Literacy narratives: Writing and relating letters and stories of teacher knowledge, identity and development

摘要

In this project, I focus on my personal and professional knowledge relationship with Jeanette, a Grade 6 teacher, over a four year span and use writing about my co-participant and me, as well as writing with Jeannette, to examine literacy teaching and learning as a product of caring, collaborative relationships in a diverse communal school landscape. Teacher knowledge, identity and development of literacy educators are explored through the primary method of letter writing, as well as other conversations, interviews, research texts, course papers, journals and diaries I have written in what I term literacy narratives . My work in this narrative inquiry is positioned in the work of Dewey's (1938) experience as education, in Connelly and Clandinin's (1988, 1994, 1999) research of teachers as curriculum makers, teacher identity, and personal practical knowledge and in Clandinin and Connelly's (1995, 1996, 2000) extensive work on teachers' professional knowledge landscapes and narrative inquiry through experience and story in qualitative research.;In part one of this study, I illustrate teachers' professional knowledge by looking first at my own personal literacy narrative as I came into this research. I then look at professional knowledge landscapes through the viewpoint of Joseph, the principal, while positioning my own theories to the landscape site.;In part two, I examine the concept of teacher identity in the development of literacy educators. I show literacy narratives, through the primary method of letter writing with Jeanette, by studying literacy narrative landscapes such as the Breakfast Club and by the examination of teachers' and students' personal literacy narratives which linked teachers' teaching and learning of literacy to students' learning and acquisition of literacy.;In part three, I study closely the application of related literacy narratives as a tool for collaborative teacher development and literacy education reform. I extrapolate such principles as: commitment, patience, trust, respect, compromise, community, affirmation, and relationship. Implications for the use of related literacy narratives as a tool for collaborative teacher development in other educational contexts and as applied to my research findings conclude my project.