At the Intersections of Narrative Inquiry and Professional Education (Invited)

In this paper, we explore the intersections of narrative inquiry and professional education by making visible four common tensions we experience across the disciplines of education and nursing. The tensions are woven, inseparable, and deeply embedded in complex landscapes of self, others, time, and institutional structures. We highlight the elements of narrative inquiry that reverberate into the ways we understand professional education. In this way, we explore pedagogical spaces shaped by world travelling, calling forth experience, and the significance of relationships as we think with experiences lived, told, retold, and relived

Questioning the Research on Early Career Teacher Attrition and Retention

In this paper, we consider scholarly work on early career teacher attrition, and retention, from 1999 to 2010. Much of the literature has framed attrition as either a problem associated with individual factors (e.g., burnout), or a problem associated with contextual factors (e.g., support and salary). Some recent conceptualizations consider early career teacher attrition as an identity- making process that involves a complex negotiation between individual and contextual factors. On the basis of our review, we suggest the need to shift the conversation from one focused only on retaining teachers, toward a conversation about sustaining teachers. This shift offers the possibility of new insights about teacher education and about the kinds of spaces needed on school landscapes to sustain and retain beginning teachers.Cet article porte sur les travaux académiques évoquant l'attrition et la rétention des enseignants en début de carrière entre 1999 et 2010. Une part importante de la littérature présente l'attrition comme un problème associé à des facteurs individuels (par ex. épuisement professionnel) ou bien à des facteurs contextuels (par ex. appui et salaire). Selon certaines conceptualisations récentes, l'attrition d'enseignants en début de carrière serait un processus de formation identitaire impliquant des négociations complexes entre l'individu et des facteurs contextuels. À partir de notre analyse, nous évoquons le besoin de s'éloigner des conversations portant exclusivement sur le besoin de retenir les enseignants pour discuter plutôt de soutien aux enseignants. D'un tel changement peuvent découler de nouvelles idées sur la formation des enseignants et le type de milieux scolaires nécessaires pour appuyer et retenir les enseignants en début de carrière

Enhancement of medical student performance through narrative reflective practice: a pilot project

Background: Narrative Reflective Practice (NRP) is a process that helps medical students become better listeners and physicians. We hypothesized that NRP would enhance students’ performance on multiple choice question exams (MCQs), on objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs), and on subjective clinical evaluations (SCEs). Methods: The MCQs, OSCEs and SCEs test scores from 139 third year University of Alberta medical students from the same class doing their Internal Medicine rotation were collected over a 12 month period. All preceptors followed the same one-hour clinical teaching format, except for the single preceptor who incorporated 2 weeks of NRP in the usual clinical teaching of 16 students. The testing was done at the end of each 8-week rotation, and all students within each cohort received the same MCQs, OSCE and SCEs Results: Independent t-tests were used to assess group differences in the mean MCQ, OSCE and SCE scores. The group receiving NRP training scored 4.7 % higher on the MCQ component than those who did not. The mean differences for OSCE and SCE scores were non-significant. Conclusions: Two weeks NRP exposure produced an absolute increase in students’ MCQ score. Longer periods of NRP exposure may also increase the OSCE and SCE scores. This promising pilot project needs to be confirmed using several trained preceptors and trainees at different levels of their clinical experience

COMING TO NARRATIVE INQUIRY IN THE CONTEXTS OF OUR LIVES: A CONVERSATION ABOUT OUR WORK AS NARRATIVE INQUIRERS

The text reports our experiences as narrative researchers to highlight aspects of narrative research that often create difficulties for new researchers in this relational form of research. We begin by reminding readers that narrative inquiry is the study of the experience understood in the narrative. Thus, we draw attention to narrative research as a phenomenon under study and methodology for the study. This by itself often creates confusion for those who are new to narrative inquiry. We highlight three particular tensions that often cause difficulties for researchers. Engaging at the beginning of the autobiographical narrative, shifting from field texts to research texts and conducting narrative investigations made purposive for personal, theoretical/practical and social justifications were the three tensions we selected. Drawing on ongoing and recently completed narrative investigations, Dilma, Shaun and Jean have made explicit the ways in which they have moved from interim field texts to final research texts

Places of Practice: Learning to Think Narratively

In the lived practices of narrative inquiry, we honour our relational ontological commitments and responsibilities as narrative inquirers. In this paper, we link these ontological commitments with our practice, which is often tension-filled because the knowledge landscape on which we live as researchers is shaped by paradigmatic rather than narrative knowledge. It is easy to get swept into thinking paradigmatically and to sustain ourselves as narrative inquirers amidst knowledge landscapes that cast narrative inquirers as not knowing when seen from within dominant plotlines. We see that not to fall into these dominant plotlines requires wakefulness to shaping places where we can practice thinking narratively

Redefining professional identity: the voice of a language teacher in a context of collaborative learning

Following a narrative and biographic approach, in this study, we present the case of an in-service language teacher and her professional learning trajectory in the context of the project ‘Languages and education: constructing and sharing train- ing’. This project aimed at the construction of a collaborative teacher education context for learning and transformation of experiences, views and practices in language education, and involved teachers, teacher educators and researchers. Based on a single case study, the analysis tries to disclose the teacher’s discur- sive displacements as hints of professional transformation while she reinterprets the learning taking place in the collaborative education process. The signs of change are visible in the way she constructs meanings regarding her professional identity, re-identifies her mission as a language teacher and reconsiders her pro- fessional identity. Finally, we reflect upon how collaborative teacher education scenarios may foster teachers’ personal professional learning and renewed self- images

Clandinin, D. Jean, Personal Practical Knowledge: A Study of Teachers\u27 Classroom Images, Curriculum Inquiry, 15(Winter, 1985), 361-385.

Reports a study of teachers\u27 personal practical knowledge in the classroom and the images used to characterize the classroom

Creating Spaces for Teachers' Voices

In this section two university researchers and one teacher researcher engage in a dialogue about the possibilities of including teacher research in our academic journals. Clandinin suggests, in her opening comments, that we have much to learn from li stening to teachers' accounts of their practices as we begin to create collaborative agendas for educational research shared with teachers. Black responds by inviting readers to imagine the poss ibilities that would be created by engaging in new relationships between researchers and teachers where there is an ongoing conversation that would reconfigure our work as teachers and researchers. Milburn responds by asking questions about the nature of teachers' accounts of their practices, about the criteria needed to judge the worth of teachers' stories, and about the validity of teachers' stories. Finally, Clandinin responds by wondering about the possibilities for written conversations between teachers and researchers

Clandinin, D. Jean, Developing Rythm in Teaching: The Narrative Study of a Beginning Teacher\u27s Personal Practical Knowledge of Classrooms, Curriculum Inquiry, 19(Summer, l989), 121-141.*

Explores the development of one first-year teacher\u27s personal practical knowledge of teaching