Learning about reflection through exploring narrative inquiry

Abstract

This article illustrates what can be learned about reflection through exploring narrative inquiry as a productive research method in the study of teachers’ experiences of school reform. By focusing on five qualities of narrative inquiry: (1) research in the midst; (2) research on the boundaries; (3) knowing through relationship; (4) narrative truth; and (5) following where the story leads, the paper illustrates how each dimension fruitfully contributed to my developing understandings of what teachers came to know in the context of organized school reform at T.P. Yaeger Middle School, the campus where I have conducted research for over a decade. In the final analysis, my discussion concerning the use of narrative inquiry to excavate teachers’ experiences of school reform and the connections between it and reflective practice demonstrates the never ending complexities of school landscapes, school reform efforts and educators’ lives lived in relationship and across time and place. It also shows how integral reflection is to continuity and change.

Keywords:

• reflection
• narrative inquiry
• teacher knowledge
• school reform
• reflective practice

Acknowledgement

This paper was presented at the 3rd Tampere Conference, Tampere University, Finland, in 2007.

Notes

1. Schwab spoke of teacher, learner, subject matter, and milieu as curricular commonplaces. Borrowing Schwab’s commonplace terminology, Connelly and Clandinin (2005) have referred to temporality, sociality and place as narrative inquiry’s commonplaces.

2. Schwab used the word ‘account’ frequently in his 1962 essay, which is rather odd for a renowned scientist. Of course, his vision of what constitutes science was much broader than the beliefs perpetuated in both his and our times.