Freema Elbaz-Luwisch

Narrative Research: Political Issues and Implications.

Abstract The conduct of narrative research gives rise to a range of political issues which include the validation of narrative knowledge, the relationships of power and authority among research participants, and the distinction between the public and private domains. In this article three issues will be examined: The politics of research in a “narrative” mode which challenges traditional research; issues of power that arise in collaborative research relationships; and the political implications of studying the private domain of life story and autobiography.

Writing as Inquiry: Storying the Teaching Self in Writing Workshops

Abstract Recent research demonstrates that the process of telling and writing personal stories is a powerful means of fostering teachers’ professional growth (Connelly & Clandinin, 1995; Conle, 1996; Diamond, 1994; Heikkinen, 1998; Kelchtermans, 1993). This article aims to further understanding of writing in the development of teachers’ narratives of practice, and to critically examine the potential of the writing workshop as a space where diverse voices can find expression. I take up a narrative perspective, seeing the practice of teaching as constructed when teachers tell and live out particular stories. I examine the autobiographic writing of teachers who participated in a graduate course on autobiography and professional development, drawing on phenomenological (Van Manen, 1990) and narrative methods (Mishler, 1986) and attending to issues of voice (Raymond, Butt, & Townsend, 1992, Brown & Gilligan, 1992) and “restorying” (Clandinin & Connelly, 1996, 1998). The main questions addressed are how do teachers narratively construct their own development and how does the university context, usually construed as a locus of knowledge transmission, function as a framework for the processes of storytelling, reflection, and restorying of experience and for the elaboration by teachers of an internally persuasive discourse (Bakhtin, 1981)? The article describes the experience of the course and the various uses to which participants put autobiographic writing; the range of voices used in the writing is indicated. Three “moments” in the writing process are discussed: describing, storying, and questioning, moments that, taken together, are seen to make up the restorying process. The conclusions point to limitations and possibilities of writing in the academic setting, in particular the place of theory in helping to draw out teachers’ voices.

Immigrant teachers: stories of self and place

Teachers’ lives have been the focus of much recent research on teaching, and we now have rich, detailed understandings of how teachers develop a ‘teaching self,’ in the context of concrete details of biography, school settings, relationships and educational systems within which teachers work. What we lack is a sense of the teacher in a place—a specific location that holds meaning, that matters to those who inhabit it. The concept of ‘place’ has been neglected in contemporary education, yet it seems to be an important one for postmodern times. This article will examine the stories of immigrant teachers in Israel, people who have undertaken to teach in a culture different from the one in which they themselves were educated. Teachers who have made a transition from one cultural setting to another are likely to have developed an awareness of teaching and schooling in the new culture that other teachers may not have. Their stories reveal what it means in the chosen culture to tell one’s story and give an accou...Teachers’ lives have been the focus of much recent research on teaching, and we now have rich, detailed understandings of how teachers develop a ‘teaching self,’ in the context of concrete details of biography, school settings, relationships and educational systems within which teachers work. What we lack is a sense of the teacher in a place—a specific location that holds meaning, that matters to those who inhabit it. The concept of ‘place’ has been neglected in contemporary education, yet it seems to be an important one for postmodern times. This article will examine the stories of immigrant teachers in Israel, people who have undertaken to teach in a culture different from the one in which they themselves were educated. Teachers who have made a transition from one cultural setting to another are likely to have developed an awareness of teaching and schooling in the new culture that other teachers may not have. Their stories reveal what it means in the chosen culture to tell one’s story and give an account of one’s career and work as a teacher. The stories of seven immigrant teachers, in dialogue with the researcher’s story, highlight losses and gains in the journey toward a new teaching self, and reveal something of what the process of finding or making a place for oneself—both in the new culture and as a teacher—is like.

Personal Story as Passport: Storytelling in border pedagogy

The Coexistence Workshop is a course in the teacher education program at an Israeli university. Its purpose is to promote the ability of prospective teachers to educate their pupils for a democratic society in which diversity is honored and coexistence becomes a reality. Teaching the Coexistence Workshop allows me to explore the usefulness of personal storytelling in learning about diversity and enabling students to become border crossers. The concept of border pedagogy (Freire, Giroux) speaks to issues of social justice and equality among groups divided in very concrete ways by the powerful but often invisible borders of race, social and economic class, gender and, in this case, ethnic-national identity. I examine the experience of border-crossing afforded by the Coexistence Workshop through an account of selected events, interrogating and interpreting this account by way of a discussion of the requirements of border pedagogy in the work of Giroux. My purpose is to elucidate some of the concrete meanings that the metaphor of border-crossing points to in the Israeli context, to gain insights for a pedagogy of difference in teacher education, and to illustrate some of the possibilities of mapping out terrains of commonality, connection and shared concern.

How Is Education Possible When There's a Body in the Middle of the Room?

Abstract This article explores the possibility of education for multiculturalism and diversity in a situation of violent conflict. It tells the story of my attempt to figure out what might be learned from the situation of living with violence, threats to personal safety, and death as part of the everyday. I draw on recent experiences of dialogue between Jewish and Arab/Palestinian Israelis in preservice and in-service settings at the University of Haifa to suggest that attention to feelings, to the expression of fear, vulnerability, and anger, and to the body that carries these feelings and experiences, are needed in order to make such dialogue possible.

Writing and Professional Learning: The Uses of Autobiography in Graduate Studies in Education.

Based on the writing and oral reports of a group of 15 students in a graduate course focused on autobiographic writing and professional development, I address the question of how graduate study in education might sustain teachers in their work. For the course in question, the students studied recent research on teacher learning and devoted time to personal writing related to the course topics, viewing writing as an embodied process. The participants saw professional learning as entailing the expansion of their repertoire of professional knowledge and skills, the strengthening of reflective processes, paying attention to cognitive dissonance, inquiry into and clarification of their personal story and the development of ‘narrative authority’, the building of a ‘knowledge community’, and the integration of theory and practice. My interpretation of the course materials highlights the contribution of writing to professional learning: writing facilitated paying attention to the concrete details of experience, making place for expression of feelings and imagination, giving voice to a range of social concerns, and viewing social, cultural, and religious difference as a resource for teacher learning.

Narrative Inquiry: Wakeful Engagement With Educational Experience

An essay review of Narrative Inquiry: Experience and Story in Qualitative Research (Clandinin, D. Jean, & Connelly, F. Michael. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000)

Professional Development in Israel: Fostering Multicultural Dialogue among Jewish and Arab Israeli Teachers.

Abstract Can teacher-educators and teachers work together in community, to make a difference in society? The aim of this article is to describe a set of strategies the implementation of which will contribute towards the elaboration of a new ‘culture of teaching’. By promoting practices that lead to the development, in students and educators alike, of communication across cultural, ethnic, religious and national boundaries, of mutual tolerance and acceptance, the program we propose is dedicated to the evolution of a ‘culture for peace’. The program will be implemented and ongoing formative evaluation carried out, in the northern region of Israel, by a team of researchers with the participation of teacher educators and junior high school teachers from various cultural backgrounds. The rationale for the work derives from research literature on the nature of teaching and school change, the foundations of hostility and misunderstanding among people of diverse cultural backgrounds, and the potential of personal narrative for bringing people together. Our purpose in this article is to elaborate this rationale and to engage in critical reflection on the prospects and difficulties that lie ahead

Teaching and Marginality: Lessons from Teachers’ Life Stories

In many traditions, teachers are honored as holding a place of central importance to the development of society. However, there are signs that teaching as a profession is increasingly being marginalized in society: research studies as well as statements in the public forum tell us that teaching has become a more and more difficult job over the years. The frequent use of terms such as “deskilling” (Apple, 1987) and “intensification” (Woods, 1999; Ballet et al., 2006; Hargreaves 1994, 2003) reflect this. Research on teaching often looks at the negative side of the ledger rather than the positive, focusing heavily on topics such as teacher stress and burnout (Vandenberghe & Huberman, 1999; Wilhelm et al, 2000). Teachers complain about being under constant pressure to respond to reform initiatives, in particular to outcome-oriented and standards-based programs that demand many changes in teachers’ work without always delivering the hoped-for gains in student achievement; in many countries teachers are poorly rewarded for their efforts, paid low salaries and offered few opportunities for advancement. Overall, rapid changes in the work of teaching have left many teachers “grieving for a lost self” (Nias, 1993), struggling to make sense of the latest reform and wondering whether it is worth their effort to invest in mandated new programs (Gitlin & Margonis, 1995).

Review: Education: Pam Poppleton and John Williamson, eds, New Realities of Secondary Teachers' Work Lives. Oxford: Symposium Press, 2004, 319 pp., ISBN 1873927142, £28.00/US

The last two decades of the 20th century witnessed far-reaching changes in the working lives of teachers worldwide. Although critics decry the fact that the overall picture of schooling seems to have changed relatively little even in this period of technological and social upheaval, there is general agreement that much has changed for teachers who are at the forefront of the schooling process: their workload has intensified (Hargreaves, 1994), while at the same time there has been a process of ‘deskilling’ (Apple, 1987; Apple and Jungck, 1992) as packaged curricula, outcomes-based management programmes and other schemes for advancing and monitoring the learning process have been introduced into schools, controlling the work of teachers and taking many decisions about pedagogy, curriculum and evaluation out of their hands. Large-scale comparative evaluations of the results of schooling, such as those conducted by the IEA (International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement), have put increased pressure on state educational systems to demonstrate their effectiveness in producing competitive test results, often overshadowing more vital concerns such as preparing students for adult life, for competent citizenship and economic productivity. The public call for accountability and increased control of the procedures and in particular the outcomes of schooling have impacted on the conduct of schooling around the world, albeit with very different foci and effects in different countries. In response to these developments, New Realities of Secondary Teachers’ Work Lives reports on an ambitious international study that examines the changes in teachers’ working lives in comparative perspective. The book was written by members of the Consortium for Cross-Cultural Research in Education, coming from Australia, Canada, the People’s Republic of China, England, Hungary, Israel, the Netherlands, South Africa and the US. Part 1 of the book reports on individual studies conducted