Narrative research into the possibilities of classroom-generated stories in English teacher education (original) (raw)
The Archeology and Ideological Stances of Narratives in English Language Teaching Research
Ars Artium, Vol. 10, 2022
English Language teachers have been engaging in narrative analysis and using restorying as a technique to unravel their own and their peers previously storied learning-to-teach experiences, concepts, and self-understandings for about two decades now. One of the goals of narrative research in English Language Teaching (ELT) is to increase understanding of central issues related to teaching and learning through the telling and retelling of teachers’ stories. Narrative research inquires into narratives made by the chosen participants. It utilizes story-telling as a way of communicating participants’ realities to a larger audience. Narrative researchers collect data about people’s lives and construct meanings with the help of their experiences. It is a methodology in which the researcher attempts to present the meanings of personal stories and events. Narratives can be good tools to understanding an individual’s experiences and help ELT researchers to obtain an “insider view” on the issues of learning and teaching of English. Stories told by a participant also provide a deeper understanding of the issues that arise in the relationship between the participant and the researcher. The aim of this paper is to explore the history and the ideological stances of narrative inquiry, and revisit the growing popularity of narrative approach to ELT researches. This article discusses types, characteristics and techniques of narrative research in ELT along with the potential challenges of using narratives in ELT researches.
A case study of narrative inquiry within EFL teacher education in Argentina
English Language Teacher Education and Development (ELTED) 16 (Spring): 18-26, 2014
This paper summarizes a narrative inquiry carried out with a selection of undergraduates attending the subject Overall Communication in the English as a Foreign Language Teacher Education Program (EFLTEP), School of Humanities, Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Argentina. After exploring heroic representations in two Irish motion pictures, students recounted noteworthy yet ‘unheroic’ lives. Next, they wrote about the existences they had narrated, revised class events, and provided further comments. Themes materialized in these texts were studied narratively in their local EFLTEP milieu to underscore the significance of narrative inquiry in EFLTE and professional development.
Concepts and Methods for Using Narrative in Teacher Education
2011
Someone tells you a story. It seems wrong. It misrepresents someone you care about. But it has been told by someone you do not want to offend or contradict. What do you do? You feel you must say something-set the record straight, absolve your friend, clarify your relationship to her, assert your view on what is right and wrong. How do stories provoke this sense of urgency? When a story is told and interpreted, nothing less than truth, power, morality, and individual agency can be at stake, and these stakes are too high to ignore. The stories analyzed in this book illustrate that narratives bring into play those elements that bring meaning to life. . .
There is an increasing awareness that teaching is a practice where moral action is inseparable from pedagogical action and where wise deliberation or reflection on what course of action to take as an educator is an important part of being a good teacher. This paper will focus on rethinking the role of narratives as an articulation of such practical knowledge and the enrichment they might bring to a teacher’s pedagogical imagination. Working within a conceptual framework drawing on Schön and Aristotle, the study presents a group of narratives describing successful conflict resolution told by students at a newly launched teacher education program. These are discussed as part of a teachers’ practice repertoire and the argument is made that the local and personal repertoires of practitioners need to be complemented with elements from the repertoire of others, something systematic research into narratives of teaching in action can be part of.
This is a narrative study into the co-construction of teaching identities narrated by twenty-four undergraduate students in the context of an English language teacher education program in Argentina. Teacher identities are defined in the literature as co-authored stories of living and becoming. Our method uses narrative inquiry to study lived experiences as co-nar-rated phenomena. The narrative analysis of different texts gathered in the teacher education program allowed the co-composition of each participant’s identity story. Results first display thematizations of identity strands in these narratives involving emotions—love, desire, imagi-nation, and fluidity. Next, participants’ negotiation of their processes of becoming through these emotions are retold. The discussion examines results considering state-of-the-art literature. The conclusions summarize the implications of the research for English language teacher initial university education
Whose Narrative Is It?: Ethical Issues when Using Drama with Teacher Narratives
International Journal of Education the Arts, 2004
The authors describe ethical issues they have encountered when teachers develop narratives about their own practice and then again when these narratives are later explored using drama techniques. Specifically, they look at the developmental process itself, both in the creation of the original narrative and the subsequent creation of a dramatic text. They also examine the climate of trust and respect that needs to be in place when teachers share narratives especially when the author of the narrative is not known. Issues of power relationships also arise especially when soliciting narratives from pre-service teachers and sharing them with wider audiences. (Note 1) Other people's stories-those are the ones I crave. … Not the stories I already know, but the ones I haven't heard yet: the ones that will show me a way out of here. … The point is to find sense. (Barbara Kingsolver, 1995, p 156.) There is a good reason why there is a narrative or story at the heart of most drama/theatre practice. Narratives are an integral part of our lives and, in fact, of our basic human condition. Earlier cultures taught their children, passed on their cultural heritage, and recorded their history through stories. Research tells us that knowing narrative structure is a precondition for literacy in children (Wagner, 1998). Teaching is more effective when done through stories as the narrative structure is more easily understood and recorded in our minds (Bruner, 1986, as cited in Jalongo & Isenberg, 1995). Sharing stories helps to create common bonds and a sense of community (Atkinson, 1995). Narratives help us know who we are and unite us in times of trouble. We know narratives or formal stories are also powerful tools in learning, teaching, and research because for nearly ten years now, we have used them in one form or another as a part of teaching and learning educational drama. Educational drama differs from theatre in that it is designed more for the benefit of the participants rather than for an outside audience. As Wagner (1998) notes, "The goal of educational drama is to create an experiences through which students may come to understand human interactions, empathize with other people and alternative points of view" (p. 5). In classrooms, stories are used as texts when students recreate them using story dramatization or pretexts when a story becomes a jumping off place to create a new text or drama world using process drama (O'Neill, 1995). Students share personal narratives as part of their work in drama, and, most importantly, classes
Staying with the detail: The use of story as a pedagogical tool within teacher education
Abstract What is story? How do we, two teacher educators, use 'storytelling'as a pedagogical tool with prospective teachers? There are two versions of what 'story'means to us that we want to explore in this paper. The first is from Bateson's book 'Mind and Nature','a story is a little knot or complex of that species of connectedness which we call relevance… the notion of context, of pattern through time.'(pp.
Storytelling and professional learning
Isla Proceeding of the International Seminar on Langaugers and Arts, 2012
This paper begins by reflecting on the role that story-telling plays in our lives, drawing on a range of theoretical resources to affirm the value of storytelling as 'the central function or instance of the human mind' (to borrow the words of Fredric Jameson, 1981, p.13). The paper then moves on to ask why story-telling is not given the prominence it deserves in school education, and then considers ways in which classrooms might be reconceptualized as storytelling sites, in which teachers and their pupils come together to share their experiences by exchanging stories. The main focus of the paper, however, is on the heuristic value of storytelling as a form of professional learning and practitioner inquiry. This will include reflecting on the importance of autobiographical writing as a vehicle through which educators can develop a reflexive practice that is sensitive to the values and beliefs of the young people they teach. I will also be looking at how teachers can learn by writing stories about their day-today professional practice, drawing on my long-time collaboration with Douglas McClenaghan, an English teacher who works in a state school in Melbourne (Doecke and McClenaghan, 2011). To conclude the paper I will also consider the role that storytelling has played in a major project in which I have been engaged, namely the development of the Standards for Teachers of English Language and Literacy in Australia (STELLA), focusing on the teacher narratives published on the STELLA website (stella.org.au). A key aim of the paper is to show how teacher educators working in tertiary institutions and school teachers can develop collaborative research partnerships by focusing on the stories that teachers tell about their work.