The Phenomenality of Authority and Its Disruption in Educational Narrative

• In Event: 34.078 - Roundtable Session 13
  In Roundtable Session: 34.078-8 - Considering Experience and Identity in Narrative Inquiry

Abstract

Schools too often ignore or marginalize the experiences of individual students, denying them the authority to be disparate individuals and authors of their own phenomenality. This denial of authorship is an impediment to social change that limits the ability to meaningfully engage in critical pedagogy. The narratives explored in this research examine the phenomenality of moments of assumed and denied authorship through the author’s lived-experience in multiple roles, contexts, and through time. Results of this work underscore the importance of teachers’ critical reflections on their practice and their own education for the relationship between conformity and the manner in which authority is taken up and the anti-oppressive potential of teaching when teachers allow their authority to be disruptive and disrupted.

Author

• Timothy Babulski, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities