbai and Houston and discerned common themes from their stories. Now we are sharing their experiences, as well as our own conversations about the broader implications of those experiences, with you.
Podcasting as a method of communicating ideas has been shown to have a variety of benefits as a form of public pedagogy. First, podcasts are generally constructed through conversations. In fact, it is the combination of the research/information provided and the conversational tone used that often makes podcasts so appealing as a method of learning1. We have formed our podcast through combining insights gained through a collection of dialogues with our respondents and each other. Paulo Freire, an influential educator in anti-oppressive pedagogy, discussed in his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed how it is through dialogue that we can construct knowledge with each other, rather than presuming that one person (generally the teacher) holds the knowledge to be deposited into the minds of others2. Through the various conversations that we share in this podcast, we aim to construct together a more nuanced understanding of the factors influencing living and learning in this pandemic. Second, the aural information communicated through speaking and listening provides more information than would reading an article or paper because it also allows listeners to interpret emotional or affective information3. Finally, because podcasts are available to the general public, this bridges the gap between the world of academia and the public such that more people are able to access the information and insights gleaned from our project as well as contribute to it through the submission of their own stories.
References
Harris, J. (2019). Podcast talk and public sociology: Teaching critical race discourse participation through podcast production. About Campus, 24(3), 16-20.
Freire, P. (2005). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. (M. Bergman Ramos, Trans.). The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc. (Original work published 1970).
Kinkaid, E., Emard, K., & Senanayake, N. (2020). The podcast as method?: Critical reflections on using podcasts to produce geographic knowledge. Geographical Review, 110 (1-2), 78-91. DOI: 10.1111/gere.12354