Research on the Boundaries: Narrative Inquiry in the Midst of Organized School Reform

ABSTRACT

The author centers on narrative inquiry as a “multilayered and many stranded” form of qualitative research (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. xvii), one that unfurls in the midst of a plethora of social phenomena and other research agendas (Conle, 1999). In the article, the narrative inquiry broadly relates to organized school reform in the years leading up to and immediately following the introduction of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (2002). The work depicts the narrative inquirer as part of a human parade (Connelly & Clandinin, 1999) situated on a continuum of time, place, the personal, and the social (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). The narrative inquirer, similar to all other researchers, is complicit not only in what stories become lived and relived but also in how stories become told and retold about experiences encountered and enacted in the field of education. In this particular instance, the author focuses on the bumping up places between narrative inquiry and other research and societal perspectives while discussing, from a methodological point of view, the interstices where teacher knowledge, school context, and organized reform meet.

Keywords:

• narrative inquiry
• school reform
• evaluation
• social context
• research methods

Notes

1. I purposely use the word training because it is the favored local expression. Teachers in the locale attend trainings or training sessions more than they describe themselves as attending workshops or engaging in professional-development activities. The term training suggests “confinement” as described by Peters (1967, p. 7) cited in Bullough, (2003, p. 7).

2. Here, my use of the word lost reflects the subtle shaping effect of the midsouthern state's language and cultural mix on my speech and writing. I frequently encountered the use of the word lost in the schools populated predominantly by African American faculty and students.

3. This principal eventually became the executive director when the local office of the reform movement continued its change agenda under a different name at the conclusion of the 5-year project.

4. When the reform movement began, Destiny was situated in a suburban community. By the end of the reform movement, the community had been annexed by the city.

5. As it turned out, I was able to skirt the issue because I did not author Destiny's final evaluation report. Instead, I was asked to prepare the summative report writing for Cochrane Academy, Hardy Academy's partner campus, which had fallen in its shadow.

6. In 2006–2007, the suburban school district opened a new high school campus based on Destiny's story of reform. A former Destiny teacher assumed the role of principal.

7. To Lugones (1987), arrogant perception is the “failure to identify with the person one views arrogantly” (p. 4). Thus, suggestions are offered about what a person should be doing without taking into account that individual's understanding of reality expressed in his or her own terms.

8. The formative and planning evaluation funds that the university received were significantly less per school than were the summative research funds.

9. Heights's formal evaluator unfortunately did not complete the task.

10. Eagle's school district has now chosen the type of consulting service I feared it would favor: a team led by a highly paid consultant from the business sector that visits classrooms and makes judgments of teachers’ practices and schools based on 3–5-min observations.

11. As indicated earlier, following in the footsteps of Destiny was problematic for most campuses, but especially for Eagle because it was a diverse, urban campus offering a comprehensive program and Destiny was a suburban campus, with mostly White, hand-selected students and a specialized program. The schools were also situated in radically different school district milieus. Also, Destiny's facilitators, as they were called, had privileges that far exceeded Eagle's teachers. This also created tension.

12. At Destiny High School, for example, the planning and evaluation consultant was never present on the campus when I was.