Small Stories Research in Service-Learning Contexts: Disrupting Narratives of Homelessness in Teacher Education

• In Event: Roundtable Session 10
  In Roundtable Session: Relationships for Service-Learning in Teacher Education

Abstract

This study explores how pre-service teachers question, problematize, and re-conceptualize the issues of poverty in families without homes, and teacher identities in a storytelling project as part of their community-based field experience. A small story approach was used as a tool to design the service learning and as an analytic tool for narrative analysis in this study. Findings suggest that the pre-service teachers problematized the unchallenged assumptions about families without homes through listening to and reflecting on the stories and daily conversations of families without homes. The pre-service teachers also explored the multiple layers of teacher identities to work effectively with students without homes by reflecting on the intersections between their own personal identities and the mothers’ identities and experiences.

Authors

• Minjeong Kim, University of Massachusetts - Lowell

• Soon-Yong Pak, Yonsei University