Getting Personal and Practical with Personal Practical Knowledge

ABSTRACT

Clandinin and Connelly's research on teacher's “personal practical knowledge” has made a substantial contribution to study on teacher thinking. Yet as their research is currently constituted, its conception of teaching tends to isolate the teacher, as it fails to deal with the institutional elements to this form of work. Two fundamental principles of this research project are reconsidered: one is methodological as the researcher strives to collaborate with teachers, and the other is conceptual as the researcher pursues an individuality that lies at the center of “personal practical knowledge.” A return to Clandinin and Connelly's data suggests that limiting factors in their collaborative efforts include discourse conventions and the press for narrative unity. The principal challenge to their conception of the individual comes from poststructuralist theories of the subject which would allow for a more open, if less unified, experience in the teaching of school.