Tracing teacher and student learning in teacher‐authored narratives

Abstract

Using a Vygotskian sociocultural view of learning, this article explores what teacher‐authored narratives can tell us about the internal activity of teacher learning, how teacher learning works to alter the nature of activity in the classroom, and how that, in turn, influences how teachers describe the nature of student learning. By examining how a teacher narrates the experience of creating and co‐teaching a literature course for immigrant high school students in a New York City public school, we see how she comes to understand and enact new ways of participating in the social practices associated with the teaching of literature. As this teacher and her students began to internalize these new modes of engagement and the values they represent they also began to reconceptualize how they think about and engage in the teaching and reading of literature.

Keywords:

• Narrative Inquiry
• Sociocultural Theory
• Teacher Learning

Notes

1. A capstone experience is a final requirement of a degree program. Most often it is a research paper or a teaching portfolio.