Narrative Inquiry for Science Education: Teachers’ repertoire‐making in the case of environmental curriculum

This paper considers how the school science curriculum can be conceptualised in order to address the contingent and complex nature of environmental and sustainability‐related knowledge and understanding. A special concern lies in the development of research perspectives and tools for investigating ways, in which teachers are faced with complex and various situations in the sense‐making of science‐related issues, and subsequent pedagogic issues. Based on an empirical examination of Korean teachers’ sense‐making of their curricular practice, the paper develops a narrative approach to teachers’ perspectives and knowledge by considering the value of stories as sense‐making tools for reflective questioning of what is worth teaching, how and why. By employing the idea of ‘repertoire’, the study regards teachers’ stories about their environment‐related personal and teaching experiences as offering angles with which to understand teachers’ motivation and reflection in curricular development and implementation. Furthermore, three empirical cases present ways in which the nature of knowledge and understanding is recognised and potentially integrated into pedagogies through teachers’ narratives. Finally, the paper argues for the need to reconsider the role of the science teacher in addressing environmental and sustainability‐related issues, in ways that facilitate teachers’ reflexive interpretation of meanings in cultural texts and the construction of pedagogic text.     

Narrative analysis: exploring experiences of observational drawing and dyspraxia

Narrative analysis offers a powerful and accessible means of understanding the ways in which individuals experience learning across a range of educational sites. Drawing on a recent study that explored ‘dyspraxic’ pupils' experiences of drawing from observation, this paper offers an insight into the potential that narrative analysis has for enhancing our understanding of the ways in which individuals experience complex contexts for learning, where the fields of art education, ‘special’ education and inclusion intersect. I argue here that a narrative approach can enhance our understanding of pupils' experiences of learning by a capacity to resist the compartmentalization of experience. The ‘natural’ drive to use narrative as an interpretive procedure for explaining departures from the ‘norm’ is also discussed, with the concepts of ‘breach and exception’ offering a useful frame for exploring the spaces between centres of practice in art education and the potentially ‘de-centred’ ‘dyspraxic’ learner.     

Writing and Dialogue In,and Around,a Senior Secondary Literature Classroom

The tradition of teachers engaging in narrative-based inquiry is now well established, as is its value for creating situated knowledge about teaching. This reflexive autobiographical article weaves together narrative accounts around a senior literature classroom environment. The article features two voices: a teacher (Natalie Bellis) and a Year 12 literature student (Jessica Garcia). Through this process of narrative inquiry, the teacher reflects on her experiences of exploring literary texts with senior students within a landscape of high-stakes assessment. In this way, the teacher engages with Dorothy Smith’s notion of ‘writing the social’, by using narrative to illuminate and critically inquire into the lived experience of teaching and learning. The motif, or thread, that binds these three narrative accounts is the act of letter-writing, which serves as a metaphor for the foregrounding of the personal within a context that is shaped by external forces that can result in conformity and generality. This tension between the ‘local actualities’ of experiences and the institutional structures that govern them is theorised using de Certeau’s metaphor of the city map.     

Education policy and the ‘inter’‐regnum

In the UK, the vocabulary of public services is becoming infused with the prefixes ‘inter’‐, ‘multi‐’ and ‘co‐’. Public‐sector agencies are being encouraged to adopt ‘multi’‐ or ‘inter‐agency’ configurations; ‘workforce reform’ seeks to dissolve once‐impermeable professional boundaries; leadership is to be ‘distributed’. This tendency is referred to as the ‘inter’‐regnum in education policy. (This does not mean that we are dealing with an ‘interregnum’ in the sense that we are somehow between modes of governance.) The term ‘regnum’ is used to emphasise that this propensity for the ‘inter’ is asserting itself as a new ‘reigning philosophy’. Examples of the ‘inter’‐regnum are presented from the UK (mainly England), and these are located conceptually within an analysis of hierarchies, markets and networks. Thereafter the cultural, intellectual and economic contexts which allow for the ‘inter’‐regnum to emerge as policy are explored. The ‘inter’‐regnum draws its legitimacy from a number of sources. First, it resonates with the culture of consumerism, and it takes further that earlier market‐based regime of governance which was associated with the new public management. Second, it is functional for the ‘new capitalism’ as a new work order of affinity‐ and solution‐spaces. Third, it has important intellectual supports: that is, in addition to its association with recent marketing theory, it can appeal to emerging theory and research in organisational learning.     

Limitations of language: developing arts‐based creative narrative in stories of teachers’ identities

This paper is based on a multidimensional study employing a heuristic methodology termed ‘creative narrative’ that combines arts‐based methods with narrative inquiry. Six female teachers’ narratives of identity are explored through artistic, visual images to illuminate if and how they story ‘unconscious’. The creative narratives, illuminated through a multi‐layered extract from one creative narrative, illustrate various ways in which the participants imputed meaning and power to tacit and non‐conscious influences which were emotionally potent but previously hidden from themselves and others and that continued to affect their professional identities. The paper argues that such unconscious or non‐conscious dimensions to teachers’ lives are crucial to the experience and exercise of professional identity and yet are largely absent from our understandings and outside the capture of narrative inquiry as it is presently conceptualized. Narrative inquiry should strive to extend its theoretical boundaries and incorporate non‐verbal arts‐based research methods in order to go beyond the limits of language and capture the meaning of lived experience in more holistic ways.     

Personal Narratives and Policy: Never the Twain?

In this article the extent to which stories and personal narratives can and should be used to inform education policy is examined. A range of studies describable as story or personal narrative is investigated. They include life‐studies, life‐writing, life history, narrative analysis, and the representation of lives. We use ‘auto/biography’ as a convenient way of grouping this range under one term. It points to the many and varied ways that accounts of self interrelate and intertwine with accounts of others. That is, auto/biography illuminates the social context of individual lives. At the same time it allows room for unique, personal stories to be told. We do not explicitly discuss all the different forms of auto/biography. Rather, we investigate the epistemology underlying the personal story in the context of social action. We discuss the circumstances in which a story may validly be used by educational policy makers and give some examples of how they have done so in the past.     

Research and practice in science education: a response to Traianou and Hammersley

A reader of Traianou and Hammersley’s article (in this issue), which discusses at some length the work we undertook in the Evidence‐based Practice in Science Education (EPSE) Research Network, might attribute to us views that are rather different from those which we in fact hold, and which we have sought to present in our own accounts of this work. We highlight several points on which their interpretation of our work and views differs markedly from ours. The aim of the EPSE Network was to explore the practical implications of ‘evidence‐based practice’ in the context of a mainstream curriculum subject such as science, not to advocate any particular interpretation of that term. We would encourage readers interested in the relationship between research and practice in the teaching of specific subjects to base their view of our work, and the perspectives underpinning it, on our own account.     

On being transgressive in educational research! An autoethnography of borders

Autoethnography and narrative inquiry, with their focus on researching the personal dimensions of human experience, are overlapping realms within the field of qualitative research. While the dominant ways of knowing and researching in the academy remain that of empirical observation and critical analysis from a distanced perspective, these approaches attribute little meaning to the culturally relevant and reflexive accounts of those involved in the autoethnographic and narrative inquiry. In this paper, I critically reflect on my experiences of negotiating identities as an academic and educational researcher over time against a backdrop of professional anxieties produced by policy and political imperatives that have increasingly pervaded modern higher education in the UK. Adopting an autoethnographic style, I contemplate the complexities and opportunities that have inscribed my various identities as an educational researcher over a career, crossing from traditional research to creative narrative and arts-informed approaches.     

Editorial

Along with the narrative turn in social sciences, the quality of research has become a more and more intricate issue. Action research reports are often narratives, located in the context of the evolving experiences of those involved. In this paper, the problem of quality in action research narratives is addressed, and some principles for assessing the quality of narrative research reports are proposed. The issue is explored both at a theoretical‐conceptual level and through a number of practical cases from the narrative‐biographical research project TeacherLife. As narrative researchers, the authors are not willing to accept an extremely relativistic stand. They argue the need for conceptual tools to grasp the problem of quality of narratives, but tools different from the traditional concepts of validity and reliability, which harbour markedly positivistic connotations. They propose five principles for judging the quality of action research from a narrative point of view. According to these principles, a good action research narrative firstly acknowledges the past course of events that have shaped the present practices (the principle of historical continuity). Secondly and thirdly, it is reflexive (the principle of reflexivity) and elaborates the story dialectically (the principle of dialectics). Fourthly, a decisive criterion for successful action research is that it produces some useable practices that, in one way or another, can be regarded as useful (the principle of workability). The authors agree with Aristotle, who claims that a good narrative involves a balance between ‘logos’, ‘ethos’ and ‘pathos’. They place emphasis on ‘ethos’ and ‘pathos’ through a principle of evocativeness. These criteria are not proposing as an established checklist, and the authors point to the overlap between some of them. They are drawn from experience in supervising action research projects, evaluating narrative reports and encouraging people to write authentic narratives of their research work.     

Philosophy and Educational Research: a reply to David Bridges et al.

It is argued that, contrary to much contemporary opinion, ‘conceptual analysis’ is not to be seen as a particular ‘school’ of philosophical thought beyond which we have now passed. It is, rather, a practice: an inter‐personal engagement which seeks to clarify meaning without making any ‘assumptions’ and without the benefit of ‘theory’. The necessity of this practice for educational research, indeed for any sharing of minds between people, is obvious: the difficulty lies rather in our own impatience and reluctance to engage in it.     

Literacy,subjectivity and the gender divide: ‘the freedom of writing implies the freedom of the citizen’ (Sartre, 1948)

The aim of the research project was to explore new ways in which we might evaluate boys’ and girls’ engagement and ‘performance’ in English at Key Stage 3. This paper draws on recent theories regarding literacy, identity and gender and includes an analysis of short stories written by boys and girls aged 12‐ to 13‐years‐old. An exploration of literacy, which relates here to the pupils’ treatment of theme, style and structure, will develop further an understanding of their ability to access the imagination and express original creative ideas. This discussion suggests ways to develop the teaching of creative writing and explores to what extent reading pupils’ narrative fiction might reveal their cultural literacy.     

Dialogical aspects of reflective learning in ministerial work

This article examines reflective and reflexive aspects of practice in the area of ministerial work. Through an analysis of the narrative accounts of four Reform and Conservative rabbis in Israel, the author focuses on how congregational rabbis acquire the skill of attentiveness in their daily professional lives. One of the salient themes to emerge in research conducted on models of rabbinic leadership was the theme of ‘careful listening’. Rabbis in non-Orthodox congregations in Israel achieve success through their ability to perceive the needs of individual congregants and learn the local culture of the communities in which they work, and by constantly assessing and reassessing the unmet needs of the broader community. The article concludes with a discussion of how a technical rationality model of learning has dominated modern rabbinical school curricula and suggests that by incorporating reflexive professional development courses, students could be better prepared for the ministry.     

Students' Meaning‐making of Socio‐scientific Issues in Computer Mediated Settings: Exploring learning through interaction trajectories

This article reports on a study concerning secondary school students’ meaning‐making of socio‐scientific issues in Information and Communication Technology‐mediated settings. Our theoretical argument has as its point of departure the analytical distinction between ‘doing science’ and ‘doing school,’ as two different forms of classroom activity. In the study we conducted an analysis of students working with web‐based groupware systems concerned with genetics. The analysis identified how the students oriented their accounts of scientific concepts and how they attempted to understand the socio‐scientific task in different ways. Their orientations were directed towards finding scientific explanations, towards exploring the ethical and social consequences, and towards ‘fact‐finding.’ The students’ different orientations seemed to contribute to an ambivalent tension, which, on the one hand, was productive because it urged them into ongoing discussions and explicit meaning‐making. On the other hand, however, the tension elucidated how complex and challenging collaborative learning situations can be. Our findings suggest that in order to obtain a deeper understanding of students’ meaning‐making of socio‐scientific issues in Information and Communication Technology‐mediated settings, it is important not only to address how students perform the activity of ‘doing science.’ It is equally important to be sensitive with respect to how students orient their talk and activity towards more or less explicit values, demands, and expectations embedded in the educational setting. In other words, how students perform the activity of ‘doing school.’     

Haraway's ‘bag lady story-telling’: relocating childhood and learning within a ‘post-human landscape’

In this article, we explore some alternate ways of approaching childhood and learning by taking three short forays into what Donna Haraway calls a ‘post-human landscape’. This exploration takes us beyond the horizons of orthodox educational approaches, in which the individual child is typically seen to be developing and learning within his/her (exclusively human) sociocultural context. The post-human landscape relocates childhood within a world that is much bigger than us (humans) and about more than our (human) concerns. It allows us to reconsider the ways in which children are both constituted by and learn within this more-than-human world. Adopting Haraway's feminist narrative strategy, we offer three very different ‘bag lady’ stories that consider the ethics and politics of child/non-human animal cross-species encounters. Each of these stories gestures towards the ways in which we can learn to live with ‘companion species’ rather than only ever learn about them.     

Storying Joanne, 1 an undergraduate mathematician

In this article two different accounts are juxtaposed. In one, we use a variety of texts to narrate the story of Joanne, a woman undergraduate student of mathematics. Like many of our mature students Joanne came to the university with a ‘non‐traditional’ academic background. We describe how Joanne developed as a learner of mathematics and connect this to our ways of working in the undergraduate mathematics classroom. We believe that our pedagogy is unusual outside (some) school classrooms and suggest it allows our students to develop positive ‘disciplinary relationships’. In the other, we grapple with the issues raised by telling other people’s stories especially when we are also characters within it. Our intention has been that, in interweaving these two threads, each helps us understand more about the other.     

Sociology and Music Education: a further response to Swanwick

This paper is a response to Professor Swanwick's further critique of our sociological perspective on music education. We argue that criticisms made in relation to our positions on referenlialism, the ability of people to appreciate music cross‐culturally, and the various analytic categories of Meyer, Chester and Keil are all grounded in a desire to isolate the essence of ‘music’ from social and cultural processes. We further argue that the difficulties perceived with our positions do not follow from a belief in the culture‐specific significance of different musics per se, but rather from overly rigid and sometimes mistaken interpretation of our perspective. Finally, we point to the danger of assuming a cross‐cultural category, ‘music’, when many cultures have no equivalent word and use what we understand as ‘music’ in ways vastly different to ourselves.     

Heidegger,Education and the ‘Cult of the Authentic’

Within educational philosophies that utilise the Heideggerian idea of ‘authenticity’ there can be distinguished at least two readings that correspond with the categories of ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ utopianism. ‘Strong‐utopianism’ is the nostalgia for some lost Edenic paradise to be restored at some future time. Here it is the ‘world’ that needs to be transcended for it is the source of our inauthenticity, where we are the puppets of modernist‐capitalist ideologies. ‘Authenticity’ here is a value‐judgment, understood as something that makes you a better person. The ‘inauthentic’ person is simply deceived. ‘Weak‐utopianism’ is recognising the forces for change in the ‘everyday‐immanent’ where we do not look to overcome the world but own it as ‘heritage’. ‘Authenticity’ here is an ontological choice, a modification of inauthenticity, not its opposite. The ‘cult of the authentic’ relates to the ‘strong utopianism’ where ‘authenticity’ has become fetishized, harking back to a purer, pre‐modern state, untainted by the ideals of the Enlightenment and ethos of capitalism. ‘Authentic education’ is the overcoming of our environments and socio‐historical contexts, opening up new horizons of meaning. The radical notion of freedom that this implies, where one is free from rather than free in the realisation of constraint, may also be another dividing line between the ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ readings, which lend themselves to a Messianic narrative. It will be argued that if ‘authentic education’ is understood through a ‘strong utopianism’ it actually re‐enforces those very same dystopian ideals they look to overcome as characterised by ‘enframing’.     

Learning with vital materialities: weather assemblage pedagogies in early childhood education

Abstract

Early Childhood Education in general, and Early Childhood Education for Sustainability in particular, have dominantly relied on an ontological framework that privileges children’s agency. This paper challenges this dominant narrative by attuning to the everyday ways in which children are moved by the weather within a multitude of weather assemblages. It attempts to illustrate how ‘learning’ could be achieved when bodies come in relation with, and are able to be affected by, other bodies. Drawing on ideas from post-qualitative research orientation that highlights weather-generated data, the paper elucidates how the weather acts on and comes into relation with humans and non-human bodies. It contends that noticing and engaging with the vitality of weather offers possibilities for creating affects and that this potentially leads to an attunement towards ecological sensibility. Notions such as ‘vital materiality’ and ‘lively assemblages’ are discussed as a possibility to go beyond an anthropocentric understanding of the weather, which could pave the way towards a more relational ontology as a basis for emphasizing human’s ‘inter and intra-dependence’ with non-human nature, and hence, arguably, sustainable living.