My classroom as my kitchen : attending to the conversations within

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Date
2011
Authors
Audet, Christina
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Volume Title
Publisher
Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Faculty of Education, c2011
Abstract
It seems all too obvious that most people find meaning through the conversations they have with others. Yet, the degree to which we have explored the importance of conversation in our classrooms seems minor compared to the role that it plays in the daily life of most teachers and their students. The graduate project, My Classroom as My Kitchen: Attending to the Conversations Within, considers the place of conversation relative to student learning and teacher-student engagement and does so using qualitative life writing research in the form of narrative interpretive inquiry, generated in the process of action research. The author weaves together a personal métissage “of place, space, memory and history” (Hasebe-Ludt, Chambers, & Leggo, 2009, p. 9), braiding her own creative non-fiction writing with that of her students in a Grade 12 English Language Arts classroom in rural Alberta. The combination of writing voices and genres (journal, memoir, poetry) creates a narrative whole, an interpersonal conversation that reflects the tangled interplay of many current educational conversations. As such, the project considers curriculum theory based on the work of researchers such as Ted Aoki, Cynthia Chambers, Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Leah Fowler, Carl Leggo, Erika Hasebe-Ludt, and William Pinar. The result is a project that considers the importance of place, family, and conversation as the educational community struggles to create an environment that encourages thoughtful, authentic learning.
Description
viii, 95 leaves : ill. ; 29 cm
Keywords
Storytelling , Storytelling in education , Creative nonfiction , Education, Secondary , Language arts (Secondary) , Teacher-student relationships , Narration (Rhetoric) , Conversation
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