Philippa Hunter

Using Vignettes as Self-reflexivity in Narrative Research of Problematised History Pedagogy

This article focuses on the use of vignettes as an emergent dimension of narrative research writing. The author draws on doctoral research that problematised history curriculum and pedagogy with pre-service teachers in the context of secondary teacher education in New Zealand. Pedagogic crossings of history education sites, and negotiation of disciplinary boundaries were storied in the narrative research. A lived experience of curriculum continuity and change had shaped a critical pedagogy orientation in the authors theorising and practice. This featured a self-reflexivity of pedagogic identities including those of student, practitioner, and researcher. The narrative writing was conceptualised as a layered bricolage of academic socialisation, engagement with theory, and practitioner work. Accordingly, it proved unworkable to distance the authors lived experience and pedagogic identities from the narrative, for these lay at the heart of the research. Therefore, the styling of vignettes became a creative way to story self-reflexivity within academic writing. Vignettes were conceived as inside stories that recalled pedagogic voices and evoked themes of curriculum disturbance as transgression, and desire as re-imagined history curriculum.

Problematised history pedagogy as action research in preservice secondary teacher education

ABSTRACT A critical pedagogy stance involving reflexivity and critique of Aotearoa New Zealand’s history curriculum informed a participatory action research methodology of problematised history pedagogy (PHP). Conceptualised as layered and reciprocal, the PHP was nested as a ‘case’ of action research at the heart of narrative inquiry. The PHP was situated in a year’s curriculum course in secondary teacher education, and activated participants’ phenomenological empathy, genealogical disclosure, and discursive self-fashioning. This involved life-storying, critical discourse analysis of history texts, and PHP interventions with students in history classrooms. A dismantling analysis deconstructed participants’ historical thinking and revealed something of their discursive production. Recognition of pedagogic identities, embodiment, and the seeking of authentic selves played out through the critical project. As a professionally challenging process, the PHP depended on mutual goodwill and careful reading of participants’ readiness, attitudes, and unique capabilities. The research was also dependent on the professional expertise of colleagues in schools. My interpretive authority as a researcher involved multiple selves as teacher, advocate, and writer. The provoking of more critical approaches in what we do and why in history pedagogy, and the enhancing of practitioner capabilities, supports the PHP as a useful research methodology in initial teacher education.