Being a student again: a narrative study of a teacher's experience

Abstract

For some time there has been a focus in higher education research towards understanding the student experience of learning. This article presents a narrative analysis of the experience of a teacher who re-entered the learning world of undergraduate students by enrolling in a challenging chemical engineering course. The analysis identifies multiple lenses in the narrative: of student, of researcher, of teacher and of mature student. A personal reflective genre was noted which displayed an overriding emotional tenor, linked both to the emotions associated with the individual experience of struggling with difficult tasks and those arising from negotiating the social interactions of the learning environment. This hermeneutic engagement points to the value in teachers exploring their own learning, as well as new possibilities for critically examining the implications of apparently progressive teaching methodologies.

Keywords:

• narrative analysis
• student learning
• teaching
• hermeneutics

Acknowledgements

Many people have provided useful critiques of this paper in its stages of development; in particular we would like to acknowledge the contributions of Sarah Mann and Richard Gunstone. We also acknowledge the financial assistance of the National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa.

Notes

1. In this course students chose how they wish to work in the (compulsory) tutorial afternoons and most formed self-selected and typically racially homogeneous groups of between two and 10 students.