Towards reflective practice and practical research: narrative groundwork and theorisation in teaching practice.
Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, University of Hamburg, 17-20 September 2003
Ana Zavala
C.L.A.E.H. (Centro Latinoamericano de Economía Humana)
I.P.A. (Instituto de Profesores ‘Artigas’)
Montevideo - Uruguay
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Abstract
This paper deals with narrative as a main tool for understanding and researching teaching practice in a practical research mode. It is assumed that ‘understanding practice’ refers to teacher development as a real and broader background for teaching practice and therefore for teaching practical research. However, it is also assumed that ‘reflective practice’ is closely and uniquely linked to practical research (and so to practical problem awareness), being reflection the very principal methodological tool for teacher-researchers.
Narrative is then introduced in this paper as a privileged way for a deep understanding of teaching practice because it turns teaching action intelligible. If we accept that teaching practice has a double-epistemological framework, the theoretical/mimetical saying (i.e. narratives) about anything related to teaching practice refers both to the practice epistemology and to the epistemology of the subject knowledge. Furthermore, the three-timed nature of teaching practice is approached as supporting different narrative deployments, meaning themselves better understanding for doing and for thinking in teaching practice and improvement.
1. Understanding, reflecting about and researching into teaching practice.
Because educational circles had assumed for a long time that teachers do not think, and that the realm of thinking and understanding practice was only for experts and not teacher’s business, then when someone dared to say that teachers think,educational sciences were shocked (most policymakers are still trying to be convinced about). The challenge is then, not to argue about teachers’ own thinking, but to turn this fact into the improvement of teaching practice and not into a domain for outside experts. We are aware that this is a real risk. Just now, and for the last ten or fifteen years, ambiguity has characterised many educative speeches, where broadly employed polysemic terms impede better understandings of teaching practice. This paper intends to be a strictly semantic viewpoint concerned with principal key concepts in this matter.
The enthusiasm produced by this good news about teachers thinking encouraged academic studies and a lot of publications have been produced in the recent times in Europe and in America. In a certain way, in this research (‘about’ [1] educational issues) learners and learning have lost the principal place that they used to enjoy. Time for teachers and teaching has arrived. I think that if only a term could be kept from these papers, without any doubt, ‘reflective teachers’ and their ‘reflective practice’ would be the winner.
However, we the teachers have learned that reflection implies a high degree of understanding our practice. We are aware that it is possible and indeed necessary to distinguish understanding from reflecting, being ‘understanding’ a larger concept and ‘reflecting’ a more specific one. Then, reflecting supposes understanding, but reversibility is not possible here. As confusions and misunderstandings in this point are quite extended, I should state here that reflection -as a conversational and moving accomplishment- is itself closely linked to the arising of a teaching practical problem, and therefore to teaching research practice (or teaching practical research, or educative action-research…). We must accept that teaching practice is not always necessarily under research, if we mean practical research (academic ways are not considered here). Practical research is promoted by the arising of a practical problem, and practical problems are themselves personal feelings about wrong-happenings in teaching practice. Hence, practical research always looks for improvement, which in the end means the improvement of teaching practice as well as the teacher personal and professional improvement (i.e. the very sense of ‘development’). It is precisely this involvement of the subject of the action in the action itself which claimsfor reflection, which is a methodological tool, the main one perhaps, for practical research into teaching practice.
If reflection is needed, it means that the practical problem was already known (felt and made conscientious) by the teacher. Deep understanding of his/her own practice supports the arising of this event that he/she calls ‘problem’. Only a deep understanding of ones’ own practice is able to capture the distortion between theory (the world of words and thinking) and practice (the world of action) that problem represents. Then, understanding practice runs earlier than just reflecting, timely and logically speaking. It does not imply the problem-reflection-practical research triad, that always comes later. Too often, outsiders think that the understanding of teaching practice (meaning sometimes ‘reflection’) is something natural and spontaneous for teachers, assuming that practice speaks by itself. (Ricœur, 1986. See also Kemmis’ prologue to Carr, 1990)
Teacher development requires solid self-understanding. This is much more than being well read or having studied a variety of disciplines required in teacher education programs. Hence, taking into account that the teacher (meaning the individual) is involved in teaching practice, understanding practice has to do with both understanding the teacher as an individual and understanding teaching as a practical action (involving teacher and practical context, e.g., learners, society, institution, the knowledge that is taught, economy, politics, etc.). Becoming an ‘understanding-teacher’ (I support this teacher is not yet a ‘reflective’ one, because the problem is not yet visible, that is, self-perceived) is hard work. Formative mediation is indeed possible, by teaching teachers or student teachers, but at last, understanding does satisfy some teacher personal need. As consequence of this, only teachers do look for it, in spite of syllabuses, Didactics teachers, mentor teachers, those in the academy, policymakers or administrators’ good will and effort.
I am supporting here that the understanding of teacher practice can be grounded in narrative about practice. It is because of this, that this paper is concerned specially with teachers’ narrative groundwork. As a History and Didactics of History teacher-researcher (i.e. practical researcher), I have learned that building narrative is a privileged way to unveil living theories and embodied values guiding teaching action, being at the same time, real opportunities for teachers’ teaching theorisation becoming explicit. Then, now we shall explore narrative throughout its dialectic relationships between teaching action, time, subject, feelings, public/private words and thinking. Individual, social and professional identity (identities?) are finally the mother and father of action and thought about it, by means of ‘sense construction’ (Barbier’s sens construit) and ‘significance offer’ (his offre de signification)(Barbier, 2000), concerning both with the individual and his/her teaching action.
2. Building some narrative groundwork about teaching practice.
a. About narrative
Narrative turns action intelligible. When someone gives some sense to an action then he turns it intelligible, i.e. understandable for human thinking. However, action itself has undeniably some narrative pattern, because actors conceive, perceive and act following narrative schemes in their minds. Then, narrative and human action may be considered mutually mimetical. This is because action may be thought, and thinking may be thought as being acted. Didactics is largely indebted to this conceptualisation (taken and unfolded by Paul Ricœur from Aristotle’s Poetics), which provides it with some theoretical worthy tools for thinking/doing teaching.
- The very roots of narrative are in practical comprehension. Paul Ricœur calls semantics of action the conceptual net that subjects master in order to understand and to tell action. This conceptual net includes, e.g., purposes, motives, circumstances, interactions, consequences –wanted or not-, etc. Though if may seem too obvious, this conceptual net plays as symbolic mediation when some meaning for facts and events (whatever nature they could be) is required. Certainly, meaning is always something new, something never said before, but components of meaning were part of familiar language practices (pratiques langagières) of individuals and societies. In this way, meaning is a composition (com-position, i.e., some particular and perhaps original arrangement of concepts and ideas).
Furthermore, temporal issues are always involved in action (in our concerns, teaching action). Teaching action and thinking must always be thought as something rather complex. In this field, are, were or will be are superimposed on each other. Saint Augustine’s idea of triple present (taken and unfolded by Ricœur from Saint Augustine’s Confessions), seems to have been tailor made for Didactics. Teaching always happens in a quite simultaneous three-timed living/thinking action.
When narrative mimetises action, facts and events have been arranged, because narrative is not a copy but a creative re-presentation of action. Then, intelligibility requirements of narrative (and of understandings) claim for an order, which is not necessarily a chronological one. Intelligibility of narrative means that the narrative may be followed (followability) because the linking of facts and events allows and assures comprehension. Action becomes then storied in a plot.
The world of action provides facts and events, as well as motives, intentions, consequences, interactions, etc. simultaneously. A semantic conceptual net assures early and perhaps naïve comprehension of it (Ricœur’s practical comprehension), but narrative is the one who organises the emplotment, by telling the whole action, word after word, idea after idea. In this way, narrative is different from semantics. It has syntactic rules for com-position, which arranges facts and events of action world. So, synchronic things in the action world become diachronic words and ideas in terms of narrative.
- When teaching action becomes narrative, some special circumstances must be taken into account. Most of the times Ricœur’s Time and Narrative framework supposes someone giving narrative form to an action world that is not his own, but a comprehensible one because of human cultures large similarity. However, given the fact that teachers’ narrative has to do precisely with a world of action where the subject of the action is both an actor and a narrative producer, some special considerations are needed then. Ricœur’s Oneself as another and The practical reason[2]offer some appropriate tools about action theory, which are indeed helpful in order to understand and theorise teaching action. Teachers actually plot their teaching action (following some previous narrative emplotment for it), and after this they re-plot it in some narrative form, perhaps a written one, but quite surely a spoken or a thought one. Didactics does ground its whole work in this dialectic relationship between teaching action and its discourses, which precisely turns it intelligible. Certainly, Sociology, Psychology, Anthropology or History may give some intelligibility to teaching practices, whether they consider or not teachers’ narrative, but they are not Didactics, so they are differently related to teaching practice and its improvement.
b. About self-narrative
Self-narrative, i.e. the actor’s one, may be analysed from Ricœur’s framework referring both to the text and to the action. Even though fictional and historiographical narratives are mainly focused and theorised by Ricœur at ‘Time and Narrative’, much more than autobiographical or self-telling narratives, the tools provided about text are indeed invaluable. Perhaps one’s practice narrative could be considered as concerning with microhistorical genre, specially from some methodological issues. On the other hand, Ricœur’s ‘From text to action’ includes many specific concepts in order to understand the close relationships between the text (meaning even self-telling) and the human action (as teaching action actually is).
First, I should consider the idea that narrative is a natural component of improved (and improvable) teaching practice, but not an ornamental, bureaucratic or administrative requirement, as some people do believe. Long-time prestigious and powerful academic backgrounds of teaching practice understanding, have got the effect that practice would be seen indeed as an outcome of suggestions and ideas of the academic world. The place of academic thought in practice thinking and doing is quite relevant, and it will probably never be moved out. However, despite its aims, the Academy itself is not the one who decides its role in teaching practice. Most of the times, teachers’ narratives do not have academic weight and they are not the result of any search of information about the teaching practice or the practitioner. Even though, I think that the naturalness of narrative in teaching practice must be argued in an academic way, but from the perspective of the teaching practice itself.
Why am I referring to telling about practice if practice is something to be done? In some way, teaching practice is always told about (for ears, for eyes or for minds), because senseless and meaningless actions are rather unacceptable ones for rational people. Even under alienation, practices are not senseless or meaningless for the subject of the action, because of sense and meaning, whatever they could be, do not consist in form fulfilling. Everybody is clear that teachers do not produce any meta-knowledged statement entitled, for instance: ‘I am speaking about the sense or the meanings of my teaching practice’. Much more, when this arrives in this way, it is not meta-knowledge but –rather frequently- a ritual expression looking for and asking for the acknowledgement of community and authorities. Low reliability and high hermeneutics work are claimed for before considering these statements as teachers’ thinking truth. Words and effects revealing teachers’ sense and meanings of teaching practice appear everywhere. No special times, or places or circumstances are required, but only proper theoretical tools to seize teachers’ thinking.
Ricœur’s action semantic conceptual net and the symbolic mediation of language are the very background of this personal practical comprehension of teaching practice. However, given the fact that the teacher is the one who teaches (i.e. he/she is the actor of the action), teaching action does not only involve him/her as an actor but as an individual, as the person he/she truly is. Then, I should state here that, being teaching practice both a practice of teaching and also a practice of the person who teaches, when teaching practice is understood, meant, provided with some sense, told, etc., the teacher is also understood, meant, provided with some sense, told, etc. This main acknowledgement claims for special theoretical backgrounds beyondRicœur’s framework.
- J-M Barbier (Barbier & Glatanu, 2000; Barbier, 2000)suggests that the key is to look for a theory that joins a theory of action and a theory of identity/subjectivity (Barbier himself has deep Ricœurian roots). The singular nature of action claims for some theoretical tools, which are not conceivable from outside the actor of the action (the practitioner, the teacher…). If action implies its own representation, then action and narrative are inseparable; and if action representation implies the representation of itself, besides actor and context representation at the same time, then subject and action are shaped together.[3] A whole approach to this theoretical background requires one more component. Affect is indeed the very linking substance that enlightens cognition, sense, meaning, subject, action and narrative (from action semantics to real words, making sentences, logical linking and, in the end, the emplotment of lived action).[4]
However, things are not so simple. Narrative practices and skills of teachers are different from the writings of the historians, philosophers, or any other professional writer. Most of the times, teaching practice implies reading books, etc. about teaching contents, and speaking about them to the pupils. Sometimes some written reports are also required, quite surely about pupils and learning… The teachers’ voice speaking about themselves because, either they need or they want to do it, is something really unusual. Two main reasons back up this fact: first, when something about teaching has been claimed to be said, ‘experts’ had always had a legitimated voice to be taken into account, but not teachers; second, teachers have long been aware by many different ways both about their conceptual and ideological powerlessness and about their convenient discourse to be accepted in order to get/keepsome professional acknowledgement. Thus, teachers’ voices have become more and more worthless. Because of this, to dare some didactical purposes growing out of teachers’ narrative is a rather complex and hard venture. Indeed, tough act to follow.
- We certainly all agree that many teachers and their teaching practice can perhaps be changed (i.e. improved). However, as teachers are the very subjects of the teaching action, nobody but themselves may accomplish significant changes into the matter. Forgetting and rejecting ritual, servile and nonsense language about teaching practice is only half of the work to be done. Another narrative –perhaps more authentic and honest- does exist in teachers’ minds, as well as Ricœur’s action semantics, but social and institutional contexts do not usually introduce it as any positive representation (représentation finalistante). Personal perspectives are hardly welcome there, meaning that affective questions often impede teachers’ public narrative to be authentic. Everybody is clear that some encouragement and some institutional support are required to reverse this situation. This is because professional (and so personal) development involves a lot of formative mediations throughout the whole life of the teacher persona. These mediations are connected to the fact that throughout their teaching careers teachers’ trust and self-confidence are usually undermined and need to be recovered. Real lived life is precisely what provideseach subject with experiences, interactions, values, feelings, identity and alterity sense, knowledge and wisdom, besides some projects for future… all along each subject ‘formative stage’ (Ferry’s trajet de formation). The practicum expresses personal and professional ‘form’, despite it does not matter if teachers are able or not to think or to put it in words.
Didactics teachers have a role that has to do with improving teaching practices (even though, they shall never be awarded as main actors, but perhaps as simple support roles). Teaching interaction with those who will be teachers or those who want to become teacher-researchers, introduces narrative practice into the syllabus, as formal work. Then, an opportunity is given to accompany the singular -and so the personal- process through which the individual (the student in my classroom) translates a part of is/her life into words. I have learned that people face this challenge differently. Some of them look as if they had waited for this moment for a long time. Words and plotting-doing are quite pleasant and peaceful for them. They enjoy being shown, to themselves and to the others. Otherwise, some teachers or student teachers feel well because they have achieved order and sense into their teaching practice. Whereas some people do not like narrative. Sometimes they make great effort to evade it. They feel they are invaded in their privacy and in their intimacy, because they cannot find any reason to say some things to others, and perhaps even to him/herself. Some people prefer to speak, because writing on paper terrifies them; others, prefer writing (as Cicero said, ‘Epistola enim non erubescit’).