Constructing Narratives Toward Justice? Audrey's Teaching Story to Live by and Leave By

• In Event: 35.066 - Narrative Research and Social Justice

Abstract

How does a teaching story of inclusion, social justice, compassion, and love become unsustainable? What prevents critically-minded teacher candidates from living out a narrative toward justice as first-year teachers? Using methods that center the construction and analysis of narrative (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000), I explore these questions through the lived experiences of a first-year teacher and her students in an urban school. Audrey attempts to narrate a story based in social justice pedagogies. But she is confronted by the shifting discursive landscape of public schools imbued with oppressive discourses, including “body-not-enoughness” (Hughes-Decatur, 2011). In this paper I re-tell Audrey’s stories, theorizing how her “story to live by” becomes a “story to leave by” in these neoliberal times in public education.

Author

• Erin Beeman Stutelberg, University of Minnesota