Debbie Pushor

Navigating Sites for Narrative Inquiry

Narrative inquiry is a methodology that frequently appeals to teachers and teacher educators. However, this appeal and sense of comfort has advantages and disadvantages. Some assume narrative inquiries will be easy to design, live out, and represent in storied formats in journals, dissertations, or books. For the authors, though, narrative inquiry is much more than the telling of stories. There are complexities surrounding all phases of a narrative inquiry and, in this article, the authors pay particular attention to thinking about the design of narrative inquiries that focus on teachers’ and teacher educators’ own practices. They outline three commonplaces and eight design elements for consideration in narrative inquiry. They illustrate these elements using recently completed narrative inquiries. In this way, the authors show the complex dimensions of narrative inquiry, a kind of inquiry that requires particular kinds of wakefulness.

Reflections on the Ethics-Approval Process

It is sometimes a difficult journey receiving ethics approval for research involving vulnerable populations, research involving our own children, or innovative research methodologies such as autoethnography. This autoethnographical account is a story about one student who wanted to write a PhD dissertation in a very different way and also the story of her co-supervisors who supported the student in using autoethnography as a creative way to share her “secrets of mothering” and who also supported her through an ethics-approval process that was both challenging and rewarding. This article reflects on a personal journey through the ethics-approval process at a Canadian university integrating components of the Tri-Council Policy Statement (TCPS), that guides university ethics committees across Canada, and asks the questions: What is the purpose of research and how can research ethics boards support research and stories that are difficult to tell and difficult to hear? It is an inquiry into secrets and difficult knowledge, and how reluctant we are to talk about difficult topics such as developmental disabilities, sexual abuse, divorce, accidents, and illness.

Narrative inquiry, curriculum making, and teacher education

This is a book for teacher educators. It is also a book for teacher candidates and educational stakeholders who are interested in using storied practice in teacher education. It is about teacher educators and teacher candidates as curriculum makers (Clandinin & Connelly, 1992) who engage in narrative inquiry practice. As editors of this volume, we came to this important writing project as a result of our respective work using narrative inquiry that originated from our studies with Dr. Michael Connelly and Dr. Jean Clandinin. In a large sense, this book represents our interpretations, as second-generation narrative inquirers, of three main ideas: narrative inquiry, curriculum making, and teacher education. Narrative inquiry, curriculum making, and teacher education are vitally interconnected concepts that offer an alternative way of understanding the current landscape of education. Narrative inquiry in teacher education would not have been possible without the groundbreaking work of Connelly and Clandinin.

Bringing into Being a Curriculum of Parents

Just a short while ago, I watched a portion of the broadcast of the 42nd Annual JUNO Awards which celebrate Canadian music and artists. I had tuned in to see k.d. lang become inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. I love k.d. lang’s voice; I love how she uses her voice powerfully as a musician and how she uses it powerfully as an advocate for the rights of all individuals to be their unique selves.

Feeling it in our Hearts

Thank you for joining us in this conversation we have been having about working alongside parents and families. As our Parent Engagement Collaborative sat together at the table just a few nights ago, thinking back to when we began this journey together in the summer of 2010 and about where we are now in present time and where we may go in the future, there were many silences in our conversation.

Planning and Living a Curriculum of Parents

Bringing into being a curriculum of parents has been a celebratory aspect of my teaching life. For years, it was something I envisioned as I researched, read, learned, and talked with others about a reconceptualization of parents’ place in their children’s schooling. I remember leaving the meeting in which I was told that I could move forward with the development and offering of graduate courses focused on parents and families, knowing that moment was one of significance, a marker in a journey.

Leading an examination of beliefs and assumptions about parents

ABSTRACT A body of literature on parent engagement has emerged over the past five decades (Mapp, K. 2013. Partners in Education: A Dual Capacity-Building Framework for Family-School Partnerships. Washington, DC: Southwest Educational Development Laboratory). Regardless of this extensive research evidence and its promise for improved student outcomes, there are only ‘random acts of parent engagement’ (Weiss, H. B., Lopez, E. L. and Rosenberg, H. 2010. Beyond Random Acts: Family, School, and Community Engagement as an Integral Part of Education Reform. Boston, MA: Harvard Family Research Project) occurring in schools across the globe. Why has the systematic engagement of parents not become integral to all schools? We believe an underemphasised and critical piece in the work to engage parents is leadership to facilitate school staffs’ deep and honest examination of their beliefs about parents, and the place and voice of parents in teaching and learning.