Letting experience in at the front door and bringing theory through the back: Exploring the Pedagogical Possibilities of Situated Self-Narration in Teacher Education

As a means of exploring what ‘learning through experience’ in teacher education might look like, situated self-narration is both conceptualized and performed here as the discursive practice through which already familiar and remembered experience may re-presented and re-organized from a forward-looking vantage point. Drawing on poststructuralist views of language and subjectivity and framed by a “pedagogy of possibility” (Simon, 1992 Simon, R. 1992. Teaching against the grain: Texts for a pedagogy of possibility, Westport, CN: Greenwood Publishing Group.  [Google Scholar]), situated self-narration involves three main discursive strategies: interruption, interrogation and interpretation. By way of illustration, I use memory to interrupt my relationship to the dominant narrative of ‘English Teacher as avid reader’ and interrogate my everyday experiences of being a girl as mediated by popular culture, in both cases, drawing on a poststructuralist understanding of identity as an evolving constellation of discursive practices and foregrounding the distinctive qualities of one’s experiences as a possible source of agency. I consider the pedagogical possibilities of such identity work in the context of English teacher education, specifically in terms of teaching theory through the back door (Luke, 1993). I engage what it means to say that the way we “word the world” matters (St. Pierre, 2000 St. Pierre, E. 2000. Poststructural feminism in education: An overview. Qualitative Studies in Education, 13(5): 477–515. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]) through my own interpreted experience as an evolving yet situated subjectivity; a consciousness-that-teaches.     

Normalizing literary responses in the teacher education classroom

In this essay, the authors present analyses of data emerging from a study of a classroom of pre‐service English language arts teachers' readings of a young adult novel that challenged normative sexuality stereotypes. They argue that when literary fictions are included within teacher education ‘methods’ courses, the possibility that literature might support generative learning is eroded by the normative structures of teacher education, particularly those pedagogical beliefs and practices that separate discourses of experience from discourses of knowledge. The authors offer a brief overview of studies of human consciousness, with particular attention to how literary experiences can contribute to its development. They suggest that the identities that co‐emerge with conscious awareness are structured by normalizing discourses instantiated within teacher education methods courses. The essay concludes with a discussion of how the conscious awareness of beginning English teachers might be more expansively developed within pre‐service teacher education.