Migrating through Currere : a narrative inquiry into the experience of being a Canadian teacher
Date
2009
Authors
Lewko, Candace P.
University of Lethbridge. Faculty of Education
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Dept. of Education, 2009
Abstract
The research questions of this thesis, “Migrating Through Currere: A Narrative Inquiry
Into the Experience of Being a Canadian Teacher,” are three-fold: What is the experience
of being a Canadian teacher? How do personal and trans/national migration histories
influence this experience? How does being a teacher of English-as-a-Second/Additional-
Language of adult immigrant and refugee students affect this experience? The aim of this
thesis is to better understand how auto/biographical migration stories are connected to a
pedagogical life and how this connection influences a teaching praxis. The following
quotation sets the teacher in migration: “What is the experience of being…a stranger in a
land not one’s own” (Pinar, 1975a, p. 399)? Curriculum reconceptualist theory asks the
teacher to engage in processes of self-reflexivity in social, historical, and pedagogical
contexts. The experience of being a Canadian teacher is reflected in my family’s and
others’ migration stories during the first wave of migration of immigrants to Alberta.
Four narratives of my own arose out of self-reflection on topics of identity, culture,
home, location, and ethnicity. Each narrative is developed using William F. Pinar’s
(1975a) method of currere. The narratives are interspersed throughout the thesis from the
regressive to the synthetical moments of currere; they are juxtaposed against
autobiographies written by first and second generation Canadians. A review of the
literature illuminates the works of educational philosophers such as Maxine Greene and
contemporary curriculum scholars including Ted T. Aoki, Dwayne Huebner, Janet L.
Miller, Leah Fowler, Erika Hasebe-Ludt, and Cynthia Chambers, in addition to Pinar.
The inquiry reveals how a historical return to the self can inform the teacher of the
meaning of the teaching experience found in the pedagogical, lived, and historical
v
circumstances of the self and other. A new awareness of the teaching self emerges in the
foreign and familiar of the classroom. Tensions found in dichotomies of language,
culture, and ethnicity become generative spaces to reflect on the experience; home
becomes a portal through which the teacher views the world with empathy. The teacher
lives perceptively in a culturally diverse classroom and amongst the complexities of
another’s life circumstances.
Description
ix, 157 leaves ; 29 cm
Keywords
Teaching -- Vocational guidance -- Canada , Education -- Study and teaching -- Canada , English language -- Study and teaching -- Foreign speakers , Teachers -- Canada -- Attitudes , Education -- Canada , Dissertations, Academic