Authenticity and Ethics in a Cultural Presentation Task
A student prepares a school-assessed signed presentation on Deaf culture for an audience including Deaf community members. She plans to describe her own journey learning Auslan, include a story about a Deaf friend, and explain the history of a local Deaf club. She has gathered information from social media posts, a documentary, and conversations with her friend. She intends to include a photograph of her friend from a public event and to retell a personal story her friend told her. The rubric rewards cultural understanding, appropriate register, and engagement with Deaf perspectives. The teacher reviews her plan before she films.
1. Identify the ethical and cultural issues the teacher should raise, and explain why each matters for the assessment.
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Three issues stand out.
Consent for the photograph. A photo from a public event is not automatically free to reuse in an assessed presentation. The student should ask her friend's permission, especially as the friend is identifiable and the context is a school assessment. Using an image without consent risks harm and undermines the respect for Deaf individuals the rubric rewards.
Retelling a personal story. The friend's story belongs to the friend. Retelling it, particularly if identifiable, can breach trust. The student should seek permission and consider anonymising or, better, presenting her own experience and crediting the community rather than appropriating another's narrative.
Source quality and attribution. Social media posts vary in reliability; the documentary and direct conversations are stronger sources. The student should distinguish verified history from anecdote and acknowledge sources.
Why it matters for the assessment: the rubric rewards cultural understanding and engagement with Deaf perspectives. Appropriating stories or using images without consent demonstrates the opposite - treating Deaf people as material rather than as partners. Authentic cultural understanding includes consent, attribution, and respect for ownership of experience.
2. The student argues that because the event was public and the story was shared openly, she can use both freely. How should the teacher respond, and how does this connect to register?
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The teacher should distinguish public visibility from consent to reuse. Something said or shown in a public setting is not thereby licensed for reproduction in a different context - here, a school assessment with an audience. The friend shared a story in conversation; that is not the same as agreeing to have it retold and assessed. Public visibility lowers but does not remove the obligation to ask. The respectful default is to seek consent and to offer the friend the chance to review how she is represented.
Connection to register: register is not only formal versus informal vocabulary; it includes how a signer positions themselves relative to the audience and to the people represented. A presentation that treats a Deaf friend's story as illustrative material adopts a distanced, extractive stance. A presentation that credits the friend, seeks consent, and frames the student's own learning as the subject adopts a respectful, reciprocal stance - which is the register the rubric's engagement-with-Deaf-perspectives criterion is looking for. The teacher can suggest the student foreground her own journey, cite the friend's influence with permission, and use the documentary for the club's history. This satisfies the rubric more fully than the original plan and models the cultural understanding being assessed.