Embodying Shared History: Narrative Inquiry as Pedagogy.
2014; Volume: 41; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0737-5328
Autores Tópico(s)Teacher Education and Leadership Studies
ResumoOverview This article describes my personal journey translating narrative inquiry research methods into pedagogy for my teacher education course. I use self-study research methods to frame my journey. Self-study is a widely used method in teacher education to reflectively improve one's practice (Bullough & Pinnegar, 2001). It provides the researcher a tool to look within, delving deeper into one's teaching context, motives, and actions. Using gained insights, one can then create the possibility for improvements. Dinkelman (2003) describes the process of self-study as: [C]onfronting a puzzling situation; identifying a problem posed by that situation; forming a hypothesis about what might be done to solve that problem; considering the hypothesis by drawing on experiences, linking understanding, and combining ideas; and testing the hypothesis against the realization of desired ends. (p. 8) These self-study steps are the format for my article; I use them to guide the reader along each stage of my investigation. Presenting personal research narratives to illustrate each stage, I also make shifts through time. This section foregrounds the steps of my process and maps it out. Beginning with the context, I share my research puzzle. Then I develop a hypothesis that leads me to examine my own learning of narrative inquiry. Drawing on my dissertation as a reference, I step back in time to Audrey, my research participant. Audrey shares her experiences from the often forgotten story of San Francisco Japantown gentrification. As I walk alongside her in the narratives and explore her many meanings, Audrey and narrative inquiry help me to redefine our lived histories as shared. This learning from narrative inquiry, through the process of going inward and outward, across time and space, is what I seek to bring into my course pedagogy. In the second half of this article, I transition. I describe the ways I sought to use narrative inquiry as pedagogy in my new course to facilitate learning through narratives. Specifically, I share personal narratives from my course discussions, readings, films, and project assignments. Each element of the course serves to cultivate the narrative inquiry process for both teacher and students. In each reflection, I recount my progression with quotes from students. In the following section, I begin. A New Course: A Puzzling Situation Sitting in my office chair, I stare at the gingko tree flapping its fan-shaped leaves outside my window. The tree reminds me of the gingko trees back home in San Francisco. The beauty of this tree calms me as I presently wrestle with constructing my new course. I am a faculty member in the department of education studies at a small Midwestern liberal arts university. I recently volunteered to teach an elective undergraduate preservice teacher course entitled Cross-Cultural Studies for Teaching. Upright in my chair, I begin to design the course. I consider the course content I need to include and what learning needs to take place within my small class of ten preservice teachers. Many of the students I have known through other courses and academic advising. Prior to the course, I remember conversations in which some of these students share with me that they had little to no cross-cultural experiences growing up. Given this background knowledge, I consider my puzzle. What will help these preservice teachers be able to teach cross-culturally? I decide one course objective must be to help my preservice teachers personally understand their differences and commonalities with their students. Specifically, the ways larger macro-level forces like global economics, politics, and national institutional systems and structures push and pull in their lives and the lives of their K-12 students and families (Watson-Gegeo, 1992). Macro levels frame, inform and constrain the micro-level personal history, values, ideologies, and epistemology (Watson-Gegeo, 1992, p. …
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