Ian Phillips - The Makings and Unmakings in the Making of Me: Affirming and Improving the Professional Practices of an Educator - The African Storyteller.

This study seeks to demonstrate how storytelling, so central in African oral traditions, has importance for framing inner conversations/dialogue and as a result of these inner conversations, the creation of one's own stories. These inner conversations recall important life events that have had influence on the shaping and masking of who I am in the world and the world in me - the makings and unmakings in the making of me.

In the study I will utilise stories to give evidence of the inner tensions that have impacted on my self-identity, living values, interpretation of experiences, attitudinal displays and live actions to show how who I am and my way of being has changed over time and that the prospect of further changes in the future remains. Yet, I also hope to show that despite this dynamic and ever-changing self, I have come to affirm a dynamic Africanness, predisposed to share loving relationships and be engaged democratically within my community - my African Worldview.

Therefore, I want to self-inquiry into the qualities of the African Storyteller in me, share how I have used these qualities and give evidence of how I have assisted others through 'storytelling as dialogue' in the finding of their qualities. I also want to inquiry collaboratively into whether my African World view can be affirmed/improved/integrated in my professional practices at the Sankofa Learning Centre/Mandiani Project.

Furthermore, it is my view that storytelling as a presentational form has importance beyond that of self, and I intend to evidence how the sharing of stories offers too, the decided prospect of building positive dialogue/relationships between individuals, with members of families, people in organisations, groups in communities and amongst nations.