Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose

• In Event: Narrative Methods? Beyond Methods “Experts” in Relocating Narrativizing Philosophies in the Curriculum

Abstract

To teach in the American school today is to undertake a profoundly human as well as professional responsibility. It is a time when far more is known than ever before about the theoretical aspects of teaching and learning; but it is also a time when far less can be guaranteed (Greene, 1967, p.3.)

Though decades have passed and a century has turned since Maxine Greene wrote the above passage in the first pages of her little, existential power volume, Existentialist Encounters for Teachers, it still rings true. In this paper, I add curriculum to Greene’s existential mix to reassert-- in the tradition of Connelly & Clandinin, 1988; He & Phillion, 2008; Grumet, 1980; Miller, 2005; Pinar, 1975-- that to understand curriculum in this historical moment is to undertake a profoundly human responsibility.

Using documentarian methods of the synoptic text (Pinar, 2006), this presentation recounts that the story of narrative research in education is really a multiplicity of stories. Developing this synoptic text, I draw from curriculum handbooks, key texts on narrative research, and data collected in my field work and teaching with students to recount, retell, and problematize narrative within the field of curriculum. Using landmark state-of-the-field handbooks on curriculum studies (Connelly, He, & Phillion, 2008; Malewski, 2010; Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery & Taubman, 1995), I pair these explorations with a pool of literature that deals with narrative in its own terms (see Adams, 2008; Akin, 2002; Andrews, Squires, & Tamboukou, 2008; Barone, 2010; Clandinin, 2008; Clough, 2002; Ayers, 1992; Clandinin, & Connelly, 2000, Cresswell, 2002: He & Connelly, 2005; Juber-Warring, 2010; Josselson, 2006; Lyons & LaBosky, 2002; Phillion, 2002; Phillion, Pinnegar & Danes, 2007) and combine these literatures with understandings emerging from my own narrativizing anthropological research both as teacher and in the field.

In my research, I come to understand/conclude/ find my own narrative within the tradition of testimonio which I deploy strategically to frame my narrative and that I use with students as a curricular practice, and I also draw from literature that explores and problematizes testimonio as narrative form (Bartow, 2004; Beverly 2005; Cruz-Malavé, Logan, 1997; Nance 2006; Squire, 2012, Vargas, 2011; Yudice, 1991). As Ayers (1992) writes: “There is, of course, not a single story to tell, but a kaleidoscope of stories, changing, flowing, crashing against one another, each one playing, light and shadow, off the others in an infinity of pure and crazy patterns” (p. 155).

References in the upload.

Author

• Laura M. Jewett, The University of Texas - Brownsville