From Knowing to Understanding Student Empowerment: The Narrative Approach to Research in a Middle School

• In Event: Participatory Action Research: Student, Teacher, and Community Voices

Abstract

This paper examines how, as a teacher researcher, I employed the narrative approach to research to better understand my 8th grade Language Arts students’ empowerment in school. Drawing on sociocultural theory, critical pedagogy and the narrative approach to teacher research, students’ voices were privileged and compared to the systemic assumptions regarding student empowerment inherent in No Child Left Behind (NCLB) policy in order to develop a stronger professional understanding of how schools empower and disempower students.

Author

• Brian R. Horn, Illinois State University