Inquiry into experience reading reaction

I have just finished reading the chapter "Inquiry into experience; Teachers' personal and professional growth" from Paula R. Golombek and Karen E. Johnson, and found it fascinating. The article deals most broadly with the shifting and sharing of knowledge, narrative inquiry and narrative inquiry as professional development.

To review, a bare-bones overview of narrative inquiry is necessary. Its NOT the telling of fun fiction stories to teach English to a classroom (unfortunately!)

It is a model of learning and knowledge development that draws from the storytelling and restorying of personal experiences and opinions. This is considered helpful, especially in the arena of teaching theories, because it allows each teacher to not only relive their experiences in coherent detail, but to learn from said experiences, and also to learn from the experiences of other teachers and use them to make connections, inferences and developments to their own style.

The idea of narrative inquiry allays a lot of discomfort with the idea of "learning to teach" that I have been having. I have always understood the need to be adequately prepared for the task of teaching, but have also always been confused by the idea of teaching teaching theories. Teaching, or any kind of knowledge sharing, is a negotiated experience. No two classrooms are equal in that no two students have the same experiences at home, at work, in the classroom, no two students think and learn alike, and no two students share the exact same level of proficiency in any subject. Likewise, no two teachers view their jobs the same, have the same life experiences, or are effected equally by the trials, tribulations and successes of the classroom. Therefore, no one theory regarding the act of teaching can be effectively applied to every classroom. Because of the unique value and environment of a classroom setting, I found it a little absurd that I was trying to learn to teach from books, or from broad theories and assumptions made by teachers, or worse yet, those who study teachers. It all seemed a little sterile and difficult to digest, as if I were learning how to create the ideal classroom, knowing that the feat was impossible before I even began.

Why I am so fascinated by the idea of narrative inquiry is because it is so simple, yet so perfect. As the chapter mentions, every conversation, be it student to teacher, teacher to teacher or student to student, is negotiated. Certain words and ideas uttered by one person evoke certain memories or feelings in the other, and so forth. Thus, the model of learning and developing through narrative inquiry is quite brilliant, because it is the fullest way to incorporate your own development with the development of others in order to facilitate a more complete understanding of the direction in which these developments are moving. It is also useful simply because one learns best from their own mistakes by relating those mistakes to the mistakes of others, as well as by reliving their mistakes to learn what went wrong and where changes must be made to affect efficient improvement.

Wrapping up, I loved this article. It appealed to my sense of community learning and specified teaching so nicely, I may read it a few more times.

Until next time,

Jessica Annett