Five teachers, five fingers, five narratives
Date
2000
Authors
Roberts, Caroline A
University of Lethbridge. Faculty of Education
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Faculty of Education, 2000
Abstract
This project will attempt to make pedagogical connections between aspects of
contemporary autobiographical theory through teacher stories in the development of
individual identity presented in an aesthetic and artistic manner. The project is about
writing and sharing, making connections, building, and fostering our own identity as
individuals. Comments throughout the project are included as they happened as a part of
the overall process. It is not my intent to analyze or interpret each group member's ideas,
but to share them as well as document how the process evolved. The goal was to allow all
the participants, including myself, a medium to show how this process affected each of us
and how we developed an identity.
Five teachers, including myself, reflected on their teaching practice by writing narratives
based on the five forms indicated by Preskill (1998) in Narratives of Teaching and the
Quest for the Second Self). In this project, each teacher wrote one narrative based on one
of the different forms highlighted in Preskill's article, which include narrative of social
criticism, narrative of apprenticeship, narrative of reflective practice, narrative of journey,
and narrative of hope.
This project utilized a type of action research where participants were involved in
reflecting, writing and sharing stories formed from teaching experiences. This sharing
process aided in the recognition of identity and identity formation. My main objective
was to allow each member to gain personal insights about her development as an
individual and teacher. All members of the group were instrumental in offering each other support, reflection, and an arena to discuss the successes and failures in each other's
career. Each member was an important contributor to the project and to the narratives of
each person taking part in the project. The goal was to provide living action research
about identity formation. I hope this project aided these teachers in a journey of identity
exploration. This exploration allowed them to look at the influences in their lives as
experiences they must embrace, write about, reflect upon, grow with and learn from as
they continue to construct and reconstruct who they are as individuals, teachers,
professionals, and women.
Presentation of each member's narratives was also something that I wanted to develop, to
allow for each member's uniqueness to become directly incorporated with their narrative.
This was done through fmgerprints. Each member of the group chose a print from their
left, or feminine, hand to transcribe their story into. This would allow each story to be
unique to the individual, an expression of the person, the teacher, the woman. I felt that
this was their own unique personal expression of their, and only their story. As the
fingerprints are individual, so are the stories of the women of the group.
Description
vii, 128 leaves ; 29 cm. --
Keywords
Teachers -- Canada , Women teachers -- Canada