Narrative in Teaching and Learning- Teacher as a Researcher

At the first time when I looked at the word ‘Narrative’, I had no idea what it exactly indicates and was also confused what narrative inquiry is in reading assigned article by Gabriella Minnes Brandes and Lynn Fels. So I searched on the internet and found the meaning of ‘narrative inquiry’. Wikipedia says that narrative inquiry is an approach to understanding or researching the way people make meaning of their lives as narratives. Narrative Inquiry is not same with storytelling in that the word narrative implies an audience and a narrator. Narrative inquirers’ interest is not what happened so much as what meaning did people make of what happened. I think narrative inquiry is important for teacher to understand how his/her students think about activities in class and how much students acquired from those activities. Teacher can get new insights from them and improve their teaching method and learning tools by doing narrative research. Therefore, they need to listen seriously to their stories of experiences as learners.
In doing narrative research, it should be cared to listen to not only students but also parents, other less powerful people like First Nation parents and co-workers (the principal, other teacher, the school nurse, cooks, school cleaners and caretakers) according to Reetta Niemi, Hannu L.T. Heikkinen & Lasse Kannas (2010). It is because each of them would have had a different point of view of the methods and pedagogy used in class. Teacher should not miss their voice! Teacher can connect with their parents through emails, telephone conversations and letters and etc. I think it is important for teacher to support the sense of community between the school and students’ homes.

Teaching Standards and Blooms Taxonomy

The article on Bloom’s taxonomy and the overview of questioning strategies was a succinct examination of the six levels of competence that as educators we need to assess for in our development of curricular learning activities (knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation). I found it fascinating that the list came from a UBC student counselling service because I had not really given thought to them being a student resource before. In education courses we have explored Bloom’s taxonomy as it relates to curriculum development and organization of subject unit plans. However, in retrospect I can see how it would be a powerful learning tool for students specifically intermediate students who are engaged in abstract thinking and making connections among different subjects. Giving the students the taxonomy table is similar to a grading rubric as it gives them access to the necessary criteria to take responsibility for their own learning. I can see that as educators we need to ensure that all six competencies are included in our lessons and that our assessment practices include information gathered in all areas as well.

I couldn’t stop thinking as I read table how most of the course has concerned itself with the synthesis competence stage. We have been engaged primarily in the act of integration of classroom management theory within the experience of our personal and educational constructs. As we have read the articles and participated in classroom discussions we have made personal sense and connections to the material. Recognizing our learning styles has given us an insight into our strengths as an educator and illuminated opportunities of growth. The orientation of instructional intelligence or reflective practice that we have incorporated this semester is illustrative of Bloom’s stage of evaluative competence. Our task has been to assess our own performance, justify our decisions, and seek to extend our teaching effectiveness through creating a classroom where instructional strategies, and management techniques coalesce into a vibrant and student centered learning environment.


I think that the ability to interweave curriculum, with instructional skills, in a framework that is powerful for student learning is the goal of all teachers. The ongoing challenge is to articulate who I am as a teacher and to embrace that as I move from theory to practice. Teaching standards demand a high level of organization, proactive management and critical assessment of students and of our own teaching effectiveness. The lens of evaluation is a two way instrument: trained outwardly towards our students and inwardly in self-reflection of our own teaching effectiveness. Both are equally important if we are to become the educators we envision.

Narrative in Teaching & Learning - Belated Post

My apologies on being late with this posting; I misread DC’s requirements for the previous week.  As Lisa points out in her post, narrative is the essence of reflection.  Our personal experiences are deeply meaningful to us, and we need to provide opportunities for our students to become engaged in activities that make sense to them.  My Curriculum Educ 471 offered that enriching opportunity; we are asked to prepare two projects that held personal special meaning and support that with an educational rationale.

The first project was a geographical place that held meaning for us, and how we could integrate that place throughout our chosen grade curriculum, and the second project was an area that we felt should be included in the curriculum and why.  All of the presentations were extraordinary (and practical) because of the meaning we attached to them and highlighted the passion of the presenter. 

In my on-line Language Arts course, there was an assignment to create a found poem from a piece of text that deeply resonated with us.  We all had the opportunity to read each other’s moving and very creative poems.  The rationale behind the individual chosen texts was also interesting, often because we could connect with that text if we were familiar with it. 

Sagar offered up a good reading facilitation last week and had an interesting outside source...one area we discussed was how curriculum design could be affected by personality types.  Would a SJ type be more rigid and content driven vs. a NF type?

Inquiry into sane education

A definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.

Herein we find the key to inquiry's necessity. (And this is the last time I'll make a sentence rhyme.) Any teacher who has the integrity and self-awareness to admit areas of limitation and incompleteness must admit room for growth, and growth will require change. How then will the growing teacher decide what changes need to be made? I much prefer the language of 'inquiry' to 'research' but however we name it this process of intentional exploration and analysis for the sake of discovery must be a part of any reflective teacher's practice.

The sort of questions we ask will shape the answers we are willing to accept, and so I believe self-awareness and openness to exploring our own weaknesses will establish the most fertile ground from which our questions may grow. If we are afraid of losing control or authority within our classroom then we may not be willing to ask whether our students could manage an hour a day of self-directed learning. If we are rigidly stuck in the ubiquitous assumption that letter grades are an inevitable part of the education system, then we may not be willing to explore possible alternatives.

Real inquiry will take us places we may not wish to go; growing to accept this natural discomfort and the uncertainty that comes with stepping foot onto new territory will become a part of the inquiring teacher's learning curve. The teacher as inquirer is one who willingly enters a collegial relationship with students, learning along with those she is privileged to teach. Of course the process of inquiry will ever-broaden the teacher's ken and domain of expertise, yet this does not predict an end to inquiry. While a teacher will grow in knowledge and wisdom, neither of these is a finite category and so the developing teacher will always be able to walk alongside her students in the act of inquiry. Teachers may share their wealth of knowledge and from this, new questions will arise and students will contribute their own ration of light and vantage point from which unexpected alleyways of inquiry will become visible.

The process of inquiry therefore requires not only integrity, humility, and a certain emotional fortitude and courage from the teacher, but also assumes that learning is a collaborative process that happens within a community of learners which extends to include the teacher as well. This is how I hope to practice inquiry within my own classroom one day.
-Mark

Our evaluations point their fingers back at us

I am grateful for our class reading in which Mamchur exposes the following six ‘evaluation traps’: 1. MEASURING WHAT’S EASIEST TO MEASURE, 2. UNDERSETIMATING THE LEARNING EMBEDDED IN EVALUATION, 3. REDUCTION, 4. UNEXAMINED POWER, 5. INEFFECTIVE FEEDBACK, 6. IGNORING INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES.

When I reflect on my own experience somewhat painfully moving through the public education system, I would say that my education suffered most from traps (1) and (6). To a certain extent these are flip sides of the same coin. A lack of awareness or care for different ways in which students learn, may legitimize teachers’ tendency to evaluate only that which is easily measured. This always lead to frustration for me as I was a rather eccentric and perhaps even volatile learner! I have always been a person of deeply passionate curiosity, yet tragically undisciplined when bored. I am not proud of my inability to muster discipline to study that which holds no interest for me, but I have come to accept that unless and until I can find an ‘entry point’ for my curiosity then I will fail to produce any work worthy of appreciation. I wish with a great nostalgic longing that my elementary teachers had allowed me to explore the many subjects that I so loved: reptiles and amphibians and their habitats, and anything out of doors; how to survive in the wilderness; creating physical sculptures and buildings out of unwanted scrap materials; etc. I was an energetic, bodily-kinesthetic, naturalist-environmental learner. How could my various inquisitive projects have been be evaluated? Well give me a chance to tell you what I’ve learned and I would offer it with exuberant dedication. No, I could not create a classically beautifuL poster, but I could build you something strangely symbolic of my project out of cardboard and scribe explanatory text over its rough surface. I had sadly been given such an inadequate and boring introduction to poetry that I hated English for it (an ‘education’ that utterly destroyed interest in poetry until I reached university and a refreshing professor with real light in her eyes unveiled the true beauty of poetic wordsmithing). However if a teacher who loved language had taught me poetry, I would have joyfully played with the language to create and speak aloud my learning progress.

Instead of any of this I received meaningless grades from an evaluator I didn’t trust or honour anyway. I teetered on the edge of failure in most classes until grade ten, when I started earning highest grades simply to smugly prove my intelligence to a doubtful teacher (this is a pathetic external motivation to ‘succeed’ academically, but it’s as much as I could muster in the education system that forced me through itself like so much digested fodder). I did not feel any room was made for my learning style in school. I don’t feel I yet know a solution, except frankly that more time and energy, more care must be dedicated to really knowing each student and honouring his humanity and natural joy in learning. For this classes should be smaller, interests should be encouraged and classic disciplines taught *through* them, and there should be an educational teaching team for every classroom. If the school system doesn’t allow teachers the time and energy to do this, well that shows where our societal values fail our students.

I will be a part of that system and hope to change what I can from within, but ultimately I expect I will fail some students along the way, just as I was failed by many teachers.
All I can do is struggle to really meet the students in my care where they are at, to honour their strengths and nurture their natural desire to learn, no matter how bruised and wounded this desire may be. I will explore with them how they might grow as learners and will listen to their questions and interests as sincerely as I am able. I will tell them how things look from my vantage point and hope to listen to their acceptance or rejection of my evaluations. I will try to explain what I think might be helpful, and will offer as much aid as they will receive. I hope to explore evaluation criteria together with my students, and leave room for accomplishments I could not have anticipated. So much of this cannot be outlined before entering the unique relationship with each student. I have my personal story and it shapes the sort of evaluator I will be. Always evaluating my own practices and looking for the strengths in my students should set the trajectory of my assessment practices.

-Mark Northey

Ubuntu

Vygotsky recognized the essential role social context plays in the developing cognition of young learners. Learning is not an isolated test-tube event, but an integrated process of internalizing the understanding received and accepted by competent others with whom one is in dialogue and relationship. The progress of a young learning mind therefor depends on the vitality of this invested social body; once a student is cognitively prepared to progress he will be able to benefit from experienced and caring others who will nurture further learning.

I am deeply appreciative of Vygotsky’s wisdom to recognize the essential social and relational context in which learning takes place. It reminds me actually of literary theorist and anthropologist René Girard’s rather recent intellectual ‘discovery’ of mimesis: the imitative nature of human desire. (Really this has been understood by prayerful mystics for thousands of years; however for something as deeply true about human nature to penetrate the defensive hubris generated by modern academia and reach recognition and acceptance, well it really is a striking discovery in such self-absorbed modern intellectual circles.)

Similar to Vygotsky, Girard has uncovered the social underpinnings of human desire by astutely observing commonalities among the world’s greatest literature in how conflict is generated: in contrast to simplistic modern adages that attribute all violent conflict to differences and not ‘getting along’, Girard demonstrates that a certain most dangerous species of violence is not born of difference but precisely resides in proximity, similarity, and getting along famously. Only with someone close to ourselves and alike to us, do we come to share competing desire for one and the same thing. From this mimetic desire, rivalry is born and violent conflict may erupt if the object of this shared desire cannot itself be shared. (In great literature then, Girard recognizes that it is often a romantic partner who comes between two characters very much alike, since this special object of desire can never be shared by two rivals).

Only in a triumphantly individualistic culture can it come as great surprise that everything from human desire to intellectual development is highly dependent upon and shaped by our social context and relationships. As educators we should accept even greater responsibility to reach each learner where she is at, with the knowledge that her learning is dependent on caring intervention and nurturing collaboration with those around her. Yet there is a foolish irony if teachers are expected to appreciate multiple learning styles while simultaneously assuming no specific teaching style particular to themselves and their own distinct personalities. While educators must do their very best to teach students in various diverse ways sensitive to the differences among them, we also need to admit our own strengths and preferences endemic to our personality and expressed in our own teaching style. For me this has meant a tendency toward bodily-kinesthetic and naturalistic-environmental instruction. I am deeply inclined in these directions myself and feel some legitimacy to emphasize these learning styles given that they are typically terribly neglected by teachers, to the learning atrophy and boredom of many students and I would suggest especially young boys.

My interest and even passion to teach out of doors and in a multi-sensory, bodily-kinesthetic way, will make me more suited to some students and less to others. It is my responsibility as an educator to recognize this bias in my teaching style and be ever-vigilant in my efforts to reach those students not as easily engaged by my typical instruction emphasis. Nevertheless I believe that teachers teach who we are, and our genuine enthusiasm counts for a great deal that may be ‘lost’ due to our natural limitations being specific persons with specific personalities. My own pedagogical vision will entail certain challenges, but these create some of the beauty that collaborative learning and a diverse, communal classroom can have. I don’t want to be everything to everyone, and I know I cannot be. But I can always strive to be my best for each student in my care; to see her as she really is and to offer what strength I have to nurture her love of learning along the path of discovery.

UBUNTU: A person is only a person through other persons.

-Mark Northey

[NOTE: I was away at camp during this blog post]

Narrative in Teaching and Learning- Teacher as a Researcher

Before reading the article, I never thought of a teacher as a researcher; however, a teacher is a researcher. Narrative in teaching can be a teacher who is able to explore his/her teaching, his/her classroom, so that they can improve their teaching, comes out with more new ideas, and then apply all of them into the classroom teaching; or, teaching students the real experiences from ourselves or others; therefore, makes the class more informatively, interesting and unforgettable.

One of my education professors used to record the lectures; therefore, after the class, the professor can review the whole class. Because sometimes when you teach, in your dimension, you as a teacher and students are all objects you can observe; therefore, you are easily ignore a lot of familiar elements that effect your teaching quality. However, if you see the lecture record after the class, teacher becomes an audience; view the interaction between teachers (which is him/herself) and students in the classroom. Using different point of view to observe students’ performance, reflect ourselves teaching really makes our teaching different.