The Means Are the End: A Quest for Mutualist Classrooms

• In Event: Advancing Curriculum Studies Through Duoethnography: Adapting a Research Methodology to a Form of Pedagogical Inquiry

Abstract

Objectives

This duoethnography aimed to make tacit the value of teaching and learning in a mutualistic way, uncover the challenges in teaching democratically in an age of hyperstandardization, better understand one’s practice in juxtaposition with the Other and reconceptualize the past based upon present understandings. By making explicit how conversations on educational theories and teaching experiences influenced and changed their beliefs and practices in the teaching of pre-service teacher education students they demonstrate how duoethnography serves as a form of collaborative reflective practice. In disseminating this form of narrative research, readers can ‘conspire’ (Barone, 1990) or ‘breathe with’ the insights as they resonate with parts of each story that they deem relevant.

Perspective(s)

Building upon Maruyama’s (1974) three paradigms of planners (hierarchists, individualists and mutualists) concept of ‘mutualists’, these duoethnographers have attempted to model democratic classrooms (Henderson, 2002) in which student voice (Freire, 1986) is fostered. DuoethnographerA has utilized learning styles (Briggs-Myers, 1985) and multiple intelligences (Armstrong, 1994) theories to guide his teaching. He designs courses that are emergent in nature (Osberg & Biesta, 2008). DuoethnographerB emphasizes pedagogical content knowledge (Hashweh, 2005). She aligns with Kegan’s (1994) belief that education is a “gradual process of holistic mental growth or transformation – the evolution of consciousness – [rather] than of mastering new mental skills” (p. 187) in which each class creates its own mini-habitus (Bourdieu, 1973). While each has different histories and theoretical influences, collectively both take a constructivist orientation (Phillips, 1995) in which knowledge is co-constructed by student, teacher, subject and milieu (Schwab, 1981) and recognize the role of autopoesis (Maturana &Varela, 1992) in the process.

Methods/Data Sources

The researchers employed duoethnography (Norris, Sawyer & Lund, 2012) as their research methodology as it acknowledges that meanings are personal, emergent and change based upon new experiences and information. It also inserts more accountability and clarity into the autobiographies. Recorded conversations and scripted emails formed the basis of this research.

Results and Significance:

Reflections revealed that many pre-service teachers, primarily enculturated in a top-down educational system, enter their classrooms looking for the right way to teach, becoming agitated, confused and resistant when asked to think/speak for themselves. Students feared uncertainty and, as a result, over the years, each teacher-educator found her/his own ways to teach drama and second languages respectively. The duoethnographers have learned to accept fear as a natural student condition and by making this explicit and adjusting their instructional designs they found that students were more apt to accept the validity of mutualism. Reflections on their many vignettes provide a portrait of how two individuals attempt to implement mutualism. They became aware that their approach was more than a technique to achieve educational goals; they concluded that mutualism was a goal itself that addressed the hidden curriculum (Flinders, Noddings, & Thornton, 1986) of subservience by creating spaces for student voice.

Authors

• Joe Norris, Brock University

• Olenka S. Bilash, University of Alberta