Narrative Inquiry as Professional

Development

Karen E. Johnson

Penn State University

March 2008

Narratives: Experience & Continuity

Dewey (1938)Experience - both personal and social (and both are always present)

“People are individuals and need to be understood as such, but they can not be understood only as individuals. They are always in relation, always in a social context.”

Continuity - experiences grow out of other experiences, and experiences lead to further experiences

“Whenever one positions oneself in that continuum-the imagined now, some imagined past, or some imagined future- each point has a past experiential base and leads to an experiential future.”

Narrative Mode of Thought

Bruner (1990)

Humans understand the world in two very different ways:

Paradigmatic mode of thought - seek to comprehend experiences in terms of tightly reasoned analysis, logical proof, and empirical observation

Narrative mode of thought - concerned with human wants, needs, and goals all of which are embedded in human interaction and organized in time

Narratives do not represent an external version of some internal mental entity- rather narratives are a mode of representation of human experience

The social context in which the narrative is related, the narrator’s reason for telling it, the narrator’s narrative competence, and the nature of the audience are all important elements in developing an understanding of the narrative.

Agency is inherent in narratives - the storyteller constructs his/her story based on choices. These choices include determining which story events to disclose to the audience, how to order those events, and whether to edit or enhance the story based on the audience.

A Narrative Epistemological Stance

Doyle (1997) Carter (1993)

Narratives by their very nature are not meant to describe phenomena objectively, but rather to connect phenomena and infuse them with interpretation.

Narratives situate and relate facts to one another, and the essence of

“truth” is how phenomena are connected and interpreted.

Narratives are holistic and cannot be reduced to isolated facts without losing the truth that is being conveyed.

Narrative Analysis: Interpretation & Reinterpretation

Polkinghorne (1983) Sarbin (1986)

2 types of narratives:

Narratives of description – used to create meaning from events in our lives

Narratives of explanation – move beyond meaning and explore causes of life events and their connections with one another

Narratives help us interpret the world – narratives constitute a practical, but also a highly selective, perspective with which we look at the world around us.

Narratives always involve interpretation and reinterpretation.

Narrative Analysis: Structural

Labov (1997) Structural types of narrative clauses

Abstract and orientation – how the speaker defines/positions him/herself and the context in which the event(s) takes place (time, place, participants, initial behavior)

Complicating actions – how an event or set of events emerges (sequentially) and how an event or set of events is constructed and/or understood

Evaluation – what are the consequences of the event or set of events on the speaker or audience or ‘an other’ (sometimes evaluated in term of other events)

Result or resolution – how the complicating actions are resolved and what resources were accessed to help resolve them

Coda – how the speaker, if at all, transforms his/her activities in the future or what was learned by the event or set of events

Narrative Inquiry in Educational Research

Elbaz (1991) “Teachers live in storied lives.”

Narratives (stories) are the tools teachers use to make sense of experience and organize it into a body of practical knowledge.

What teachers choose to inquire about emerges from their personalities, their emotions, their ethics, their contexts, and an overwhelming concern for students.

Narratives capture the complexities of teachers’ practice, trace their professional development over time, and reveal the ways in which they make sense of and reconfigure their work.

The use of narrative has emerged as the predominant means of getting at what teachers know, what they do with what they know, and the sociocultural contexts within which they teach and learn to teach.

Who is in this classroom with me?

by Suzanne House

In (2002) Johnson, K.E. & Golombek, P. (eds) Teachers’ Narrative Inquiry as Professional Development. New York: Cambridge University Press.

ESL 411 Volunteerism

Food Bank “Hunger Knows No Boundaries”

National Volunteer Week

USA Weekend “Make a Difference Day”

ESL 411 Volunteerism - Budget Activity

RentTransportationFood

ClothingInsuranceEducation

ESL 411 Volunteerism - Poster Session

Dialogues Around “Social Identity, Investment, and Language Learning”

by Bonnie Norton Peirce

(1995) TESOL Quarterly, 29 (1) 9-31

Who are students allowed to be in this classroom?

How might this positioning of students affect their language learning?

“Now dash away, dash away, dash away all!”