Living an elementary school curriculum: Rethinking reform through a narrative classroom inquiry with a teacher and her students into the learning of mathematics. Life lessons from Bay Street Community School

摘要

This study, situated in a long-term Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada Research Project, explores teacher knowledge and reform in education. I work with one teacher, Janine O'Neil, examining her mathematics education practice as it unfolds in her classroom. My study spans two years of classroom participation and observation followed by another year of research in Bay Street Community School's larger community.;My research phenomena emerges in response to the reform environment shaping the North American context of education. I examine how reforms to mathematics education are experienced in an elementary classroom. As my narrative classroom inquiry progresses, complexities of classroom life with Janine and her students in Room 34/35 enfold me. The complexities create tensions that are layered throughout my research and writing.;Section I, a narrative analysis, begins with a description of a grade 3/4 mathematics lesson, Remembrance Day Math. Then, I explore the meaning of this classroom experience using a three-dimensional axes of narrative inquiry: place, temporality and the personal and social relationship. The importance of teaching and learning mathematics as contextualized in experience emerges as a pivotal understanding.;Section II, a curricular analysis, begins with a description of a grade 3/4 mathematics lesson based on an exploratory activity into relationships between whole numbers, fractions, and ratios (third grade), and a problem-solving activity (fourth grade). Using the notion of curriculum commonplaces to reconstruct a mathematics education experience in an elementary classroom, I analyze this lesson from the perspectives of the teacher, social milieu, subject matter, and learner. I find that classroom curriculum results from the negotiation of tensions between the learner, curriculum, and community needs.;Section III, a narrative reconceptualization of reform in education, consists of three chapters. The first is a study into the relationship between personal and social influences in the construction of teacher knowledge. The second is an account of a school-based reform and how this initiative becomes part of a teacher's practice. I argue that framing notions of education reform in terms of learning and growth is beneficial. The final chapter looks backward into and forward from this inquiry.