Stories that stayed "under the skin"

This paper is a critical reflection on students' withholding of relevant personal stories in a college classroom which was uniquely designed to validate and welcome them. The instructor in Stories Under the Skin, an interdisciplinary course in history of science at Harvard, generously shared her own stories in lectures, regularly called upon students' subjective judgement, and engaged them in explicit discussion of the value of personal experience as evidence. Still, students' reactions were those of hesitancy and questioning the appropriateness of personal stories in an academic or scientific discussion. The qualitative lens used in this research not only helps capture the polyphony of student opinions on the subject, but also serves as a key point of debate about the use of interpretive, qualitative data in an academic setting today. The paper calls on students and instructors to acknowledge the difficulty of presenting subjective experiences in the context of academic or scientific discourse, and to consider ways of legitimizing and stimulating the constructive use of personal story in a college classroom.     

Re-storying practice: Using stories about students to advance mathematics education reform

We apply a literary definition of story (struggle, protagonist, and resolution) to an American primary school teacher's reflections on experimenting with new teaching practices. This definition makes issues of equity explicit and revealed what the teacher saw as possible for changing her practice. By re-storying her stories – offering evidence from interviews, video, and surveys to affirm or complicate interpretations – we consider the power of storytelling to deepen commitments to reform and challenge skepticism. When done collaboratively between teacher educators and teachers, restorying could be a generative analytic process of learning from practice.     

Collaborative reflection through story: towards a deeper understanding of ourselves as women researchers

This paper outlines the collaborative inquiry process of three female academics who decided to subject themselves to the same qualitative research procedures that they employed with others. In this inquiry, they were in search of “researcher thinking,” attempting to discover the implicit theories they brought to the research site. The methodology involved telling stories about research experiences and collaboratively reflecting on these stories through discussions, field notes, and written narratives. Unexpectedly, a common story emerged that was fundamental to their identities as researchers and as women. All three experienced a tranformation which facilitated the emergence of both researcher and personal voices. Others who follow this process may also gain personal understandings which will enhance research practices and facilitate understanding the possibility that research might empower those who are participating in it.     

“Oh,I have a story”: narrative as a teacher's classroom model

This paper examines the teaching practices of one American Indian teacher in a high school literature class. It explores the teacher's use of narrative as an instructional strategy designed to convey abstract concepts through concrete experience. The narratives engage students in critical thinking and personal reflection, and provide them with the opportunity to make connections between social and historical contexts. In addition, the teacher uses stories to contrast multiple contexts with personal experiences, which reflects teaching strategies previously identified as those used by effective teachers. There is evidence that sharing ideas and concepts through story is an important way of encouraging social relations and helping students make connections between what they are learning in school and what they know of the world. Based on data analysis, this study presents a model of the teacher's use of narrative as a strategy to pose critical questions, frame a context for discussion, encourage students to reflect on personal perspectives, and introduce ideas and concepts. The model provides a visual representation of the teacher's use of narrative as a way of clarifying course content, contextualizing meaning, and reinforcing understanding.     

Narrative configuration in qualitative analysis

Narrative inquiry refers to a subset of qualitative research designs in which stories are used to describe human action. The term narrative has been employed by qualitative researchers with a variety of meanings. In the context of narrative inquiry, narrative refers to a discourse form in which events and happenings are configured into a temporal unity by means of a plot. Bruner (1985) designates two types of cognition: paradigmatic, which operates by recognizing elements as members of a category; and narrative, which operates by combining elements into an emplotted story. Narrative inquiries divide into two distinct groups based on Bruner's types of cognition. Paradigmatic‐type narrative inquiry gathers stories for its data and uses paradigmatic analytic procedures to produce taxonomies and categories out of the common elements across the database. Narrative‐type narrative inquiry gathers events and happenings as its data and uses narrative analytic procedures to produce explanatory stories.     

Relations Among the Frequency of Shared Reading and 4-Year-Old Children's Vocabulary, Morphological and Syntax Comprehension, and Narrative Skills

Books can be a rich source of learning for children and adults alike. In the present study, the contribution of shared reading and parent literacy to a variety of child outcomes was tested. Child outcomes included measures of expressive vocabulary, morphological and syntax comprehension, and narrative ability (story grammar, cohesion, and language complexity) for book stories as well as personal stories. A total of 106 English-speaking 4-year-old children and their parents participated. As predicted, shared reading accounted for unique variance in children's expressive vocabulary and morphological knowledge after controlling for child nonverbal intelligence, parent education, and parent literacy (i.e., book exposure). Although shared reading predicted syntax comprehension, the effect was mediated by parents' own level of literacy. Contrary to expectation, shared reading was not correlated with any of the narrative measures. Interestingly, the narrative measures for telling stories from a book and telling a personal story were not related to each other and were differentially related to the other child measures, suggesting that book and personal stories may represent different genres requiring different skills.     

Transdisciplinary qualitative paradigm in applied linguistics: autoethnography,participatory action research and minority language teaching and learning*

The paper emphasizes the crucial importance of transdisciplinary approach to qualitative research methodology in teaching and learning contexts involving highly stigmatized minority languages. Autoethnography and participatory action research are herein employed as constructive, critical, qualitative methodological procedures relevant to transdisciplinary research on minority languages in applied linguistics. An international project on teaching and learning Romani, QUALIROM, is used as a case study in order to emphasize the fact that mere theoretical knowledge and professional expertise are important but not sufficient for successful implementation and sustainability of outcomes in this field of linguistic research. The analysis suggests that socially engaged minority language learning and teaching projects should be understood as transdisciplinary, collaborative activities that transcend academic boundaries, and in which research participants create a number of interactive contexts within project-oriented communities of practice aimed at reshaping dominant social relations and practices.     

Exhibiting Lives

This paper examines some of the dilemmas that accompany the emergence of the personal voice in scholarly work, by taking a close, grounded look at the way in which these unfolded in a specific academic course. As part of the course, entitled “A cultural approach to the life cycle”, students were asked to participate in a group exhibition in which they were to display their life stories using a variety of texts, objects and photographs. The paper reflects upon a number of questions evoked by the exhibition: What made this event so powerful, moving and pleasurable for those involved? How, if at all, did the women choose to engage in dialogue with broader social, cultural and political contexts in the display of their life stories? What common identities, if any, emerged in the group exhibition and, in this process, what particular identities were put aside? What was made possible by the use of a wide variety of media in the presentation of life stories? Finally, what were some of the broader pedagogical implications that emerge out of this experiment in teaching?     

The effectiveness of a highly explicit, teacher-directed strategy instruction routine: changing the writing performance of students with learning disabilities

This study examined the effectiveness of a highly explicit, teacher-directed instructional routine used to teach three planning strategies for writing to fourth and fifth graders with learning disabilities. In comparison to peers who received process writing instruction, children who were taught the three planning strategies-goal setting, brainstorming, and organizing-spent more time planning stories in advance of writing and produced stories that were qualitatively better. One month after the end of instruction, students who had been taught the strategies not only maintained their advantage in story quality but also produced longer stories than those produced by their peers who were taught process writing. However, the highly explicit, teacher-directed strategy instructional routine used in this study did not promote transfer to an uninstructed genre, persuasive essay writing. These findings are discussed in terms of their relevance to effective writing instruction practices for students with learning disabilities.     

游戏化学习体验的质性分析研究

基于游戏化学习体验的基本理论框架,通过对学生游戏化学习体验的质性分析,本文探究了游戏化学习体验中认知体验与主体性体验的核心内容。本研究基于对多种资料的分析,归纳了游戏化学习过程中认知体验的过程要素,包含知识探究、学习迁移和认知成果;建构了主体性体验的核心要素,包括学习过程中的情绪状态、游戏与学习动机和反思意愿。对游戏化学习体验的核心内容的探究有助于理解游戏化学习行为,了解学生游戏化学习体验的个体差异,为教育游戏的设计和评估提供了重要参考。     

A Learning‐centred Faculty Certificate Programme on University Teaching

Learning‐centred education (LCE) has the potential to meet the diverse needs and circumstances of a multidisciplinary faculty cohort enrolled in a certificate programme on teaching and learning by engaging participants in a learning community, and by drawing upon a wide range of appropriate teaching strategies to facilitate learning and development of student abilities. Action research design was employed to examine the theory‐practice relationship of LCE within the UBC Faculty Certificate Programme on Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. Research data, both quantitative and qualitative, collected over a 12‐month period, suggest that a multidisciplinary faculty cohort exhibits diverse learning styles, and that individual faculty members are at different stages in developing a scholarly approach to teaching and learning. Furthermore, data suggest that LCE can be used to organise a faculty certificate programme around teaching and learning issues relevant to university faculty and that some structuring of the LCE environment can assist in the attainment of course learning outcomes while engaging faculty as active participants in their personal developmental process.     

Outdoor Adventure Education: Applying Transformative Learning Theory to Understanding Instrumental Learning and Personal Growth in Environmental Education

We conducted a qualitative study of the experiences of 23 Outdoor Adventure Education (OAE) participants to determine what participants found significant about their course and to what course elements they attributed this significance. Participants experienced personal transformations, which they attributed to spending extended time in pristine nature, separation of the course from normal life, the community that formed among course participants, and the intensity and challenge of the course. Whereas outcomes related to personal growth, as opposed to changes in environmental behaviors (instrumental learning), are consistent with participant motivations for joining OAE courses and with most course activities, transformative learning theory suggests ways in which courses might integrate personal growth with instrumental learning to better foster environmental behaviors post-course.     

Jewish Day School Wounds and What We Can Do About Them

This article is based upon a qualitative research study that examined 95 school stories written by Jewish female teacher candidates in an undergraduate education course. Many candidates wrote inspirational or humorous stories about growth and development or a special teacher. However, over one third of the narratives described painful Jewish day schooling episodes with insensitive teachers, stinging rebukes, or public shaming. The findings argue for the enhancement of Jewish educator preparation with attention to professionalization of classroom management and interrogation of assumptions from schooling biographies. This study challenges teacher educators in the liminal space of educator preparation as teacher candidates shift from personal lived schooling experience into professional practice.     

Appropriating English,Expanding Identities,and Re-Visioning the Field: From TESOL to Teaching English for Glocalized Communication (TEGCOM)

In this article we critically analyse our own autobiographical narratives and use the collective story as a format to tell our stories of learning and teaching English in different sociocultural contexts. We discuss how this local, socioculturally situated knowledge can contribute to the knowledge of the discipline and a re-visioning of the field.     

Tensionalities in the collaborative instructional design process

This paper is a retrospective restorying of an instructional design project in which members of a large urban school board collaborated with faculty members of a large university to design and produce an interactive videodisc. This story has been told from a number of perspectives, but is reframed in this paper as a process of culture building in which the design family is the basis of meaning and action. Conversation-based design is suggested as the tool and the content of the family culture. In particular, conversation is a cultural artifact revealing stories of tensionalities in the design process that frame the theoretical constructs in this collaborative model.     

The Stories They’d Tell: Pre-Service Elementary Teachers Writing Stories to Demonstrate Physical Science Concepts

Preservice teachers enrolled in a science content-based course wrote stories that could help their future students understand a science concept. First, participants chose their topic and wrote the story with few guidelines to establish a baseline. In the next part, a different set of students were given a choice of three topics (based on force, electricity, and heat misconceptions), and collaborated to write stories with guidance from the instructor. Stories were analyzed for narrative and science units, and test scores examined. Without guidance, many students struggled to find ways to integrate science within a story. With guidance, participants wrote stories that included more narrative elements overall, and participants felt the stories helped them understand the concepts.     

科学故事：在科学教育中的教学意义及策略

在科学教育中,科学故事具有重要而独特的功能。运用科学故事的结构和组成要素选择或构建科学故事,运用观念驱动理解法指导学生阅读科学故事,有利于充分发挥科学故事的教育教学功能。     

ePortfolio use by university students in Australia: a review of the Australian ePortfolio Project

In October 2008, the Australian Learning and Teaching Council released the final report for the commissioned project ‘ePortfolio use by university students in Australia: Informing excellence in policy and practice’. The Australian ePortfolio Project represented the first attempt to examine the breadth and depth of ePortfolio practice in the Australian higher education sector. The research activities included: surveys of stakeholder groups in learning and teaching, academic management and human resource management, with respondents representing all Australian universities; a series of focus groups and semi‐structured interviews that sought to explore key issues in greater depth; and surveys designed to capture students’ pre‐course expectations and their post‐course experiences of ePortfolio learning. Further qualitative data was collected through interviews with ‘mature users’ of ePortfolios. Project findings revealed that, while there was a high level of interest in the use of ePortfolios in terms of the potential to help students become reflective learners who were conscious of their personal and professional strengths and weaknesses, the state of play in Australian universities was very fragmented. The project investigation identified four individual, yet interrelated, contexts where strategies may be employed to support and foster effective ePortfolio practice in higher education: government policy; technical standards; academic policy; and learning and teaching. Four scenarios for the future were also presented with the goal of stimulating discussion about opportunities for stakeholder engagement. It is argued that the effective use of ePortfolios requires open dialogue and collaboration between the different stakeholders across this range of contexts.     

Moments of becoming: experiences of embodied connection to place in arts-based service learning in Australia

The experience of place in arts-based service learning (ABSL) is personal. It can be difficult to define and challenging to share and build upon. This paper, reporting from a national ABSL project involving three Australian universities, is concerned with experiences of place in forming professional teacher identity. Using a narrative methodology in presenting the stories of six people, pre-service teachers and Indigenous community members, the paper draws on a number of different theoretical frameworks to explore each participant’s experience and its longer-term impact on their thinking. The participant stories revealed the value of spaces between art-making, teaching, and research. The learning experiences led pre-service teachers to reflect deeply in relation to self and to consider the impact of their experiences on both current and future professional interactions. As anticipated, participants found it difficult to communicate these elemental experiences in the written word. The findings have implications for the value of flexible and critical service-learning approaches, particularly in diverse cultural contexts.     

The role of topic‐related background knowledge in visual attention to illustration and children's word learning during shared book reading

The purpose of this study was to examine how background knowledge of a topic may influence children's attention to different elements of storybook illustrations and how that influences word learning. Forty‐one kindergarten students were administered a test about a familiar topic (i.e., birds). Participants were then read either a fictional story about a familiar topic (birds) or a fictional story about a novel topic (wugs) on an eye‐tracker monitor. Results suggest that, for children who heard the familiar story, those who knew more about the category were faster to orient to the illustration of the novel word than children with lower background knowledge. Accordingly, children who were faster to orient to the illustration were more likely to learn the word. These results may suggest that one mechanism by which background knowledge improves implicit learning in shared‐book reading contexts is by guiding attention to the named elements of the illustrations.