Braiding the Informal and Formal Archives for Learning

This chapter conceptualizes the “braided archive” as a hybridized epistemic framework that entwines informal archival modalities including personal, community-driven, digital, and ephemeral, with institutionalised formal repositories to reconfigure pedagogical praxis. Anchored in experiential learning theory, constructivist paradigms, postcolonial epistemologies, and critical archival studies, it interrogates the ontological and epistemological underpinnings of archival legitimacy within educational ecologies. The chapter delineates typological taxonomies, methodological scaffolds, and didactic applications that operationalise informal archives as legitimate cognitive artefacts. By foregrounding counter-hegemonic narratives and subaltern epistemes, the braided archive functions as an agent of epistemic justice and curricular decolonisation. Empirical illustrations and transnational exemplars elucidate its efficacy in augmenting learner agency, enhancing cognitive engagement, and nurturing dialogic, multimodal knowledge construction.