Narrative Inquiry Invites Professional Development:

Margaret MacIntyre Latta
Jeong-Hee Kim
2010

Praxis: Jumping down the rabbit hole

Be Proud

Why Re-Frame Pro D? U.S. STATS

• Number of "unqualified" teachers (%30)
• Graduation Rate %70
• "Chronic failure of public schools"
• %46 of teachers leave within 5 years (2002)
• Washington Post (2010): http://wapo.st/1Sq7YPn
• EPOCH TIMES (2013): http://bit.ly/1oOLOLr

“Nowhere in that curriculum does it say that I am to feed students, or I am to nurse students, or I am to friend students, or I am to parent students. Those are not functions of a teacher. And I think we have to raise an issue: at what point does poor parenting become an issue?”
(former teacher Debra Barry)

Consider
this ...
Are Canadians following the American trend?

Are we preparing student teachers for the REALITIES of being an educator in 2016?

Pro D...

Current ProD (U.S.)

• Focusses on "how to's" & "quick fixes"
• Fails to orient teachers to be purposefully involved as primary participants
• Doesn't recognize how teachers learn
• Mandates opportunities
• Teaching "outcomes" based vs. student based

Professional Development should be experiential, empowering, ongoing, contextual, and collaborative, connecting theory and practice. (McCotter) p.139.

HOW vs. WHAT

Question:

Define..

• ProD: meaningful and productive time to encounter, negotiate and articulate the complexities of our classrooms.
• Praxis: practice, as distinguished from theory; the application of knowledge and skills.

Purpose of Research

• To explore ways in which teacher-learning opportunities are created and developed to allow for teachers' praxis (p 138)
• To draw attention to narrative inquiry AS professional development
• To explore the implications of teacher claimed praxis

Narrative is a medium through which, as human beings, we can understand ourselves and others (Ricoeur, 1991); through which our aspirations, vicissitudes, tensions, and conflicts are expressed (Bruner 2002), and through which we make a selection of important elements of experience that need to be emphasized while discarding less important ones. (p.139)

What is Narrative Inquiry?

• A study of narrative that has become a field of it's own, focusing on it's nature, it's uses and it's significance. (Bruner 2002)
• A legitimate way of knowing and an act of sense making that shapes our conceptions and understandings of the world around us. (Bruner 1986, 1994)

What is Narrative Inquiry?

• A study of narrative that has become a field of it's own, focusing on it's nature, it's uses and it's significance. (Bruner 2002)
• A legitimate way of knowing and an act of sense making that shapes our conceptions and understandings of the world around us. (Bruner 1986, 1994)

In other words... as part of exploration, it is a form of authentic Professional Development through reflective practice that allows teachers to see and act accordingly within the act of teaching (praxis)

This study looked at how narrative inquiry works as a pedagogical medium that invites teachers and students to look at their school experiences from multiple perspectives, helping each other to interrogate their assumptions and taken-for-granted ideas as well as question the disabling context of teaching and learning. (p.139)

Data Collection

• 2007-2008 Graduate Level Courses
• Weekly narratives about teaching and learning practices
• Research literature
• Researcher field notes

Data Analysis

• Narratives as openings for educators to problematize their practices as internalized connections to one's teaching identity, as invitations to live theory, enabling their praxis, and as interdependent within the social context acting as a catalyst of continued renewal (p.140)

Data Analysis

• Dwelling and Building Elicits the Significance of the Other
• Openess Enlarges Self-Understandings Through Engagement with the Other
• Seeing Potentiality Within the Present Transforms Self and Other

1. Dwelling and Building Elicits the Significance of the Other

Inquiry is
investigating and navigating
relational complexities.
(p.141)

...the self-other space assumes open, vulnerable, questioning beings. (p.142)

QUESTION:
What are some of the relational complexities in which you are currently dwelling and building?

2. Openess Enlarges Self-Understandings Through Engagement with the Other

The
capacity to comprehend that there is always more
to be seen
and heard.
(p.142)

What surfaces throughout the process?

Openness of Self

• We make sense of the world through our interactions and engagement with others.
• Human beings desire to be challenged.
• Recognize the intrinsic link between the unfolding of our selves, our understandings & the role of others.

Every encounter with otherness... (p.143)

3. Seeing Potentiality Within the Present Transforms Self and Other

The dynamic nature of knowing which allows for an individual and a collective movement to take place.

The dynamic movement of learning fosters renewed senses of the student and teacher identities, changing and growing as relations are encountered and engaged.
(p.143)

Oneness awakens identities.
p.144

Discussion

• Embrace the process
• Seek possibilities
• Aknowledge self-understanding
• Practice narrative inquiry AS professional development

identities in touch with
self as teacher, self as individual, students and learning contexts

How has YOUR "pedagogical movement" affected or transformed the growth and well-being of OTHERS?

Claiming the Creative Space of Praxis: The Formative Work of Professional Development.

In Conclusion, Narrative Inquiry:

• brings educators near to their practice
• allows for opportunities to look at the past in order to move forward
• requires time to understand the relationships between themselves and otherness (narrative interchange)
• generates stronger internalized teaching identities with a collective sense of purpose (p.145)

RELECTION