Teachers’ mo(u)rning stories: A living narrative inquiry into teachers’ identities on emergent high school inquiry landscapes

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Date
2013-08-27Author
Riffel, Kevin
Type
ThesisDegree Level
MastersMetadata
Show full item recordAbstract
This particular telling and retelling from a living narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) into the early experiences of three high school science teachers – Beth, Joel, and Christina – explores the emergent inquiry landscapes constructed as we implemented a renewed, decolonizing, science curriculum in Saskatchewan founded on a philosophy of inquiry and on a broader, more holistic definition of scientific literacy, both Western and Indigenous. This inquiry draws on an ontology of lived experience (Dewey, 1938) and, more subtly, on the borderland of narrative inquiry and complexity science in order to illustrate the emergence and coming to knowing (Delandshire, 2002; Ermine, as cited in Aikenhead, 2002) of our identities in a way that avoids the reduction in complexity of our experiences. While my initial wonders persisted throughout the research as I lived alongside Beth, Joel, and Christina for two years, they diffracted into the contextualized wonder: how do we share a philosophy of inquiry with each other and with our students? As such, this inquiry is a sharing about our own identities, about our own agency, about identity work, and about which experiences we choose to (re)engage with as we attempt to (re)find the narrative diversity, both individual and collective, necessary to shift from enacted identities to 'wished-we-could-enact' identities. This exploration of our 'mo(u)rning stories', early experiences from our shifting identities after stepping through the liminal and onto emergent inquiry landscapes, or our 'stories to relive with' provides a language and context to our shifting identities and hence, to science education, as we move towards a more holistic and humanistic form of scientific literacy for all our students. What emerged through the enmeshing of our landscapes and through the construction of voids in existing practices, followed by deformalizations in assessment and planning, was the development of a way of sharing our philosophy of inquiry and hence, our shifting identities. The artifacting and sharing of our contextualized inquiry experiences highlighted the rich assessment making, and curriculum making experiences (Huber, Murphy & Clandinin, 2011) we shared with our students and highlighted a view of assessment as a relationship. As we told and retold our stories to relive with, our identities shifted towards those more akin to facilitator and anthropologist and away from sage and engineer/architect.
Degree
Master of Education (M.Ed.)Department
Curriculum StudiesProgram
Curriculum StudiesSupervisor
McVittie, JanetCommittee
Murphy, Shaun; Aikenhead, GlenCopyright Date
August 2013Subject
science education
narrative inquiry
inquiry
curriculum renewal
assessment
identity
teacher identity
decolonizing
scientific literacy
complexity
complexity science
borderland
agency
narrative diversity
contextualized inquiry experience
stories to relive with
mo(u)rning stories
holistic
humanistic
wished-we-could-enact identities
emergence
deformalizations
professional development
reductionism
modernity
positivism
coming to knowing
post-modern
postmodern
Indigenous
First Nations
ontology
lived experience
narrative coherence
complexity reduction
artifacting
assessment making experiences
curriculum making experiences
assessment as a relationship
liminality
liminal
assessment for learning
assessment for inquiry’
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