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1999

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NARRATIVE & THE EXPLORATION OF CULTURE, SELF, &
OTHER IN TEACHERS' BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION GROUPS

presented by

Mary Birgit McVee

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NARRIT‘:

NARRATIVE AND THE EXPLORATION OF CULTURE, SELF, AND OTHER
IN TEACHERS' BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION GROUPS

By
Mary Birgit McVee

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Teacher Education

1999

NARRATI

As. a
multicultu
called to q
teaching a:

multicultu

ABSTRACT

NARRATIVE AND THE EXPLORATION OF CULTURE, SELF, AND OTHER
IN TEACHERS' BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION GROUPS

By

Mary Birgit McVee

As a result of both the recent debates over literacy and the increasing
multicultural nature of our society, teachers and teacher educators are being
called to question their past efforts and prepare for future directions in
teaching and teacher education. In particular, some advocates of
multicultural education, critical theory, and culturally relevant pedagogy
argue that teachers, especially, white teachers must learn to value difference
as a strength and resource to be used in curriculum and instruction rather
than as a deficit to be mediated. However, for teachers to do this, they must
first explore and understand their own cultural identities. This is problematic
for many white teachers who often claim to be "cultureless." In adopting
such a perspective, because their own culture remains transparent, the
teachers fail to see how cultural biases privilege certain forms of literacy
instruction and ultimately, the success of certain groups of children.

Recently narrative, and particularly autobiography, has been touted
within educational circles as a means for teachers to explore their own
identities and their perceptions of others as well as a way to explore their own
knowledge, experiences, beliefs and theories about teaching. Although past
research on narrative in education has revealed interesting and important
insights into the lives of teachers, it has for the most part, privileged content
over consideration of forms and function of narrative. Additionally, few of

these studies have focused on narratives told in conversational context. The

following 5
tell or writ:
function. i
discussions
mmgm
culture, rac
Autobiogr;

In an
time with I
they have c
reveals the.
self, other,
Additional]
important i

exl‘loration

following study extends past research by carefully considering what teachers
tell or write stories about, how they craft those stories and how those stories
function. These questions are researched in the context of teachers'
discussions and written response to autobiographical literature and academic
writings related to literacy. These texts were chosen to surface issues of
culture, race, and identity within a masters course on "Culture, Literacy, and
Autobiography."

In analyzing the narratives, I found that teacher's stories change across
time with multiple retellings allowing teachers to position themselves where
they have opportunity to explore issues of race and culture. Analysis also
reveals that not all narratives serve the function of furthering explorations of
self, other, and culture. Some narratives reify stereotypes and positions.
Additionally, I found that adopting the stance of a teacher-researcher was
important in revealing how teacher educators can support narrative

exploration for their students.

Copyright by
MARY BIRGIT MCVEE
1999

1hr: wm
care, supp.
and Charlr
under

This work is dedicated to Zhang Jian Hua, Zachary, and Jaden whose love,
care, support, and patience made this all possible. And to my parents Marlene
and Charles McVee whose unconditional love and support has allowed me to

undertake many wonderful journeys far beyond my Montana home.

For tl
hmband. V
possible. T1
for this PM
cleaving 3”
and laden tl
away from
being patier

I am
reading mu
helping to c
committee r
Raphael for
would not i
assistantshi;
experiences

Jocelj
(even acros:
early memo
0f money tr

The f
dissertation
Karla B
E

‘ .
ellin

dWardS H

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For the completion of this work, I am indebted to Jian, my wonderful
husband. Without your support this undertaking would not have been
possible. Thank you for encouraging me to complete my Masters and go on
for this Ph.D. Had you known how many hours you would spend cooking,
cleaning and watching babies, you may have chosen differently! For Zachary
and Jaden thank you for being patient all those weekends and nights I was
away from home. To our families in Montana and China, my thanks for
being patient with our being so far away and coming home so seldom.

I am also indebted to my committee chair, Susan Florio-Ruane, for
reading multiple drafts, providing wonderful feedback and criticism and for
helping to craft this work into its final form. Thank you to my other
committee members: Jenny Denyer, Lynn Paine, David Pearson, and Taffy
Raphael for their thoughtful questions and comments. In addition, this work
would not have been possible if David, Taffy, and Susan had not sponsored
assistantships along the way that provided friendship, mentoring, and
experiences in research, all of which made this dissertation possible.

Jocelyn Glazier, my email corespondent, critical reader, and friend
(even across the miles in Israel) deserves special acknowledgment for reading
early memos, drafts, ideas, ramblings, analysis, and for putting spending lots
of money to call me and encourage me and think through this analysis.

The following people have been critical to the success of this
dissertation by reading drafts, offering ideas and in providing moral support:
Karla Bellingar, Devon Brenner, Cindy Brock, Kailonnie Dunsmore, Patricia

Edwards, Helene and Khaled Furani, Jim Gavelek, Pat Norman, Cathy

vi

REISChl, Belt
members of '

In add
caioled me it
PhD. 1 wou
encouragem

Finall)

and who gra

Reischl, Bette Shellhorn, Susan Wallace, The Women's Literary Circle,
members of The Literacy Colloquy, and members of the Vygotsky Group.

In addition, I owe a special debt to Rita Page and Nancy Price who
cajoled me into pursuing a Masters and encouraged me to continue for a
Ph.D. I would not have had faith in my abilities without their initial
encouragement.

Finally, I am indebted to all the teachers who participated in this study

and who graciously shared their course work, ideas, and stories.

vii

CHAPTER 1
BTRODL'CT

Literacy and
Grand Narra1
literacy, C 111'
Overview of
Chapter Ove:

marten 2
CLITL'RE, i

introduction.
Lingu;
Cultur
Teach.
Explm
SOdOCultura]
Piarra‘
lCarra‘
NaI‘rat

Memods .....

COUrsr

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................ 1
Literacy and the Contemporary Sociocultural Context ........................................... 1
Grand Narratives ............................................................................................................. 2
Literacy, Culture, and Autobiography ......................................................................... 4
Overview of the Study .................................................................................................... 6
Chapter Overview ........................................................................................................... 8
CHAPTER 2
CULTURE, NARRATIVE, THEORY 8: METHODS ............................................... 10
Introduction .................................................................................................................... 10
Linguistic, Cultural, and Ethnic Diversity .................................................... 10
Culture and Cultural Identity ......................................................................... 12
Teachers Exploring Culture ............................................................................. 14
Exploring Culture Through Narrative ......................................................... 16
Sociocultural Perspectives of Language and Narrative ......................................... 18
Narrative as Re-emplotment: The Construction of Self and Other ...... 19
Narrative as Cultural Therapy and Positioning ......................................... 21
Narrative as Ethics ............................................................................................ 23
Methods ........................................................................................................................... 25
Course Objectives, Readings , and Discussion Groups .............................. 25
A Case of Practitioner Research: Data Collection and Methods ............. 31
Theoretical Frameworks for Data Analysis .................................................. 38

viii

CHAPTER T.
ElllE'S SIOI

Introduction.
The V.
Methods of .‘

Prelim
Narrat

Extending th-

Evidence of I
Sequences, ar

Repeu
R€peu
Repen-

Rtemplottin
flies Final c

Conclusion...

CHAPTER THREE

ELLIE'S STORY: THE BLACK JESUS ........................................................................ 43
Introduction .................................................................................................................... 43
The Vignette Assignment: Opportunity for Re-emplotment ................. 45
Methods of Narrative Analysis from Labov and Polanyi ..................................... 49
Preliminary Analysis Using Quantitative Comparisons Across
Narratives ............................................................................................................ 53
Extending the Analysis to Include Examination of the Discourse ..................... 65
Evidence of Re-emplotment: Repetition Across Words, Questions, Flash
Sequences, and Resolutions ........................................................................................ 68
Repetition Across Words ................................................................................. 68
Repetition Across Resolutions ....................................................................... 73
Repetition Across Questions ........................................................................... 75
Re-emplotting the Self: Questions, Flash Sequences, and Repetition Within
Ellie's Final Oral Retelling ........................................................................................... 80
Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 86

CHAPTER FOUR
CATHY'S STORY: WHITE TEACHER, BLACK CHILD PLACED IN

CRISIS .............................................................................................................................. 89
Introduction .................................................................................................................... 89
The Sociocultural Contexts of Narrative .................................................................. 93

Culture, Literacy, and Reflection: Exploring Self and Other ................... 98

Culture, Literacy, and Reflection: Avoiding the Hot Lava of Race....101

Examining Our Personal Perspectives Through Narrative ............................... 106
Black Child in Crisis: Cathy's Narrative .................................................... 107
Alternative Resolutions ................................................................................. 113

ix

Dscussio
Co.
CHAPTE]
REGAN'S
LOTS" .....
lntroducti
What Typr
Qua

Mu]

Cra:

Positioning
Quasinarra

INIEllECtUa]
Conventior

Com

Mult;

Discussion ...................................................................................................................... 116

Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 119
CHAPTER FIVE
REGAN'S STORY: "I WANT TO BE SOMEBODY WHO MOVES THE
LINES" ............................................................................................................................ 123
Introduction .................................................................................................................. 123
What Types of Talk Did Regan Use? ....................................................................... 125
Quasinarratives ................................................................................................ 129
Multi-voiced Narratives ................................................................................ 130
Grand Narratives ............................................................................................. 131

Positioning Regan as the Intellectual: Academic Discourse and the

Quasinarrative .............................................................................................................. 132
Intellectual Discourse and the "Concept of Self" .................................................. 143
Conventional and Unconventional Narratives in Regan's Discourse ........... 147
Conventional Narratives .............................................................................. 148
Multi-voiced Narratives ................................................................................ 151
Grand narratives .............................................................................................. 154

Critiquing the Grand Narratives: A Discussion of The Kitchen God's

Wife ................................................................................................................................ 157
Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 163
CHAPTER SIX

CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................. 166

The Need to Examine Form, Function, Content and Context of Narrative...166

Significant Findings and Limitations of Narrative .............................................. 171
Narrative as Dynamic ..................................................................................... 171
Storytelling and Stereotyping: Essentializing the Other ........................ 173

Foster
The lr
L'ncoi
Teachers ant
Educative .\'
Teach
Narra
APPENDICI
Appendix A:
Appendix B;
AE‘Pfi’ndix C:
APPendix 0
Appendix E;
APPEndix F;
APPEndix C
At‘t‘endix H

A‘PPEndiX l:
‘ ar”lites.

h
A.
A

Pend' .
Pla 1X 1'

Ced in Cr
APPEndiX K

A

0-
o
....
.v
o
n

Fostering Multiplicity ..................................................................................... 174

The Influence of Context on Narrative ...................................................... 176
Uncovering Issues of Power In and Through Narrative ........................ 177
Teachers and Teacher Educators Learning Through Narrative ........................ 180
Educative Narratives, Literacy, Learning, and Experience ................................. 182
Teacher and Ethnographer as Learner ........................................................ 182
Narrative, Continuity, and Experience ....................................................... 183
APPENDICES
Appendix A: Course Syllabus ................................................................................... 188
Appendix B: Narrative Vignette Activity ............................................................. 198
Appendix C: Ellie's Narrative #1 ............................................................................ 200
Appendix D: Ellie's Narrative #2 ............................................................................ 201
Appendix E: Ellie's Narrative #3 ............................................................................. 202
Appendix F: Ellie's Narrative #4 ............................................................................. 203
Appendix G: Ellie's Narrative #5 ............................................................................ 204
Appendix H: Ellie's Narrative #6 ............................................................................ 205

Appendix 1: Complete List of Words Coded for Repetition in Ellie's
Narratives ..................................................................................................................... 208

Appendix J: Timeline for Class on 9-29 and Cathy's Story: "Black Child
Placed in Crisis" ............................................................................................................ 209

Appendix K: Transcript of Maya Angelou's Poetry Reading ............................ 211

Appendix L: Questions Cathy Asked During Her Interviews With African
American Educators .................................................................................................... 214

Appendix M: Example of a Narrative Written by Regan in a Conventional
Form ............................................................................................................................... 216

xi

REFERENCES ............................................................................................................... 218

xii

Table 1
Table 2
Table 3

Table 4

Table 6
Table 7
Table 8
Table 9
Table 10

Table 11

Table 12

Table 13

Table 1.1

Table 1
Table 2
Table 3
Table 4
Table 5
Table 6
Table 7
Table 8
Table 9
Table 10

Table 11

Table 12

Table 13

Table 14

Table 15

Table 16

Table 17
Table 18

Table 19

LIST OF TABLES

Course Participants ............................................................................... 25
Book Club Discussions Throughout the Semester ........................ 27
List of Data Sources Collected During the Study ............................. 32
Coding System for Narratives from Labov and Waletzky ........... 39
Narrative #1 ............................................................................................ 54
Narrative #2 ............................................................................................ 55
Narrative #3 ............................................................................................ 56
Narrative #4 ............................................................................................ 57
Narrative #5 ............................................................................................ 58
Narrative #6 ............................................................................................ 60
Summary of Ellie's Narrative Retellings by Number of Clauses
Per Segment in Narratives #1 Through #6 ..................................... 63
Core Plots Composed of Main Line Events and Flash Sequence
Events for Ellie's Six Narratives ......................................................... 64
Repetition of Selected Words in Ellie's Narratives ....................... 69

Comparison of the Word "Race" as Used in Narratives #4 and
#5 ............................................................................................................... 71

Overview of the Resolutions Offered in Ellie's Six
Narratives ................................................................................................ 74

Summary of Questions Ellie Asked Across Narratives #1

Through #6 ............................................................................................. 76
Comparison of Cathy's Written and Oral Narratives ................. 110
Forms and Features of Regan's Discourse ...................................... 126

Content and Context Surrounding Regan's Conventional
Narratives .............................................................................................. 149

xiii

Table 20

Table 20 An Example of a Conventional Narrative Told By Regan ......... 150

xiv

Rpm]

hguel

rn

(

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 Timeline for Ellie's Narrative Retellings Across the
Semester ................................................................................................... 47
Figure 2 Cathy's Narrative in Context .............................................................. 94

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LIST OF SYMBOLS AND ABBREVIATIONS

Transcription Conventions

overlapping speech

short pause (less than 1 second)

long pause (more than one second)

stressed for emphasis

elongated vowel sounds

dangling sentence, feeling of more to come
speaker unidentified

unintelligible speech

falling intonation (marked over a word or phrase)

rising intonation (marked over a word or phrase)

xvi

There is n

literacy and th
Cultural

Americans (Ho
education since
QML Say
but America, h
utter....lt was a
statement: "Ar
"idea" America
SChools and \‘c
relevance and

conflicting id e2
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Still YEcent in c
Cit" bombing,

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION

There is no theory that is not a fragment carefully prepared of some
autobiography.

Paul Valery1

nt m ra i ultural nt xt

Cultural identity has always been a particularly problematic issue for
Americans (Howarth, 1980); it has been a defining question for public
education since the days of Horace Mann. Quoting F. Scott Fitzgerald in lie
My; Sayre (1980) notes that "France was a land, England was a people,
but America, having about it still that quality of the idea, was harder to
utter....It was a willingness of heart " (p. 149) He concludes with the bold
statement: "America is an idea" (p. 155). There is much debate about what
"idea" America is about these days. Debates over affirmative action, charter
schools and vouchers to equalize educational opportunities, and the
relevance and place of bilingual and multicultural education reflect
conflicting ideas of how we define ourselves as a people and a culture. In
addition, in the context of this broader cultural, social, and historical context
much media attention has focused on the shifting demographics in the U. S.
and how after 2000, Caucasians will no longer be a majority. Other events
still recent in our collective past-- O. J. Simpson, Rodney King, the Oklahoma
City bombing, legislation against affirmative action and bilingual education,
and violence in schools--have raised questions such as, What does it mean to
be an American? What does it mean to live in America? How can we
educate our children so they will make our democratic society a more

equitable place? Who are we as a people? And who do we want to be?

 

lPreface, MW 1. Olney, (Ed), 1980.

Another way of ]
want to tell abm
defer?

rand Narrativr

 

At the he.
encompassing s
have become pa
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articulating the:
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other events 8n
for example, to
by our media;
1md'SCiPlinecl e
\
Zl am using tl

Points thrOUgh
IESearChe V

Another way of phrasing such questions is to ask: What are the stories we
want to tell about ourselves? Whose storieszwill we allow and whose will we
defer?
Graniblarratiles

At the heart of these questions are the grand narratives, the all-
encompassing stories, that represent us and our culture. These narratives
have become part of our national landscape and identity. They are part of the
"primary discourse" (Gee, 1989a) of an American culture that privileges its
White European heritage. Such master stories are not reproduced by
articulating them as "a story" with a character, setting, and plot. Like culture
these stories infuse themselves into our lives, and we internalize them based
on experience, stories, face-to-face interactions, and media information, and
other events encountered in our daily lives. Shirley Brice Heath (1997) refers,
for example, to the grand narratives about youth culture that are undergirded
by our media: In the 1990's young people in our society are self-centered,

undisciplined and think only of themselves. Based on research she

 

2I am using the terms: "story" and "narrative" interchangeably at various
points throughout this dissertation. I am aware that some scholars and
researchers make distinctions between these words. For example,
Gudmundsdottir (1995) provides this summary: "Structuralist literary
theorists make a clear distinction between narrative, story , and discourse
(Culler, 1975). A narrative has two parts: story and discourse (Chatman,
1978). The story includes the events, characters, settings and so on that
constitute the content of a narrative. The discourse is the telling, expression,
presentation of the story...The end product is a narrative, an organized
text....(p. 25). Others, particularly researchers in the social sciences, have
adopted a more flexible definition of narrative, for example, narrative as "a
series of verbal, symbolic, or behavioral acts sequenced for the purpose of
'telling someone else that something happened'" (Herrenstein-Smith, in
Gudmundsdottir, 1995, p. 25). Much of the analysis in the following chapters
deals directly with different definitions and constructions of personal
narratives or personal stories. When necessary I have given specific
definitions, but readers should be aware that throughout this work, I use the
terms "narrative" and "story" interchangeably.

conducted in j
representation
refers to the "
narratives, the

For me
narratives anc
our daily lives
Ilhere do we :
sedimented in
students and c
cultural, and r
In contrast to
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teachers are rr
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whEre their id

conducted in youth clubs in urban areas, Heath takes issue with this
representation, this story about young men and women in our society. Heath
refers to the "'am'ness" and "'are'ness" that is a function of these grand
narratives, the ways in which these narratives shape lives and identities.

For most of us who are teachers or teacher educators, these grand
narratives and controversies surrounding them may seem far removed from
our daily lives. Or, we may simply feel overwhelmed in asking ourselves:
Where do we start? How do we begin to critique, to challenge stories so
sedimented in history? Instead we may choose to focus our attention on
students and classrooms as we attempt to address the increasing linguistic,
cultural, and ethnic diversity we are encountering in classrooms.

In contrast to the students who increasingly attend our schools, the teaching
force remains predominantly white, female, and Euro American. Thus
teachers are more and more often teaching children who come from different
backgrounds than their own.

For many teachers, debates about culture may seem disembodied from
their own experience. For example, white teachers often feel that they are
"just Americans" and do not belong to any particular culture or race. In
addition, they often think of schools and classrooms and "ungendered" places
where their identity as women, or the gender of their students, is not an issue
to be considered as long as the teacher adopts a stance of "treating everybody
the same" or "being equal." However, it is unlikely that teachers will be able
to assist students in examining their own cultural and literate practices or to
prepare students to live in a multicultural society until teachers have a sense
of themselves as participants in cultural practices of literacy. This awareness
is of critical import in contemporary U. S. society when students come from

diverse ethnic and linguistic backgrounds.

itera ’ till

It is cri

more than we
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accompanying
to realize that
implications f
transferred, re
We must stri\
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how are we to
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It is critical that teachers come to recognize that literacy encompasses
more than ways of reading and writing; literacy is a cultural artifact and tool.
Literate practices are not limited to print decoding or the cognitive strategies
accompanying comprehension or composition. We must expand our views
to realize that ”literacy acquisition, particularly reading instruction, holds
implications for cultural transmission, that is, for how knowledge is
transferred, reproduced, and transformed” (p. 288, Roth in Ferdman, 1990).
We must strive to understand what this means for students who are
confronted with multiple and often conflicting interpretations of literacy. Yet
how are we to do this if we as teachers do not recognize how culture is
intertwined with our own literate practices? The answer, in part, may lie
with narrative-stories of self and other--our own literate pasts. Stories of
becoming literate-~of educational change or boundary crossings--allow us to
examine culture in every day life, not just to think of culture as a construct
existing in exotic locales (Florio-Ruane, 1997). Such stories function as a
means of self-definition and self-representation (Soliday, 1994).

Recently, teacher educators have begun to propose alternative models
of teacher development which foreground the use of autobiography, both by
published authors and by teachers themselves (see for example, Au, 1996;
Florio-Ruane with deTar, in preparation; Florio-Ruane, Raphael, Glazier,
McVee, & Wallace, 1997; Soliday, 1994), as one means to encourage teachers to
explore issues of culture, self and other. Such an approach relies heavily on
the power of narrative, the power of story. However, this process of exploring
issues of culture and identity is not easy as participants can find it difficult to
engage in discussions of narratives which address difficult issues , for

example, race or gender (Glazier, McVee, Wallace, Shellhom, Florio-Ruane,

a Kathie"
discomeCtj
Process5 of '
well underf
narrative if
previ
contriliutior
cont"?nt as e
(Connelll' d:
interpreting
means 0f un
(Gitlin & Me
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(see Lace}? ll
has not explC
content over
1990; Riessme
attention to tl
coUrses where
Sociolir
Bauman, I986

St Raphael, in press), and narratives can foster both connection and
disconnection for participants (McVee, 1998). And, as Soliday notes, this
process of how stories help develop a ”cultural sense of the literate self” is not
well understood (p. 513 ), even though there are numerous studies of
narrative in education.

Previous studies on teacher narrative have made important
contributions to educational research by focusing primarily on narrative
content as evidence for beliefs that constitute a knowledge base for teaching
(Connelly & Clandinin, 1986), a means of planning, understanding and
interpreting curriculum (Egan, 1986; Connelly 8: Clandinin, 1988), or as
means of understanding the beliefs and theories that shape teachers' practice
(Gitlin & Meyers, 1993; Goodson & Cole, 1993). However, few of these studies
have focused on the relationship between teachers' narratives and beliefs
about literacy and its relationship to cultural identity. With few exceptions
(see Lacey, 1991; Florio-Ruane, et a1., 1997; Swidler, 1995), most of this research
has not explored narratives as a social performance. Thus it has privileged
content over close analysis of the forms and function of narrative (Atkinson,
1990; Riessman, 1993). Additionally, the previous studies have paid little
attention to the role that teacher educators or other participants play in
courses where narrative may be a primary pedagogical method.

Sociolinguists, folklorists, and psychologists (e.g. Tannen 1989;
Bauman, 1986; Polkinghorne, 1991) have argued that narratives are social
performances created within social contexts, contexts which include a teller's
relationship with listeners / readers. Narratives thus function to identify or
position both teller and audience in relation to one another. They can also
serve as means by which people alternatively reify and reinvent social reality.

In privileging content, researchers risk "ignoring the complex interrelations

between the ind
development an
P305). The put}
analysis Of the 5
function to hell‘
educate teacherS
involl'lng cultUl
.em w , flit”
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Challenged my
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between the individual, social, and textual” necessary for ”understanding the
development and deployment of oral and written discourse” (Michaels, 1991,
p.305). The purpose of the following research study is to provide close
analysis of the social performances in terms of their content, form and
function to help us understand how telling stories of cultural experience may
educate teachers by furthering our understanding of the complex interactions
involving culture, narrative, self and other.
Wrong

As a teacher who has worked with students of diverse cultural, ethnic,
and linguistic backgrounds, I am cognizant of the many challenges that
currently face teachers. As a teacher educator, I wonder about how I can help
prepare teachers see diversity as an advantage rather than a problem to be
mitigated. Unlike many of the teachers I work with, I have had the
advantage of spending a lengthy amount of time immersed in other cultures.
Although my own public school education was in an isolated rural setting in
Montana--a fairly homogeneous environmental had the opportunity after
attending university to live for six years in mainland China and Hong Kong.
This experience taught me to examine my own cultural identity and to think
about how I viewed my self and others around me. Traveling in Asia further
enhanced the opportunities I had for interacting with many cultures, and
challenged my thinking about cultural identity and issues of how we position
ourselves and those around us with respect to culture. As an English teacher,
I was particularly interested in how issues of language, literacy, and culture
interact. It was these broad issues that drew me toward graduate studies and
eventually led to the dissertation topic explored here.

Unfortunately, most teachers do not have the luxury to spend extended

periods of time experiencing first hand the cultural contexts and

communities of
opportunity to
connection and
More sophisticz
enables us to be
culture, race, ar
educator worki
Euro American
about culture a
in the context (
The data-
was IIIStructor
AutobiOgraph)
course were sir
Alaska and ha‘
SCh001 full-rim
amtOb'bgl’aphie
0' Culture, self
having the Ica.
class and “an;

Raphael, 1997-

communities of the students they teach. However, story offers us an
opportunity to travel beyond our limited views of self and other, explore
connection and disconnection, to cross boundaries without crossing oceans.
More sophisticated understandings of our own cultural identities as teachers
enables us to better serve our students because we become more aware of how
culture, race, and gender may affect their lives and learning. As a teacher
educator working with literacy teachers, who are predominantly female and
Euro American, I set out to explore how literacy teachers might learn more
about culture and to encourage them to examine their views of self and other
in the context of a literacy masters course for practicing teachers.

The data presented here were collected during the fall of 1997 while I
was instructor for a literacy masters course, "Culture, Literacy, and
Autobiography" at a midwestern university. Participants in this elective
course were six practicing teachers and one student who had been teaching in
Alaska and had recently returned to the area who was preparing to return to
school full-time. The purpose of the course was to read and respond to
autobiographies by published authors to encourage teachers to explore issues
of culture, self and other as these relate to literate practices. This included
having the teachers (participants) respond to narratives shared orally in the
class and narratives written by their peers. Using Book Club (see McMahon 8:
Raphael, 1997; Raphael, Pardo, Highfield, 8: McMahon, 1997) as a model for
discussion and drawing on a model of teacher development outlined by
Florio-Ruane 8: Raphael (see Florio-Ruane 8: deTar, in preparation; Florio-
Ruane, et al., 1997), teachers read autobiographies or autobiographical fiction
by ethnic minorities or white teachers who had examined their own practice.
The autobiographies were alternated weekly with discussions of research

articles related to culture and literacy.

Ifocused
that were sharec
around narrativ
framed the stud

I. How:

constrair

do the p.

2. What

around
3. Wha‘
about id
As I undertool
these question
ha t r \‘er

I begin
national COnte
rePresentnttor
Culture. IaISc
inveStit'iatiort :
PolkinghOme

OvenriEW Of t'

methods Used

Chapte
organized a re

I focused my attention on the group interactions around narratives
that were shared orally in class discussion or discussion of literature and also
around narratives written in student work. Initially, three broad questions
framed the study:

1. How do written and oral narratives function to create, sustain, or

constrain a learning-oriented dialogue among participants? What part

do the participants play in these interactions?

2. What part does the teacher educator play in discussions constructed

around narrative?

3. What do these narratives reveal about the participants' learning

about identity, culture and views of self and other?

As I undertook the study and began collecting and analyzing data, I refined
these questions as will be explained in the following chapters.
W

I begin Chapter Two by overviewing the increasing diversity in our
national context and its importance to teachers. I then discuss various
representations of culture and how narrative can assist teachers in exploring
culture. I also describe the theoretical perspectives that framed this
investigation including perspectives from Vygotsky (1978;1986) ,
Polkinghorne (1988, 1991) and Davies and Harré (1990). I conclude with an
overview of the methods and data collection procedures and preview the
methods used in analyzing the data.

Chapters Three, Four and Five present three cases of narrative analysis
organized around three course participants Ellie, Cathy, and Regan3 . Chapter
Three explores how narratives change as they are retold over time. During

the course, Ellie retold one narrative, in oral and written form, six times

 

3For the purposes of confidentiality, pseudonyms are used for all participants.

across the semest
and how and uh

Chapter Ft
introduced to the
an oral narrative.
participants leadi

The fifth a
something of an '
returning to grac
Indians in Alaska
stories that Rega
content, and fun
and explores her

In Chapte
Wilmer for life
e(hicator and M
Cathy, and REga

teachers in their

across the semester. I analyze these narratives to determine what changes
and how and what this indicates about Ellie's learning.

Chapter Four focuses on Cathy and one particular narrative which she
introduced to the class in written form but later had opportunity to share as
an oral narrative. I analyze Cathy's narratives and the discussion of group
participants leading up to and following her oral retelling.

The fifth and final analysis chapter focuses on Regan who was
something of an "outlier" in this data set. As a recent graduate who was
returning to graduate school after an experience working with native Tlingit
Indians in Alaska, Regan was unlike the other participants in the group. The
stories that Regan shared with the group were also unusual, often in form,
content, and function. This final analysis chapter presents Regan's narratives
and explores her role in the group.

In Chapter Six I explore implications of the study for education and in
particular for literacy instruction. In addition I focus on my role as teacher
educator and what I have learned as well as what we can learn from Ellie,
Cathy, and Regan about how narrative functions in powerful ways to assist

teachers in their exploration of culture.

CI

As the I
teacher educatt
future directior
growing conce
female, Euro 15
& Sclan, l996)--
the needs of so
Emmy, and r
whO are respor
lhmkilig that u

A5 We er
"mEUage and c
Educate "Other
PUbliShed book
Cultural and lin
connecfiOnS’ an
most educatorS
find wal’s I0 Va
mainstream SOc-
mulnmlmral Cu
education, arguj

3551mmahon ratl

1mm the schoc

CHAPTER TWO
CULTURE, NARRATIVE, THEORY AND METHODS
Introduction
I . . . C l I I E I . 12' .

As the US. becomes an increasingly diverse society, teachers and
teacher educators are being called to question their past efforts and prepare for
future directions in teaching and teacher education. I In particular, there is
growing concern about how a non-diverse teaching force-~one that is 90%
female, Euro American and predominantly middle-class (Darling-Hammond
8t Sclan, 1996)-can prepare students for a multicultural society and address
the needs of students who are increasing diverse in cultural background,
ethnicity, and mother tongue. It is especially important for literacy teachers
who are responsible for educating students in ways of reading, writing, and
thinking that undergird democratic ideals.

As we enter a century where our schools will be ever more diverse in
language and culture, educators appear to be taking seriously our charge to
educate "other people's children" (Delpit, 1995). Authors of recently
published books, articles, and conference presentations use key words such as:
cultural and linguistic diversity, culturally relevant pedagogy, home-school
connections, and multicultural literature to situate their work. Although
most educators are in agreement that teachers and teacher educators must
find ways to value all languages and cultures in the classroom, not just that of
mainstream society, there is also opposition, for example, to adopting
multicultural curricula. Some groups are opposed to multicultural
education, arguing that educational and economic success depends on
assimilation rather than on maintenance of linguistic or cultural diversity

within the school and classroom. And, while this assimilationist view is not

10

a new one in I
resurgence. f
California's Pr
instruction der
multilingual A
be successful,
must learn En;
only environm
lncreasi:
come under th
experts have t;
legislatures in
Example, the It
leMatures, dt
PTOgrams suct
programs irnpr
monolithic, sta
to Consider, in
literacy @3595
becomes an im

the Indivdeal

a new one in U. S. educational history, it has recently had an apparent
resurgence. For example, recent challenges to bilingual education such as
California's Proposition 227, which mandates intensive English-only
instruction demonstrate how difficult it can be to celebrate a multicultural,
multilingual America. Those backing Proposition 227 argue that in order to
be successful, immigrants, and particularly children of those immigrants,
must learn English. To accomplish this they must be immersed in English-
only environments as soon as possible (Proposition 227, 1999).

Increasingly not just education, but in particular, literacy education has
come under the scrutiny of policy makers. In recent years, many literacy
experts have faced off against one another and sided with or against state
legislatures in passing measures that mandate particular literacy practices, for
example, the teaching of phonics. In addition to such mandates from state
legislatures, districts are increasingly requiring teachers to use skill-based
programs such as "Success for All." Often implicit in the requirements and
programs imposed upon teachers is the notion of both literacy and culture are
monolithic, static practices which locate literacy in the individual. They fail
to consider, in Ferdman's words, that "In a culturally heterogeneous society,
literacy ceases to be a characteristic inherent solely in the individual. It
becomes an interactive process that is constantly defined and renegotiated, as
the individual transacts with the socioculturally fluid surroundings” (1990, p.
187). This view portrays both culture and literacy as dynamic and interactive.
From this perspective, students' cultural knowledge is seen as an asset rather
than a hurdle to be overcome; students can use their "funds of knowledge"
(M011, 1992) as a powerful starting point for literacy acquisition.

Drawing on the knowledge that students posses, particularly the

literate practices of their homes and communities has provided much insight

11

for educator:
culturally ref
Jordon, 1981
press). Althr
have led to 5
race, and lin
and its respc
race, social c
between teac
education in
1999) Thus i
out, in both :
For example]
Americans IT
racial group
African Arne
little extra he
teachers to 0
uncover the 1
Situated in th
Emmy, anc
nit-or an cl ‘
Here, I
3550clated WI
Iéhvah his:
l-lE'ws of it,‘ a

S

for educators in recent decades and has assisted in the development of
culturally relevant teaching practices (see for example, Heath, 1983; Au 8:
Jordon, 1981; M011, 1992; for a brief review see Florio-Ruane 8: McVee, in
press). Although the previous research does attend to issues of culture which
have led to some changes and improvements in policy and teaching, culture,
race, and linguistic diversity persist as challenges to our educational system
and its responsibility to educate all children. The increasing disparities--in
race, social class, level of educational attainment, and mother tongue--
between teachers and their pupils and families increase the complexity of
education in a multicultural society (Florio-Ruane, 1997; Sleeter 8: Grant,
1999) Thus while some progress has been made, we must continue to seek
out, in both research and educational reform, ways of attending to culture.
For example, Ladson-Billings (1994) writes: "While it is realized that African
Americans make up a distinct racial group, the acknowledgment that this
racial group has a distinct culture is still not recognized. It is presumed that
African American children are exactly like white children but just need a
little extra help" (emphasis in the original, p. 9). Not only is it critical for
teachers to consider their students' cultures, but teachers must examine and
uncover the ways in which their own beliefs and instructional practices are
situated in their culture, and to explore their beliefs about students and class,
ethnicity, and linguistic diversity (Banks, 1998).
W

Here, I am using the term culture, not in the static where culture is
associated with "facts" about various people such as holidays, foods and
festivals. Instead, as Clifford and Marcus (1986) write, "culture, and our
views of 'it,‘ are produced historically, and are actively contested" (p. 18). As

such culture is dynamic, not static and does not fit into neat categories for

12

description. They go on to state that "If 'culture' is not an object to be
described, neither is it a unified corpus of symbols and meanings that can be
definitely interpreted. Culture is contested, temporal, and emergent" (p. 19).
According to another contemporary anthropologist Renato Rosaldo (1993), in
this view of culture as process, "Culture lends significance to human
experience by selecting from and organizing it. It refers broadly to the forms
through which people make sense of their lives, rather than more narrowly
to the opera or art museums....all human conduct is culturally mediated" (p.
26). The all-pervasiveness of culture implies that for many of us, it is
transparent; we do not become aware of culture until some invisible border is
crossed and our order of perceiving things is disturbed.

Rosaldo writes, for example, that "A classic concept of culture seeks out
the 'Mexican' or the 'Anglo-American,‘ and grants little space to the
mundane disturbances that so often erupt during border crossings" (p. 29).
This process of essentialization is one of the pitfalls of autobiography (Zuss,
1997). The "classic norms of anthropology" have contributed to the problem
of essentialization by attending "more to the unity of cultural wholes than to
their myriad crossroads and borderlands" (Rosaldo, 1989, p. 30). In portraying
this classic view of culture and its essentializing nature, Rosaldo, using
examples from the Philippines, Mexico, and the U. S. describes how in each
national context the group that sees itself as "cultureless" has a great deal of
institutional power; those groups that have "authentic culture" wield less
power. He elaborates in the following extended quote:

In practice, the emphasis on difference results in a peculiar ratio:

As the "other" becomes more culturally visible, the "self" becomes

correspondingly less so. Social analysts, for example often assert that

subordinate groups have an authentic culture at the same time that

13

they moc
view sub
middle-c
allow th
the ratio
wields.
have an
undersc
that at I
"oursel‘
The im
The many wt
Flaltltenberg,
like” Unawa:
inSh’uctiort a1
transParent.
pedagogical ;
Mehan's Wm
is 8Uided by
imphdtly
50)

tat
' Becomir

and teach is

they mock their own upper-middle—class professional culture. In this
View subordinate groups speak in vibrant, fluent ways, but upper-
middle-class people talk like anemic academics. Yet analysts rarely
allow the ratio of class and culture to include power. Thus they conceal
the ratio's darker side: the more culture one has, the less power one
.Wields. If "they" have an explicit monopoly on authentic culture, "we"
have an unspoken one on institutional power. This ration's dark side
underscores the urgency of rethinking social analysis in such a manner
that at once consider the interplay of culture and power and makes
"ourselves" more culturally visible" (p. 202).
The implication of Rosaldo's observation for teachers in profound.
The many white teachers who often believe they "do not have a culture" (see
Frankenberg, 1993; King, 1991; Florio-Ruane, et al., 1997; McIntyre, 1997), are
likely unaware that their definitions of literacy and choices of literacy
instruction are colored by their own experience. For these teachers culture is
transparent. For example, they may feel that their role is simply to make
pedagogical and curricular decisions, without realizing, in Cazden and
Mehan's words, that "Like all culturally-based behavior, classroom behavior
is guided by rules or norms established by convention, which means they are
implicitly taught, tacitly agreed upon, and cooperatively maintained" (1989, p.
50). Becoming aware that they "have culture," that what they learn, know,
and teach is shaped by and embedded with social norms and cultural
practices, takes teachers a step closer to examining the interplay of culture and
power in their classrooms.
W
The relationships between culture, language and power are critical for

literacy teachers to explore. Attending to these issues encourages teachers to

14

reflect t
the hist
and by
view lit
critical ;
cultural
I
teachers
needed ‘
tools (en
recognit
are of cr
for authr
and their
Vygotskj
Be
0i their 5
their ow;

reflect on how literate practices and forms of literacy instruction are bound by
the historical, cultural and social contexts within which they are carried out
and by the social cultural and historical lenses through which individuals
view literacy. The recognition of literacy as a culturally constructed tool is a
critical recognition if teachers are to prepare their students to live in a
culturally heterogeneous society.

Unfortunately, the culturally situated beliefs and values of many
teachers go unexamined as they and teacher educators focus on the tools
needed to conduct literacy instruction on a day to day basis. For teachers, such
tools (e.g., how to conduct a writers' workshop, teach phonics and word
recognition skills, to assist students in developing comprehension strategies)
are of critical importance, but these tools and their appropriation by students
for authentic purposes must be understood culturally as well. These tools
and their appropriation by teachers are mediated by culture (Rosaldo, 1993;
Vygotsky, 1978; Wertsch, 1991).

Because teachers' cultural backgrounds increasingly differ from those
of their students, it is important that teachers consider how culture mediates
their own beliefs about literate practices and literacy instruction and how this
affects students' opportunities to learn. For literacy researchers who work
with teachers this means that we must explore our own positionings and
understanding of self and other, and as teacher educators, we must realize
that the study of self and other is a critical undertaking for both preservice
and inservice teachers who often assume that "treating all students the same"
or being "colorblind" (Paley, 1979; Cochran-Smith, 1995) is the answer. But, as
Ladson-Billings (1994) explains, colorblindness is a limited response. She
argues that it is only when teachers have explored and gained understanding

of their own cultural identities can we expect teachers to "capitalize on

15

students' indiv
engage in cultt
pedagogy mea.
emotionally, ar
skills, and attiti
means that edt
classrooms and
"on an underst.‘
identities of the
cultural expert-e
Au (1996

issues of prima r
literacy POTlfOllt
Ofmllufe and Ii
that explore our
Students, P aTI’ICL
influence IangUa
Rum, Et al., 199
through teachers
diSCussion STOUP

students' individual, group, and cultural differences" (p. 11) in order to
engage in culturally relevant pedagogy. To engage in culturally relevant
pedagogy means finding ways to empower "students intellectually, socially,
emotionally, and politically by using cultural referents to impart knowledge,
skills, and attitudes" (p. 18). To engage in culturally relevant pedagogy also
means that educators must recognize the inequities possible in their
classrooms and in society. Such recognition depends, according to Au (1998)
"on an understanding of their own cultural identities as well as the cultural
identities of their students" (p. 308). This is why study of teachers' own
cultural experience is foundational to learning to teach diverse youngsters.

Au (1996) has helped her students who are preservice teachers explore
issues of primary language and ethnicity by scaffolding their development of
literacy portfolios. Soliday (1994) suggests that one means of exploring issues
of culture and literacy in our own lives is through the use literacy narratives
that explore our own literacy learning. These literacy narratives can assist
students, particularly minority students, in exploring the deep cultural
influence language has in their daily life (Au, 1998). Others (see Florio-
Ruane, et al., 1997) have explored connections between literacy and culture
through teachers' discussions of multicultural literature in Book Club
discussion groups. Each of the previous projects relies upon the use of
autobiographical narratives to explore issues of self and other and ultimately
of culture as related to literacy.
E I . C I I] l I I .

Narrative, and language in general, function as tools which mediate
teachers' understandings and beliefs about culture and beliefs about literacy
and literacy instruction (Vygotsky, 1978; Wertsch, 1998). As such, narrative

acts as both a means of exploring, expressing, and organizing meaning-

16

making (Polkinghorne, 1988; Bruner, 1990; Wertsch, 1990). A social
constructivist perspective is useful in exploring teachers' interactions because
it emphasizes "active engagement in processes of meaning-making, text
comprehension as a window on these processes, and the varied nature of
knowledge, especially knowledge developed as a consequence of membership
in a given social group" (Au, 1998, p. 299). In the reading, writing, and telling
narratives teachers actively engage in meaning making. The texts they create,
both written and oral, are windows into both how and what they learn. This
knowledge, Au notes, is situated within a both social and cultural contexts. In
a social constructivist perspective of learning and language, narrative holds
forth the potential of scaffolding teachers' interactions and learning around
volatile cultural issues such as race, gender, class, and culture.

Scholars in a variety of disciplines (e.g. literary criticism, psychology,
folklore) have addressed issues of narrative and suggested that narrative, in
particular autobiographical narrative, is an effective means of encouraging
teachers to explore their own cultural identities and additionally, to help
them understand and explore the cultural identities of their students.

In the field of education, narrative, particularly personal narrative or
autobiography, have been highly touted for all that it can do for teachers in
encouraging them to construct knowledge (Nespor 8: Barylske, 1991), in
helping them with in curriculum theorization and planning (Connelly 8:
Clandinin, 1988; Egan, 1986; Pinar 8: Grumet, 1976) and teaching and learning
(McEwan 8: Egan, 1995), in helping them explore constructions of self and
other (Witherell 8: Noddings, 1991), but few have used narrative as a form of
inquiry into culture. Concomitantly, few researchers and theorists attend to
the linguistic aspects of narrative (Cook-Gumperz, 1993; Turski, 1994). There

is an overemphasis on the extracting of content to the detriment of

17

examining issu
neglect examir
information co
the relative ob
contexts, it is r
on how the va
and how narra
So
Along w
Wrgotsky, 197;
teachers' storie
teacher develo]
and must be vj
0f Critical impc
For Vygotsky,
between Indivi
the COME)“ of t
puhhShEd auto
506211 baclcgroL
bOok clubs in V
both exéun p 195
Personal l'igner
dficouraged’ In
The 50:1.
written or SPOI-
c
OHSITUcted art

IE“.
4.9“ a
nd She;

examining issues of context (Swidler, 1995). Even ethnographers are apt to
neglect examination of story forms while placing heavy reliance on the
information contained within narratives of culture (Atkinson, 1990). Given
the relative obscurity of research on narrative's forms, functions, and
contexts, it is not surprising that very little educational research has focused
on how the various forms that narrative takes in teacher discussion groups
and how narrative form and content function within conversational settings.
Sociocultural Perspectives of Language and Narrative

Along with narrative theory, a social constructivist perspective
(Vygotsky, 1978, 1986) will be used to frame the study and to investigate how
teachers' stories about--and in response to--cultural experiences might serve
teacher development. Vygotsky argues that all learning is socially-mediated
and must be viewed within its social, historical, and cultural contexts--a point
of critical importance when studying teachers' explorations of self and other.
For Vygotsky, learning occurs first as social or interpersonal processes
between individuals and then as psychological or intrapersonal process. In
the context of this study, teachers are engaged in a course in which they read
published autobiographical narratives by writers from diverse cultural and
social backgrounds. They respond to these autobiographies primarily within
book clubs in which they are encouraged to talk and write about the texts,
both examples of socially mediated learning. In this context, the offering of
personal vignettes in response to the autobiographical texts is not
discouraged, but rather elicited.

The social context allows for the creation of new "text" in the form of
written or spoken narratives. These texts are interpersonal in that they are
constructed around interactions with others and intrapersonal because they

reflect and shape the internalized thought or learning of participants. As

18

such, perso
organizing
internally ft
glimpses of
as tools, prt
participants
between dis
narrative en
Therefore, it
content, but
individuals 2
imagery, anc
Smith, 1995,)
W
Activi:
embodied na
that Polkjngp
narratjyes' bc
explore and u
events but an
future- Such
underStind th
teaChErs to be
historical, SOCi
gendered natu

Emmott
narrative. Con

such, personal narrative is a "tool" that mediates human activity by
organizing and interpreting experience whereas the "sign" (e.g., thought) is
internally focused. Although we cannot see the internal sign, we receive
glimpses of it in external tool use. Therefore, both written and oral narrative,
as tools, provide reflections of the internalized thought or Teaming of
participants (Gavelek 8: Raphael, 1996). In other words, it is in the interplay
between discourse and narrative that events are formed, and it is not just the
narrative emplotrnent of these events that deserves important consideration.
Therefore, it is critical to examine not only a story's event structure or
content, but also to examine how discourse is shaped and reshaped by the
individuals interacting within the groups at the level of words, phrases,
imagery, and the like. (Florio-Ruane et a1, 1997; Marshall, Smagorinsky, 8:
Smith, 1995).

Lai'! ‘-. i:-m:o,ou_:n. Th 0 utioon lfa 00h!“

Activities and experiences mediated by language, culture, and the
embodied nature of being play a part in construction of life narratives, an act
that Polkinghorne (1991) refers to as "emplotrnent." The sharing of
narratives, both fictional and autobiographical, enable literacy teachers to
explore and understand the self. This process is not a fixed recollection of past
events but an active construction of the self in past, present and into the
future. Such exploration and construction of the self is important if we are to
understand the self in relation to others. It is an endeavor that allows
teachers to be viewed an individuals but also allows situates them within
historical, social, cultural, and political contexts and acknowledges the
gendered nature of teaching.

Emplotment is explains what autobiographers do when they craft their

narrative. Complex events are woven into a single story, and events are

19

interpreted in relation to each other across time. Polkinghorne (1991) writes
that "the historical and social contexts in which events take place exert
influence on the understanding of the story....Although emplotment can
consist of a single thread that serves to draw elements together, it often
consists of multiple threads of subplots woven together into a complex and
layered whole" (p. 141). Not only does emplotment apply to writers of
autobiography and autobiographical fiction, it applies to the personal
narratives told by group members within their small and large group
discussions and to their written narratives.

Polkinghorne explains that the historical and social contexts of action
influence the understanding of a story's events. This is true on two levels.
First, there is the historical, social context of the story itself and the events in
it, and second, there is the historical, social context of the setting where the
story is told. In the latter case, the setting is the group's history--that stories
are written or told within a course setting, perhaps in response to an
assignment. Other elements of this setting that must be attended to are that
all participants (hearer and tellers) are educators, college students,
professionals, females, and of middle-class and Euro American background.

Polkinghorne (1991) cites the work of Scheibe (1986) and Crites (1986,
1987) who "linked the self-concept with narrative configuration" (p. 144).
Such self- stories are dynamic, and they are also "embedded in and
constructed out of a person's particular cultural environment-- that is, the
specific vocabulary and grammar of its language, its 'stock of working
historical conventions' and the pattern of its belief and value system" (p. 144).
These ideas seem to provide insight into some ways narratives, in this case
published autobiographies and personal narratives, shared in a group setting

might be useful. First, the studies cited recognize that narrative is linked to

20

self-identity.
inservice teat
position, then
cultural and
locate our sc
Polkin
exploring the
connections tr
Polkinghorne
14:9- He goes
the loss of idr
Sequence of e'
recollected ou
person's chara
W
COnsm
killing the stor
manaITVes Hot

Colllact. In ad.

Namath-ES to t

W911 as paSl 9X

Values! and dis

5

therapy" (Spinc

t
o explore their

self—identity. Second, it seems that if we are to encourage preservice and
inservice teachers to think about others' cultures, ethnicities, and social
position, then we must first encourage them to think about their own
cultural and ethnic backgrounds, those larger landscapes within which we
locate our selves.

Polkinghorne's work is useful is that he points out the relevance of
exploring the past. In our group discussions of autobiography, we often make
connections to texts and authors as we tell stories about our pasts.
Polkinghorne notes that, "Self—knowledge is an appropriation of the past" (p.
144). He goes on to suggest that, "Disconnectedness with the past results in
the loss of identity, with experience becoming no more that the mere
sequence of events passing one after the other, a bare chronicle. Identity,
recollected out of the past, is the depth dimension of the self that contains a
person's character" (p. 144).

Construction of the self and interpretation is an ongoing process, and
telling the story of lives need not be a narcissist process. We draw into our
narratives not just our self but the selves of others with whom we come in
contact. In addition, we need not focus only on our past, but can rely on
narratives to transcend temporal constraints, envisioning future prospects as
well as past experiences. The process of bring one's own cultural beliefs,
values, and discourse into focus and holding it up against other cultures to
sharpen one's awareness of ourselves and others is a practice of "cultural
therapy" (Spindler 8: Spindler, 1993) and has been used as a way for teachers
to explore their own culture and the ways in which culture biases their
relationships with children. Cultural therapy, with its intentional focus on

examining one's sociocultural position, implies that it is important to pay

21

attent
this It

COI'ITIT

stereo
are re.
spealr
Harte,
the pe
about
35 Gee
and dc
even b
POSitic

‘lu95tic

attention not just to what an individual says but to how she says it and how
this reflects culturally sedimented "assumptions, goals, values, beliefs, and
communicative models" (p. 28).

For teachers, this requires detailed reflection of how their discourse
positions both self and other. For example, in the context of teachers'
discussions about culture and literacy, "one speaker can position others by
adopting a story line which incorporates a particular interpretation of cultural
stereotypes to which they [other participants] are 'invited' to conform, indeed
are required to conform if they are to continue to converse with the first
speaker in such a way as to contribute to that person's story line." (Davies, 8:
Harte, 1990, p. 50). As such, all participants must chose whether to engage in
the perpetuation of such stereotypes (e.g. parents of poor children don't care
about education), to challenge the stereotype, or to remain silent. However,
as Gee indicates above, if we are functioning within our primary discourse
and do not have other discourses to offer us a "meta-language," we may not
even be aware of how we are positioning others or how we are being
positioned by them. Because of this, teachers may respond without
questioning such stereotypes. However, this does not mean that stories are
meaningless or should not be shared because "conversations with other
people will give rise to new stories because different people will ask different
questions. In line with positioning theory, those questions can be regarded as
forcing the addressee in certain positions" (p. 97, Van Langenhove 8: Harré,
1993). Not only can questions cause a participant to revisit, and possibly
reinterpret, her position, but the context may also encourage participants to
reinterpret or revisit their interpretations of events or actions. For example,

telling a story to a different set of conversational participants might mean

22

telling a particular story in a different way. Or having just read or heard
someone else's story may assist someone in reinterpreting their own story.
The revisiting of narrative events and examination of one's position in
relation to those narratives, is a critical enterprise in understanding one's
cultural identity and the position it represents, are phenomenon "generated
in discourse" (Van Langenhove 8: Harre, 1993, p. 82).

II . E I .

Examining the what and how of stories, implies attention to
"narrative as ethics: the ethical consequences of narrating 'story...and the
reciprocal claims binding teller, listener, witness, and reader in that process"
(Newton, 1995, emphasis in the original, p. 11). In addressing a similar ethical
issue in autobiography Mandel (1980) notes that telling and reading are both
problematic because part of what constitutes "truth" in autobiography is the
context--how intent the writer is on telling the truth of his / her life and how
that truth is laid out by choice of word, style, tone, organization. Not only do
the writer's assumptions underlie the narrative, but the narrative is
influenced by a reader's "willingness to experience and cocreate this context
that allows autobiography to speak the truth" (p. 72). Such cocreation, where
reader or hearer acts as interpreter, lies at the heart of narrative ethics. It is in
the act of interpretation that we see the social nature of the construction of
self and the potential for re-emplotment. No self, even that within a text, is
constructed outside of the social setting: "It is, finally, the sign of
interpretation which identifies the reader’s share in the act of telling the self
to others, the dialectic of revelation and concealment, of looking home and
looking away, of knowing and acknowledging..." (Newton, p. 285).

The ethical responsibilities embedded in a reader's or listener's

response to narrative are problematic for teachers because the acts of reading

23

or sharu
Narrativ
stance is
own dis
that prir

commur

Speakers
groups 5
Addition
"grand n
how it CE
Olltside (
vaUired

Ne
tExt lies 1

or sharing stories do not in and of themselves qualify as narrative ethic.
Narrative ethic requires a critical, reflective stance toward narrative. Such a
stance is difficult to maintain because it is difficult to step outside of one's
own discourse to think, talk, and learn in new ways (Gee, 1989a). Gee argues
that primary discourses--ways of thinking, believing, valuing,
communicating which we are first socialized into--often "contain implicit
and explicit racism and classism" and "they cannot carry out an authentic
criticism, because they cannot verbalize the words, acts, values, and attitudes
they use, and they cannot mobilize explicit meta-knowledge" (emphasis in
the original, p. 10). Even when attempts are made to interact with stories in
critical fashion, speakers may avoid discussions of "hot-lava" topics, those
topics like race or gender (Glazier, et al., in press) which speakers, through
their primary discourse, have been socialized to avoid. In other cases,
speakers sometimes silenced talk about difficult issues in order to maintain a
group's sense of community and avoid conflict (Florio-Ruane 8: de Tar, 1995).
Additionally, critique is limited to the extent that participants share cultural
"grand narratives" which organize and bound what can be narrated as well as
how it can be narrated; to critique these grand narratives requires stepping
outside on one's primary discourse and mobilizing the "meta-knowledge"
acquired through secondary discourses.

Narrative ethics also posits that the ethical nature of response to the
text lies not just with the interpreter but with the text (oral or written) itself.
Teacher educators must be aware that there are ”Narratives that bind and
narratives that release, ’the stories that help and the stories that hurt’: in each
case, texts tax readers with ethical duties ” (Newton, p. 292). A current trend
in narratology is to emphasize that no one story is worse or better than

another (Rosenwald 8: Ochberg, 1992) but to hold such a view ignores the

24

ethical I
that son
helpful.
story le.
we mus

this stor

T
of a mas
participe
EXperien
Table 1

Name

 

ethical nature of reading any narrative. Such a view does not acknowledge
that some stories are not allowed to be told or that stories can be hurtful or
helpful. It discounts the role that others have played in constructing this
story leaving only the teller's interpretation. It ignores cautionary questions
we must ask about all narratives: "Who is served by this story? How does
this story distort, even as it represents?" (Florio-Ruane, 1996).
Methods
'v a in an i u i n r
The data presented in the following study were collected in the context
of a masters literacy course "Culture, Literacy, and Autobiography." Course
participants were seven Euro-American women. All but one were

experienced teachers who were teaching at the time of the course (see Table 1).

Table 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

C E . . I
Name Grade Teaching Setting Students

Cass K Urban charter school 75% African American,
socially 8: economically
diverse

Cathy 1 Urban charter school 75% African American,
socially 8: economically
diverse

Ellie K Urban charter school 75% African American,
socially 8: economically
diverse

Jaime 6 Rural community predominantly white,
socially 8: economically
diverse

Marsha K Urban, inner-city predominantly African
American, high joverty

Regan multi- Literacy Coalition-- African American 8:

aged Urban, inner-city 8: Latino
migrant

Tom 4 Rural community predominantly white,
socially 8: economically
diverse

 

 

 

 

 

 

25

Most w
childrer
represei
flammc
three pt
narrativ
necessai

T
linguist
autobio
Cultural
within i
peer-lec
OUrselvt

develo:

Most worked in elementary school settings and most were working with
children in the primary grades. Being white and female, these teachers were
representative of 90% of the elementary school teaching force (Darling-
Hammond 8: Sclan, 1996). As explained later in this chapter, I will focus on
three participants, Ellie, Cathy, and Regan as case examples; however, the
narratives and discourse of other participants will also be drawn upon as
necessary.

The course was specifically designed to help teachers teach in
linguistically and culturally diverse settings. In the course we used ethnic
autobiography and readings about literacy and culture to explore issues of
cultural and linguistic diversity, to explore the multiple views of literacy
within its social and cultural contexts, to experience and practice dialogue in
peer-led discussions of literature, and to explore how we perceive both
ourselves and others within cultural contexts. The course was originally
developed by Susan Florio-Ruane, and I adapted her syllabus of course
readings and assignments (see Florio-Ruane 8: deTar, in preparation for
details on the creation of this course). Originally, course readings consisted of
ethnic autobiographies in three categories--white teachers exploring ethnicity,
American-born members of "involuntary immigrant" groups (see Ogbu,
1992), and "voluntary immigrants." However, in adapting the course, I
replaced the autobiography of Mike Rose (1989) with Amy Tan's (1991) The
W (see Table 2 for a listing of books / film). As a member of
the Literary Circle,

26

 

 

and LE
kfimg

mecol

Table 2

TE UTHOR
8

t. te ea
t. e ou w
6 Ho an Lost in Trans ation
ez un o emo
0v. 3 an Ki '5 W' art
0v. 1 an e Ki en 3 ' art
Nov. 17 wa Roa oorain
ov. 14 Av on

 

a woman's book discussion group, I had read The Kitchen God's Wife the
previous year. I had been struck by how artfully Tan blurred the elements of
fact and fiction. In a lecture to our university campus, Tan had addressed this
blurring of the fictional world with her own history when she shared how
her mother, after Tan had finished the book, had asked her how she knew
about her grandmother's suicide, a family secret that Tan had imagined and
written about as a "fictional" event within the text. Tan's "fictionalized
biography" reveals that categories like "autobiography," "biography" and
"fiction," are not mutually exclusive. Given my own interests and
experiences in China, I was also interested to observe what these teachers
could learn from Tan's book about Chinese history and the lives of Chinese
Americans.

In addition to the autobiographical works, I also chose a set of readings
related to the following themes: Implications of Culture and Ethnicity for
Teachers' Work, Ethnic Autobiography, Cultural Perspectives on Teaching
and Learning Literacy, Teaching and Teacher Education in Multicultural
Settings, and The Role of Narrative and Dialogue in Literacy Learning, and
Cultural Understanding. (A complete listing of all readings is presented in

the Course Syllabus in Appendix A.)

27

ll

Two articles in particular figure prominently in participants'
discussions as presented in the following chapters. One is a an article by John
Ogbu (1992), "Understanding Cultural Diversity and Learning," where Ogbu
presents a summary of his classification of minority groups as "(a)
autonomous, (b) immigrant or voluntary, and (c) castelike or involuntary" (p.
8). Ogbu also presents some strategies that African American use in adapting
to school and addresses the question: "What can be done [to help minority
students succeed in school]?" Another article that figures prominently in the
following chapters is "A Good Place to BeginnExamining Our Personal
Perspectives" Abt-Perkins and Gomez (1993). This example of practitioner
research uses narratives of the authors' teaching experience as they attempted
to address issues of culture in their classrooms. It was a powerful article for
participants to read because it provided classroom examples of teachers'
successes and their mistakes. Originally, I had anticipated focusing primarily
on the discussions of the autobiographies. However, given the numerous
opportunities where speakers wove narratives in and around their
discussions of the research and theoretical readings, it was important to
explore forms, functions, and content of narrative in both the discussions of
the readings and the autobiographies.

As Florio-Ruane had also done in discussing each autobiography, we
followed the Book Club model (Raphael, Goatley, McMahon, & Woodman,
1995; McMahon & Raphael, 1997). As is discussed in Florio-Ruane, et al.
(1997), the merging of ethnic autobiographical context with the Book Club
pedagogy was intended to support teachers' learning of book discussions,
culture, and literacy. As instructor, typically I opened the initial large group
discussion or First Community Share by inviting participants to talk about

what they had included in their sketch books related to the books or by

28

identif
discuss
respon
other i
any to]

su ‘95

(1'4
'1’)

write.

this th

identifying themes or topics within the texts or within our preliminary
discussion. This sharing time was usually followed by a brief in-class writing
response either to the discussion and themes or ideas we had identified or to
other issues which had interested participants. I allowed students to write on
any topic related to the book or discussion; however, I would also make
suggestions for writing to assist students who had difficulty deciding what to
write. The writing time usually merged with a break which was necessary in
this three-hour course.

Originally, I had anticipated having two peer-led book club groups, but
after our first discussion of Paley with three students in one group and four in
the other, the students elected to stay together as one group for their
discussions because they felt groups of three and four were too small, and
they wanted to hear what everyone had to say. Thus, after the first night we
remained together as a whole class for each segment. The first night the
entire class was together for First Community Share, Book Club, and the
Second Community Share I realized keeping the group together meant that
transitions between these different parts of the evening were awkward
because physical markers that indicated the transitions (e.g., forming small
groups, rearranging ourselves into a larger group) were removed when we
stayed together around one table for the entire evening. Although I could
introduce each segment and try to focus our discussion in a slightly different
manner, the lack of physical change affected our discourse and our discussion
merged together over the evening. For example, it was difficult to transition
to a Second Community Share where, in one sense, there was no need to
"share" what we had discussed because everyone had been part of the same
discussion, and we were already sitting together, so there was no physical shift

accompanying the shift in focus. However, it was still important to me to

29

have a time like a Second Community Share to reflect on what we had been
talking about and to think about what we had discovered or uncovered
during our book club discussion as well as to think about issues we had not
discussed. To help solidify transitions, I designed physical shifts to
accompany each of the different parts of class and adapted the Second
Community Share time.

We began our First Community Share seated around a table where we
talked about the autobiographies, shared from sketch books and laid out
themes in the autobiographies. We followed this with a short writing time
and a break. During the break, I arranged pieces of lounge furniture in the
room into a circle where we held our book club discussions. After the book
club, we would take a second short break and return again to the tables often
doing some brief writing before we had our Second Community Share. All
books, except Wwere the focus on only one book club.
Because we read WM near the end of the semester and
because it was a longer book, I rearranged our discussion at the students'
request to span two nights where we read and discussed half of the text in
addition to several articles. Students also participated in one "film club"
discussion after watching "Avalon" a film which tells the story of an East
European Jewish immigrant family.

Our discussions of the articles followed a similar pattern to our book
club nights. We would typically begin class seated around the table. We
would have time to share from our sketch books to talk bout what we had
written or thought about and students often shared items they had heard in
the news media or brought in clippings from the newspapers or magazines
that they felt pertained to the course. Most of the time their discussion of

these articles remained on a factual level with students sharing information,

30

reading excer;
clarification o:
engagement is
this see chaptt
two smaller gr
as a whole grc
it and holding
played a role i
beginning of a
Write about wl
about (e.g. sun
artides, etc), b

C01158 reading

reading excerpts from their clippings and other students asking for
clarification or addition information. There was seldom critical reflection or
engagement with the grand narratives that framed these stories (for more on
this see chapters 4 and 5). Frequently in discussing the articles, we broke into
two smaller groups to concentrate on articles we had read. We then reunited
as a whole group giving a synopsis of the articles for others who had not read
it and holding discussion among all participants. Reflective writing also
played a role in our discussions of the articles. At the beginning of class or
beginning of a large group discussion time, I would often ask the students to
write about what they had read. I let them choose what they wanted to write
about (e.g. summarizing or critiquing an article, raising questions across
articles, etc.), but I also offered themes or writing suggestions. I have listed all

course readings in the course syllabus (see Appendix A).

‘ 9 ' - 1'99 r 1- ar :Iaa 91-191 .19 -th99

As a case of practitioner research (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1990), I acted
as both teacher educator and ethnographer. In addition to the data that would
typically be collected within a masters course by a teacher (e.g. in class writing,
mid-term essay, final project, Sketch Books) I also wrote memos about my
class planning, and I collected data as a participant-observer in the course.
After each class session I wrote field notes using ethnographic techniques (e.g.
Hammersley 8: Atkinson, 1983). For each class I also collected audio tape and
later completed tape catalogs. In addition to field notes and audio tape, I also

video taped many class sessions.

31

Table 3

Data Sources
ourse Assi ents
urse ection

writm
Mi -Term Assi ent
' course re ection
ta
'c memos

o ow-u interviews
notes

emos
ranscri t
eo a

 

Students completed several types of assignments throughout the
course At the beginning of the course students completed a written reflection
on their beliefs about literacy, autobiography and culture. At the end of the
course, students completed a similar final course reflection which also
incorporated reflection on course themes and their sketch books. As described
in the course syllabus the sketch book was a place to "trace our thinking and
explore how the autobiographies, book clubs, research articles, and
discussions have affected our thinking..." I encouraged students to "explore
multiple formats and multiple entries for each week...[such as] personal
responses to the readings, reflective or analytical responses, poetry, titles of
books you wish to read in the future, thoughts on your final project,
newspaper magazine, teaching articles relevant to the course, your project or
interests" (Course Syllabus, 1997; see Appendix A).

A second assignment which I asked students to complete was to write a
narrative vignette about a border-crossing experience. To prepare students for

this assignment I gave them two examples of short vignettes and a handout

32

with question
would revisit
we would rei

In addi
completed tw
were to choos
themes would
teaching, To ,
a handout wit
Preparation fr-
OPPOFtunities
discuss their 1
offered five su
Students to de
finahling thei

Due to 1

with questions to think about (see Appendix B). I also told them that we
would revisit their personal narratives later in the course and if time allowed
we would rewrite them.

In addition to the assignments described above, students also
completed two graded assignments. One was a mid-term essay where they
were to choose a theme or themes in the course and write about how these
themes would might relate to their views of language, culture, literacy, or
teaching. To assist students in thinking about the mid-term essay, I prepared
a handout with "Ideas for getting started" and "Ideas for writing." In
preparation for both the mid-term assignment and final projects I built in
opportunities during class time for students to write about their ideas or to
discuss their ideas in large and small groups. For students final projects, I
offered five suggestions (see Course Syllabus, Appendix A) but also allowed
students to design alternative projects if they talked to me about them before
finalizing their plans.

Due to the need to protect students from loss of privacy or bias toward
their course work which might come from analyzing it as research data, I
conducted the bulk of my analysis following the course. In addition, after the
course was complete, I conducted follow-up interviews with Ellie, Cathy, and
Regan. The criteria for selecting these students for follow-up interviews and
as case examples will be explained below. As I began revisiting my field notes,
listening to audio tapes and video tapes, I also began writing analytic memos
to identify categories and themes (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). I then tested and
refined my analyses against other parts of the data set, engaging in grounded
theory development (Glaser & Strauss, 1967).

Because I was the course instructor as well as a participant-observer, I

could not analyze the data until the course was completed. However, in the

33

strictest sense, descriptions and reflections included in field notes and tape
catalogs can be considered a first pass at analyzing the data since both are
filtered through the ethnographer's lens (Hammersley 8r. Atkinson, 1983).
Acting as both course instructor and course ethnographer caused me to "see
with a new set of eyes and hear with a new set of ears." For example, early on
in the course, I reflected that I was uncomfortable with many of the narratives
that students were telling. I wrote: "Several aspects of this discussion made
me uncomfortable. One, I don't agree with the generalization about what we
(Americans) do and what other cultures do. These comments are loaded with
assumptions, and often inaccurate. What do I do? Say anything or not. Also,
I think the assumptions made about stay at home moms or welfare moms are
disturbing." (field notes, 9-8—97). On another night I wrote: "I felt really
uncomfortable here like things were falling apart into a sort of 'swapping
stories mode' and I was wondering if I should let this go on or cut it off.
Listening on tape it seems much shorter than what it seemed when I was
sitting there" (field notes, 9-15-97). These stories made me uncomfortable, in
part, because the highlighted the tension between my roles as researcher and
teacher.

As a researcher who had set out to explore the form, function, and
content of personal narratives within discussions of culture, literacy, and
autobiography, I knew that I should have been overjoyed at all the data--
multiple storiesuthat I was collecting. Yet at the same time, as a teacher
educator, some of these narratives made me uneasy because the appeared to
reify stereotypes or position culture as exotic or embodied only in others. I
faced the dilemma of being a researcher who wanted to celebrate the "rich
data" and being a teacher who wondered whether that "rich data" reflected

narratives that were educative or miseducative for students. I began to feel

34

that the resear
interfering wit
commented th
more objective
I slowly began
and my resear
of practice" or
and a research.
and told by stu
had I not been
appeared to rei
have been pron
n:‘il’ratives? Ho
Oblefiives? In t
are we position
As I COnti

dllEmmas that c

that the research was interfering with my teaching and my teaching was
interfering with the research. In an audiotaped memo to myself I
commented that if I were the observer and not the teacher, I could be much
more objective about these stories. In contemplating this dilemma, however,
I slowly began to realize that the dilemma could enhance both my teaching
and my research by assisting me in uncovering and developing my ”theories
of practice" or "theories in practice" (Cochran-Smith, 1995). Acting as teacher
and a researcher forced me look much more closely at the narratives written
and told by students and the responses of other participants. For example,
had I not been the teacher, I might not have noticed that the narratives
appeared to reify stereotypes or the definition of culture as exotic. I might not
have been prompted to ask: What is educative about this discussion, these
narratives? How do these stories support our exploration of course
objectives? In telling these stories, how are we positioning ourselves? How
are we positioning others?

As I continued to take field notes, I continued to note questions and
dilemmas that confronted me. Upon completion of the course, I was able to
begin extensive analysis of the data and to actively refine questions and
generate grounded theory (Glaser 8: Strauss, 1967; Strauss 8: Corbin, 1990). A
first step in this process was to prepare transcripts of all sessions; tapes were
transcribed by a professional transcriber. After the first pass at transcription, I
listened to tapes and read through transcripts making changes, additions and
deletions as necessary. Where close analysis of the discourse was necessary, I
marked overlapping speech, stress, pauses and occasionally other aspects of
prosody like rising, falling, or flat intonation. (A Transcription Key is
provided in the preface, page xvi). Working from field notes and catalogs, I

first identified segments of talk that appeared to be narrative. I then read

35

transcrij
wrote rt
interpre
sketch b

B.
identifyi
hot-lava
data, I d
hypothe
construc
and wit}
al50 atte:
(Strauss
35 a lens
Categoriz
to (level.
In attem
reflecliloi
“Sent,
Was exp

A
the C011 r

t' .
ellEcm.e

transcripts to code for narrative talk. As I worked through the data set, I
wrote memos about the narratives I was finding and commentary and
interpretation on other forms of discourse as well as other data sources, e. g.
sketch book entries and assignments.

Being steeped in the data assisted me in coding narratives and
identifying themes across narratives (e.g. stories that avoided discussion of
hot-lava topics, stories that positioned culture as exotic). In approaching the
data, I drew on what I knew about narrative theory and teacher discussions, to
hypothesize about how narratives were constructed and why and how the
construction and content of these narratives functioned within conversation
and within student's learning. While I attended to both data and theory, I
also attempted to think beyond the data and theoretical knowledge I possessed
(Strauss 8: Corbin, 1990). For example, rather than using one narrative theory
as a lens through which to view all the data, I worked from my coding and
categorization of narrative and discussion to identify features of narrative and
to develop explanations and interpretations of how narrative functioned.

In attempting to think outside existing theories, it was helpful to engage in
reflections about what the data would mean if the narratives were not
present, in other words, to think against the narrative forms, the "it" that I
was exploring (Lather, 1998).

As I engaged in preliminary analysis of the narratives and talk within
the course, I realized that using case examples was the most efficient and
effective means of organizing the exploration of narrative and generation of
grounded theory. I used the original coding of narrative to identify three case
examples which I explored more in-depth. I chose the first case, Ellie, because
of the unusual number of times that she revisited one compelling narrative,

retelling and rewriting it approximately six times throughout the course. The

36

 

————-

   

 

multipl
Ellie pt
Althou
one nai
because

narrati‘

multiple narratives she performed presented opportunities to explore how
Ellie positioned herself and others through multiple retellings of a story.
Although other participants retold or rewrote some stories, none revisited
one narrative as many times as Ellie. The second case, Cathy, was chosen
because of the deep engagement that other participants showed with her
narrative and because of the narrative's content and form. The high
engagement is reflected in the length of time Cathy held the floor in sharing
this narrative, the physical and verbal encouragement from other
participants, and the discussion around Cathy's narrative. I also chose
Cathy's case because I thought it would be useful in exploring the ties between
the discussion of readings, narratives, and other course curriculum. Regan,
the third case, was included in part because her discourse and experiences,
and the response of others to her set her apart from other participants. Regan
used a great deal of academic discourse, for example, analyzing and
synthesizing ideas, in her talk and writing. Her comments were often met by
silences from other students. As the teacher and researcher, I was particularly
intrigued by Regan because although her comments often represented ways of
thinking and types of engagement I was hoping to foster in the course, the
lack of uptake by her peers heightened my awareness of the dilemma teachers
face in trying to foster peer-led discussion of "hot-lava topics" (Glazier, et al.,
in press).

Although data collected from the other four participants in the course:
Cass, Jaime, Marsha, and Toni has not been developed in individual cases, I
did code their narratives and consider how their participation, discourse, and
narratives could contribute to the analysis and findings. Given the repetition
of patterns across the narratives (e.g. similar form, function, and content), I

did not choose to develop a case for each participant. The cases of Ellie and

37

Cathy provic
narrative anc
exemplified i
highlight nar
Regan, in the
participants v
either as liste:
In preli
narrative was,
definition of r
relating of an
Heritage Dictj.
(1943) “OHOn <

a Scene, and a

the elements 0

to 100k across

0' events and

ction, and
me We.
wider}. Cited in
Labov 3, Wale

COmpllCating ‘

Cathy provide insight into and reflections of many of the same features of
narrative and conversational discourse typical of narratives and discourse as
exemplified in Cass, Jaime, Marsha, and Toni. Although the case analyses
highlight narratives and other forms of discourse shared by Ellie, Cathy, and
Regan, in the following chapters, there are also examples in which all seven
participants were present and participated in conversations or discussions
either as listeners or speakers.
W

In preliminary data analysis I relied on an intuitive sense of what a
narrative was. Essentially, as I read and listened to transcript I used a
definition of narratives that Polkinghorne described: '"The narrating or
relating of an event or series of events, either true or false'" (American
Heritage Dictionary in Polkinghorne, 1988, p. 13). I also found that Burke's
(1945) notion of a well-formed story composed of an Actor, an Action, a Goal,
a Scene, and an Instrument was also a simple, but useful way to think about
the elements of a story. However, as I proceeded with the analysis it was
critical to construct a more elaborate definition of narrative because I wished
to look across narratives for examples of change, particularly re-emplotment
of events and interpretation. This required close analysis of narrative form,
function, and content.

The work of Labov and Waletzky (1967) and Labov (1972) is most
widely cited in regard to definitions of narrative. As indicated in Table 4,
Labov 8: Waletzky defined narrative as constituted by Abstract, Orientation,

Complicating Action, Evaluation, Resolution, and Coda.

38

Table 4
Coding

E

Abstrac
Orienta

 

 

Compli

' Evaluat

\
Resolut

 

Table 4

 

 

 

 

 

99'; _ :11 9. . .9v~ .9 ab9 an9 al zk
Element Definition from Labov 8: Waletzky (1967)

Abstract statement that indicates what the story is about

Orientation: statement that orients the "listener in respect to person,
place, time, and behavioral situation" (p. 32)

Complication: "main body of narrative clauses usually comprises a
series of events" (p. 32)

Evaluation: "that part of the narrative which reveals the attitude of

the narrator towards the narrative by emphasizing the
relative importance of some narrative units as compared
to others" (p. 37)

 

Resolution: the "result" of a narrative, follows the evaluation and
establishes a break between the complicating and
resolving action" (p. 39)

 

 

Coda: "a functional device for returning the verbal perspective
to the present moment" (p. 39)

 

 

 

Although Labov and Waletzky's definition is helpful in defining
narrative, their definition and the constraints surrounding this model of
analysis are also somewhat problematic. Labov elicited narratives in
interviews. For example, he asked participants to respond to the question:
"Were you ever in a situation where you thought you were in serious danger
of getting killed?" In analyzing those narrative episodes, Labov carefully
broke down each narrative clause by clause. Although this is an extremely
rigorous way to analyze narrative, this detailed analysis did not work well
with my data because the narratives were often extremely long. Another
significant problem was that many of the narratives I wished to analyze were
embedded in conversation. Whereas Labov's narratives were free of back
channel comments, interruptions, and multiple turns. I have used Labov's
definition and the elements of an abstract, orientation, complicating action,
evaluation, resolution, and coda in the following chapters for a general
analysis of narrative structures. However, for a detailed analysis of narrative,

particularly within conversation, I have sought other models.

39

1%31‘
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What I

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l

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I adapt.

S‘Ory E

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I looked at a number of other means of analyzing narrative (e.g. Gee,
1985, 1989, 1991; Riessman, 1993) and although I found these interesting, they
again proved cumbersome because the narratives I was analyzing contained
more than one speaker, multiple turns or long turns. In conducting a
detailed analysis of narratives, I found the work of Livia Polanyi (1985) to be
most helpful because she extends Labov's work, applying it to the analysis of
narratives within conversation. Polanyi's model was useful in extracting
what I call a "core plot" which could then be compared, for example, to
examine how a speaker changes the same story over time. To extract a core
narrative, Polanyi proposes five steps:
1. Divide the story into individual clauses or utterances
2. List separately:
a. Main Line Story Event Clauses
b. Crucial Contextualizing Information
c. Non-Storyworld Clauses/ utterances
3. Roughly calculate the amount of evaluation for mainline story
event clauses.
4. Combine the most heavily evaluated events into a "core plot".
I adapted these steps to extract core narratives and then compared Main Line
Story Event Clauses, Crucial Contextualizing Information 8: Evaluation,
Non-Storyworld Clauses / Utterances to analyze how narratives shift as they
are retold. I used this analysis in only one chapter (Chapter 3) where I explain
the procedure in more detail.
In exploring how narratives function, I have drawn upon
Polkinghorne's (1991) theory of re-emplotment and Davies 8: Harre's (1990)
notion of positioning, both outlined earlier in this chapter. To demonstrate

position and re-emplotment and to explore these as functions of narrative, I

40

drew upon ml
(Schiffren, 199
anthropology,
Gumperz and
'situatedness"
construct of pt
constructs of ft
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Vygotsky 1986
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drew upon methods of discourse analysis often described as "sociolinguistic"
(Schiffren, 1994). These methods which draw from the disciplines of
anthropology, linguistics, and sociology are heavily reliant on the work of
Gumperz and Goffrnan (Schiffren, ibid). Since they emphasize the
"situatedness" of language interaction, they mesh well with Davies 8: Harre's
construct of positioning which Harre has argued is alternative to Goffrnan's
constructs of footing and frames (Davies 8: Harre, 1990). This perspective is
also compatible with a sociocultural theory of language (Vygotsky, 1978;
Vygotsky 1986) and the notion of language as a tool. As Schiffren explains:
"Gumperz's sociolinguistics of interpersonal communication is a view of
language as a socially an culturally constructed symbol system" (p. 102).
Tannen is another discourse analyst whose work Schiffren labels
"interactional sociolinguistic." Tannen's (1989) work on repetition was
important in looking at both the conversational discourse across speakers and
within one speaker's sharing or writing of a narrative. Among the possible
uses of repetition in conversational settings, analysis here focused on
speakers using repetition to demonstrate active listening, to sanction topics,
create and "savor" humor. Repetition was also important within a narrative
to emphasize a speaker's point and to position the speaker and others. I also
drew on Tannen's work in developing a definition for "quasinarratives" as
explained in Chapter 5.

In the next chapter I begin my analysis of narrative by introducing
Polkinghorne's theory of re-emplotment to look at changes in events and
interpretation across narratives as indicated by methods of analysis adapted
from Labov and Polanyi. I extend this preliminary and primarily structural

analysis by incorporating the methods from discourse analysis and

41

positic

changt

positioning theory to explore not only what changes but how narratives

change over time.

42

 

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CHAPTER THREE
ELLIE'S STORY: THE BLACK JESUS
Introduction

Our second class meeting was our first book club, a discussion of
Vivian Paley's (1979) Weber: where Paley described her early
experiences in teaching Kindergarten in a racially diverse classroom. Because
of the Labor Day holiday, our initial class meeting had been held two weeks
before, so I asked the participants to introduce themselves again. They briefly
shared their names and the grades they were teaching before we went on to
discuss what they had included in their sketch books. I told the students that I
wanted "to give people an opportunity to share how they were working with
their sketch books"1 and to explore how people organized their questions or
ideas. Hoping that students would explore many topics and genres through
their sketch books, I had not given strict guidelines for what to include, and
the students were tentative about their responses as Cathy said, "I'm anxious
to hear what some of the rest of you decided to do with yours [sketch book]."

Our discussion began with brief descriptions of what students included
in their sketch books. Cathy noticed that Cass had included some articles
from the newspaper in her sketch book, and when she commented on this,
Cass responded that she just "wrote little things" about the articles. Jaime
shared how reading Paley's book was a "re-reading" experience for her
because she had already read the book as an undergraduate. During her "re-
reading" of Paley, she attempted to make connections to the sixth grade

classroom where she was teaching. Immediately following Jairne's

 

1Words in quotes are taken from audio tapes of the class meetings unless
otherwise specified.

43

comments, Ellie beg
and she shared the
Ellie: The fir
was tl
irnme
white
thong

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otJes
they?

Afric

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That
partr

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haw .

comments, Ellie began to talk about what she included in her sketch book,
and she shared the following story2:

Ellie: The first time I walked into the building I taught in Finley, there
was this big picture, a 16 x 20 of the whole school. And I
immediately noticed, of course, how there was absolutely no
white faces in the whole thing except teachers. And my first
thought was ”Oh, I thought this would never bother me. What
if it bothers me?” And then I turned around and there’s a picture
of Jesus in African garb and all the Apostles are African and
they're all in their African huts and they're all on the plains of
Africa and that just bothered the heck out of me. ’Cause I’m like
look, ”It says right there he’s in Jerusalem. He wasn’t in Africa.”
That just drove me nuts and then um I was talking to my
partner that I ended up teaching with and this is us, right here,
with one of my classes.

Mary: That’s when you were doing your

Ellie: This is when I was wor.. in Finley

Mary: In Finley, okay

Ellie: Yeah, this is one of my classes in Finley and um she said, "You
know, it used to bother me too, but if it makes them feel a closer
connection to Christ because they see him like they look, how
can that, how can that harm anything?" And then I just wrote
down here Life magazine there was an article that came out right
after that Life magazine did on, magazine did on Jesus. And it
had like 15 different pictures of Jesus. It had like the Russian

Jesus, the Chinese Jesus, the this Jesus, the that Jesus and it kind

 

2A transcription guide is provided on page xvi under List of Symbols.

44

Al
many otl
However
reading 5
the book
duomg th.
retold this

multiple c

Interpret t

 

of just, um, came out in my mind. So I kind of just jotted that
down....

Although Ellie's story was interesting, it did not stand out from the
many other narratives introduced into the group's talk on this night.
However, over time I recognized the importance this event had to Ellie. In
reading students' in class writing on this night and in listening to the tapes of
the book discussion groups, I realized that she shared this story three times
during this first evening, and by the end of our fifteen-week course Ellie had
retold this story six times which, as I demonstrate in this chapter, provided
multiple opportunities for her to not only construct this narrative but to
interpret the events of the story.

As explained in the previous chapter, I provided opportunity
throughout the course for participants to share narratives through their
writing in course assignments and sketch books and orally in their discussion
of articles and books. Although students had the option of using their
sketchbooks and written assignments to develop their mid-term and final
projects-providing opportunities for students to revisit narratives they had
written-~only one assignment required that students would revisit and revise
a narrative. The assignment that required this was the narrative vignette.

Because I had adapted this assignment from Florio-Ruane's course,
"Culture, Literacy, Autobiography," where I had been a participant-observer, I
had my own vignette to share with students. I included this narrative and an
example from Florio-Ruane on a handout for the students (see Appendix B).
As I shared the handout with the students, I asked them to think of a border-
crossing that they or a family member experienced in relation to school. I told

them that they could write this as a piece of "free writing" in their sketch

45

book, or they could
overly concerned w

responses to abOUt h

 

 

iiscussed our narrat

The assignmer
and discuss their nar
(at the original draft:
the original vignettes
revised written vi grit
some participants sh
while others like Elli
Data collected from 1
participants because
story multiple times
who chose to write h
51W! book and oral
{spically had two or

iterations of Ellie's n.

book, or they could type their narrative, and I also cautioned them not to be
overly concerned with revising, editing, or polishing and to keep their
responses to about half a page. The week after giving the assignment, we
discussed our narratives using questions on the hand out as a starting place.
The assignment provided opportunities for students to write, revise,
and discuss their narratives. Data collected around this assignment included
(a) the original drafts of students' narrative vignettes, (b) discussion around
the original vignettes, (c) the revised vignettes, and (d) discussion around the
revised written vignettes. Discussions around the vignettes varied with
some participants sharing additional information about their narratives
while others like Ellie retold their vignettes elaborating and extending them.
Data collected from Ellie throughout the course stands in contrast to other
participants because she was the only participant to voluntarily share one
story multiple times and in multiple settings. She was the only participant
who chose to write her vignette about a story she had already shared in her
sketch book and orally with the entire class. Compared to other students who
typically had two or three iterations of their narratives, I identified six
iterations of Ellie's narrative (three written and three oral) (see Figure 1) and
two occasions where Ellie did not retell the narrative but referred to it by
retelling some details or by adding additional information. The multiple
tellings of Ellie's narrative come from several sources: her sketch book, large
group community share, book club discussion around Paley's (1979) Whig
Ieaehex, written vignette assignment, discussion of the vignette, rewriting
the vignette, and discussion of the rewritten vignette. Figure 1 presents a
chronological tirneline for the story retellings across the semester (see

Appendices C-H for the complete narratives).

46

 

' twrittent

 

;
As
indicatioi
58ng. he
Charter 54
another I
Stidents
We cut
hmad
tilt at
her PTEV

fifiud

 

Eigmel. Timeline of Ellie's Narrative Retellings Across the Semester.

 

 

week 2 week 2 week 2 week 4 week 11 week 11
l | _ I _______ I _______ l _______ | ___
9-8-97 ' 9-8—97 9-8-97 9-29-97 11-10-97 11-10-97
sketch large small vignette revised small
book group group assign- vignette group
(written) (oral) (oral) ment assign- (oral)
(written) ment
(written)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As mentioned above, the number of times Ellie told this story is one
indication of its importance to her. At the time of the study Ellie had just
begun her fifth year of teaching. It was her second year of teaching at the
charter school. (Cathy, whose narratives are presented in Chapter 4, and Cass,
another participant, also taught in this school). Approximately 75% of the
students at Ellie's school were African American, and the remaining 25%
were culturally and ethnically diverse, and all students at the school come
from a diverse array of social and economic backgrounds. Ellie had chosen to
teach at this charter school because of its diverse student population, and in
her previous teaching position, which was her first job as a full-time teacher,
she had worked with African American students and their parents.
However, before this first teaching position she had little direct experience
with students of other ethnic or linguistic backgrounds. The narrative that
Ellie retold at various points during the semester dealt directly with this lack
of experience. Although the narrative accounts vary in how much detail and
interpretation are offered, the basic story events were similar across the
retellings. In each version, Ellie recounted entering a private Catholic school
to attend her first job interview, how unsettling it was for her to see Christ
portrayed as Black, and how unsettling it was to see a picture of the entire
school where all the students were African American and where the only

white people were teachers. Although the school was located in a small city

47

not far from where Ellie grew up, the school's urban and predominantly
African-American community stood in contrast to Ellie's own suburban
upbringing and her university experience where most of her peers were Euro-
American.

As I looked through the data set and read and listened to multiple
versions of Ellie's story, several questions emerged, and I wondered: What
was it that remained the same over the course of the retellings? What
changed as Ellie revisited her story? What could these changes tell me about
Ellie and what she was learning or exploring through her narratives? How
did they help her understand herself and others? To explore these questions,
I began using Labov's (Labov 8: Waletzky, 1967; Labov, 1972) segments of
Abstract, Complicating Action, Evaluation, Resolution, 8: Coda to look at
Ellie's narratives to determine what remained the same over time and what
changed. More specifically, in examining the narratives I hoped to find
changes in the events and the interpretation of those events, an act that
Polkinghorne refers to as "re-emplotment."

Polkinghorne argues that as we narrate life experiences, we emplot and
re-emplot events, giving new meaning to those experiences and constructing
and redefining the self. Emplotrnent is the act which configures events "into
a whole by 'grasping them together' and directing them toward a conclusion
or ending. Thus emplotment transforms a list or sequence of disconnected
events into a unified story with a point or theme" (Polkinghorne, 1991, p.
141). Major events, e.g. birth, adolescence, marriage, can disrupt the already
existing plot an individual is constructing which "leaves the person to
'experience the profound insecurity, self-doubt and inner conflict which we
associate with anxiety" (p. 148). Although Polkinghorne writes about this

disruption in relation to "life events," others have argued (e.g. Rosaldo, 1993;

48

DIET

Florio-Ruane, 1996; Clifford, 1988) that crossing cultural boundaries can also
disrupt the stories we are constructing about ourselves causing us to re-
emplot our experiences. Because such re—emplotment is a dialectical process
between the events being recalled and the theme or purpose of the story,
changes in narrative (e.g. additional details or commentary), are not simple
embellishments but hold forth the possibility to reflect changes in the Self.
Essentially Polkinghorne's notion of re-emplotment implies a change in self
over time and a repositioning of the self in relation to life events or
circumstances. Thus, examining how Ellie's stories changed over time has
the potential to reveal changes in the narrative re-emplotment (the
relationship of events and their interpretation) and changes in the narrator
(how she positions the Self and Others).
Methods of Narrative Analysis from Labov and Polanyi

Preliminary analysis of Ellie's narratives using Labov's categories
indicated a striking increase in the number of evaluative statements--that
part of the narrative where Ellie revealed her feelings about the narrated
event or the narration of that event. In identifying and analyzing evaluative
sequences, I have relied on Labov and Waletzky's (1967) definition of an
evaluative clause as "that part of the narrative which reveals the attitude of
the narrator towards the narrative [either the telling of it or the events
themselves] by emphasizing the relative importance of some narrative units
as compared to others" (p. 37). These evaluative clauses appeared to assist in
re-emplotting the narrative by providing an interpretation, or as
Polkinghorne said a "point or theme." Although Labov's model provided an
overall feel for the structure of the narrative, the categories (abstract,
orientation, complicating action, evaluation, and resolution) were

problematic primarily for two reasons. Labov's analysis had been carried out

49

l'uiIl'

IIIUC

on narratives that were elicited within the context of interviews, thus
conversation between participants played a minimal role in the construction
of the narratives he studied. In contrast, several of Ellie's narratives were
shared in conversational settings where other speakers contributed to the
narrative's construction. In addition, narratives analyzed by Labov were
much shorter often around 30 clauses--one unusual example which Labov
calls a "long story" is 53 clauses long (Labov, p. 371, 1972). Ellie's longest
narrative is approximately 154 clauses. Using Labov's coding system on these
long narratives was helpful in revealing the increased evaluation, but it was
difficult to extract the main events, contextual information, and evaluation
in a systematic fashion. In searching for methods of narrative analysis, I
realized that I needed to use a coding system that would allow me to (a)
analyze longer oral and written narratives, (b) analyze narratives told in
conversation, and (c) analyze narratives to distinguish evaluative
commentary and contextual information from key events that formed the
main story line.

The work of Livia Polanyi (1985) was very helpful in this regard.
Polanyi's analysis was based on Labov's original categories; however, she
adapted his work and developed her own coding system to examine
narratives told in one on one settings (e.g. interview) and in conversational
settings where speakers jointly constructed a narrative. She also analyzed
some longer narratives which, though still shorter than many of the
narratives I examined, provided a helpful model. Polanyi's work was also
useful because, it demonstrated a "methodology for abstracting from the
surface structure of a text those propositions about the storyworld which, if
taken together, are the essence of the story as told (1985, p. 9). This method

allowed me to cull the main events and formulate a "core plot" for each

50

narrative in a systematic manner by attending to those events that were most
heavily evaluated. This was a necessary step in preparing for cross—narrative
analysis that would allow me to look for evidence of re-emplotment.

Similar to Labov, Polanyi develops an extremely complicated and
rigorous coding system where preliminary analysis involves separating the
narrative into clauses. Polanyi's method relies heavily on linguistic markers
to indicate main events, descriptive clauses, and evaluation in a narrative,
but also allows for other indicators such as pronunciation, stress, volume,
repetition, flashbacks or flash ahead, gestures. As reflected by the linguistic
markers, evaluation is "highly-orchestrated" by the narrator (Polanyi, 1985, p.
15). In the following analyses, I have drawn from and adapted Polanyi's
method using only five steps whereas her original model included fourteen
steps. In adapting her work to identify and compare key elements of Ellie's
narratives, I followed these steps:

1. Divide the story into individual clauses or utterances
2. List separately

Main Line Story Event Clauses--An event is "an occurrence in some
world which is described as having an instantaneous rather than
a durative or iterative character" (emphasis in the original, p.10,
Polanyi, 1985).

Crucial Contextualizing Information--"Descriptions of characters,
settings, and motivations are durative-descriptive [crucial
contextualizing information], along with habitual, iterative, or
noninstantaneous actions and events which are semantically
interpreted to be off the main time line" (p. 12, Polanyi, 1985).

Flash ahead and flash back sequences and evaluation are part of

51

the crucial contextualizing information. I have listed them
separately to assist in later analysis.

Non-Storyworld Clauses/utterances" These are um's, false starts,
parentheticals (e.g. you know, I mean) and repetition. I have
also included comments from other speakers here, if their talk
not crucial contextualizing information or a main line story
event clause. Although Non-storyworld clauses do not form the
"core plot" of a narrative, they are still important, and after
breaking down a narrative, Polanyi urges readers to revisit these
clauses in further analysis.

3. Roughly calculate the amount of evaluation for mainline story event
clauses.

4. Combine the most heavily evaluated events (main events) into a eere plet.
5. Look across the texts "globally" for repetition of words, phrases, clauses,
flash sequences, and so on.

Tables 5 through 10 present the analysis of Ellie's six narratives. (A
complete set of the original narratives in their unanalyzed form is attached in
Appendices C-H). Just a glance across the tables reveals some differences
which I will analyze more in detail in the following section. I have chosen to
analyze all six narratives, thus conducting a cross-genre analysis including
both oral and written narratives. Obviously, there are important differences
between the oral and written forms which may raise questions about the
feasibility of a cross-genre analysis. A critical difference is the contexts within
which the narratives texts were constructed. Whether a narrator is writing
alone for her own purposes or for an assignment or whether a narrator is
speaking to a group shapes form, function, and content. Even the

preliminary analysis highlights some of these differences. For example,

52

during the beginning states of analysis, I noticed that written narratives
aligned closely with Labov's model while in contrast spoken narratives, even
conventional narratives (see Chapter 4), were more complicated to analyze
because they were constructed in conversational settings where there was
opportunity for others to participate, interrupt, and otherwise share in the
story and its construction. Another difference apparent by simply scanning
Tables 5 through 10 on following pages is that written narratives do not
contain Non-storyworld talk. This is not surprising given that writers have
more opportunity to craft their words and that the immediacy of face to face
conversation and concern for the "presentation of self" (Goffman, 1959)
results in more Non-storyworld talk such as repetition, false starts, and side
sequences in oral discourse. While I recognize that differences exist between
the written and oral texts, comparing only like genres is also problematic
because it provides a limited view of how Ellie re—emplots her narrative.
Examining both spoken and written discourse provides a more detailed
picture of how narrative functions over time and the role it plays in
constructing both Self and Other. In recognition of the differences between
the oral and written forms, I will indicate possible limitations on my analysis
as I proceed with the comparison of Ellie's narratives.
' - _'11'1 9. 1 ;_1- ' ' g 0 11 i a 'v 9m9ari m A vs Narraiv-
As a preliminary step in the analysis across all six narratives, we can
scan Tables 5 through 10 looking for readily seen changes in the narratives
structure. As mentioned above, readers will notice that there is no Non-
storyworld talk included in the written narratives. However, we can see a

striking increase in crucial contextualizing information across the retellings

53

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62

including an increase in evaluative information. We can also see that the

core plot remained essentially the same across the narratives.

To assist in comparison of the six narratives, Table 11 provides a

summary of the quantitative changes in events, contextual information,

evaluation, and non-storyworld talk as revealed by Polanyi's method across

all six narratives. Across the narratives, the main events were between three

and seven clauses long. Contextual information (this includes crucial

contextualizing information, flash sequences, and evaluation) ranged from

seventeen to eighty-eight clauses. Over the course of the retelling evaluation

increased from six lines to fifty-three lines, and as would be expected, the

longer oral narratives contained more non-storyworld talk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 11
-JLH , a 0 °' _ .-rrat'v Rutll' 1 b umbr of lau ' Pr . nt
WW
Narrative Main Line Context. Evaluation Non- Total # of
Events info—CCI", within CCI storyworld clauses in
Flashes, & flash talk or this
Evaluation sequences writing narrative
#1 written 3 16 6 0_ 20
#2 oral 4 3O 9 15 49
#3 oral 1 31 22 4 36
#4 written 3 15 9 0 18
#5 rewrite 5 48 21 0 53
#6 oral 7 88 53 70 154

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*CCI = Crucial contextualizing information
Flashes = Flash ahead or flash back sequences
Evaluation = Evaluation within flash sequences as well as main narrative

 

The preliminary analysis of the six narratives and the summary
provided in Table 11 show that as Ellie retold her story, she changed it.
However, although all categories (main line events, contextual information,

evaluation, and non-storyworld talk, and length of narrative) increased over

63

time, this change was more dramatic in some categories than in others. For
example, as shown by Table 12, the main line events remain relatively the

same across all narratives.

 

 

Table 12
CQrs Elgts Cgmpgssd sf Main Ling Evsnts and Flash Sequsnge Evsnts for
' ' a r 'v
NARRATIVE MAW LINE EVENTS
#1 Iwalkej in—
(written) There it was--The picture-

Sketch book entry for Paley's Masher Then behind me was another picture:
I talked to my teaching partner about the picture (fs

 

F2 The first time I walked into the building
(oral) And I immediately notice [the picture]
Large group community share for W: And I turned around
and there’s a picture [of Jesus in African garb]
I talked to my teaching partner about the picture (fs)
I saw a Life magazine article with many
representations of Jesugfs)

 

53 I went [to the interview]
(oral) But then to hear her [my teaching partner] talk about
Small group book club discussion of W it and say
Black leaders were trying to prove Jesus was
Black.(fs)

My teaching partner talked about the picture (fs)
I saw a Life magazine article with many
representations of Jesus (fs)

 

#4 I entered the doors [for my interview]
(written) At that moment, everything I had always prided
Vignette assignment to share with others in class myself on was challenged.

but here I was standing in the hall just about to
interview to teach at this school.
I entered school on the first day of class (fs)

 

55 I walked [in] the doors
(written) When I entered the building,
Rewritten vignette assignment to share with others As I looked around the other walls,
in class But then I saw it. [photogra h]
At that moment, eve thing Fhad always prided

m self on was allen ed.
I hear radio talk shows ta§k about: Was Jesus
Black? (fs)
I went to school on my first day of teaching.(fs)

 

 

#6 but it was about wherment in for the job
(oral) interview
Small group discussion about revised vignette and I walked in
assignment and I saw the big picture of the whole student body
on the wall.
And it really challenged something that had always
frustrated me

So I had just honestly never thought about it [and I
was just faced with:

But, then II was faced with looking at this sea of

e

Before e interview I talked to the principal on the
phone (fs)

I hearfd people on talk shows saying: "Jesus is Black"

5

I saw a Life magazine article with many
representations of Jesus (fs).

 

 

64

 

As Table 12 shows, the core events remain essentially the same across all six
retellings:

Ellie entered the building. She saw a picture or photographs showing:

the school population where all the students were black and only the

teachers were white, Christ as a Black man dressed in African clothing

with African disciples, and a Madonna and child, where both mother

and child were Black. These pictures challenged her.
Within the narratives, the challenge posed by the black Jesus and black
student population was evaluated and resolved by Ellie concluding there was
no problem, talking to her teaching partner, or by seeing the article with
many representations of Jesus. There is an increasing amount of evaluation
across the narratives.

Extending the Analysis to Include Examination of the Discourse

Noting these structural changes (e. g., similarities in main events,
increase in evaluation) is important because it reveals the dynamic nature of
narrative and seems to indicate that Ellie was "re-emplotting" her story. As
she was retelling the events, she was also imposing and changing a plot
structure or interpretation. Although this appears to be the case given these
structural changes, several questions must be answered before we assume that
the increase in various categories does, in fact, indicate re-emplotment. In
addition to a more detailed analysis of what changed and what remained the
same, it is critical to consider how the narratives changed. This requires
extending the analysis beyond the preliminary quantitative comparisons to
explore qualitative changes in Ellie's narratives.

Further inquiry into qualitative differences across narratives requires
scrutinizing the discourse across the retellings in addition to examining the

structure. Attention to discourse is important because "stories of narrative

65

self-identity must be embedded in and constructed out of a person's particular
cultural environment--that is, the specific vocabulary and grammar of its
language, its 'stock of working historical conventions,’ and the pattern of its
belief and value systems" (Polkinghorne, 1991, p. 144). Here Polkinghorne
indicates the ties between the construction of self and language. Self-identity
is "embedded in" and "constructed out of" culture and language. Although
Polkinghorne highlights the aspects of discourse associated with "vocabulary
and grammar," he also indicates that culture and "working conventions"
play a significant role in identity construction, and while Polkinghorne does
not fully explore the implications of this statement, it is worth further
consideration.

Bamburg (1991) has criticized Polkinghorne for not emphasizing the
role that discourse plays in re-emplotment, stating that: "events are not only
given form due to their relationship to the theme or plot, but at the same
time due to the language that is spoken and the discourse that is generated"
(p. 157). The use of the term "discourse" here refers not only to "vocabulary
and grammar" but also to the "working conventions" to which Polkinghorne
referred but did not explore. The working conventions with their patterns of
"belief and value systems" can be thought of as a "discourse" which Gee
(1989) defines as saying or writing "the right thing in the right way while
playing the right social role and (appearing) to hold the right values, beliefs,
and attitudes. Thus what is important is not language, and surely not
grammar, but saying (writing)--doing--being--valuing-—believing
combinations" (emphasis in the original, p. 6). Thus discourse is more than
just a way of communicating, more than a "convention," it is "an identity

kit," which assists us in constructing the Self and the Other. As such, our

66

 

views of self and our views of others are discursively produced (Harte &
Gillett, 1994).

In attempting to re-emplot events and in searching for evidence of re-
emplotment, careful consideration must be given to evaluative comments or
what Bamburg refers to as "value-orientations. "How these evaluations are
constructed and what is contained within them is critical because such value-
orientations reveal the narrator's "subjective point of view" (Bamburg, 1991).
The position taken up by the narrative and the positions projected onto
others can be identified by "extracting the autobiographical aspects of a
conversation in which it becomes possible to find out how each conversant
conceives of themselves and of other participants by seeing what position
they take up and in what story, and how they are then positioned" (p.48,
Davies and Harre). Thus, how we position ourselves and how we position
others within our cultural environment is reflected and also reflexively
constructed by how we use language. In sum, a change in re-emplotment
requires that a narrator reshape events or the interpretation of those events
over time. Change can be determined in part by looking for quantifiable
changes (e.g., increases in the occurrence of events, contextual information, or
evaluation) but also by qualitative changes (how events change, how
evaluation changes). In addition, evidence of re-emplotment can also be
found by examining the evaluation or interpretation of the story for how the
narrator positions herself and whether there is a shift in her positioning of
self and others over time.

In the following section I explore the questions (a) What additional
quantitative changes do we see across the first five narratives? (b) What
qualitative changes do we see across the first five narratives? And (c) What do

these changes reveal about how Ellie positions herself and others? The

67

section presents a cross-narrative analysis of which foregrounds Narratives
#1 through #5. Analysis of Narrative #6 will be presented in the final
section. I have chosen to present the analysis of Narrative #6 separately
because it is a very long narrative, and it is the narrative that demonstrates
the greatest amount of change. In exploring methods of analyzing the
evaluative segments, it is clear that there is no set way to determine how
different kinds of value-orientations are "in concert" or in conflict" as
Bamburg (1991) noted when he wrote: "[H]ow one can analyze such
orientations, is far from being fully understood at this point in narrative
research." (Bamburg, 1991, 161). However, given the emphasis placed on
discourse by Polanyi, Labov, Bamburg, and that implied by Polkinghorne, I
use techniques from discourse analysis, particularly the work of Tannen
(1989) to identify conflict and coherence across and within narratives.

9‘ ‘ 0 "-‘n.0 on n: R‘o‘otitin A r0 0 d _"D‘, ition _‘ o

a ti ' n A r ti n
E . . l Ill 1
When I first read across Ellie's narratives, I was struck the repetition

within the evaluative segments but also across the narratives as a whole.
Although the main events are repeated across most of the narratives creating
coherence across stories, there are also other words, phrases, ideas, and
structures that Ellie used create a coherence and emphasize ideas across the
narratives. In the early stages of analysis, I began highlighting words that
were repeated (e.g. Finley, black, bother, picture) and later I highlighted words
that seemed to be reflect Ellie's position and how she positioned others (e.g.
African, challenge, race, white). Patterns did not emerge for all the words I
coded and in some cases, the lack of repetition was as revealing as the

repetition (see Appendix I for a complete list of words coded). Table 13

68

 

Six}
.

‘34P:

. 5.:-
‘L
.

provides a summary of five words that were important not only for the

number of times they were repeated but also for how they were used across

the narratives.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 13
t W r 'n Elli ' Narra ive
WORD #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6
Africa/ 3 5 O O 2 2
African
black 2 O 2 3 12 8-E
1-M
culture 0 0 O 1 1 0
race 0 O 0 3 3 0
white 1 1 0 2 2 1-E
3-R

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

E= Ellie R= Regan M=Marsha

As I looked across the narratives, I was surprised to see a shift where
Ellie used the word "black" with increasing frequency. In her earliest
narratives she used "black" as a descriptive term only twice to refer to "Black
students" and "Black leaders." In all other references she used the words
"Africa" or "African." In contrast, she used "black" twelve and nine times in
her last retellings. My first hunch was that Ellie's language in her first
narratives was a more guarded, politically correct use of language where she
avoided using the term "black" because it raised the hot-lava topic of race. I
hypothesized that Ellie was moving toward a more open exploration of the
story and its characters through her multiple retellings. While this assertion
cannot be supported by looking only at one term, there is evidence of this
movement if we look at other words and how they are used.

In contrast to "black," Ellie used the word "white" much less

frequently. Throughout the narrative Ellie used "black" only to describe the

69

photograph of the children and their teachers. It was a "black and white"
photograph both because of the type of film and because the faces of the
students and teachers are black and white. In contrast to the increasing use of
"black," Ellie used the word "white" to refer only to the teachers at the school.
This is not surprising given that white is the "unmarked form" in our society
and that white people often think of themselves positioned outside of race
and culture (Frankenberg, 1993; King, 1991) and that teachers who are
predominantly white women tend to avoid raising race as an issue (Glazier,
et al, in press; McIntyre, 1997) . For these reasons, I was surprised to observe
that Ellie actually used the words "race" and "culture" in her fourth and fifth
narratives, both of which were completed for part of the written vignette
assignment.

In these narratives Ellie wrote that she "learned so much" or "quite a
bit about the black culture" during teaching in Finley. This could imply that
Ellie saw "the black culture" as a monolithic construct that could in fact be
"learned." There are no comments that reflect attention or focus on her own
"white culture." More revealing was her use of the word "race." She used

this word in both narratives five and six as shown in Table 14.

70

Table 14

QQmQQQ'sQn Qf :11: Ider "Rags" as Ussg m’ Narrativss #4 and #5

 

Narrative #4 Narrative #5

 

I never thought that I would have a I never thought that I would have a
problem with teaching a child of any problem with teaching a child of any

 

race. race.

What if I did have a problem with Would the principal see something

race? in me that I never thought was
there--that I did have a problem with
race?

 

 

I entered the school my first day still I don't recall race ever coming up in
so excited but now, not the least bit the interview.
concerned about the kids' race.

 

 

 

In her narrative, after seeing the photograph of black students and white
teachers and after seeing the portraits of Jesus and Mary as Black, Ellie
wondered if she would "have a problem teaching a child of any race." This
statement indicated the possibility that there could, in fact, be a problem. This
possibility was reflected in the two questions Ellie posed: What if I did have a
problem with race? Would the principal see something in me that I never
thought was there--that I did have a problem with race? In the end, Ellie
concluded that race was not to be a problem she was "not the least bit
concerned about the kids' race." Ellie then added: "I learned so much about
the Black culture working there and honestly never felt the difference
between us was a problem." This implies that the "problem" of race can be
dealt with by choosing to be colorblind and by learning "the Black culture."
Ellie also indicated this interpretation in her resolution of Narratives #5 and
#6, she Ellie said, "They were my kids, and I was their teacher." This ending,
described the context--Ellie as teacher (not white teacher) and kids as students
(not black students) and implied that the issue of difference, Ellie being white

and her students being black, was not one that needed to be addressed.

71

As Bamburg noted earlier, the events in a narrative are shaped not
only by interpretation but by the language used throughout a narrative
(Bamburg, 1991). Although Ellie introduces the idea of race through the
events she relates and the words she uses, her interpretation indicates that
these events were not important. In avoiding the hot-lava topic of race, Ellie
readily solves her dilemma by adopting the stance of a "colorblind" teacher--
what Polkinghorne might call a "working convention" that Ellie falls back on
to express her idea. As I explain below, this simplistic view of remaining
colorblind is not a common resolution across the narratives. Several of the
narratives, particularly the last retelling, introduce and sustain the issue of
race as a dilemma and reveal the complexity of Ellie's evaluative sequences.

Before proceeding with this examination of other evaluative segments,
I think it is important to consider how the form of Narratives #5 and #6 may
have affected the way that Ellie shaped her story and the interpretation she
placed on it. The two direct references to "race" which I analyzed above
occurred in Ellie's written narratives. In contrast, there were no direct
references to race in the oral retellings. I believe that the form of the
narrative (a brief written narrative) and the context (an assignment for class
and to be shared with others) contributed to the way that Ellie introduced race
as a possible problem but then resolved it. One possibility is that Ellie knew
she had to share her story with others and whether she was conscious of her
strategy or not, she attempted to mitigate opportunities for argument or
disagreement by concluding that race was not a problem, making it a non-
issue. It is also likely that the written form contributed to the structure of the
evaluation and resolution. All the written vignettes crafted by students for
their assignment shared a common form, in that all could easily be coded

using Labov's structure of Orientation, Complicating Action, Evaluation, and

72

 

 

C0!

Ell

W
5U

01’

Resolution. This is probably due in part to the examples I provided for
students (see Appendix B) which also exhibited this pattern. In some respects
this form can be quite limiting. For example, in Chapter 5 I will demonstrate
that other narrative forms actually allow narrators more options to raise
questions and dilemmas and to present themselves as "multi-voiced"
individuals (Bamburg, 1991; Zuss, 1997). However, even narratives organized
in a traditional organizational pattern, can provide opportunities for more
complex evaluation over time as we can see from further comparison across
Ellie's narratives.
R u i

As mentioned earlier one of the most striking changes across the
narratives is the increase in evaluation. In Ellie's case, examples of
evaluative comments range from the relatively mundane statements "That's
all I knew [that it was in northern Finley]" to the more provocative self-
directed questions: "What if I did have a problem with race?" In addition to
these statements and questions, Ellie also uses the resolution of her stories as
a form of interpretation. Resolution statements are usually found at the end
of the story and function to provide a "result" for the story; they answer the
question: "And then what happened?" Resolutions also state or imply an
interpretation of the story's events. Ellie essentially offered three overarching
interpretations or resolutions to resolve her story. At various points she
suggested that the final result of her being white and her students being black
or that Jesus being black was (a) seemed problematic until she talked with her
teaching partner or read the magazine article (b) could have been a problem
but it wasn't, or (c) remained a dilemma. Table 15 provides an overview of

they types of resolutions offered in each narrative.

73

Table 15

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Narrative Could have been Seemed problematic Remained a
a problem but until... dilemma
wasn't

#1 (written) she talked to

sketchbook teaching partner 8:

read magazine

#2 (oral) she talked to

large group teaching partner &

read magazine

#3 she talked to

(oral) teaching partner 8:

small group read magazine

#4 (written) They were my

vignette kids. I was their

assignment teacher.

#5 (written) They were my

revised kids. I was their

vignette teacher.

#6 (oral) What if ......

final retelling

 

The plots or interpretations that Ellie places on her narratives are both
"conflicting" and "in concert." For example, Narratives #1, 2, 3 have similar
"in concert" interpretations. In each case Ellie mentions talking with her
teaching partner and reading the magazine article which depicts many
representations of Jesus. However, the interpretation placed on the first three
narratives is in conflict with Narratives #4 and #5. As mentioned during the
section "Repetition of Words," Ellie resolves Narrative #4 and #5 with the
statement: "They were my kids. I was their teacher" thus indicating that race
was not a problem. All five narratives differ from the resolution of the final
narrative in which Ellie leaves open the question of whether race is a
problem. Rather than being easily resolved, the issue of race continues to be a

dilemma.

74

The changing resolutions is yet another indication that as Ellie engaged
in the process of revisiting and re-emplotting her narrative in both its
structuring of events and the interpretation of those events. It implies that
her cognitive stance has changed or at least that there is some part of the story
that resists being emplotted in the way that she has attempted to do so. The
lack of consistency across resolutions is, in fact, representative of the
"resistance" that individuals encounter in trying to fit events into a particular
temporal and interpretive frame (Polkinghorne, 1991). These assertions--that
Ellie is re-emplotting her narrative and thus changing her position--can be
supported further by considering the types of questions Ellie asked across her
narratives and by exploring how these questions functioned.

Bspsfitign Agrgss Qusstions

Table 16 presents a summary of the questions asked by Ellie across her
narratives. Looking across the questions, one of the most striking details is
the dramatic recurrence and increase in "what if" questions, question form
that allows speakers to express possibilities. In the first four narratives, Ellie
asks only three "what if" questions. In Narratives #2 and #4, she asks: What
if it bothers me? What if I have a problem with race? thus raising the
possibility that she perhaps does have or would have a problem with race.
She also raises the possibility that she is a racist by asking the question: What
would that mean I was? These questions reflect Ellie's sudden recognition of
having crossed a cultural boundary where the "tables are now turned" and
where she, as the white teacher, is the minority. The "what if" form of the
questions holds forth the potential to explore what Rosaldo (1993) calls "the

mundane disturbances that so often erupt during border crossings" (p. 29).

75

l .
t

 

Table 16

 

 

 

 

 

 

a h ti n Elli Ak dAr s arrativ #1 hr h#
Narrative Questions J
#1 None
(written)
sketch book
#2 What if it bothers me?
(oral)
large group
#3 None
(oral)
small group
#4 What if I have a problem with race?
(written) What would that mean I was?
assignment
#5 Why is that so hard to understand?
(written)
revised What if I did have a problem?

 

 

What if I found I was uncomfortable here?
What if the children did not want to listen to me?

Would the principal see something in me I never thought was
there that I did have a problem with race?
If so, what would that mean I was?

 

76

 

 

 

 

#6 What do you know about northern Finley?
(oral) What is so hard about this?
final retelling

What if I find that I’m in this interview and they see
something in me that I’ve always said wasn’t there?

What if it’s there?

What if they make me teach this?

to start teachings this thing I don’t believe in?
What if there was a person in me I never knew was there--
someone I didn’t really like?

Do you know what I mean?
Does that make sense?

What if I am something I’ve always said I wasn’t?
an is asking me all these questions I can’t answer?

You know, [what if he’s asking me about] things I’ve never
thought about or...?

 

 

Ellie increases the potential for this exploration in the next narrative,
#5, by raising an additional set of questions when she asks: "What if the
children did not want to listen to me?" and, "Would the principal see
something in me I never thought was there that I did have a problem with
race?" These two questions represent a critical shift in Ellie's position. The
questions imply consideration of how the principal and students will "see"
her. Interestingly, the word "see" connotes both her physical self--the
principal and children will see that she is White--but the word also indicates
how she will be perceived--the principal might perceive that she is a racist or
the children might perceive that she is not a teacher to whom they should
listen because she is White. Thus Ellie's questions reveal a subtle but
important shift. By introducing how other's perceive her, she injects into the
narrative the potential to demonstrate that "Life stories need not be simply

self-centered and narcissistic. Our individual stories can, and perhaps need

What if everything I’ve always thought of myself is not true?

What if they make me stand up there working here and I have

I was thinking about what if you’re in this interview and this

 

to, expand the protagonist from an I to a we. The I in the 'Who am I?‘ can be
extended to include other individuals and communities" (p. 146,
Polkinghorne, 1991). Thus as Ellie questions herself, she also begins to
introduce the perspective of the Other by asking: "How do Others see me?"

Although the potential exists to "extend the protagonist form an I to a
we," for Ellie to explore her position as a white teacher and to consider how
her race positions her within the school setting and within the society, Ellie
does not push take this reflection any further. This is exemplified in the way
that Ellie responds to the questions she has introduced. Her questions, '
though self-directed and introspective, are also rhetorical, and it would go
against the written and oral convention of discourse for Ellie to respond to
them directly, for example, by stating, "I am not a racist," or "The principal
could see I wasn't prejudiced." However, Ellie did respond to these questions
in the way she resolved her stories. As I explained in the previous section on
resolutions, Ellie uses two resolutions in concluding Narratives #1 through
#5. One was that she talked with her teacher and read a magazine article, and
the issue of race (particularly portraying Christ as black) was no longer
problem. In the second interpretation, Ellie concludes: "1 was their teacher.
They were my kids." Both interpretations of her narrative offer a response to
the self-directed questions she poses. For example, she responds to the
questions: "What if I have a problem with race? What if I was
uncomfortable here?" with the reply, given in her resolution, "Race was not
an issue; it didn't matter if I was white and the students were black."

The changing questions are further evidence that Ellie's was re-
emplotting her narratives and reflecting on the tensions surrounding race.
However, as I have noted above, this change is limited. Although she raises

the opportunity to explore issues (e.g., her position as a white teacher) she

78

does not always fully engage these opportunities. In raising questions that
potentially problematize her position as a white teacher and then in replying
to these questions that race is a "non-issue," Ellie demonstrates how difficult
it can be to both raise and sustain exploration of hot-lava topics through
narrative. Her resistance to shifting her position, of almost stepping into the
place of the Other and then backing away, represents both the potential power
of narrative, to explore how others see us and thereby to reposition ourselves
and others, but also the resistance to re-emplotting our life stories.

Although the process of repositioning ourselves is difficult and
although Ellie may encounter resistance from within herself, I wish to point
out that context (e.g. written assignment, oral story) can contribute to the
form of the narrative and potentially constrain narrative exploration
(Swidler, 1995). For example, in the written narratives, Ellie knew that she
was supposed to write about half a page and that the narrative would be
shared with her peers. This may have decreased the opportunities for Ellie to
pose and respond to difficult questions. However, it is worth noting that
even in comparing the two written forms Ellie made some important
changes in relation to the questions she posed. In Narrative #4, the first
written vignette assignment, Ellie posed only two questions: What if I have a
problem with race? What would that mean I was? But in rewriting the
narrative (Narrative #5), she included six questions. Five of those questions
are questions which are essentially self-directed questions which embody
possibilities (e.g. What if I did have a problem?) and two are the type that
begin to consider others and how they perceive Ellie (e.g. What if the children
did not want to listen to me?). This indicates that although re-emplotment

may be constrained by context, important changes can still occur.

79

 

Re-emplotting the Self: Questions, Flash Sequences, and Repetition Within
Ellie's Final Oral Retelling

Thus far we have looked at repetition of words, resolutions, and
questions and how they provide evidence of re-emplotment and shifts in
position over the first five narratives. However, it is Narrative #6 that the
greatest changes occur. As Table 16 showed, Ellie used thirteen questions in
this final oral narrative. Because these final questions are part of a long oral
retelling, one in which several other participants play a part in shaping the
narrative, it is important to consider the questions in the context of the
extended retelling. In the following section I present Ellie's final narrative
with analysis that focuses on interpretation of events through the use of
questions, flash sequences involving other participants and repetition within
the narrative. I also consider how Ellie positions herself through questions,
comments, and interaction with other participants.

Ellie's final oral retelling took place eleven weeks into a fifteen-week
course. Before coming to class on that night she had re-written her vignette
assignment (see Appendix G for Ellie's rewritten vignette). She retold her
story in a small group with Regan and Marsha, and this retelling lasted for
about five minutes. The complete transcript of this retelling and Ellie's
interaction with other participants is available in Appendix H.

In this final version of her story, Ellie uses several different types of
questions. The first question is reported speech from the principal with
whom she interviewed and introduces a flash back sequence:

Ellie: I honestly did not know anything about northern Finley. I

mean, he, he [the principal] asked me on the phone, you know:
”What do you know about northern Finley?” I’m like

Regan: It’s in northern Finley. ]

80

Ellie: It’s in northern Finley ] laughter

That’s all I knew I didn’t know anything about, you know, the
socioeconomic area, I didn’t know anything about the
population, nothing.

This flash back is a humorous exchange that engaged other
participants, but it also functioned as a way for Ellie to evaluate this event, to
indicate her limited knowledge about Finley. Regan's response: "It's in
northern Finley" and Ellie's overlapping speech and repetition along with
Ellie's repetition of the idea that she "didn't know anything" or knew
"nothing" amplify Ellie's position as a naive actor in the story. Other
participants know from hearing or reading previous versions of the story that
Ellie grew up in a fairly prosperous suburb not far from Finley. In previous
versions of the story, Ellie indicated she was unaware that Finley and
especially northern Finley is "known" for being a predominantly black
community. Finley also had a reputation for high unemployment and crime,
and at the time Ellie interviewed was particularly troubled by unemployment
due to General Motors shut down of a major assembly plant. Ellie reveals
that she was unaware of Finley's black population and history. Thus when
Ellie walked into the school and saw the pictures of a black Christ and his
disciples and a black Madonna, it was a "shock" to her.

As Ellie recounts her story, her discourse reveals not only how she is
positioning herself but how she is positioning others. Even though in the
first 30 lines, she describes talking with the principal, going to Finley, entering
the school and seeing the pictures of the Black Christ, she never refers directly
to the black students or black community. She mentions the "black and white
faces" of students and teachers, "the student body," and the "population" but
it is not until lines 35-38 that she directly talks about the school as an all black

81

school. She says: "I had actually never thought about a school that could be
100% black. It, you, to always to me it was there, there were some of them in
your classroom. It was just really hard to think of it being, you know, a
100%." At this point Ellie's language clearly indicates how she is positioning
herself and her students. Her depersonalization of the students as "them"
("there were always some of them in your classroom") and her inclusion of
Regan and Marsha, the others in her discussion group ("there were always
some of them in your classroom") indicate separation along racial lines.
Although white readers may find nothing unusual about Ellie's reference to
these students as "them," African Americans who have read and listened to
Ellie's narrative have all commented on her depersonalization of the
students, a discourse move that reflects white "depersonalization" of Black
Americans within our society. Ellie's positioning of herself and other
participants in the group and the black students and community as us-them
reflects the balkinization along racial lines within our society. This
separation is also reflected in Ellie's comment in line 52 when she describes
looking at the photograph of the students, "this sea of [black] pe0ple," and she
adds: "I'm gonna be outnumbered here." Ellie's positioning herself as a
naive and passive character and her discourse which uses an us-them

dichotomy reflects a conversational strategy that McIntyre (1997) calls white
talk'--talk that serves to insulate white people from examining their/ our
individual and collective role(s) in the perpetuation of racism" (p. 45).

Yet what is striking about Ellie's point of view is how she joins this
depersonalization of the Other with reflection on her own position. She
begins in line 30 by noting that the picture of the black Jesus really bothered

her and that she was shocked to be faced with her own "feelings." However,

she does not express what those feelings are. In line 42 she continues

82

reflecting on herself and her views at first using vague references and abstract
pronouns (33512113114 in the excerpt) and she continues to position the black

students and the black community as the Other (in bold in the exce at):

 

 

42 with: What if svsrything I’ve always thought of myself is not
43 true? What if I find that I’m in this interview and they see

44 Ming in me that I’ve always said wasn’t there? You

45 know, what, what if 1th there? And I didn’t hones..., I didn’t

46 ever stand there and go ”Oh my gosh there’s no way I could do
47 this, but I was afraid that there actually was somgtmng in me
48 that was, that would be prejudiced or biased against this or

49 something because my first initial reaction was about the black
50 Jesus was like ”Come on, no way” But, then I was faced with
51 looking at this sea of people and it was almost like I’m gonna
52 be outnumbered here. What if they make me teach this? What
53 if they make me stand up there working here and I have to

54 start teaching this mgs I don’t believe in. You know, And the
55 whole thing with the black Jesus was like ”Well, if it makes

56 them feel better to see him look like them, well, great, you

57 know...

 

 

 

The types of questions that Ellie has begun to ask in the excerpt above
reflect how difficult it is to explore racism and identity. Ellie states that her
own reaction to the Black Jesus challenged her and raised doubts about
whether she was racist and about whether she knows herself. Her repeated
references to"somst11i_ng in me," and questions of "what if its there" and
"what if everything I've thought. is not true?" indicate how difficult it is to
directly voice the issue of racism. Ellie finally introduces the issue of

prejudice and bias in line 48 when she states: "I was afraid that there actually

83

was sgmgthihg in me that was, that would be prejudiced or biased against
this." Ellie's speaking the words "prejudice" and "bias" are significant
because she identifies, for the first time, what the "it" is that could be inside
her. However, even as she has raises this issue, she is still vague about what
the "object" of her prejudice is: "that I would be prejudiced or biased against
this." "This" can be interpreted as both the black students and black
community or the Black Jesus.

Ellie reifies her positioning the black Other as "they, them" throughout
this segment. Although Ellie repeatedly mentions the "black Jesus," she does
not mention the "white teacher," and her own race remains transparent, the
unmarked form which is not introduced as a topic on the conversational
floor. However, immediately after the above excerpt, Regan, who often raised
issues of race for discussion (see Chapter 5), attempts to introduce "whiteness"

as a topic:

 

 

58 Regan: And they have white Jesuses everywhere too.

59 Ellie: Oh, yeah,

60 Regan: White Mary’s.]

61 Ellie: Yeah ]

62 Regan: When I went to Catholic school everybody was white]

63 Ellie: Yeah it was, It was a Catholic school in Finley. ]

 

 

64 Marsha: All black. That’s interesting. ]

 

The juxtaposition of Regan's comment: "And they have white Jesuses
everywhere too" and "white Mary's" and "When I went to Catholic school
everybody was white" is striking because Ellie has spent a great deal of time
describing the black Jesus, but she did not indicate that the school contained
many other representations of Christ or Mary as white. Although Regan does

not directly challenge Ellie's description, she indirectly raises the issue that if

84

 

there were all-white Catholic schools just as this school happens to be all-
black. However, there is no uptake on the idea of "whiteness," and Marsha
assists in avoiding engagement with the issue of "whiteness" by noting, "All
black. That's interesting." This segment is particularly important because it
indicates how even in conversational narratives, which were less constrained
than the narrative vignette assignments, it is difficult to raise and sustain
discussions where individuals explore how their own whiteness positions
them.

Although the group does not directly delve into the topic of whiteness,
Ellie continues to skirt the edges of this topic through more "what if"

questions. She concludes her retelling with this evaluation:

 

76 Ellie: But that kind of helped me too work through you know
77 dealing with that one issue cause that was the one thing

78 that really bothered me. But mostly my concern was what if
79 I get this job and I’m in this room and all of the sudden it’s a
80 problem and it’s something that I never thought would be a

81 problem and it really is. And that’s mostly what my

82 narrative was, was kind of waking up to who I really, who I
83 really was and what if there was a person in me I never
84 knew was there--someone I didn’t really like.

85 Regan: Hmm, That’s interesting
86 Ellie: Do you know what I mean? Does that make sense? That
87 was mostly what the issue was, was just kind of being faced

88 with: What if I am something I’ve always said I wasn’t?

 

 

89 And I ’ve always ]

 

 

85

 

 

9O Regan: Like if it just comes out one day when you’re talking]
91 Ellie: Yeah, or like, I mean, I was thinking about what if you’re
92 in this interview and this man is asking me all these

93 questions I can’t answer. You know, things I’ve never

 

 

 

94 thought about or.

 

Ellie begins this excerpt by indicating that the "one thing" that really
bothered her was the picture of the Black Jesus. Yet she immediately follows
this statement with the phrase in line 78-80: "But mostly my concern was
what if I get this job and I'm in this room and all of the sudden it's a

problem... These two conflicting interpretations of what "the problem" is
reflect Ellie's stance at this moment. We have seen over earlier iterations
how Ellie had concluded that "there was not a problem with race" or "there
could have been a problem with race but in the end, there wasn't." In this
final narrative, she ends her narrative not with one of these resolutions but
with a set of questions (e.g. What if there was a person in me I never knew
was there--someone I didn't really like? What if I am something I've always
said I wasn't?) that repeat a common theme of "What if I am prejudiced?
What if I am a racist?" This "resolution" rather than being the "result" of the
narrative, presents both the narrator and the listeners with a dilemma!
(Florio-Ruane, & deTar, 1996) and problematizes Ellie's position as white
teacher.
Conclusion

In analyzing Ellie's narratives I have argued that the quantitative and

qualitative changes across Ellie's narratives reveal re-emplotment. In this

analysis I have considered what changed (e.g., evaluative sequences, words,

flash sequences, resolutions, self-directed questions) and how these changed,

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reconfiguring the relationship between events and their plot, evaluation and
interpretation of narratives, and ultimately, a shift in how Ellie positions
herself. We see this in Ellie's narrative as she moves from a point where her
own whiteness is of no consequence to a point where she begins to ask: How
do others see me? a point where Ellie takes a critical first step toward
confronting her whiteness and what this means for her as a teacher working
with African American students.

Ellie's case demonstrates that the process of re-emplotment is a
dialectic between events and interpretation. This non-linear process of
revisiting her own story reveals the multi-voicedness of the Self (Bamburg,
1991; Grumet, 1991) and demonstrates that we are not just one story but many
stories, often conflicting, sometimes in concert. Ellie is at once the naive,
white teacher who chooses to be "color blind" and the more experienced
teacher exploring what it means to be "color conscious." At the same time
that Ellie asks numerous self-directed questions where she begins to explore
the position and prejudices that she has perhaps internalized she positions
her students and their community in references which mask her own
"whiteness" by drawing attention to the "blackness" of the Other. The
language Ellie uses and the resulting dissonance created by conflicting
evaluations, resolutions, and positions, demonstrates how difficult it is to re-
emplot a narrative.

Implied throughout the analysis of Ellie's narrative is the notion that
individuals may sometimes fail in their efforts to re-emplot a narrative, that
their attempts at recreating stories may not result in changes between events
and interpretation or changes in positioning. It suggests that some narratives
may reify previous positions and interpretations held by a narrator. Bamburg

suggests that emplotments fail, in part due to the "communicative aspects [of

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interaction] that are constituted by language and discourse in their specific
cultural/ institutional settings" (p. 157, Bamburg, 1991). In other words, as
narrators we interpret life events in our primary discourse the specific set of
"saying (writing)--doing--being--valuing--believing combinations" (emphasis
in the original, p. 6, Gee, 1989) which are part of our primary

"cultural/ institutional settings." It is only when we learn to step outside this
primary discourse to re-emplot events from another perspective with another
discourse that we can begin to radically re-emplot our life events and counter
the reifying effects of narrative. Thus re-emplotment involves seeing the self
as both a process and an object, as Zuss observes: "Life-writings manifest an
increasing, if at first an often tentative and delicate, engagement with the self
as both a process and an object crisscrossed by the powers and play of multiple
actors, discourses, and positioning influences" (1997, p. 174). As Ellie shows,
this can involve reifying beliefs even as an individual begins to raise
questions about them. However, in undertaking this "tentative and delicate
engagement" of the self, Ellie carries out a complicated and courageous task.
Her multiple renditions of narrative demonstrate the power of stories to
change and grow over time if opportunity is provided to revisit and

reinterpret events.

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CHAPTER FOUR
CATHY'S STORY: WHITE TEACHER, BLACK CHILD PLACED IN CRISIS
Introduction
I arrive at Cathy's school--a charter school affiliated with the Edison
Project—on a cold day in January, almost one year after Cathy was a participant
in the Culture, Autobiography, and Literacy course that I taught the previous
fall. Cathy, who has now moved into an administrative position, welcomes
me into her office. As I set up tape recorders and microphones, we chat about
Ellie and Cass, the other teachers in her school who had taken the same
course and about challenges Cathy faces in her new job. When I have
finished setting up all the equipment (and we have finished joking about
how many tape recorders there are) I ask a few preliminary questions about
the school and its students, and then we delve into the narrative. As I have
explained on the phone, I want to talk with her about this story again-«not to
ask her what she remembers from before, but to find out what she is thinking
now and also to check some of my analysis and interpretations with her. To
start things off, I ask Cathy to read a narrative that she had written the
previous year in my course-~a narrative about a conference Cathy had
attended called "Black Child Placed in Crisis." She comments that the racial
situation surrounding the story is "painful," "upsetting to a degree", and
"disappointing" to her because she did not find the tools she was looking for
at the conference. As Cathy shares these feelings, my respect for her grows. In
spite of the difficult issues, she has been willing to share this story with her
peers and to share it once again with me. We listen to the tape. Cathy stops
to add an occasional comment or explanation. When the tape ends, she says

to me, "That wasn't worthless." She adds a quick explanation perhaps to

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avoid offending me. " I mean, I thought of things that I hadn't thought of
before, so isn't that the idea, right?"

As Cathy revisited her story, she reflected on it in new ways, extending
her own understanding by using the narrative as a tool. In many ways
revisiting her narrative was representative of interactions that Cathy and I
shared during my class. Cathy was willing to use narrative as a tool-a
mediational means (Vygotsky, 1978; Wertsch, 1991,1999) through which she
could construct and reflect on her own cultural perspectives. Within this
conversation and the course, as a "more knowledgeable other" I assisted
Cathy in her use of narrative as a tool, by asking occasional questions,
facilitating her telling or retelling of the narrative. As her teacher, I also
provided opportunities for her to engage in that exploration by asking her to
share her story, providing opportunity for her to revisit it, and allowing her
to design course assignments directly related to the issues that she had raised
in this one particular narrative, particularly the question: What can I as a
white teacher do to assist learners who come from a different cultural or
racial background?

At the time of this study, Cathy had been a teacher for thirteen years,
and almost all of her experience had been teaching the primary grades. Both
she and Ellie taught at a charter school, or public school academy, which was
affiliated with the Edison Project. One of the "Ten Fundamentals" of the
Edison Project is to have "Schools tailored to the community" (Edison
Project, 1998, p. 7) and in keeping with this philosophy, teachers and children
at Cathy's school participated in mini units called "intensives" where they
explored topics related to their community. Because approximately 75% of
the students were African American, the school devoted time across the

school year to the exploration of African American culture and heritage. The

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remaining 25% of students at Cathy's school were from Euro American and
Lantino American backgrounds, and overall, the students were diverse in
their social and economic backgrounds

Although Cathy had lived in the midwest for ten years, she still
believed that "Missouri is home." Of books we read in our course, Cathy was
most appreciative of Maya Angelou's I ISQQW Why the Caged Biid Sings
because it provided one perspective on what it was like to be an African
American woman in the south. She also enjoyed Vivian Paley's text White
Iesehen As a white teacher in a predominantly African American school,
Cathy identified with the Paley and the issues she raised through her writing.
At the beginning of the course Cathy wrote about her first experience teaching
in a school where most of the students were African American. She wrote:

At the small private school where I taught K-2 from 1989-1996, the

majority of my students were black. I was proud that the students did

not seem to notice that they were not all the same color. They never

mentioned it and we never had racial problems. When someone
would ask me how many black children and how many white children

I had, I could proudly admit that I didn’t know because it never

mattered to me.” (sketch book entry, 9/ 8 / 97)

Cathy commented that this "color blind" approach was advocated by
the school administration. However, when Cathy enrolled in my course, she
had completed one year of teaching in a new school where the administration
encouraged teachers to consider the diversity, particularly racial diversity, of
their students in their planning and teaching. Thus, before Cathy entered
enrolled in my course, before she read autobiographies by Paley, Angelou, and
others, and before she shared her own narratives and listened to narratives of

her peers, Cathy had already recognized that she could not be color blind.

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Unlike the "dysconsciousness" that King (1991) speaks of, Cathy was aware
that color did matter. However, she still struggled with what it meant to be
"color conscious" and with what it meant to be teaching children from
diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds.

The following chapter presents an analysis of a narrative shared
by Cathy about a conference, "Black Child Placed in Crisis," which she
attended. Throughout the chapter, I explore how these narratives functioned
as opportunities for Cathy to make sense of her experiences and to share that
sense-making with others. The narrative explorations pushed Cathy to reflect
on her own cultural perspectives and to explore the questions: What can I as
a white teacher do to help my students? What does it mean to be a white
teacher who works with linguistically and racially diverse students? Her
explorations of these questions through discussion, written reflection, and
course projects are characterized by a newly emerging awareness of culture
and its ties to literacy or what others would call "culturally relevant
teaching."

The two narratives that I will analyze were shared during the activities
on one night of class during the fourth week of the semester. On this night I
arranged readings and activities to support students' sharing and discussion
around narratives they had written before class about a border-crossing
experience (see Appendix B). The activities, discussion, and readings for this
night formed an important context immediately surrounding Cathy's
narratives. I begin my analysis with an overview of the discussion and
activities in the course on this night to illustrate how Cathy's narrative is
situated within this context. After describing and presenting examples of the
context, I analyze the written and oral narratives according to Labov's (1967,

1972) definition of narrative (orientation, complicating action, evaluation,

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resolution). I highlight how the narratives functioned as opportunities for
Cathy to make sense of her experiences and to share that sense-making with
others and also on how other participants interpreted Cathy's narrative. In
concluding I explore how Cathy's narrative encouraged her to further explore
her position as white teacher and what it means to be a white teacher working
with predominantly African American students.
The Sociocultural Contexts of Narrative

To analyze Cathy's narrative from a sociocultural standpoint, it is
essential to place the narrative in the larger contexts in which it occurs (see
Figure 2). Cathy's narrative in both it's written and oral forms provides a
fixed window into Cathy's learning. Only by situating her narrative and the
ideas it reflects within the context of the talk and activities of the course on
this night and those activities and discussion that occur before and after this
night of talk can we construct a more complete portrait of Cathy's learning
and situate it within the social, historical, and culture context within which it
occurs. Not only is Cathy's learning situated within these multiple contexts,

but the various contexts are dynamic and interactive.

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fixing}, Cathy's Narrative in Context

 

 
   
    

historical

cultural

   
   
     
    

course context before 8:
after Cathy's narrative

 
 

Course context the night
Cathy shared her narrative

Cathy's narrative

 

On this night of the course, we began class with a discussion about
our upcoming mid-term assignment and followed this with a time where we
shared our sketch books. (For a timeline of this night's class see Appendix J)
During the sketch book sharing time students raised topics they had
encountered in newspapers and other media. Topics covered included: the
bilingual education debate, affirmative action, racial discrimination, and
ethnic identity. Typically, as participants raised these issues, they used quotes
or references to news clippings or news events. For example, as we discussed
our sketch books on this night, Marsha began talking about racial tensions
that surfaced between Hispanic groups and Black groups in Dallas in the case
of a Black school superintendent. To provide an overview of the case, Regan
read an excerpt from a newspaper article that she had brought in about the
case. Talk during this sharing time followed a predictable pattern where one
or sometimes two participants constructed a topic and where the topic was
sustained on the floor as other participants asked questions or clarified factual

information. While participants raised issues related to controversial topics,

94

these floors were not sustained for debate, exploration, or reflection about
where participants stand in relation to the topics. For example, the final issue
shared during this time revolved around questions of ethnic identity and
cultural heritage for a Black American journalist who did not consider
himself to be African American. In response, participants began telling
narratives about cultural difference. However, rather than explore issues
related to ethnic identity and cultural heritage, the stories told positioned
culture as "exotic, " something to be experienced when one travels abroad.
For example, Jaime told this story:
I get daily email from my brother now that he's in England and um,
the first day that he was there, he went with some of his flat mates to a
pub or something to have a pint. It was like within the first how many
hours, I don't know. He said I could barely understand them. That's
how much different the culture and the language is....
In keeping with this theme, five stories were told about experiences in Europe
and travel abroad and how this is different from life in the United States. As I
recorded in my field notes, these stories do not tie in with topics (race,
affirmative action, ethnic identity) that immediately preceded them. As the
course instructor I wrote in my field notes that the stories did not seem very
reflective but "paralleled a kind of curriculum that says 'Japanese people are
this way: here's how they eat, holidays, etc."' I also chose to cut off the
sharing of these stories to segue into the next class activity which was to view
Maya Angelou's dramatic reading of several poems. Angelou explained that
she had written this poem in honor of a Black woman she had observed
riding the bus:

I have written a poem for a woman who rides a bus in New York City.
She's a maid. She has two shopping bags. When the bus stops abruptly,

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she laughs. If the bus stops slowly, she laughs. If the bus misses
someone, she goes "ahahaha." So I watched her for about nine
months. I thought, "hmmm, uh huh." Now if you don't know Black
features, you may think she's laughing, but she wasn't laughing. She
was simply extending her lips and making a sound "ahahaha."

"Oh," I said, "I see." That's that survival apparatus. Now let me write
about that to honor this woman who helps us to survive. By her very
survival, Miss Rosy, through your destruction, I stand up. So I used
the poem with Mr. Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem "Masks," written in
1892, and my own poem "For Old Black Men"

We Wear the Mask

We wear the mask that grins and lies,

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes;-
This debt we pay to human gile;

With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be overwise,

In counting all our tears and sighs?

Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask....

After reading Dunbar's poem, Angelou continued with her own:

When I Think About Myself

When I think about myself,

I almost laugh myself to death,

My life has been one great big joke,

A dance that's walked

A song that's spoke

I laugh so hard I almost choke

When I think about myself.

Seventy years in these folks' world
The child I works for calls me girl

I say "Yes, ma'am" for working's sake
Too proud to bend

Too proud to break,

I laugh until my stomach ache

When I think about myself....

Angelou continued this reading and followed it with yet another poem. (A
complete transcript of the poems is available in Appendix K.) Although

several students commented that this reading was "powerful," we had a

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difficult time talking about it. Questions I posed about the poem were met
with long pauses. When participants did respond to the poem with what
they were thinking as they watched the video, there was no uptake on their
comments and long pauses followed many student responses. After
approximately seven minutes of discussion with more than seven long
pauses, I chose to move the class toward discussion of one article we had read
for class on this night as a means of preparing students to discuss narratives
they had written.

In the course I asked students to write a narrative vignette of one or
two paragraphs about a time when they or someone they know experienced a
"border crossing"--an event that made them aware of being an insider or
outsider, or of feeling uncomfortable about a situation related to a school
setting. I chose to have students focus on events in a school setting because
significant insights into literacy and culture often come from stories that are
not about literate practices of reading, writing, listening, speaking. For
example, a story about changing schools and going from rural to urban school
may help students begin to understand how literate practices differed across
these communities and to think about what literate practices govern the lives
of students in the communities where they teach

To assist students in writing their vignettes, I gave the students two
examples of vignettes written on a similar topic and a handout with
questions adapted from Ferdman (e.g. What messages do language practices
communicate to the individual about his or her culture and its value?) (1991,
pp. 110-111) that we would use in analyzing the vignettes. I asked students to
bring copies of their narrative to class to share with their classmates. I also
told students that we would revisit these narratives later in the semester for

further reflection and interpretation.

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“l- - 'rgq - a. i- - a0 : x-or'; : 31' 0

On the night of the course where we were to discuss these narratives,
we had read "A Good Place to Begin--Examining Our Personal Perspectives"
(1993) by Abt-Perkins and Gomez. In this article, the authors explain how
they began teaching their course by sharing their own teaching stories with
their students. In the context of the course, the authors and their students--
practicing teachersuused writing to explore their experiences, beliefs, and
instructional practices of literacy and of multicultural education. I chose to
discuss the article during the first part of class to scaffold students'
explorations of their own narratives by providing examples of how several
individuals reflected on and analyzed their own personal narratives.

On this particular night I introduced the article for discussion by noting
how the narratives that we would be sharing later in the evening paralleled
the process used by the authors. As this chapter will show, our narratives
were a means of opening up conversation for us around issues of culture and
literacy, and these narratives functioned in ways similar to those presented in
the article. After this brief introduction, I invited students to comment on
what they had read in the article, either narratives or the analysis and
interpretations developed by the authors. Cathy was the first to speak. She
began by commenting, "It is interesting to see the growth of some of these
teachers" and the changes they remembered initially and what they had done
a year later to make changes. The growth to which she referred involved the
teachers' willingness to look at their own experiences and beliefs and a
willingness to address difficult issues such as race. In one example from the
article, a teacher shared how her only African American student told her that
she treated him differently and that after first becoming defensive, she

decided to listen. This ability to listen allowed her to recognize that her own

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"well-meaning efforts" were contributing to pain and anger that the student
felt over his isolation in the school because of his race. The student's
confrontation with this teacher was a painful experience, but it enabled the
teacher to realize that she had to make changes in her curriculum and
teaching philosophy. As a result, she changed her writing curriculum to
include more collaboration and adopted a stance where "students knew that
race would be talked about" (Abt-Perkins & Gomez, p. 199).

Cathy stated that even though she worked with first graders, she could
do more to help them think about multicultural issues, and in particular, she
could do more to help them begin to explore their cultural and racial
identities. The following excerpt illustrated Cathy's acknowledgment that
although teachers need to be aware of cultural issues and their ties to literacy,
their will also be differences between teachers.

Cathy: I'm not gonna be the same as the teacher next door who's Black.

I'm not gonna respond to the kids the same way. Even if the
teacher next door is not black, if the teacher next door is a man,
so I'm not gonna respond, you know, the same way. And so
that's, that's something to think about. I think, I think that all
teachers, I think everybody oughta read this. You know, I think
we should all be

Jaime: And reflect on it

Cathy: Pushed to think about that, yeah. That's a good word, reflect.

Ellie: Reflect. Where'd you get that word?

Implicit in Cathy's acknowledgment that she didn't teach like the
teacher next door was an awareness of her cultural identity as white, female
teacher. When she said, "I'm not gonna be the same as the teacher next door

who's black. I'm not gonna respond to the kids in the same way," she was

99

not just saying that she is white and that the teacher next door is black; she
was acknowledging a difference in teaching styles that may be culturally
based. Her statement that "I'm not gonna respond to the kids in the same
way" was a reflection of her role as a white teacher in a predominantly
African American school. She added that if the teacher next door were a man
(which was in fact is the situation in Cathy's school), by comparison, she
would also teach differently. Cathy made the statement that all teachers
should read the article by Abt-Perkins and Gomez and, with Jaime, she
coconstructed the idea that all teachers should reflect on who they are and
how this affects their instructional and literate practices. These comments
were further sanctioned by Ellie's repetition of the word "reflect." Cathy's
comments about culture and reflection and her willingness to engage in
reflection on her position as a teacher opened up the floor so that others in
the group could begin to explore how their personal perspectives affect their
teaching.

As demonstrated by comments made by Cass and Ellie in the following
paragraphs, Cathy's response to the article and the group's affirmation of
Cathy's willingness to reflect served as a model for other participants to reflect
on their own classrooms, students, and in some cases, teaching. Cass shared
that as a teacher who works with predominantly African American children,
she appreciated the story told about J. D., the first African American student
in Abt-Perkin's classroom. As part of a writing unit, Abt-Perkins
interviewed students about their lives and experiences. When she decided to
interview J. D. , she instead of asking him the same kinds of questions she
asked other students in her class, she used him to "raise issues about race and
prejudice in our society." In this powerful and painful story, Abt-Perkins

exposed the mistake she made in using her own power to objectify J. D. and

100

in asking him to "represent all African American people." Cass identified
with Apt-Perkins' story and stated that she could see herself making the same
mistake Abt-Perkins had made if there were only one minority student in her
class. But Cass also wondered, what does it mean to be a teaching in a
classroom where the majority of the students are black? She says, "I'm
wondering if the students in my classroom feel as alone as J. D. did...because
there are more black children in my classroom."
iL- a -_’-fl- ': Vooi'; -Ho Lavao-fRa

At this point Jaime, who had stated that she had only one minority
student and that she too could have made the same mistake as Abt-Perkins,
asked a question that was suggested by the article and in Cass's comments
about J. D. Jaime asked: "Maybe it's because I don't have that much
experience yet, how do we discover the needs of our diverse students as not,
and not coming from their culture, how do we, how do we do that?" This
prompted a brief discussion where participants wonder aloud about how to
communicate with children of diverse backgrounds if we "don't really
understand all the cultural implications" of our actions and responses and
those of our students. They also discussed the importance of understanding
of what a student's participation or lack of participation might mean
culturally, a reference to an article by Ogbu (1992) that they had read and
discussed for their second week of class. In the article Ogbu posits, that "mere
cultural and language differences cannot account for the relative school
failure of some minorities and the success of others" (p. 8). He argues that
some minorities, for example, African Americans, associate participation and
success in school with the dominant hierarchy and white oppression, and
therefore academic success is associated with "acting white." At this point the

group discussion functioned a lot like a brainstorming session where

101

participants listed ideas about how they might discover the needs of culturally
diverse students and make up for teachers' lack of knowledge. The group did

not pause to analyze, evaluate or challenge the proposed ideas, and reflection

stayed at a superficial level.

As the group addressed the issue of communication with diverse
students and the teachers' lack of knowledge about other cultures, Ellie raised
a challenge to their approach by reframing the discussion through reflection
on her experience. She turned the conversation "on its head" by suggesting
that it is not a lack of knowledge many times that keeps her from addressing
issues, but the discomfort that comes in discussing issues which are related to
race. Ellie said:

But I also know that there have been times when the word "slavery"

comes up, and I find myself wanting to change the subject, not because

I don't know enough about it. But because I feel uncomfortable talking

about it. You know, mostly it's because I don't know what the students'

reaction is going to be, or in some cases, what the parents' reaction is
going to be. Um, so you know, I feel like, as you do, about how do we,
how do we find out what their needs are, especially if there are actually
personal barriers to talking about certain things?
Ellie's comments redefined the question and shifted the topic under
discussion on the conversational floor. She amended the original question:
"How do we learn what the needs of minority students are when we don't
share a common cultural background?" and instead asked, "How do we learn
about the needs of minority students when we are uncomfortable talking
about issues like race?" Her reframing of the question was not simply a
rhetorical maneuver. As a teacher whose students are culturally and racially

diverse, Ellie emphasized that we need to find out student needs, but raises

102

the problem of barriers. Ellie began her comments with an emphasis on
herself: "I feel uncomfortable talking about it [slavery]," but at the end of her
turn she moved toward the inclusive "we." This discourse move positions
Ellie in a safer place--the question is directed at all participants and not just
herself, and the question rather than being directed introspectively, is directed
at the group. What is particularly intriguing about Ellie's reframing of the
question is that it actually moves the group closer to the "hot lava" because
she incriminates her colleagues by suggesting that they too are uncomfortable
talking about race when she says: "how do we find out what their needs are,
especially if there are actually personal barriers to talking about certain
things?"

After Ellie brought this issue to the floor, there is little sustained
discussion of the problem she has raised. Participants talked around the
edges of Ellie's question without offering other personal accounts.
Immediately after Ellie finished speaking, Jaime returned to the earlier
discussion of having only one minority student in the classroom. Jaime
noted that this student is the only black student in her class and in the 6th
grade. She went on to talk about The Yea; Qf Bear end Iaekie Rehm' sen (Lord,
1987), which Jaime described as a story about a Chinese girl and her
adjustment to the US, a place where everyone looks different. Embedded in
her summary of the story and talk about her one African American student
were several comments where Jaime said, "And we talked a little bit about it
and I , you know I feel kinda the same way. Like how do I bring this up?
How do I talk about it?" Her use of pronouns here is telling; she uses the
word "it" to refer to the student's position as the only minority in her class ,
but she never uses the word race. Jaime did not pause to let others address

these questions, nor does she herself reflect on them. She moved the

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conversation further from the hot lava by talking again about her only
minority student and challenges facing him in school.

This approach and then turning away from hot-lava is not limited to
these teachers. In her work with white teachers (McIntyre, 1997) documented
how even when participants are trying to talk specifically and strategically
about race, they reframe conversations to safer ground or toward other topics.
In analyzing literature-based conversations in a women's book club group
Glazier, et al. (in press) found that even experienced teachers who had
belonged to the same book discussion group for a two-year period developed
an approach and avoidance technique whereby they would approach "hot-
lava" in beginning a discussion, but would veer away as they approached the
most difficult issues. Thus, the avoidance of topics raised by Ellie-~slavery
and race--is not unusual.

As the teachers continued to talk, Cass suggested that another way to
help students talk about difference would be to write some narratives like we
had done because "everyone has felt different or out of place." Ellie referred
to the Abt-Perkins' article where students talked about prejudice that they felt
because they were seen as "little kids" or told they could not do something
because they were girls. Toni followed this up with a story about the only
African American student in her class and how he has helped her learn about
his culture by introducing her to the writing of Maya Angelou. For Toni, it
was important to bring in different perspectives and she stated that "I have a
problem with things getting just black and white" because there are lots of
other perspectives and characteristics. Ellie and Jaime picked up on this topic
and talked briefly about how it is important to for all students to feel valued.
As Ellie said, "If you make it all black and white, then your little Chinese kids

are feel like: It doesn't matter that I'm Chinese? It only matters if I was

104

black." This talk about how within our society, race is often defined as being
black or white and how teachers we need to be mindful of other cultures and
ethnic groups is an important point. This response allowed the teachers to
engage in an argument made by other minority groups (e.g. Lantinos; Native
Americans, Chinese) that too often race is seen as an issue of black and white
and that other minority view points and voices are often excluded from the
discussion (e.g., Rodriguez, 1992). However, in raising this point, the group
was able to avoid responding to Ellie's earlier comments about barriers that
prevent us from talking about issues like slavery because they are intertwined
with race.

As illustrated the examples above, some individuals in the group
follow the model provided by Cathy's original reflective comments about her
teaching and begin to engage in exploration of their beliefs about teaching and
learning and situations in their classroom. Although they do not engage in
deep reflection, they are beginning to think about both their own perspectives
as teachers from particular cultural and racial backgrounds and the
backgrounds of their students and how the differences might impact their
teaching. As participants discuss the problem at hand-~how to teach diverse
students when you do not share the same cultural background with them--
they focus on their lack of knowledge about communication, culture, and
other racial groups. Ellie challenges both their earlier question and response,
by reframing the question in terms of race: "How do we learn about the needs
of minority students when we are uncomfortable talking about issues like
race?" However, rather than addressing this difficult question, the talk that
follows serves to draw participants away from further discussion of race or of

self and other.

105

Examining Our Personal Perspectives Through Narrative

On this particular night students began their discussion of their
sketchbooks by referencing "hot lava" topics, e.g. affirmative action, racial
prejudice, racial identity, that had been recent news items. These items were
offered up as topics and briefly discussed at a factual level. In discussing the
article "A Good Place to BeginuExamining Our Personal Perspectives,"
students began to approach and engage in exploration of their own teaching
as it related to racial and cultural issues. Cathy's comments about her
teaching and the comparison to the teacher next door who is both African
American and a man is an example of this. Again like teachers in other
studies (e.g. Florio-Ruane & deTar, 1995; Glazier, et al., in press), the
participants approach hot lava topics, but fail to fully engage with them as
exemplified by Jairne's question: "How do we learn what the needs of
minority students are when we don't share a common cultural background?"
and Ellie's reframing of the question to: "How do we learn about the needs of
minority students when we are uncomfortable talking about issues like race?"
Jaime's question, directed at what teachers don't know, is safer than Ellie's
question, directed at the stance that she and others have adopted. Through
her question, Ellie implicates herself and other teachers in actively adopting a
stance which limits their knowledge because they are uncomfortable talking
about issues of race, and therefore, avoid what could be learned about
student's needs from parents or students. The teachers back. away from the
hot lava in Ellie's question by using the legitimate argument that discussions
of race and the rights of minorities have too often focused on the tensions
between blacks and whites to the exclusion of others. This argument allows

the participants to remain on safe ground by avoiding examination of their

106

own discomfort around race and by remaining "politically correct" by
revoicing an argument made by minorities themselves (Morrison, 1992).

It is critical to recognize the teachers' willingness to approach issues of
hot lava--even if they do back off from its direct examination. Although it
would be easy to dismiss these teachers efforts at exploring their own teaching
and the needs of their diverse learners as at best superficial and at worst as
perpetuating institutionalized racism, it is important to consider what these
teachers are accomplishing in their talk. As they approach hot lava and back
off, stating and reframing questions, the teachers begin to seek answers to a
practical question: What do I do to help my students with diverse needs? In
the excerpts of conversation above, the emphasis is placed on knowledge
differences that exist between the teacher and student and what can be done
about this. This particular theme is one that is powerfully demonstrated in a
vignette that Cathy wrote for this night of class and which she shares in the
following section. It is a powerful story about one teacher's search for
answers to the question: What can I, as a teacher of Euro-American
background, do to help my students who do not share this background? We
will see that Cathy's story resonated in powerful ways within the group and
once again raised the issues of race, culture, knowledge, and the role that
white teachers can play in educating "other people's children" (Delpit, 1995).

P ' i i : a ' arr

Through their discussion of the Abt-Perkins & Gomez article, students
in the course had already begun to: reflect on their own literacy practices and
cultural background, see how the article's authors used stories to share sense-
making about culture and literacy, and talk about issues they felt were

important for working with minority students. However, as we see above,

107

there were also topics that caused discomfort such as that of race, and students
were less willing to engage these.

As we moved into the second phase of class on this night, I asked
students to distribute copies of the narrative that they had written about a
border-crossing experience. Writing and sharing these narratives provided
opportunity for me as a teacher educator to have a widow into a student's
thinking. When these narratives were retold, rewritten, and revisited across
the semester, they provided me with several snapshots of a student's learning
and thinking. Additionally, the narratives provided a work space where
students could consider construct and reconstruct ideas related to self and
other, and in particular, could consider what it means to teach in
linguistically and culturally diverse settings, and ultimately, examine what it
means to use students linguistic and cultural backgrounds as strengths to
draw on rather than problems to be mitigated.

To prepare for discussion of student narratives, we took fifteen
minutes to read the narratives and jot down questions, notes, or responses.
After reading one another's narratives, I opened the discussion by identifying
themes that connected some students' work (e.g. several students had written
about experiences as first-time teachers). Students continued the discussion
by commenting on their stories, sometimes offering further information or
interpretation or positioning their story in relation to others in the class.
After approximately fifteen minutes of discussion, I asked if the students
would like to learn more about any particular student's story. Several
students immediately asked to hear more from Cathy.

For her narrative vignette, Cathy had written a provocative account of
a conference, "Black Child Placed in Crisis," which she had attended with

several African American colleagues from her school. She had written:

108

When given the opportunity to attend an out of town conference, I
happily accepted. The subject of the conference intrigued me and I was
certain that I could learn much that would help me with my at-risk,
black students at the "Black Child Placed in Crisis" conference. Being
in the obvious minority did not bother me as I looked around at the
sea of black faces around me. However, what did bother me was the
lack of solutions offered by the presenters. I wanted to learn about tools
I could use to better assist the black children in my class. What I heard
in session after session was that there is a problem with black children
in schools and that something needs to be done about it. Every
presenter said essentially the same thing, but with a different slant
according to the title of the session. It seemed more like a pity party to
me. The longer I sat in a session, the more uncomfortable I felt being
there. I felt as though the speakers were saying white people were the
reason for the problem. Maybe they were saying that and maybe they
weren’t. But the whole reason I went to the conference was to learn
how I could make a difference in the life of a black child. I left, sorely
disappointed. Later, I told a black colleague who also attended the
conference how I felt. She told me about a part of the Malcolm X
movie that seemed to sum it all up. A young, white coed attended a
rally on campus where Malcolm X spoke and asked him what she
could do to help the cause. His answer to her was, "Nothing."

The high degree of interest in Cathy's story is apparent in the number
of students who wanted to hear more and in the rapid, overlapping speech
that follows this request and comments like "That was... Wow!" "I wrote
down a question [for Cathyl." "Talk to us Cathy!" Cathy's retelling of her
narrative lasts almost nine minutes-~an unusually long time for one
participant to hold the conversational floor.

The text of Cathy's retelling is too long to include here in its entirety.
Therefore, I quote segments of the retelling that are relevant to the analysis
and begin by summarizing it briefly and by indicating key features of analysis
of both oral and written versions in a table. Both Cathy's oral and written
narratives meet Labov and Weletsky's (1967) and Labov's (1972) definition of

narrative with statements used to mien]; the listener, ggmpliggtmg ggflgns
that build the drama, W statements that show what Cathy is thinking

109

about the events, and a gesnhitinn which follows the evaluation and

concludes the narrative. Both Cathy's narrative contains all these key

elements. Thus, the content and form of Cathy's oral narrative are very

similar the written version.

 

 

Table 17
h ' Writt n an r l arr ive
‘ WRITTEN NARRATIVE ORAL RETELLING

FORM FORM

0 mientatinn statements at 0 more Qrientatien statements (e.g.,
beginning reason few white teachers

0 ' a ' ' n in the attended, who attended from her
middle school, more description of

Membedded throughout
xesnlntinn in the form of a "flash
ahead" (Polyani 1985)

sessions offered

0 more W (e.g. of
attending events to build the
drama)

0 more whistler], about the
conference (e.g., Why aren't they
[the presenters] giving me
something? and herself (e.g., Why
do I feel this way?)

0 gesgnntnzn--Cathy begins to give
her resolution but is interrupted
mid-sentence by another
participant. Participants offer

their own Wuhan:
to her story.

 

CONTENT
description of attending the Black
Child Placed in Conference Crisis

CONTENT

description of attending the Black
Child Placed in Conference Crisis but
more details are given (see "FORM"
above)

 

IMMEDIATE PURPOSE/FUNCT ION
to fulfill a course assignment by
writing about a "border-crossing

IMMEDIATE PURPOSE/FUNCT ION
to fulfill a request from her peers to
provide more information and

 

 

experience" details about the experience
LENGTH LENGTH
285 words approximately 1300 words, nine

 

minutes

 

110

 

 

Table 17, continued
C . [Cl'lll'll lQlIl .
INTERPRETATION/RESOLUTION INTERPRETATION/RESOLUTION

 

: Mnltiple Reselntiens ftem
There is nothing that Cathy as a partieipants:
woman and white teacher can do to
help black children. 0 shouldn't blame white people for
the problem
. 0 maybe presenters went to the
Cathy does not accept that there is conference to vent frustrations
nothing she as a woman and white 0 presenters don't know how to
teacher can do to help black children. communicate practical advice to

white teachers

0 black people want to teach black
children in their own schools

0 African American educators are
telling white teachers they just
"don't get it"

0 as Delpit says, white teachers
aren't listening to their black
colleagues

 

 

 

In the oral version, Cathy provides more information about the conference:
where it was held, who attended, why attendance was low, and summaries of
some sessions she and her colleagues attended. In providing this additional
information, Cathy repeats and adds more explanation to several statements
that orient the listeners to important aspects of her story. She reiterates that
she didn't feel uncomfortable being one of few white people and repeatedly
emphasizes that she had hoped that the conference would provide "tools"
that would help her teach the black children in her class. In the oral telling of
the story, Cathy also has more opportunity to add evaluative commentary.
She does this through direct statements and through discourse markers such

as word stress (underlined and in bold in the following excerpt).

111

You know, almost everybody there was black-— meof the people there
were black. And I still wasn't that uncomfortable until he [a presenter
from a private all-male Muslim academy] got up there and started to
speak. And basically all he was telling us was what he's doing at his
school um, you know, educating them. But all he has is black boys.

Well Ican'tdnthat Ican't WWW

stme. I wanta know what to _d_o withm my boys, you know... .And um,
and, but the, the two black women that I was with, they weren't so
happy either. But they weren't uncomfortable, but they weren't happy
with what he was saying.

Cathy reiterates that her discomfort was due as much to her being a minority
as it was with the content of what speakers were saying. Throughout the
retelling she emphasizes her own position as a white teacher, saying in the
excerpt above "Look at me [I'm white and female]." These characteristics
exclude her from establishing the kind of environment that the speaker has
suggested. Cathy also emphasizes that she needs to know what to do with her
boys. Although she got a few "tidbits" that she was already doing, she didn't
feel that she learned new things to do. (Elsewhere in the oral retelling she
shares how her school mandates "intensives" where the traditional school
curriculum is set aside to teach about issues of culture and heritage. Since
75% of the school is African American, these units are often Afrocentric in
theme.)
Cathy's frustration over not being told what to do was especially

pronounced in her summary of a session that she went to on trying to reach

out to families. (Again, stressed words have been underlined and bolded).

[The presenter] was talking about reaching out to the families. And I'm
well that's what we need to do. We need to reach out to the families.
But that one was worse than the other one because we kept hearing,
you know, these families need to be reached out to.... And all I kept
hearing was these are the bad things that are happening to black
children. We need to in something about it. But they never said 1111;;
@419. You know, go hug the crack addict whose child is in your class.
Well, okay. Sure, I'll hug her but then what, you know? And then
they still, they still didn't say go out and gin this and in that. You

112

know, and maybe I went with higher expectations than what I should
have. Maybe, maybe the whole conference wasn't about what I expected
it to be. But "Black Child Placed in Crisis," I thought I'm gonna get
some tools. I'm gonna, I'm gonna learn some things that I can do with
black kids in my class. And I was really disappointed.

Part of Cathy's frustration stems from her evaluation of the conference as a
place where she hears about problems facing black children but not about
their solution. As a teacher in a predominantly black school, she argues that
she knows there are great problems facing black children. At one point she
says, "1an there's a problem. They didn't have to te_11 me that."
Throughout her narrative Cathy emphasizes that she was "disappointed" in
the conference because as a "white teacher" she didn't feel like she received
valuable tools. She asked her African American colleagues who had gone
with her "Why do I feel this way? Why aren't they [the presenters] giving me
something?" In response one of her colleagues said, "Maybe they just don't
know.... maybe they just don't know what, what you can do." The colleague
then shared the example of Malcolm X telling the white, female co-ed that
she was excluded from the movement. This comment is vague as to whether
the exclusion of the co-ed, and by extension Cathy's exclusion, is due to her
race or gender or perhaps both race and gender. Interestingly, Cathy in noting
retelling this comment from her friend who is Black and female, concludes
that the exclusion is based on race.
WM

Until this point in her retelling, Cathy had followed a the written form
of her narrative very closely. She added further explanation and examples,
but retold the narrative in a similar sequence and form. The written and oral
narrative have assisted her in making sense of her experience and in sharing
her sense making with the group as we see in her evaluative comments and

in the resolution she presents in the written narrative. However, in the oral

113

retelling when she reaches the point where she is about to conclude with the
same example of Malcolm X, the other participants in the group interrupt
her. Rather than accepting the resolution that she suggests: White pe0ple
can't do anything to help. They offer alternative interpretations,
commentary, and questions on the story.

Toni begins this round of alternative resolutions by asking what
teachers would do if two kids are ”going back and forth.” She suggests that
she wouldn’t let one kid blame the other, but both would have to participate
in an agreement or solution. Although she uses an example from a school
setting, her meaning is clear, and she finally states directly: ”I have a problem
if they’re saying white people are doing it [causing the crisis for black children]
and they [the black presenters] give no solution. Another resolution is
suggested by Regan, Ellie, and Jaime. They suggest that maybe the presenters
were ”at a different sort of level of understanding. Like they went there to
vent frustrations.” Cathy's story and possible interpretations are hot lava for
all of us, and as the course instructor, I participate directly in attempting to
shift the conversation to safer ground when I say that "if you take the sort of
obvious racial tensions out of it" a similar criticism is leveled at teacher
educators and researchers--they often have difficulty in communicating
practical suggestions for white teachers. This section of transcript again has
the feel of a brainstorming session where participants toss suggestions out
onto the conversational floor, but there is little or not examination of these
suggestions. Along with this, there is a high incidence of repetition, false
starts, and halting speech that indicates it is not easy for the participants to
express their ideas. There is also evidence of the difficulty of this discussion
as participants repeatedly end their turns with the phrase ”I don’t know.”

It is Regan, the participant who has read all of Delpit's work and who

114

has worked in Alaska, who says, "Maybe they [the black presenters] think
they’ve been telling them [white teachers] for a while and they’re telling, you
know, you just don’t understand.” I picked up on this comment by Regan
and tied it to the work of Lisa Delpit and her article "The Silenced Dialogue"
where she writes about the experience and expertise of black teachers and how
important and helpful this knowledge could be for white educators, if the
white educators would engage in a dialogue and listen to their black
colleagues. Several course participants had read "The Silenced Dialogue" and
other essays by Delpit. On this night of class the article that we read by Abt-
Perkins and Gomez contained the following extended quote from Delpit:
We do not really see through our eyes or hear through our ears, but
through our beliefs. To put our beliefs on hold is to cease to exist
ourselves for a moment--and that is not easy. It is painful as well
because it means turning yourself inside out, giving up your own sense
of who you are, and being willing to see yourself in the unflattering
light of another's angry gaze. It is not easy, but it is the only way to start
the dialogue...We must learn to be vulnerable enough to allow our
world to turn upside down in order to allow the realties of others to
edge themselves into our consciousness" (Delpit, 1988, quoted in Abt-
Perkins 8r Gomez, 1993, p. 193).
Delpit's quote which we had looked at earlier in our discussion of the article
indicates that it is difficult to "see yourself in the unflattering light of
another's angry gaze" and to "allow our world to turn upside down."
Mentioning Delpit and echoing the idea that maybe white teachers do not
listen to their black colleagues steers the conversation even closer to the hot
lava topic of racial conflict amongst teachers. This is not a topic that the

participants are willing to engage with at this time. Ellie responds to my

115

statement by saying " It also kinda takes me back to one of the first articles we
read, Ogbu's article... and the importance in the black community of the
community [itself]." Ellie then begins to talk generally about home visits.
Other participants chime in comparing which schools or programs (e.g. Even
Start) require home visits, how home visits are organized, and who has
conducted a home visit. Although home visits and fostering-home-school
connections are important for teachers, Ellie's reframing of the discussion
around home visits moves the talk to safer ground.
Discussion

In sharing her narrative, Cathy has opportunity to provide further
information to orient the listeners and to more fully describe the events that
occurred at the conference. The form of her oral narrative is similar to that of
the written vignette with statements that orient the listener, complication
actions that build the drama, evaluative statements that reflect Cathy's
feelings about the conference. Both narratives also contain a resolution. In
the written vignette, Cathy concludes with the example of Malcolm X which
suggests that she as a white teacher can do nothing to help black children. It is
clear that this is not a resolution that she accepts. She is still teaching in a
predominantly African American school. She is still attempting to make
sense out of her experience at the conference and to explore issues of self by
asking: Why did I feel that the conference was not helpful? Why was I
uncomfortable? Not only does Cathy reject the resolution written in the
vignette, she is not satisfied with the resolutions proposed by her classmates.
Over the course, she continues to explore the question: What can I do as a
white teacher to help my black students become successful readers and writers

and become successful in school?

116

Cathy's story opens up opportunities for participants to explore race
and culture. However, as evidenced by false, starts, halting speech, and
moves to reframe the conversation to safer ground, it is not easy for
participants to explore these issues. Through narrative Cathy engages in the
reflection on her own cultural perspectivena type of reflection that she herself
advocates earlier in this night of talk when she stated, "Anybody who's going
to work with people of a different race or culture have really...that's
something that somebody needs to put in their head, you know, think about
some of these things. We should all sit down and think about...where our
initial experiences with literacy or education were.”

Some readers or listeners will undoubtedly look at Cathy's story and be
critical of the emphasis she places on what she can "do" to help her black
students. Although it may be easy to criticize her, talking about racial issues is
particularly challenging to white teachers who often see themselves as
cultureless beings whose duty it is to be "color blind" (Frankenberg, 1993;
King, 1991; Paley, 1979). Furthermore, is important to consider what Cathy
does with the narrative she has constructed and how as a result of having and
talking about this experience, she decided to continue exploring issues of race
and racism in education.

For her class project Cathy interviewed three African American
teachers one male, two females at her school and her school principal who is
an African American man. In interviewing these educators, she developed a
list of questions to guide her interviews adapted from Ferdman(1990) (see
Appendix L). She asked about the teachers’ experiences in school, their
socioeconomic class, and family beliefs about education and how experiences
and race affected these teachers and their teaching (e.g., What messages did

school communicate to you about your culture and its value? What

117

relationship do you perceive between tasks assigned in school and cultural
identity? How have your own educational experiences affected you as a
teacher? What part does your race play in this or does it?) As she conducted
these interviews, analyzed them, and wrote them up, she directly engaged in
an exploration of topics related to race, literacy, and schooling. As Cathy
talked with her African American colleagues and learned their stories, she
began to share their stories in class discussions. In her final class
presentation, she shared her analysis of these stories with the class and ended
with a summary of what suggestions that these experienced African
American educators had for teachers (see Appendix L).

When I interviewed Cathy and she revisited her story one year after
the course, Cathy continued to analyze and interpret her experience and story.
After listening to a tape recording of her retelling Cathy shared several
insights and changes she had made in her teaching. For example, she shared
how, based on advice she had received during an interview with her friend
Robert she made a special effort to establish a relationship with one African
American student, Siham, who was "giving me fits in class." Robert had
shared with Cathy how important it was to him to "make a connection with
every single one of his kids." Cathy took her student Siham to lunch and
visited her several times at home, and she said, "I didn't necessarily use it
because Siham was a black child but because Siham was a needy child."

Fostering these connections with children are critical aspects of relating
to children and in developing a culturally relevant pedagogy. Cathy
commented that maybe this was something that presenters had actually tried
to share with her at the conference:

It could be that in this other one [presentation during the conference]

that I went to when they were talking about hugging the crack addict,

118

the mother and all that kinda thing, maybe that is, is kind of like what
my friend Robert was recommending that we do by making that
connection with that child. Making home visits, reaching out, you
know. And so I that maybe, maybe there was value here [at the
conference] and maybe I wasn't seeing it. I just, I was just having a
hard time getting through and maybe that was, I don't know, maybe
that was my own attitude. Maybe at that point, I was just miffed and I
didn't wanta hear anything else and I wasn't gonna let anything else
reach me" (interview 1/ 15 / 99).

Cathy also noted that maybe part of her resistance to the presenters was that "I

didn't feel like they were talking to me" and "I didn't speak their language so

to speak."
Conclusion

In Cathy’s case, her written narrative acts as a starting point for
discussing issues of race and success in schooling. However, it is critical to
acknowledge that the previous conversation on this night of the course and
readings in the course supported the inquiry and reflection in which Cathy
and the group engaged. Furthermore, although the group’s engagement
around issues of race may appear superficial, it was a catalyst in Cathy’s
pursuit of further exploration of the issues. Cathy’s interactions both with
her classmates and with her African American colleagues scaffold her
exploration of racial issues and enable her to go beyond where she has gone
On her own. Through her interactions with her classmates, Cathy begins to
analyze, interpret, and reinterpret her own narrative. In doing so, she
Constructs and reconstructs the self. The context in which Cathy shares her
rlarlz'ative and the opportunities provided to retell and revisit are critical in

Cathy's developing awareness of her position as a white teacher. Cathy's

119

pursuit of the stories of African American educators in her mid-term and
final project extend this exploration beyond the discussions and readings of
the course to explore the question: What does it mean to be a white teacher
working with students from linguistically and culturally diverse
backgrounds?"

In her final course reflection Cathy stated that she had "redefined
literacy." Whereas she had once viewed literacy as activities of reading,
writing, listening, speaking, she now includes culture. She wrote, "I now
know that culture is not simply race." Cathy has begun to recognize that a
culturally relevant pedagogy involves more than treating all children equally
or as if they are one color. It involves understanding her own cultural and
literate practices and those of her students. Cathy has taken a critical step
toward developing a culturally relevant pedagogy. Ladson-Billings has noted
that one barrier for teachers in developing such a stance is that "While it is
realized that African Americans make up a distinct racial group, the
acknowledgment that this racial group has a distinct culture is still not
recognized. It is presumed that African American children are exactly like
white children but just need a little extra help" (emphasis in the original,
1994, p. 9). Cathy stated in her final project that race was not the significant
factor in determining a child's success in school. Rather, as Cathy wrote:
"there is often no relationship between tasks assigned in school and a child's
cultural identity." She has begun to take to heart what Cazden and Mehan
(1989) admonished teachers to do when they wrote: Instead of blaming school
failure on student characteristics that the school cannot change, teachers
should reconsider aspects of the classroom environment that are within their
control" (p. 50).

Narrative can be a powerful tool for teachers like Cathy to in explore

120

questions and concerns that they have about issues of diversity and literacy
instruction. In the telling and hearing of stories, teachers are invited to
encounter, consider, and transform their beliefs of self and other. However,
as with any site of potential learning, the possibility exists that teachers' may
not use narrative as a tool for transformation The tool may, in fact, be used to
reify their existing beliefs and practices rather than encouraging
transformation. Cathy made the choice to continue to explore issues that
remain unresolved in her narrative. Thus Cathy's reflection on the
narrative, and its function as a tool for exploring issues of culture and literacy,
extends far beyond her construction and interaction around the narrative on
this one night of class. Cathy's narrative, the conversation she has with her
peers in class, the readings of multicultural literature and research on literacy
and culture, and the narratives shared by the African American colleagues
whom she interviews help Cathy create a text through which she explores
difficult and controversial issues. This text is a construction zone where
narrative functions as part of the scaffolding in Cathy's examination of beliefs
about culture, self and other and beliefs about literacy instruction.

Narrative holds forth the potential for Cathy and other white teachers
to create alternative texts which explore issues related to culture, self and
other and literacy learning. Such alternative texts can push white teachers
toward transformative literacy practices--literacy practices that "force us to
confront worlds other than our own, to see ourselves and those we are close
to in the stories of others, to address injustices, and to find ourselves changed
(Witherell, 1995, p. 47). Cathy has not yet arrived at the place where she has
envisioned or enacted the types of transformative pedagogy that Ladson-
Billings (1994), Witherell (1995), or other multicultural theorists (e.g., Banks,
1996, 1997; Sleeter & Grant, 1999) have advocated. However, it is clear that

121

she has undertaken and continues to undertake a journey toward developing
a pedagogy that will enable her to teach "other people's children" in ways that
"capitalize on students individual, group and cultural differences" (Ladson-

Billings, 1994. p. 11).

122

 

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CHAPTER FIVE
REGAN'S STORY:
"I WANT TO BE SOMEBODY WHO MOVES THE LINES"
Introduction

My interest in Regan was piqued first not as a researcher, but as a
teacher. From the beginning , it was clear that Regan was different from other
course participants. As we shared about our backgrounds on the first night of
the class, Regan told us how just that morning she had arrived from Alaska.
Her teaching experiences in Alaska were part of social-justice work arranged
by the mid-westem Jesuit university that she had attended, and while in
Alaska she had worked on a family literacy project with indigenous peoples,
predominantly Tlingit Indians. Of the seven participants in the course, she
was the only one who was not a practicing teacher at the time of the study.
Within several weeks of her return to the mid-west she had accepted a
position with a local literacy coalition whose goal was to work with children
and adults, particularly those from low-income backgrounds, who could not
read or who struggled with literacy. Regan was also an active volunteer at a
local shelter for abused women and children. Still in her early twenties, she
was the youngest participant in our group and the most recent college
graduate, having received her undergraduate degree only one year before
enrolling in the course.

Not only did these experiences set her apart, but it was clear from my
field notes and transcripts that Regan's discourse differed from other
participants in its content and form, and ultimately, its function. As
participant-observer in class discussions, there were multiple entries in my
field notes where I indicated that Regan was "thinking and talking very

differently from other students" (10-13-97, p. 4) and that were "long pauses or

123

shifts in topi
at first on Re
"intriguing" I
that were "ho
addressed by
comments ex;
racial and cult
the course to e
to openly add;

tOpics because

 

began to dr0p
raiSEd issues 01
Wrote about an
literate. educate
She exPlored h.
emPOWered he}
the experiences
"hose acquisiti

dOUbI and a 105

shifts in topics after she speaks" (10-20-97, p. 5). Again, my attention focused
at first on Regan as a student. As the course instructor, I reflected on how
"intriguing" Regan's comments were because they raised interesting issues
that were "hot lava" (Glazier, et al., in press) and as such, had not been
addressed by other students or in our previous conversations. Regan's
comments exploring poverty and social class, gender, linguistic diversity,
racial and cultural identity were closely aligned with my goals for students in
the course to explore these difficult topics. As course instructor I was hesitant
to openly address the issues of power implicit within all discussions of these
topics because I was afraid to undermine the "safe" atmosphere where people
began to drop their guard and share openly. However, for Regan consistently
raised issues of power through her comments, examples, and narratives. She
wrote about and shared examples in discussions that demonstrated how being
literate, educated, and white gave her privilege that others did not have.
She explored how acquisition of French, a second language by choice,
empowered her. She contrasted her own second language acquisition with
the experiences of autobiographers Eva Hoffman and Richard Rodriguez
whose acquisition of fluency in another language was accompanied by self-
doubt and a loss of identity, what Regan referred to as "violence to the self."
In another powerful example, Regan challenged our positioning of American
women and perception of domestic violence as we read W
Wife (Tan, 1991) and compared the situation of Chinese women in the 1940's
to that of American women in the 1990's.

It was difficult to decide how to respond to Regan's comments. As a
teacher, I wanted students to talk about topics that Regan raised because they
are issues that teachers must think about if they are to meet the needs of

students. Because I participated in book clubs with practicing teachers and

124

had conduct
Raphael, Gla
were the kin
and difficult)
power and p
responded to|
appropriate fc
that I could n.
noted in the f:
by a long paug
Regan's talk b.
Were not read)
Conversation 0

further the lea

Other st
were different
discourse Rega
were Commem.
POSItiOn. This
of discourSe We
might Regan ta]
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Regan's tall< feI

nanatiVe' By "-

had conducted prior research on those book club discussions (Florio-Ruane,
Raphael, Glazier, McVee & Wallace, 1997; McVee, 1998), I knew that these
were the kinds of topics that teachers had difficulty in bringing to the floor
and difficulty in sustaining for discussion. Regan's attention to issues of
power and privilege brought additional insight and benefit to discussions. I
responded to Regan's comments and attempted to sanction them as
appropriate for discussion and attempted to model responses, yet I also knew
that I could not respond every time, and there are many instances where I
noted in the field notes and transcripts that Regan's comments were followed
by a long pause and a topic shift. In some cases, I chose not to respond to
Regan's talk because I felt that others in the group must do so, and if they
were not ready to engage in discussion of the topic, my forcing the
conversation or my participating in a dialogue with Regan was unlikely to
further the learning of others in the group.

What Types of Talk Did Regan Use?

Other students in the group were also aware that Regan's responses
were different than their own, not only in terms of content, but also in the
discourse Regan used. As a rapport grew among the group members, there
were comments directed at Regan that indicated recognition of her unique
position. This included one night where we reflected on the different forms
of discourse we used in discussing the autobiographies and articles. On this
night Regan talked about how she felt her responses sometimes placed her
"on another planet" (11-3-97). As a researcher I was interested in how
Regan's talk represented an interesting blend of "academic discourse" and
narrative. By "academic discourse" I mean talk that analyzes and synthesizes
themes or ideas in articles or autobiographies we read, talk that often relied

upon intertextual references to explain or defend a point of view. This kind

125

of talk is likrl
has also beer
Regan used t
the course. .-
Table 18, tth
used narrativ
her peers. Ta
Narrative talk

simplest narra

 

Which differ f

function.

 

\
e

 

 

of talk is like expository text in that it builds categories and connections. It
has also been labeled "paradigmatic" talk (Bruner, 1990; Polkinghorne, 1995).
Regan used this kind of talk with far greater frequency than did her peers in
the course. As explained in the following sections and as summarized in
Table 18, this talk was not the only way that Regan's talk differed. Regan also
used narrative talk of different types and frequencies different from those of
her peers. Table 18 defines both academic discourse and narrative talk.
Narrative talk, as the table shows, can be categorized as conventional-—the
simplest narratives that most people think of as stories--or non-conventional
which differ from the norm on the basis of form, function, or both form and
function.
Table 18

R n' D'

 

Type of Discourse Features

 

N on- Academic Discourse talk that analyzes and synthesizes
Narra- themes or ideas in articles or

tive autobiographies; talk that often
relies upon intertextual references
to explain or defend a point of
view; talk builds categories and
connections and can also be
labeled "paradigmatic"

 

 

Narra- Conventional Narratives narratives that reflect many or all
tive of Labov's defining characteristics
of narrative (abstract, orientation,
complicating action, evaluation,
and resolution) or Burke's pentad
(Actor, an Action, a Goal, a Scene,
and an Instrument)

 

 

 

 

126

Narra- Un
tive

 

 

 

A5 I t0<
transcript, 1 “
in fact, my an
of ”Mention
take. 30mg 0;
examination a
meet Labov &
someflung tha
orientation) .
the stOry (

COm

Hate the 8‘

 

 

Narra- Unconventional Narratives narratives that contain elements
tive of Labov's or Burke's categories
but which do not meet the criteria
for a complete narrative or well-
formed story

(1) quasinarratives (1)narrative embedded within or
intertwined with academic
discourse

(2)multi-voiced (2)narrative that identifies both

narratives Self and Other as "1"; although a

core identity is maintained, the
self is dynamic and ever-changing,
contingent

(3) grand narratives (also (3)narratives that shape other
called master narratives, narratives, especially about our
metanarratives, and culture, selves, ways of seeing the
cultural narratives) world; whereas other speakers tell
brief conventional narratives that
represent the theme of the
metanarratives, Regan identifies
the master narrative thus allowing
for opportunities to critique its
overarching theme

 

 

 

 

As I took field notes and listened to audio tape and read through
transcript, I was interested in my response to Regan's narratives, and it was,
in fact, my analysis of Regan's narratives that led to my discovering the array
of conventional and unconventional forms and functions narratives could
take. Some of her speech had a conventional narrative feel, but on closer
examination appeared not to be conventional narratives at all. They did not
meet Labov & Waletzky's (1967) definition of a complete narrative as
something that contains statements to orient the listener to the story
(orientation), a description and relating of events that complicate the action of
the story (complicating action), statements that reflect on the story and

evaluate the events that took place or the teller's feelings or thoughts about

127

them (evalu
the story (re

or function 3

 

 

action, evaluI

Chapters 3 a

In after
conducted us
Burke's penta
1945). I founcI
"narratives," b
not be conside

Regan's uncon

 

Some talked ab
as "her narratix
was also puzz
Several times I

Particular incid
ShEIter. Howm
recalled, I foun
mind, One story
Regan Share d.

«conventiOnal 11
like Ellie and C.
many or all of t
orientation,

con
narratives are a

them (evaluation) and statements that bring final conclusion or resolution to
the story (resolution). Many of Regan's narratives took unconventional form
or function stand in contrast to the narratives told by Ellie and Cathy (see
Chapters 3 and 4) which follow the traditional orientation, complicating
action, evaluation, resolution construction.

In attempting to confirm or disprove the preliminary analysis I had
conducted using Labov's categories, I also examined the narratives using
Burke's pentad--Actor, an Action, a Goal, a Scene, and an Instrument (Burke,
1945). I found that some of the five elements were present in Regan's
"narratives," but that these pieces of talk with their narrative like feel would
not be considered what Burke called a well-formed story. When I showed
Regan's unconventional narratives to others; their reaction too was mixed.
Some talked about the stories suggested by Regan's talk and referred to these

as "her narratives" or "her stories.‘ Others insisted that no narrative existed.
I was also puzzled by my own mis-remembering of Regan's narratives.
Several times I found myself searching transcript to find a story about a
particular incident, for example, Regan's work in Alaska or at the women's
shelter. However, instead of finding a segment containing "the story" I
recalled, I found many smaller references, pieces of what had become, in my
mind, one story. This led me to take a closer look at the types of narratives
Regan shared. Some of Regan's narratives were what I will refer to as
"conventional narratives." These were similar to those of other participants
like Ellie and Cathy (see Chapters 3 and 4). Conventional narratives contain
many or all of the elements that Labov used in defining a narrative--abstract,
orientation, complicating action, evaluation, and resolution. These
narratives are also conventional narratives because they contain elements of

Burke's pentad.

128

 
   

many cases, t

almost alway.

that is similar
unconventiona
(2) Multi~v0ice

In the fi
discourse that
another begins
narrative WaYE
nrational thou1

quasinarrativ

However, most of Regan's stories were not conventional, and they do
not necessarily break down into categories constructed by Labov or Burke. In
many cases, the "narratives" are incomplete. For example, although there is
almost always some type of evaluation included, a requirement for Labov's
complete narrative, there may be scant details or images to orient the listener
or to communicate the action or resolution. Only when I put all the pieces of
discourse on a particular topic together can I create a conventional narrative
that is similar in form to narratives told by Ellie or Cathy. In coding the
unconventional narratives, I identified three categories (1) Quasinarratives,
(2) Multi-voiced Narratives, and (3) Grand narratives .

Q . .

In the first category narratives are so closely intertwined with academic
discourse that it is difficult to tell where one type of discourse ends and where
another begins. These quasinarratives blur the borders of paradigmatic and
narrative ways of knowing by blending connections, themes, categories, and
"rational thought" with images and details of story. The term
"quasinarrative" is one I have adapted from Tannen (1989) who used the
terms "quasinarrative" and "non-narrative" interchangeably while noting
that both narrative and non-narrative talk use imagery and detail. This is
true also in Regan's case where the imagery or detail present orients a listener
toward non-narrative speech. However, Regan's quasinarratives are further
distinguishable from non-narrative discourse because they trade on
intertextuality both in the kinds of texts she references and the kinds of texts
she creates (Raphael 8: Florio-Ruane, 1998). In the blurred genre of
quasinarratives, information leaned from paradigmatic ways of knowing is
juxtaposed with that present in narrative forms. The intertextuality created

through this juxtaposition creates opportunities for what Tannen calls

129

"internal ev
internal €Vlt
must provic
contain ima
these elemei
interesting i
find in their
multiplicitie
1986).

The n
quasinarrati
These narra'
merge, and
Often dispar
identity and
although a (
multiple re;
View On liv
These r1«'irran
of the Self--1
shares Sew”
HoweVer, w
Other‘ This
19915 Lionne
Where autho

ldentities an.

"internal evaluation." Events or actions are dramatized through "story-
internal evidence," e.g., images or details provided by a teller, but listeners
must provide their own interpretation. Although non-narrative may
contain imagery or elements of story or intertextual references, it interweaves
these elements in ways that lead speakers toward internal evaluation. In
interesting ways Regan's talk actually represents what scholars are coming to
find in their own work that they must weave scientific discourse with the
multiplicities of literary works, thus blurring genres (see Clifford and Marcus,
1986)

._ . a 'v

The multiplicity and blurred genres often present in Regan's

quasinarratives are key elements of her multi-voiced renditions of narrative.
These narratives have many qualities of postmodern texts which "explicitly
merge, and blur genre, in dialogic, performative texts that ventriloquize the
often disparate voices and tension composing any subjective experience of
identity and difference" (Zuss, 1997, p. 163). In these multi-voiced narratives
although a core identity remains, the Self is not fixed. Rather there are
multiple representations of self contingent upon "perspective and point of
view on lived situation, on location in the world" (Greene, 1994, p. 12).
These narratives demonstrate Regan's ability to narrate a story from both that
of the Self-her own point of view--and the point of view of the Other. She
shares several stories which begin with references to herself in first person.
However, within the same story she also uses first person "I" to refer to the
Other. This structure represents a double- or multi-voicedness (Bamburg,
1991; Lionnet, 1989; Zuss, 1997), often present in postmodern autobiography
where authors create new "forms which correspond to their multi-layered

identities and various experiences, as the linear master-narrative is

130

inappropriate as a tool to convey their concerns: often rather than resolve
contradictions, it is necessary to keep them in suspension because it is exactly
in this 'between-world' condition that the writers continue to exist"
(Wogowitsch, 1995 p.157).
Wm

As Wogowitsch mentions above, master narratives or grand narratives
are conventional in the sense that they follow a linear form. They are also
conventional in the sense that they are a part of our cultural and societal
norms, a part of our national psyche are also called "cultural narratives"
(McLaren, 1993). We encounter these narratives everywhere in our daily life.
In the same way that culture is often transparent to members of the white
middle class (e.g. we ascribe culture as belonging to people of color, new
immigrants, bilinguals), the grand narratives that shape our views and
identities remain hidden and unquestioned. According to McLaren, it is
uncommon for us to explicitly or openly tell or write these narratives unless
we wish to identify them in order to write or speak against the grain. For
example, in flomenflnnngfiinlhne (Behar & Gordon, 1995) contributors
write against the master narratives that have shaped the identity and
treatment of women in many societies. In one example Janet Finn (1995)
revisits the life and writings of Mourning Dove, a Salish Indian who "wrote
against the dominant grain of Indian image making" (p. 141). As an educated,
articulate, thoughtful writer, Mourning Dove's awareness of her own
heritage and identity counters the metanarrative constructed about her
peopleuas a uncivilized, lazy, ignorant, and incapable of feeling. Through
Mourning Dove, Finn counters the master narrative constructed by
European immigrants through both anthropological studies and popular

culture. In identifying the master narrative, Finn creates a mirror image of

131

what is typically hidden from view, holding it up for examination and
criticism. In a similar fashion and within the context of conversation, Regan
identified and told master narratives holding them up for examination by
herself and other participants.

In this chapter I use excerpts from Regan's talk and the talk of other
participants to answer the following questions: What is the nature of Regan's
talk? How can we describe its content? Its form? How does this talk function
in the group? How does this talk position Regan (Davies & Harre, 1990;
Harte & van Langenhove, 1999)? How do others position her? To explore
these questions I begin by presenting an excerpt where Regan uses academic
discourse to explore themes in Eva Hoffman's (1989) Lestmlisnslntinn.
Analysis revealed that both the content and form of Regan's discourse led to
her being perceived as an intellectual within the group. In this sense she
becomes an outsider or Other even though she has a great deal in common
with her classmates. In other examples, I show that the combination of
academic discourse, unconventional narrative, and hot lava topics function
together to derail conversation among Regan and her peers. The resistance of
other participants to engage with these topics reveals opportunities where
participants miss engaging with ideas. On the other hand, there were times
when there was uptake on Regan's comments and when group members
pushed themselves to explore difficult issues as when Regan challenged us to
rethink our comparison of domestic abuse in China during the 1940's and the
U. S. in the 1990's.

Positioning Regan as the Intellectual: Academic Discourse and the
Quasinarrative
From the earliest stages of data collection and interpretation, I was

intrigued by Regan. Many of her conversational moves were shared by other

132

 

participants
authors, pu:

told stories. I
mentioned a
her commen
from other p.
content conta

participants 1‘

 

 

academic--in
memm
ahead" of eve
OWn talk, for r
the Others in t
The fol]
one third of ti
read Eva Hoff
Writes about }
Canada as an
POHSh and En
identity: Our
she had mad 1

participants-they all referred to texts we had read, agreed of disagreed with
authors, puzzled about an author's point or character's actions, and they all
told stories. However, there were puzzling differences in Regan's talk. As
mentioned above, there was often little uptake on topics she proposed, and
her comments were met with silence. This response, or lack of response,
from other participants was a result of both the forms of Regan's talk and the
content contained within that talk. Her own talk and the responses of
participants led to Regan being perceived by group members as intellectual or
academic--in some ways she was an outsider even when she should have
been an insider. As the group put it at one point, Regan was "five pages
ahead" of everyone else. Although Regan positioned herself through her
own talk, for example, by often responding to text with academic discourse,
the others in the group supported and assisted in this positioning.

The following response occurred during the sixth week of class--about
one third of the way through the semester. For this night of class, we had
read Eva Hoffman's autobiography, _Imstn'nltmsiajien, in which Hoffman
writes about her experiences growing up in Poland and then immigrating to
Canada as an adolescent. Hoffman closely analyzes her use of language, both
Polish and English, and the role that language played in constructing her
identity. Our discussion of Hoffman's work began with Regan wishing that
she had read Hoffman's book earlier when she had written her senior thesis
on Simone de Beauvoir's autobiographical works and the works of Virginia
Wolf. She ended by saying that she thought the book was "amazing." In an
effort to get her to explain this statement I offered a prompt: What was so
amazing about it? This leads to a lengthy reply from Regan. As the excerpt
below illustrates, both the content and form of her reply led to her being

perceived of as an intellectual, and as such, different from her peers. This

133

   
  

positioning
concommite:
Mary:
Rega
(talkir

Regan

0): O

Regan

Ellie:
REgan’s resp
"COHStructior
“$8 of Englig
The response
agreement. J
said, "And I
slight Vari a ti
of creating h
suggested th.-
Stmck" Her
suggested the
the text. Par;
in awe of Ho
HOffman'S W1
Participants v
addressing R:

intellEctual .

positioning is affirmed by how her peers assist in her positioning and,
concommitently, by how they position themselves.

Mary: What was, what was so amazing about it to you?

Regan: Um, well, her construction

(talking together, laughter)

Regan: It was her construction of um, first of all, I was absolutely

awestruck at her use of the English language.

(?): Oh, yeah

Regan: Coming from Polish.

Ellie: Like I was um-struck going ,um, what is that?
Regan’s responded to my prompt by stating that she was amazed by the
"construction". She went on to say that she was ”awestruck” by Hoffman’s
use of English, especially since English was not Hoffman’s mother tongue.
The response ”Oh yeah” with its flat tone and lack of stress indicate
agreement. Ellie, in one of her many humorous ”asides” aimed at Regan
said, ”And I was um-struck, going um, what is that?” This repetition with its
slight variation is both a means of conversational engagement and a means
of creating humor (Tannen, 1989). Through the play on ”awestruck,” Ellie
suggested that she did not understand Hoffman’s writing since she was "um-
struck." Her response, with it's play on the conversational marker "um,"
suggested that Ellie was not in awe of Hoffman since she did not understand
the text. Paradoxically, we could also read into Ellie's comments that she was
in awe of Hoffman (and Regan) precisely because she did not understand
Hoffman's writing. Her humor and laughter and the laughter of other
participants work together to mask the discomfort the group feels in
addressing Regan's comments which are perceived as "academic" or

"intellectual."

134

Re
comment
Hoffman'
herself."
talked ab
the autho
text, the t
about H0
"rhythm ;
beauty of
t0gether..
intentions
Um, that '
her choicr
set her ap
generally

Reg
One ePiso.
as acaderT
analyZe H
Parallels }
about her
described

is Coldaa ‘
and it doe:
(P- 106), Ir

COIlleXt am

Regan continued her analysis of Hoffman’s writing after Ellie’s
comment and went on to explore text vs. context. She talked about
Hoffman's obsession with language and how Hoffman had to "translate
herself." Using words like "constructivist" and "deconstruction," Regan
talked about Hoffman's struggle to understand the context saying " ...divorce
the author and the history and everything, and it's only the text. The text, the
text, the text. " Regan ended her exploration of Hoffinan's work by talking
about Hoffman's awakening to English where Hoffman finally grasped the
"rhythm and the timbre of the language, she finally started to realize the
beauty of it." In conclusion she added that Hoffman's text "just all sort of fell
together ..... It was a product of its time and the author's thoughts and
intentions and how you could even hear how they were [sie] thinking and
um, that was just amazing to me." Regan's close analysis of Hoffman's text,
her choice of words (e. g., constructivist, deconstruction, rhythm and timbre)
set her apart from her classmates who did not talk this way and who were
generally not impressed with Hoffman's language

Regan's talk about Hoffman was not all that set her apart during this
one episode. Although her initial and concluding responses can be classified
as academic discourse because they explore themes and connections and
analyze Hoffman's prose, Regan embedded within this discourse a story that
parallels Hoffman's. In her analysis of language, Hoffman wrote passionately
about her search for connections and between context and language. She
described how in English words had no associations for her: "River in English
is cold-a word without an aura. It has no accumulated associations for me,
and it does not give off the radiating haze of connotation. It does not evoke"
(p. 106). In the following excerpt Regan described her attempt to connect the

context and language in her French studies. Although she was acquiring the

135

language, her experience parallels Hoffman because French is not what is
evocative for Regan; it is the context» the lives of the women who she was
studying-which ultimately allowed her to connect:
And I was a French lit major in college and I tried to write this sort of
contextual piece for my comprehensive exercise which was like it was
30 pages and it was all about Simone [de Beauvoir] and her life and
about, you know, the things that she went through as a woman and as
a writer and as a feminist and like growing up in Paris in bourgeois
society. Like I thought it was so cool. And my professors, I got to my
comprehensive hearing, like they were just like well, that's really good
but um, how about, you know, how do you feel about the first
paragraph of her autobiography? Let's look at that. And they made me
take apart the first paragraph and I did it fine. I was just like yeah, well,
and this and this and this and you can see this. Yeah, and you can see
this and this and this and I was like uh huh, and they were like wow,
could you, could you write that down for us. And I said yeah, and then
I wrote two pages on it. And then they passed me finally. But I had
written this 30 page like thesis that was all about like who I was and
who women were and all this stuff. But they were like no, we don't
want the context. You know, the context isn't what is important. So I
really identified with her, being able to succeed in writing in English
lit....
Although this excerpt contained many elements of narrative, it was atypical
of the narratives told by course participants, I have coded it as a
quasinarrative for several reasons. First, it was unusual that the narrative
was embedded within academic discourse. Additionally, the structure of the

narrative does not follow a traditional Labovian form as do Ellie's and

136

Cathy's. For example, rather than following the sequence abstract,
orientation, complicating action, and evaluation, Regan's narrative begins
with the Actionushe was trying to write a paper. There is no abstract and
little orientation. Although the narrative contains evaluative statements
(e.g., "Like I thought it was so cool"), the framing talk about Hoffman before
and after the narrative is actually an evaluation and commentary on Regan's
narrative. Without the comments about Hoffman's own understanding of
language and search for context, it is difficult to understand what Regan's
point is. This narrative is also unlike that of other participants because it is
one example of how Regan identifies with the Other--in this case the
immigrant struggling to learn the context of America and the language of
English. Other participants (e.g., Ellie and Cathy, chapters 3 and 4) did share
stories where "the tables were turned," where they were in the minority,
where they could be seen as "the Other;" however, these were not
intentionally developed positions. In the example above and in others
described later in this chapter, Regan intentionally puts herself in the place of
the other. In the example above she puts herself in the place of the language
learner by sharing a story about her own struggle to combine context and text
in her study and writing in French and by directly commenting that "I really
identified with [Hoffman] being able to succeed in writing..."

In essence what Regan did in the quasinarrative above was exactly
what she respected Hoffman for doing. She included in her talk a great deal
of introspection and evaluation, with talk that analyzed and synthesized. In
describing Hoffman's writing Regan noted how it " all sort of fell together"
and how she as a reader could even hear how Hoffman was thinking. She
also stated that the text "was a product of its time and the author's thoughts

and intentions" In Regan's analysis of Hoffman's text and life, Regan

137

mirrored Hoffman's own postmodern narrative with its analysis, synthesis
and unconventional narrative form and emphasis on multiple selves. Regan
shared with Hoffman a love of language and a quest for self. Hoffman writes
about her awakening to English: "I've become obsessed with words. I gather
them, put them away like a squirrel saving nuts for winter, swallow them
and hunger for more. If I take in enough, then maybe I can incorporate the
language, make it a part of my psyche and my body" (p. 216). Regan
commented on Hoffman's increasing awareness of the nuances of English
rhythms and sounds, and ended her turn by stating that ”And that she
[Hoffman] could do that in another language just uh, amazing to me as well. I
just was amazed by the language. I could read this over and over again. I
could write a book on this book."

Regan's turn with its heavy emphasis on academic discourse and post-
modern narrative precipitates the following reaction from the group:

Toni: Go for it.

Cathy: And here's a pen (handing Regan a pen)

Ellie: The rest of us are kinda like
Both Regan's own discourse and the response of the group positioned Regan
as the intellectual. In responding with "Go for it" her classmates were
essentially saying ”You write the book.” By adding "And here’s a pen," they
suggested that they do not wish to be involved with such an undertaking.
The admission: "The rest of us are kinda like...” indicated that if Regan
wanted to write a book, she should go ahead, but they do not feel the same
about Hoffman. In fact, they are somewhat ”um-struck” by both Hoffman
and Regan. They indicated that they do not really relate to Hoffman's text,

and in the same way they have difficulty in responding to Regan.

138

The group's response was not unlike other teacher discussions around
this text. For example in discussions with preservice teachers, Florio-Ruane
(1997) found that preservice teachers focused on discussions of Paradise, the
section of the book where Hoffman writes about her early childhood in
Poland. In previous research with inservice teachers using autobiographies
(see Florio-Ruane, et al., 1997), participants commented that they enjoyed the
first two sections of the book, Paradise and Exile because they depicted
Hoffman's memories about Poland and about the difficulties she faced in
coming to America. The group was critical of Hoffman's third section of the
book, even referring to it as "whiny." The New World, with its postmodern
structure is less linear than the earlier sections but more introspective with
its exploration of multiple, changing views of language and self (field notes
from Autobiography Project, 10-9-95).

In similar fashion to the two groups of women just described, Regan's
classmates also had difficulty relating to the third section with its
examination and attempt to construct, analyze and place the self in an ever
changing context. For example, during an in-class reflection written before
our discussion of Les]; in Translan'nn, Jaime wrote the she had mixed feelings
about he book. She was fascinated by Hoffman's use of language and
memories of Poland, but she found the book to be "very dense" She also felt
that Hoffman "jump[ed] around a lot" and that the language was "almost
overpowering" (10-6-97, in class writing). Regan was the only participant
who wrote or talked positively about Hoffman's use of language. Other
participants wrote about Hoffman's immigrant story, her struggles, and to
express admiration for her or to wonder what it is like for students who
emigrate to the US in the 1990's. Regan, on the other hand, reveled in the

richness of Hoffman's three-part book. The following spoken paraphrase of

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Hoffman's writing by Regan indicated how well Regan had internalized
Hoffman's ideas about cultural change:
But I thought, just the rich, her self um, examination as well. The
whole, I mean, with the way she divides the book into Paradise, Exile
and the New World. Um, and she can finally triangulate herself
between the two cultures and the two languages to find like a true
sense of who she is and she can get a sense of all the worlds around her
and the richness from both of them.
In other words, Regan was able to make sense out ofParadise, Exile, and The
New World and enjoyed reading all three sections.

This contrast between what interested Regan and what she felt
comfortable with and what other course participants were interested in and
felt comfortable with was apparent in other areas as well. Regan's interest in
the "intellectual" is also revealed by her interrelationship between language,
culture and the construction of self was also apparent the week following our
discussion of mm. The week after we read and discussed
Hoffman, we were discussing our mid—term projects. During our discussion,
students who had taken the Literacy Proseminar made references to Vygotsky
and how confused they became when reading about his work and in listening
to their instructors explain it. They were not comfortable talking about
language at this theoretical level. Later on this same night Regan--who had
not taken the Proseminar--talked about her mid-term essay and hypothesized
outloud about what she was beginning to believe about language . This
example was one I had cited in my field notes in support of how Regan talked
and thought differently than other students. Examination of the relationship
between language, culture and mind was something that Regan had raised

before when she shared an article from Sienna magazine (Lord, 1996) about

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how the geographic location reflects and shapes the language used by
indigenous people. Although it was typical for participants to include outside
readings, particularly newspapers or periodicals, particularly in discussions
around their sketchbooks (see Chapter 4), Regan was the only student who
brought in readings that addressed theories about language (Lord, 1996;
Greene, 1991) or identity (Gilligan, 1993), from academic sources (e.g. mm
W). On this night, she raised a question, essentially about
sociocultural theories of language. As the quote below illustrates, she
commented on how Hoffman and other sources have prompted her to think
about the relationship between context, language, culture, and mind.
The way your mind is constructed comes from the language that you
speak....My main premise is that, that, and Eva, um, Hoffman doesn't
specifically talk about that and I don't know anything about Polish but I
sort of have this idea that, that her, the way she was constructed came
from that language. And I don't know if that's, is that an accepted
theory? I mean, like I think I've just gotten this from a bunch of
different sources....I wasn't sure and I was writing and I was just like
language is a vehicle for imparting meaning to people's lives. And I
was like whoa, is that just sort of like this weird blanket statement and
everybody's gonna go no, it's not. (10-13-97, p. 14).
After Regan presented this theory of language and mind, Cass and Ellie
responded:
Cass: It sounds really good.
Ellie: None of us would have said "No, it's not" because none of us
would have had the guts to open our mouths.
This example is yet another instance where other participants responded to

Regan by choosing not to engage with the topic. While Cass's comment, "It

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sounds really good" could be read as agreement, it also could be read as a
hesitancy to engage with Regan's idea. Cass made no attempt to explain how
Regan's ideas sounds good or what may in fact ring true in Regan's
comments. In addition, Ellie's comment: "None of us would have said 'No,
it's not' because none of us would have had the guts to open our mouths"
reflected a certain level of intimidation derived from unwillingness to engage
in discussion of the t0pic which can be perceived as abstract, theoretical, or
"intellectual." Hargreaves (1984) has documented that teachers in general are
often reluctant to draw on theory in discussing their curriculum and
instruction. In addition white women in particular have difficulty engaging
in talk they perceive of as intellectual because they have not been socialized
into this discourse and do not identify themselves as intellectual (Belenky,
Clinchy, Goldberger, & Tarule, 1986; Wallace-Cowell, 1999) and tend to avoid
discussions of a theoretical or abstract nature. Within discussion groups
researchers have noted how white middle- class women in particular shy
away from conflict and disagreement (Florio-Ruane, 1995; Florio-Ruane 8: de
Tar, 1996) choosing instead to create what McIntyre (1997) has called "a culture
of niceness." Regan's question about theory is unlike the questions asked by
other students not only in its content, but also in the intertextual references
implied (e.g. the Sierra article) or directly stated (e.g. Hoffman). Other
students, even those students who had already completed the Literacy
Proseminar, seldom referred to theories of language or learning, nor did they
reference specific texts that they had read in previous courses or other settings
which dealt with language theory.

The content (theoretical concerns) and form (an intertextual weave of
ideas, sources, thoughts) of Regan's question positioned Regan as the Other,

as an intellectual within a group who did not see themselves as intellectuals.

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Ellie's comment that no one in the group would challenge Regan's ideas
reflects this perception of the group as nonintellectual and
nonconfrontational. As the course instructor, I used Regan's comments as an
opportunity to revisit the students' discomfort with Vygotsky's work. I
summarized what Regan had said and related it to Vygotsky's theories. In
attempting to affirm Regan's exploration of this theoretical perspective, I
tried to assure Regan that her explorations did reflect a particular theoretical
stance and indicated that this stance was a valid explanation for language
learning and a theory under construction and debate by theorists, researchers,
and educators. As Regan's teacher, I wanted to support her efforts to explore
new ground, but my comments again positioned her as the "intellectual"
because as the course instructor and full-time doctoral student, I was the only
one willing to engage in a discussion of her theoretical ideas. After I
commented on Regan's ideas, the group turned toward a general discussion
of Hoffman's experience and the general experience of others coming to
America and away from theories of language and the construction of mind.
Intellectual Discourse and the "Concept of Self"

I argued above that Regan's discourse was different in its form, content,
and function and that this led to her being positioned differently within the
group, that the other participants viewed her as an intellectual. My field
notes and transcripts from the course reflected how Regan was positioned
differently, and as the course continued, it became even more clear that
course participants recognized both Regan's different position and discourse.
In the following excerpt which took place eleven weeks into the fifteen-week
course, I asked students to talk about the type of talk in their book club
discussions and the type of talk in their discussion of the articles. Although

we were nearing the end of class, a lively discussion ensued about the

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differences between our book club discussions and our discussions of articles.
In talking about our discussions several participants stated that they felt they
could not question the authors of articles because the authors had "more
power." They stated that the authors were "educational authorities" who had
conducted the research they wrote up, and therefore, it was difficult to
challenge them. They felt that their stories and personal experiences did not
mesh well with the articles, and if they shared stories or personal experiences,
it was "off topic." In contrast, they felt their book club discussions were more
personal and more relevant, and if they told stories in that setting, it was
acceptable. They also felt they told more stories in the book club setting.

The excerpt below began when Jaime, a participant who had been
actively co-constructing the ideas that the discussion of the books were more
personal and the articles more distant, shared that she felt inadequate about
her responses to the articles.

Jaime: I know. Exactly. Exactly. I go home and I tell my friends and say, I
think I sounded like a total idiot. I really honestly do.
Cass: Well, we wouldn't tell you if you did. (laughter)
Ellie: We'd just smile at you and go (inaudible, laughter, talking) Regan,
what do you think?
Mary: Regan, what do you think?
Regan: Um, I was thinking about, the first thing I started writing down was
about level of discourse, about the type of talk. Sometimes I think
I'm on another planet entirely. Like I'm over here. Sometimes you
guys all look at me and I'm just like ookkaayy.
Ellie: Part of it is you were the very first person who understood, used the
phrase, the concept of self. And we all kinda went ooohhh. Boy,
she's like five pages ahead.

144

(laughter, talking together)
Regan: No, I just um, which is, I don't know. I was just thinking about
where like I'm coming from. Like I worked with small kids last year

but I haven't been working with them for years. It's just sort of a

different like, like you're playing with blocks. And I was, and I'm just

so recent out of college where this huge paper on the discovery of self
and this whole autobiographical series. That was what my big paper
was on. So I mean, I'm coming from a different, like a different point

of View. (11-3-97)

Although the responses given by Cass and Ellie were humorous (they were
accompanied by a great deal of overlapping talk and laughter), they did
describe the typical patterns of group interaction. Like other groups of white
women (Belenky, et al., 1986; Florio-Ruane & deTar 1996, Wallace-Cowell,
1999), members of this group seldom challenged one another directly. This
included overlooking the way something was said, for example, even if it was
unclear. Throughout the semester, the group had also used other tactics (e.g.
change of topic, evading questions, reframing) to avoid open disagreement
and confrontation.

In the excerpt above Ellie, Jaime, and Cass had jointly constructed and
sustained a discussion in which they aligned themselves in favor of personal
story and experience. They positioned themselves and their responses in
contrast to the articles--the more "academic" or paradigmatic ways of
knowing and talking. Although neither Toni nor Regan had participated
(Marsha and Cathy were absent on this night), Ellie turned to Regan to ask:
"Regan what do you think?" One could read Ellie's question as concern that

Regan had not joined in this conversation, especially since this was a concern

I had when, as the teacher, I repeated Ellie's question, saying: "Regan what do

145

you think?" However, given the context and comments made immediately
before Ellie's question--and at other times during the course (see Regan and
Ellie's interaction in chapter 3 and excerpts below)" Ellie's question
positioned Regan as the person who did understand and relate to the articles
read for class. Regan's status as the expert or at very least the person who
"gets what it is all about" was sustained by Ellie's response to Regan: "You
were the first person who understood [and] used the phraseuthe concept of
self." And she added in exaggerated tones: "And we all kinda went ooohhh.
Boy, she's like five pages ahead. " The metaphor of reading a book and being
ahead coupled with the exaggerated intonation evokes humor to which the
group responded with laughter. This type of humorous aside is typical of the
way the Ellie often positioned Regan throughout the course.

Regan's admission that she sometimes felt like she was on another
planet indicated to the group that she knew she did not always connect with
them or that they did not always connect with her. Her comment that "you
guys all look at me and I'm just like ookkaayy" reflected that she was aware
that others often did not respond to her comments and that an uncomfortable
silence arose when people were looking at her but not responding. Regan
acknowledged that while all other participants had been teaching "for years,"
she had only one year of experience. In this example above, Regan was
positioned as expert while Ellie positioned herself and other members of the
class as less willing to engage with the "academic" or "intellectual" discourse.
This position was a result of Regan's comments and the groups responses
throughout the course. As mentioned, Regan often used academic discourse,
and she theorized, made connections, and synthesized texts--all of which it

could be argued are more "intellectual" responses than telling a story about

146

one's experience. Regan "voices" issues and ideas that she is concerned
about.

Ellie's response to Regan's talk also functioned as a form of resistance
to the "discourse" that Regan offers to the group. In resisting and silencing
their own use of critical academic discourse and multiply functioning
narratives, the group members limit their potential for intellectual
development or exploration of what Wallace-Cowell labels "intellectual
identity" (Wallace-Cowell, 1999). Their self-silencing is representative of the
ways in which women internalize norms which constitute such self-silencing
in the name of niceness (McIntyre, 1997) and non-intellectual "femininity"
(Belenky, et al., Gilligan, 1993; Wallace-Cowell, 1999). In contrast to such self-
silencing, Regan voices ideas, beliefs, attitudes, and values which
demonstrate that she has acquired or learned a "secondary Discourse" (Gee,
1989) which allows her to critique other discourses and the "way they
constitute us as persons and situate us in society" (Gee, 1989, p. 9).

Conventional and Unconventional Narratives in Regan's Discourse

Thus far I have devoted most of this chapter to examination to talk
that I have labeled "academic discourse" and to Regan's position within the
course. As explained above Regan did tell and write narratives, and in
preliminary analysis I coded Regan's narratives into two categories:
conventional and unconventional. I broke down unconventional narratives
into the following categories: (a) quasinarratives, (b) multi-voiced narratives,
and (b) grand narratives. The forms of her stories influenced how Regan
positioned herself in the course and how others responded to her. Her
narratives differed not only in their form but also in their content. While the
other course participants had been teaching for several years, Regan had

finished her undergraduate degree one year before our course began. In the

147

interim year, she had not taught in a classroom setting but had worked with
indigenous populations, primarily Tlingit Indians, in Alaska. Regan's stories
often dealt with different topics than those of her classmates because her
experiences were unlike others in the group. In addition, Regan was the only
participant in the group who consistently raised issues of power through her
narratives. In the following sections, I present examples of Regan's
narratives, conventional and unconventional, and address the topics she
brought into the group, particularly as these reflected the hot lava topics of
power and privilege. Because I have already discussed the excerpt from
Hoffman which demonstrates the intertwining of narrative and academic
discourse a "quasinarrative," I will not revisit that form of narrative below.
ConmfionaLNarratixes

Out of all Regan's narratives cataloged during the analysis, very few
follow a conventional narrative identified by Labov (1967, 1972) of abstract,
orientation, complicating action, evaluation, resolution. Table 19
summarizes three examples of conventional narratives that Regan shared.
Each was heavily influenced by contextual factors, which may explain why
Regan constructed these stories in a conventional narrative form which
differed from the multi-voiced and quasinarratives more often told by Regan.
Although the form is conventional in all three narratives, much of the
content described within the narratives reflect "border-crossing" experiences
that set Regan apart from her classmates. In this way these first two
narratives are more representative of Regan and her beliefs (see Appendix M
for an example). The third narrative, which I present and analyze in its
entirety below, is conventional both in its form and the theme that it

communicates.

148

Table 19

 

 

 

 

u r in o x 0-1- ; 1 gas: or !'1-1 r a'
CONTENT CONTEXT

I As an elementary student Regan This is a written narrative
decides to become a nurse. This constructed for the vignette
upsets her mother because her assignment where students wrote
mother has tried to show her that about a border-crossing experience or
there are many options open to her experience involving culture.
aside from the traditional "female
occupations" of nurse, teacher, and
secretary.

II Regan had applied for a job with a This oral narrative is fairly long. (It
Latino organization that served lasts about three minutes, about 47
Latino students who had been transcript lines). It follows Ellie's
expelled from school for violence or oral retelling of her narrative about
drugs. She described the interview the Black Jesus in a small group
with the director of the program. setting.

'ITI Regan talks about how when she was This occurs as part of a "narrative

 

 

in Paris to get into the discos, the
women had to look good and how
men were not encouraged to go into
the clubs unless they could spend a
lot of money. Women could
sometimes get in free.

 

cluster." It is a string of narratives,
all approximately 10-12 lines long in
the transcript. All these narratives
are about traveling overseas as a
tourist. They all position culture as
"exotic" or as contained within the
Other. I noted in my field notes that
I felt Regan told this story to "fit in"
with other participants. Although
she told other stories of France
elsewhere, I consider those
narratives to be postmodern
renditions of narrative.

 

Table 20 presents a conventional narrative shared by Regan in a large

group setting. It was situated within a narrative cluster--a sequence where

one speaker after another shared a brief narrative constructed in a very

similar form with a short orientation, complicating action, and evaluation.

Although Regan told other stories about her experiences in France and

Alaska, this is the only story that portrayed "culture as exotic" and "culture as

other." I wrote in my field notes that I felt Regan told this story to position

149

 

herself in a similar place to other speakers. Since they were all telling stories

about culture as experienced by being a tourist in another country, Regan

shared a similar story.
Table 20

 

 

Code Regan's Narrative

_CT/A Well, I lived in, when I studied in Paris, um, I mean, it was the same
O way. You had to have, if you had a group of women, usually could, if
CA you looked good, if you dressed up, you could usually convince them
CA to let you in for free. And we could usually um, there's like a $20, $25
CA cover charge for places. And we could usually get a couple guys from
CA our program in with us. But the thing is that those bars, I guess, I

CA don't know. In Paris at least, that's where all the men go to pick up
CA women so the men, like the older men, business men kinda thing

E will put up the money to get in. But they don't want men who are

E just gonna go in there and have a good time. They want men who are
E going to spend a lot of money and that kind of thing. So they let those
CA men in and then they try to get the women in for the men. Well,

E the theory. At least in Paris. And it was all a big negotiation. It was
CA like, you know, how good do you look and how much money you
CA had to pay. And if you were gonna stay and if you were a good dancer
R and you know, it was all this big negotiation.

A = Abstract, O = Orientation, CA = Complicating Action, E=_Evaluation, R_=- ‘
Resolution

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coming after her deep analysis of Hoffman's work, this story was a way
to reconnect to other participants. By telling this story in within a narrative
cluster where participants were "swapping stories" that portrayed culture as
exotic--something experienced while vacationing in other countries--Regan
attempted to position herself not as an "intellectual" but simply as a member
of the group. This type of story was very different and much less frequent
that the multi-voiced narratives that Regan shared and the grand narratives

that Regan identified and helped the group to address.

150

I l l ._ . 1 l l .
There are several examples of narratives that Regan told or wrote
where she demonstrated an amazing ability to put herself into the place of the
other, where "multi-voicedness" is actually represented in how the pronoun

"I" indexes more than Regan herself. For example, in the following excerpt
Regan put herself into the place of the Tlingit children she worked with. In
sharing the story with the group she described how their family literacy
program was run in a community center and was divided up by movable
partitions that allowed children and parents to be in separate spaces. The
children were classified as "at-risk" because they came from homes with high
poverty rates and high rates of substance abuse. Some of the children had
been removed from their homes several times. Regan described how difficult
it was to work with the children because they "were out of control" constantly
looking under and around the partitions. Finally, the workers took the room
dividers down and the kids stopped "acting up." Regan shared the child's
perspective: "She's [Mom's] over there and she's doing her own thing right
now, and yeah, I'm doing something over here with Regan and that's fine
because I can still see mom and I can be sure that she's not leaving me. "
Regan went on to say how important it was for the children to have the
security of seeing their parents since there were times when they had been
separated.

In other examples Regan also portrayed this "multi-voicedness."
During one week, she had the opportunity to hear a speech by Sister Helen
Prejean author of W0996). In her sketch book Regan wrote
about that experience and quoted the following excerpt from Sister Helen's

book:

151

 

I keep thinking of the gifts of my own upbringing, which I once took

for granted: 1 can read any book I choose and comprehend it. I can

write a complete sentence and punctuate it correctly. If I need help, I

can call on judges, attorneys, educators, ministers. I wonder what I

would be like if I had grown up without such protections and supports.

What cracks would have turned up in my character ? What makes me

think that I wouldn't have been pregnant at seventeen? How law-

abiding would I be?
In sharing this excerpt in her sketchbook and during our share time in class,
Regan positioned herself, as did Sister Helen, in place of the other. Essentially
she asked: If I had not the privilege of being white and well-educated, where
would I be? Who would I be? Again Regan internalized the exploration of
others by focusing it inwardly on the self.

Regan also explored this controversial topic of white privilege in the
following discussion of _Hnngenth/ieniomy and the experiences of Richard
Rodriguez (1982). As the teachers talked about Rodriguez's experiences in
school and also his work experiences, for example, when he worked digging
ditches, Ellie wondered what Rodriguez was trying to say. What did he
mean? Regan replied that the phrase "give up the privilege" is something
that she has heard people say about white people; however, she thinks this is
ridiculous. To illustrate her point, she read this quote from Rodriguez:

If tomorrow I worked at some kind of a factory, it would go differently

for me. My long education would favor me. I could act as a public

person able to defend my interest to unionize, to petition, to challenge
and demand. I will never know what real work is. I will never know
what the Mexicans knew gathering their shovels and ladders and saws

(p. 138).

152

 

Her reading of this passage was followed by a pause where again other
participants failed to respond to her comments. With no uptake on the quote
and immediately following the pause, Regan shared a story about living in
Alaska.
That was something I personally struggled with. Last year I was in this
volunteer organization, got paid very little money, and it was living in
solidarity with the people that we served. That was such a ridiculous
thing for me. Like I had less money than most of my clients and I had
so much more privilege than they did. And it was, it was ridiculous,
you know, because I, I grew up in Plentywood (a predominantly white
upper middle class suburb in the midwest). You know, I went to a
private, four year college. Everything. They had, and they had a lot
more, some of them had twice as much money as I did. And they, you
know, still did not have the opportunities and the abilities that I had.
Like the whole unionizing and just seeing yourself as going
somewhere, able to change your sense of agency. Like I can change the
world if I need to, change it, then I can make that happen.
Regan felt that the idea of her "living in solidarity" with the people she
served was ridiculous because even though she had less money, she had a lot
more cultural capital. She had an education, a middle class upbringing, and
she was white. In sum, she had many more opportunities than the people
she was trying to serve. This excerpt shows that although Regan is
comfortable and capable of putting herself in the place of the other and
exploring what that means, she remained aware that no matter how much
she empathized or how she may have physically taken on the trappings of
poverty, there were critical differences--power and privilege--between other

peeple.

153

f

Grandmarramces

As I explained at the beginning of this chapter when defining grand
narratives, these narratives (also called metanarratives or master narratives)
are "conventional" in the sense that they typically follow a linear structure
and that they are an established part of our American culture. However, I
categorize them as imconventional because they are told or identified by
Regan for a range of purposes exceeding the conventions of ordinary story-
telling. Grand narratives are deeply sedimented within culture and serve to
sustain cultural understanding as tacit and shared. As such they are very
powerful but the are also very limited in their form, scope, and evaluation
and limiting in the ways that they construct and constrain an individual's
cultural identity. To provide a critique of these narratives requires stepping
outside the "primary Discourse" (Gee, 1989) which has been used to construct
these narratives. As we will see, Regan's ability to identify and then critique
these narratives is limited by her own experience and knowledge, by the
extent to which she can step outside the primary Discourse. Her efforts at
critiquing the grand narratives were more successful where her own
knowledge was detailed, nuance, and critical, where she had internalized a
"meta-language" that allowed her to explore the power that these narratives
had to "constitute us as persons and situate us in society" (Gee, 1989, p. 9).

In the early stages of analysis grand narratives posed some of the same
dilemmas as quasinarratives. For example, some days I would code these
grand narratives as narratives, but on other days they appeared to be facts
strung together. When I shared examples of these forms of discourse with
others, reactions were mixed. Although the following excerpt has muted
elements of a narrative-~it has actors, action, and setting, it lacks distinctive

statements of orientation, complicating action, and evaluation.

154

There were a lot of articles sort of in Nemmeek or mm
mm and magazines like that. I saw a few just in this past year
about African Americans and sports and about um, like the kind of
role models that we have as a society. And I thought this was really
interesting because this pre-dates all of that. Kind of like, um, you
know, African American boys and I don't know, I mean, I'm sort of
making this up but it's the general ideas. You know, in 6th grade are 12
times more likely than white kids of the same age and everything to
um, to think that they're gonna be a professional basketball player or
something. Because just that prevalence of those kind of role models
for African Americans, especially boys. And you know, your chances of
making it to be NBA are one in, you know, a million. Even if you play
high school sports and you're pretty good at it. And movies like Heep
Dremns and things like that. I was just thinking that, how sad it was
that this, you know, this was sort of around before. Like I didn't, I
mean, that was something I never had even thought about before I saw
Wins, I don't think. And um, and just that she [Angelou]
wrote this book and it happened to her and, you know, in the 403 and
early 505. And look what, you know, look how little, you know, how

little we've come from there.

Although the excerpt above lacks the linear form of Labov‘s narratives, I can

extract an underlying story from the talk, and the result is one of the "grand

narratives" of our culture. These grand narratives are the overarching stories

that define our culture and in many cases, such as that above, construct and

sustain stereotypes. Regan has identified one of the metanarratives that

assists in the construction of racial stereotyping and prejudice. The

metanarrative is one reflected in stories like W. Using Burke's

155

pentad of Actor, an Action, a Goal, a Scene, and an Instrument, we can retell
the story. The young African American male, the actor, sets out to achieve
the goal of becoming successful of "making something" of himself in society.
This drama is played out in the inner-city where the scene is dominated by
images of poverty, drugs, and violence. In this grand narrative, a sport,
particularly basketball, is both the instrument and the action.

This narrative with its depiction of African American success is a
comfortable representation of race in American society. McIntyre (1997) refers
to this type of narrative as an "exception story" because it allows whites to
emphasize the exception rather than the rule. In this case, the metanarrative
indicates that black males have a way out of poverty, especially as it is
characterized in urban areas. This ignores the reality that poverty and race are
correlated with black children experiencing poverty at a rate almost three
times that of white children (Grant & Secada, 1996). The metanarrative also
contributes to the stereotyping of black men by implying that they are suited
for sports but not for other professional occupations. The narrative thus
frames "choice" in ways that divert attention away from practices of
institutionalized racism which limits the opportunities and chances for Black
men who wish to succeed within a predominantly white society.

Regan identified the grand narrative described above during the
group's discussion of Maya Angelou's WW
(Angelou, 1969). Several participants shared stories that demonstrated how
our society is racist. For example, Cass and Ellie both shared stories about
black male friends who were stopped by police. One man's car was subjected
to an intensive search because police were certain a box of laundry detergent
(a white powder) was drugs. Another group of men were stopped because

they were traveling in the company of one white woman who was a friend of

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theirs. Although these stories also reflect overarching stereotypes of black
men, neither narrator identified the grand narratives which frame these
stories.

Regan was the only student who directly identified master narratives.
Rather then telling a story about a black man who made it as a sports hero,
she questions the believability of the master narrative. The intertextual
reference to Maya Angelou further strengthens Regan's criticism of the
"success story" because the group had been discussing Angelou's description
of her schooling and how when the white school received new textbooks, the
black school received a basketball court. Regan's final comment: "Look how
little we've come from there" indicates that the story of what Black
Americans can be successful at and of what role they should play in our
society is one that has been constructed and maintained across generations.

Although Regan uses reference to Angelou to imply criticism of the
master narrative, her experience is limited to what Angelou has written as
well as by her own position as a white middle class woman and by her own
"primary Discourse." Her position is further limited by the course
curriculum which did not include autobiographies written by African
American male authors. However, there are other settings where Regan is
able to use her own knowledge and experience and her willingness to critique
the grand narratives and to push the group's understanding and insights into
Others. This is particularly apparent in Regan's comments during the
group's discussion of W (Tan, 1991).

Critiquing the Grand Narratives: A Discussion of The Kitchen God's Wife

Although I have indicated that Regan's discourse, her position as an
"intellectual" and the lack of uptake on her ideas, often positioned her as an

outsider, Regan also played a powerful role in helping others to rethink their

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positions. In the following example, Regan used her experience and training

a women's shelter to help other participants begin to identify and critique the

master narratives that shape our understandings of domestic violence and

battered women. The example below is excerpted from discussion of The

M where participants had been discussing the relationship

between the

character Winnie and her husband Wen Fu and Winnie and her

daughter Pearl.

Ellie:

Jaime:

Ellie:

Jamie:

I had a question about kinda comparing what was happening to
her to Winnie in China with an abusive husband who abused
the children and, you know, basically killed one of them.

Did your heart wanta fall out when

And how would that have, how would that have been different
if they would have been in the United States at the same time?
Because there's a lot more stuff going on now and it was kind of,
what I mentioned a while ago. I think it was the last time we
talked about this. Sometimes it's very hard to even understand,
because this whole world is so foreign to me. I can't even begin
to comprehend somebody doing this to a child or somebody not
being prosecuted for some of what he was doing. But number
one, we're looking at another foreign culture and at another
time. And how would it have been, even if it had been in
America in the 408

Probably it would have been overlooked. Especially if it was

during the war. Here in America, people

: They still have, I mean, the statistics on women being battered

are what? One woman every three minutes or something like

that.

158

Above Ellie and Jaime constructed the idea that abuse that was tolerated in
the 1940's in China would have been tolerated in the 1940's in the U. S. too.
They implied in the U. S. today things would be different. This prompted me
to wonder if this is actually the case, and I tried to raise the issue of domestic
violence in our contemporary society with my reference to current statistics
on women being abused. The response below suggests that domestic violence
was not considered to be a problem in contemporary society because, as
participants pointed out, there are more laws, and there are safe places to go.
The repetition of the word "law" and its juxtaposition with "repercussions"
indicates what the participants believe about abuse--that women are protected
in our contemporary society.

Ellie: But we're a lot more conscious of it now and there are more

Jaime: Laws.

Ellie: Laws and there are repercussions.

Cathy: There are safe places to go.

Regan: Well, I mean, but like the waiting list, at [the women's shelter]
in Lakeridge is like two or three months.

(?): Really?

Regan: Yeah, most, most nights you can't get, I mean, you like can
show up at their door and they'll be like sorry. You know,
there's no room. So although people are more conscious of it,
sometimes it's worse because you get a lot of women calling
hotlines and stuff and there's not, there's not the resources to
take care of them.

Jamie: How disheartening that would be, to say I'm trying to get out of
this situation and you can't help me.

Toni: And now what do I do? Go back?

159

Regan: And even, now, well, I mean

(talking together)

Jaime: Forcing me to go back to the situation and try again.

Regan's comment that the shelter has a waiting list of two or three months
and that women are actually turned away causes the group to rethink the
grand narrative it has begun to construct about women. The group has begun
spin story where women are sometimes abuse, but where they are provided
for through shelters and hotlines and where abuse is not tolerated; there are
laws and repercussions. The construction of this story which allows both
individuals and society to turn a blind eye toward the problems of domestic
violence is thwarted by Regan's insistence that the group think about the
statistics. Not only does the group pause to reconsider the story they are
creating but they begin to put themselves in the place of the battered women
by making statements such as "I'm trying to get out of this situation and you
can't help me." and "And now what do I do? Go back?"

Regan continued to push the group's thinking about their portrayal by
pointing out that on average battered women leave their partners six times
before they actually leave for good; leaving and returning is part of the cycle
of domestic violence. The group did not engage this comment directly
through their own experience, but returned to their analysis of the text. They
looked closely at abuse of Winnie and her children by Wen Fu and ultimately
the relationship and respect (or lack of respect) between men and women.
The exploration of the text slightly reframed the conversation to safer ground;
however, the participants sustained the general subject of abuse, a potential
hot lava topic. While the group was discussing disrespect, Ellie reframed the
conversation and moved it to even safer ground away from the topic of abuse

and the rights of women. Using a visit to her sister in Japan as a starting

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point, Ellie shared how everyone in Japan was so "gracious" but even when
they were polite they could insult one another or send signals that say "get
out of my business." Although this prompted a short exchange of several
minutes around this topic and exploring the actions of several characters in
the book, one of the participants returned again to the topic of abuse by telling
a story about her sister who had an abusive boyfriend and who after nine
years in an abusive relationship was still unable to leave. She also shared
how her family and residents of her small community were afraid of this
man. She ended her story by. linking it with the text saying: "So I' mean,
with Wen Fu, especially the time it was, I, I can understand....well, no, I can't
understand but I've seen it." Although this participant did not directly
evaluate her story, the context, details, and imagery created the opportunity
for what Tannen has called "internal evaluation" (Tannen, 1989) where
speakers are led to an interpretation or evaluation based on details in the
story's internal structure. In this case, the speakers point was clear: Her sister
and her sister's family and friends were unable to deal with the situation of
domestic violence. In other words, the resources provided by the community
were not enough to free her from the cycle of domestic violence.

This was actually a point that Regan had hoped to make to the group
members through her sharing about her knowledge about domestic violence
and how limited resources are. In her interview she talked about how she
felt that during the discussion about battered women she had knowledge that
others did not have. She felt that one of her roles within the group was to
share this knowledge, and she also felt that others should do the same.

Regan: I was thinking about that shelter example. That was amazing to

me, that people are like "Oh, we have such great resources."

Mary: Oh, yeah.

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Regan: What? Like I have the total opposite impression. Like we have

resources, what are you talking about?

Mary: Right

Regan: You know, but it was like, but I didn't go in with a standpoint

like these people, you know, they don't know, to shake my
finger at them, or they don't know what's going on. But it was
like hey, well, you know, I have a little bit of experience in the
domestic violence field and this has been my experience. And
not that it's different or more valid than their experiences, but
it's, I mean, it is different. But it isn't more valid, it's just
different. And so maybe to, to kind of keep those, those ideas
changing. I don't know. I mean, in terms of my role, maybe
that's, that's how I would define it. Just trying to share as much
information. And I hope that people who have more
information about other things than I do will share with me and
just kind of keep an open, an open mind or discussion about it.
(Interview, 10-9-98)

During her interview Regan recalled what she tried to do during the
discussion of domestic violence. She indicated that she was amazed that
others believed we had "great resources" to address the issues of domestic
violence since through her work with the shelter she was aware of how
inadequate these resources were. Regan was careful to describe the tone with
which she hoped to share information. Rather than "shaking a finger" at the
rest of the group, she indicated that she knew her experience was "different,"
not "more valid." Regan talked about her role in the group as being one

where she shared information. She also hoped that "that people who have

162

more information about other things than I do will share with me and just
kind of keep an open, an Open mind or discussion about it. "

Regan's comments were reflective of how she saw herself as a learner
and as a participant within the group. In making contributions, she hoped to
contribute to and open discussion about topics raised within the group. In the
context of fIIhe Kitehen Ged's Wife, her comments had the desired effect; they
pushed the group to consider the new information and to rethink their
positioning of battered women. The group enters what Salvio (1995) has
called a "common place" where participants are able to "dwell in ideas, to
debate, to inquire," (Salvio in Reischl, 1999). Although participants enter this
common ground during their discussion of W in part
due to Regan challenging their views, there were other opportunities, as
explained throughout this chapter, where participants did not dwell, debate or
inquire. Those "missed opportunities" demonstrate how difficult it is to raise
and sustain conversational topics that challenge cultural narratives,
particularly those that deal with issues of racism, sexism and classicism.

Conclusion

Regan heightened my awareness of the dilemma that teachers
encounter in trying to promote conversation-based discussions of literature.
In the opening comments of this chapter I stated that as the course instructor
it was difficult to know how to respond to Regan's comments. During our
discussion of Lesflnlmnslstien I had written in my field notes: "I got the
feeling that people didn't get Regan's point here on deconstructionism (sic),
etc. I think she has done an amazing job of analyzing the text. I know I
would have responded differently had I not been the instructor. I want to
reaffirm Regan's ideas but not isolate others" (field notes, 10-6-99). Had I only

been a participant in the course, I would have felt free to engage Regan's

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ideas. However, as the course instructor I was keenly aware that by
responding to her ideas and engaging in a conversation about the topic, e.g.
deconstructivism, I would again position her as "the intellectual" and could
isolate others in the group who were not impressed with Hoffman's writing,
did not understand deconstructivism, and who, like many white American
women, did not perceive of themselves as intellectuals (Belenky et al., 1986).
The dilemma of being the teacher educator and thus wielding a great
deal of power and discourse to position otherwise is particularly contentious
when considering the objectives of the course and that Regan with her varied
experiences and penchant for interpreting texts often embodied the very
things I was hoping to accomplish within the course-"exploration of self and
other, consideration of the social and cultural contexts of literacy, use of
autobiography to explore and understand cultural and linguistic diversity. In
addition, Regan demonstrated throughout the course that knowledge is not
static, but that the relationship between language, culture and self and other is
a dialectic. Like Hoffman, whom Regan so much admired, Regan herself is a
traveler, very much aware than in our postmodern world few things are
fixed. For example, during her interview Regan talked about how she was
less sure of her opinions than she used to be and how she "used to think of
the world as a very solid place." She gave this illustration:
Maps. I always take this back to an experience in 6th grade. We made
these really big maps of Europe and we each had to think of a different
way and I had not cardboard but that particle board stuff and I put like
cereal and different like things for all the countries and it was Europe,
of course. Europe. Euro-centric. So we had to do maps of Europe and
that just being the way it was. Like you just drew the lines where they

were and that's where the lines are. And not, like in France, you know,

164

 

World War I, World War II, Germany, like the lines moved. And I
just didn't really have a sense of that before. And I think that I may see
one of my roles now, especially in terms of social, societal things that

are going on as maybe somebody who moves those lines (Interview 10-

9-98).

Although at times Regan's discourse positioned her as an
"intellectual" and distanced her from her peers, at other times Regan's talk
pushed the group to explore new territory, to reconsider our reading of the
cultural narratives which contribute to the oppression of the Other through
racism, classism, sexism. McLaren (1993) writes:

It is one thing to seek continuity as part of one's communal, civic or

national identity; it is quite another to fix identity in those narratives

that will 'read' us in a distinctly totalizing way. Contained in all
cultural narratives is a preferred way of reading them We don't only
live particular narratives but we inhabit them (as they inhabit us). The
degree to which we resist certain narratives depends upon how we are

able to read them (p. 212).

McLaren emphasizes that the grand narratives which are found within our
culture, can serve positive, unifying purposes. However, he cautions that
those narratives can fix identity, for example, the hard working immigrant
always achieves success, and those who fail do so because they do not work
hard. Regan has learned to "read" these grand narratives to critique them.
Her critique class distinctions, gender roles, monolingualism all demonstrate

her resistance.

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CHAPTER SIX
CONCLUSION

The Need to Examine Form, Function, Content, and Context of
Narrative

Recently theorists, researchers, and teacher educators have argued for a
return to narrative and a valuing of preservice and inservice teachers'
experience and knowledge, particularly through autobiography or other
forms of personal narratives as a resource for learning. In examining life
experiences, advocates of narrative argue that individuals can be transformed
by stories and that stories can be a means for teachers to express beliefs about
theory, practice, and curriculum (Connelly 8r Clandinin, 1988, 1990; Grumet,
1988; Jackson, 1995; McEwan & Egan, 1995; Withrell & Noddings, 1991; for
overviews see Carter 8: Doyle, 1996, Casey, 1995). Similarly, the study
presented in this dissertation explores how narrative can be used by teachers.

In undertaking this intensive study of narrative in a masters course on
"Culture, Literacy, and Autobiography," I found that stories of personal
experience assisted teachers as they explored curriculum, instruction, and
issues of culture and diversity. For example, revisiting narratives over time,
as Ellie's case illustrated, created opportunities for transformation through re-
emplotrnent. Changing the stories of self and other that we take forgranted
within a discourse through re-emplotment can increase the likelihood that
teachers will be more aware of and sensitive to their biases and thus more
attentive the needs of all students. Additionally, narratives of personal
experience are important to teacher education because both preservice and
inservice teachers often downplay theory in discussions of instructional

practice while at the same time relying heavily on experience to explain their

166

 

philosophical stance (Hargreaves, 1984). For this reason, narrative may
actually provide teachers with ways to link theory to practice, as
demonstrated, for example, by Cathy's attempt to explore culturally
appropriate instruction through the narratives of her African American
colleagues. However, in spite of the potential for narrative to assist teachers
in exploring a multitude of issues and theoretical perspectives, and in spite of
the potential transformative properties of narrative, I am troubled by the lack
of criticism with which many narrative studies are presented in teacher
education. Even though narratives that have the power to transform the
individual are acknowledged to be rare (Jackson, 1995), the limitations and
constraints of narrative as a tool for teachers' learning are often
overshadowed by the strong positive claims that researchers and theorists
make about narrative.

In general, researchers focus on the universal nature of narrative
(Bruner, 1986; 1990a, 1990b; Polkinghorne, 1988), stressing the "commonplace"
of stories--that people use stories to make meaning and construct identity
(Casey, 1995). In addition, narrative studies in education are limited because
they often rely on interviews rather than group discussion. Likewise
narratives told in conversation are not typically analyzed in their entire
context. Because contextualized narratives or even lengthy narratives are
hard to handle in the long forms, the analyst typically fragments narratives
and/ or summarizes their content (Casey, 1995, Riessman, 1993). Many
conclusions about narratives and its educational potential are drawn from
these studies. Yet both the type of data (predominantly interviews) that have
been analyzed in relation to narrative, and the methods of analysis

(fragmenting narratives), limit those findings because they do not emphasize

167

narrative as a social process as well as a spoken text. For example, in her
review of narrative research Casey (1995) writes:

...researchers are now discovering that they need to attend to its [a

narrative's] internal patterns of priorities. Every narrative is a highly

constructed text structured around a cultural framework of meaning
and shaped by particular patterns of inclusion, omission, and disparity.

The principal value of a narrative is that its information comes

complete with evaluations, explanations, and theories and with

selective silences, and slippage that are intrinsic to it's representation 5

of reality (p. 234).

In this passage, Casey draws our attention to several nuances of
narrative that deserve researchers' critical attention. First, narrative
structures follow cultural patterns; simply stated, narratives have particular
forms or structures. Second, the content provided by these narrative forms is
embedded in discourse that reveals a narrator's beliefs, attitudes, and
positions. Third, narrative reflects Halliday's three interrelated functions of
language as communicating: content, social relationships, and structure
(Halliday, 1973).

In her summary of Halliday's language theory, Riessman (1993) adds a
forth feature of narrative that must be considered--that of context.
Interestingly, although Casey and Riessman identify the features above as
integral to narrative analysis, few narrative researchers have studied the
forms, function, and content of teachers' narratives in educational settings.
In particular, few studies have examined narrative in the context of teachers'
discussion groups in course settings. This seems odd given that teacher
educators often use peer discussion groups in exploring dilemmas of

teaching, examining course readings, and so forth that compose the

168

if:

curriculum of many teacher education programs and that narratives told
during discussion or written for course work are apt to be far more common
in educational settings that formal interviews.

As stated above, a limitation of existing studies is that they tend to
focus on excerpted fragments of narrative elicited through interviews or, in
some cases, on excerpts from narratives written by teachers as educational
autobiographies or life histories. Thus even though the theoretical work that
many researchers draw from (e.g. Bruner 1986, 1990a, b) presents narrative as
dynamic, much of the research on personal narrative--including work on
teacher autobiography--implies a definition of narrative as both linear and
static (Miller, 1998). This impression arises from the types of narratives
elicited (e. g., teacher autobiographies or life-experiences in interview settings)
and because advocates of narrative often fail to define what they mean by
narrative or to explore how particular narratives are constructed, how they
function, and how the context plays a part in narrative construction and
interpretation. In other words, content of narratives is emphasized at the
expense of consideration of its form, function, and context.

In thinking about narrative and its forms, functions, content, and
context, it may be helpful to consider what we know about children's
narratives in educational settings to illustrate how limited our knowledge of
teacher narratives is. In contrast to teachers, we know a great deal about the
stories that children tell in educational settings, including the forms,
functions, and content of their oral and written narratives (e. g., Cazden, 1988;
Dyson, 1993; Heath, 1983; Lensmire, 1994; McCabe & Peterson, 1991; Michaels,
1991). For example, Cazden's classic description of topic-centered vs. episodic
narratives identified how content and sociolinguistic features of children’s

stories function in during sharing time. Euro American teachers were apt to

169

respond more positively to topical narratives because they were familiar with
the sociolinguistic features of these narrative texts typical of white middle
class speech. In contrast, teachers often interrupted African American
students whose episodic narratives were interpreted by the teachers as lacking
a coherent focus or including information that teachers considered
unimportant to the story they believed the student was telling. Studies by
Cazden and others have provided valuable insights into how narrative is
constructed and how it functions for children and how teachers respond to it
children in classrooms. This knowledge of narrative assists teachers in
developing curriculum and instruction and responding to students in ways
that value student contribution. It has been used by teacher educators to help
teachers think about their work with children. Few parallel studies
conducted in educational settings carefully identify the form, function, and
content of stories that preservice and inservice teachers share when they are
the students or learners in educational settings. Such studies are valuable
because they allow teacher educators and teachers to look at their own
learning with the same critical lens that has been applied to teacher-student
relations around narrative in the classroom.

Recently a small but growing group of researchers have begun to look
at the context surrounding teachers' stories (e. g., Swidler, 1995) and at
response to multicultural literature in discussion groups for inservice
teachers (Florio-Ruane, et al., 1997; Glazier, et al., in press) and between
collaborating teachers and interns (e. g., Reischl, 1998). While this study is
similar to those previously sited, it pushes further into the forms of teachers’
stories and ways that these constructions of narrative function within teacher
discussions. Rather than assume that these stories are educative or

transformative, the work presented in this dissertation attempts to document

170

stories told or written by inservice teachers in the context of literature based
discussion groups to examine how and if or when narrative assists learning.
In so doing, I have attempted to begin to describe how a particular set of
narratives is constructed in the context of teacher learning, in addition to
considering the content and functions of narrative.

Research on narrative needs to be extended by further consideration of
narrative structures, contexts, and functions in addition to content, and that
in undertaking such an exploration we need to give careful consideration to
the limitations of narrative. This requires raising and responding to many
questions that are, as yet, unaddressed by narrative studies in education: How
is narrative transformative? Do all stories promote growth and change? Are
some narratives more "educative" than others? What do stories "look like"
in preservice and inservice teacher discussions? How are these narratives
constructed? How do they function in the context of teacher education?
What contexts must we consider in exploring these narratives?

Significant Findings and Limitations of Narrative
NarratiiLLAmeamic

One of the most intriguing findings arising from the cases presented
here is how varied and rich both written and oral narratives are in the
context of teacher's engagement with multicultural literature and with
theoretical and research readings. If we think of Ellie, Cathy, and Regan and
the narratives presented in each case, narrative loses some of the static,
linear, monolithic structure implied in many narrative studies; that is, we
begin to see for adult learners, just as with children, there are multiple forms
of narrative-each with distinct sociolinguistic features--and these narratives
function in different ways. For example, in Ellie's multiple retellings, we see

how even one narrative in subsequent iterations changes its form, adding

171

more evaluation, or a more fixed resolution, or how the narrative changes its
content becoming more or less descriptive or introspective. Ellie’s narratives,
which essentially follow the same storyline, changes across contexts where
the narrative is written, spoken or shared in a larger or smaller group
settings. These changes provide different degrees of opportunity for Ellie to
consider her own position and the positions of others. It is only after
narrating multiple versions of her story that Ellie directly raises the possibility
of own prejudice. Such change implies that all narratives are not the same,
even when they are assumed to be "the same story," and clearly illustrates
that narratives are dynamic.

The dynamic nature of narrative also reflects understandings of culture

"under construction. As we see this in Ellie's' final narrative with its
emphasis on possibilities, narrative holds forth the possibility of exploring
alternatives, different ways of seeing things and doing things. For Ellie this
means beginning to engage in exploration of her own position as a white
teacher and thinking about whether race or prejudice could be problems that
influence her work with children. The dynamic nature of culture reflected
through narrative is also present in Cathy's reflections on the course and her
final project where she comments that she had redefined literacy and also
recognized that culture and race were not the same constructs. The multiple
narratives told by her African American colleagues introduced Cathy to
aspects of African American culture that Cathy had not considered before. In
turn, she began to see her own role as a white teacher differently. Through
her own narratives and the narratives of others she began to identify
culturally appropriate strategies that she could use to assist all her students in

becoming successful students. Regan also used narrative to reflect and

examine issues of culture. For example, in her course project she wrote about

172

the "violence to self" that was experienced by Rodriguez and Hoffman in
their autobiographies as they described their crossing of cultural and linguistic
boundaries. Regan also indicated how much she learned from the other
participants' stories about their classrooms in traditional school settings and
how their stories provided valuable insights into classrooms and learning.
However, not all narratives included course work or class discussions so
clearly assisted us in the learning process. Some stories were clearly more
significant for the light they shed on the difficulties inherent in learning
through and about narratives.
t ' t r in : ' liz' r

As a teacher I realized that I felt some stories did not push our
thinking; in fact it seemed likely that they would "reify" stereotypical beliefs
about culture, and in this way, the purpose of these stories ran counter to the
goals of the course. In reading through field notes, I began referring to these
stories as "narrative clusters" because they often occurred as a chain, where
one speaker immediately followed another. The stories were all similar in
length with speakers relating brief, traditionally formed (abstract, orientation,
complicating action, evaluation, resolution) stories. I wrote in my field notes
that when we shared these stories it felt like we were "swapping stories" or in
other cases, telling "'I-can-top-that' stories." I have used the plural form "we"
here intentionally because there were times when I too participated in this
type of storytelling. For example, there were times when I gave in to the
impulse to share an experience even though I recognized that the story I was
about to tell positioned culture as an objective construct that is embodied in
the "Other."

These conversations were troubling because they often led us to

"essentialize" the Other-~one of story's most negative and disturbing effects.

173

Maxine Greene (1993) cautions us against viewing narratives about others as
representations:
My point has to do with openness and variety as well as with
inclusion. It has to do with the avoidance of fixities, of stereotypes,
even the stereotypes linked to multiculturalism. To view a person as
in some sense "representative" of Asian culture... or Hispanic culture
or Afro-American culture is to presume an objective reality called
'culture," a homogeneous and fixed presence that can be adequately
represented by existing subjects. (Do Amy Tan's maternal characters
embody the same reality as does Maxine Hong Kingston's 'woman
warrior'? Does Richard Wright's Bigger Thomas stand for the same
thing as Miss Celie stands for in Alice Walker's W?) We
do not know the person in the front row of our classroom, or the one
sharing the raft, or the one drinking next to us at the bar by her / his
cultural or ethnic affiliation" (p. 16).
Greene makes the point above, that we cannot "know" individuals based on
their ethnicity or what we assume is their "culture." Yet many times the
stories we write or share, particularly those attempting to describe culture, do
essentialize others. This limitation of narrative is seldom acknowledged in
research, or in multicultural curriculum for teachers, but it was a real
problem I faced in attempting to foster discussions which explored the
relationship between literacy and culture.
E . I I ll' 1' 'l
The risk of essentializing others and the dilemma it poses confronted
me as a teacher and also as a researcher presenting three "stories" through the
cases of Ellie, Cathy, and Regan. Although their stories are "fixed" upon these

pages, the stories continue. In this sense the autobiographical aspects are not

174

just a looking back or a presenting of self within a present context, but are
teleographic, looking ahead, a projecting of possible future selves (Conway,
1998). In particular, I am reminded through Ellie's multiple narrations and
re-emplotments and by the movement and repositioning we see in her story,
in her self, that personal narrative and autobiography is not just about
looking back, but also struggling into the future. However, to maintain a
teleographic stance requires us to be wary of linear autobiographical
narratives which portray only a single and unified self (Miller, 1998). The
linear story with is singular self stands in opposition to the multiple selves
revealed, for example, through re-emplotment of Ellie's narratives or
through Regan's "multi-voiced" stories. In criticizing the linear form of
autobiography as it is often used in teacher education, Miller goes on to write:
"One difficulty that I see with such 'stories,' then, is that many do not explore
and theorize social, historical, or cultural contexts and influences, including
language an discourse, on constructions of the 'selves' who have those
'experiences."' (p. 150).

As a teacher educator one thing I have learned in looking across the
narratives written and told throughout the course is that we must provide
opportunity for creating and valuing narratives based on personal experience,
but we must also scaffold and provide opportunities for critical examination
of narratives. We must reflect on "language and discourse" of narrative, the
forms that these narratives take and how those forms function in the
construction of selves and in constructing and positioning others. This
includes consideration of how we and others are positioned through story
relative to the social, historical, and cultural context. For both teachers and
students this is a challenging undertaking. However, as we encounter a

multiplicity of stories, of voices, of ways of being, we find "access to other

175

ways of looking at the world [which then] calls into question the absolute
character of our own understanding of it" (Proefriedt, 1989/ 90, p. 86). Thus
critical reflection on personal narrative can foster multiplicity as a means of
resisting the fixed categories of race, ethnicity, and gender that we use to
stereotype and simplify others and their experiences.

Unfortunately, critical examination of narrative discourse and forms is
difficult. In many cases, teachers are resistant to examining issues such as race
or gender which they perceive as "hot lava." Even when such topics are
introduced, for example, in the many times Regan raised issues of interest to
women and talked about how women are positioned in society, there are few
examples of uptake on this controversial topic and when there is uptake the
exploration of the topic is not sustained over long periods of discussion. This
pattern of engagement is exemplified with participants exploration of
domestic violence and women‘s shelters that surfaces in discussing The

't ' i
W

Looking across speakers demonstrates additional variation in the
structure of narrative. Cathy's extended narrative about the "Black Child
Placed in Crisis Conference," situated in the context of a class discussion is
shaped by both the discussion of readings and other narrative which frames it
and by the interaction with other participants. What is important is not just
the narration of her experience as a white teacher crossing cultural
boundaries but what she does with her story and how she responds to the
multiple resolutions (yet another variation on the structure of the narrative).
The dissonance created by those resolutions and the experience provide the
impetus for Cathy to pursue further exploration of her role as white teacher.

Here again, narrative plays a part. Cathy asked her African American

176

colleagues to talk about their experience with education and about what they
believed was important in educating black children. Again, these stories
contain the possibility in their telling, in Cathy's hearing of them, they will
provide opportunities for learning, even for transformation. In Cathy's case
there is some evidence to this effect. She developed a set of
recommendations for teachers who work with diverse students. The
structure of Cathy's final project is narrative in much the same way as Gloria
Ladson Billings' book The Qreamkeepers is narrative. Cathy and Ladson—
Billings chronicle the lives of teachers and conclude with specific
recommendations. Interestingly, some of the recommendations are the
same. Cathy had not read Ladson-Billings' book before or while completing
her study, so the final project becomes an even more striking example of how
Cathy extracted themes and recommendations using her own experience as a
teacher to analyze the narratives people shared and to help those narratives
educate her about her role as teacher. The key to Cathy's growth is in what
she chooses to de with the narratives, how she uses them in her learning and
ultimately, in her teaching.
11 . I E E I l I] I ll |°

In order for teachers to transform their conceptualization of power and
its reproduction in classroom practice, they must identify and challenge
existing notions of literacy, culture and constructions of self and other within
our society. If these factors are not identified, examined, and challenged,
narrative alone will not lead to change in these areas. Acknowledging and
fostering multiplicity is also a key in beginning to uncover issues of power
that wend their way into our stories: "Pedagogical practices grounded in life-
writings, including autobiographies, memoirs, and self-portraiture, can

expedite narrative articulations of how systems of power and constraint, both

177

social and familiar, saturate and compose languages of self, positioning each
of us" (Zuss, 1997, p. 163). It is clear from looking at how narratives are
constructed and how they function, that identifying and critiquing systems of
power does not always accompany autobiographical explorations. Regan is
the only participant in this study who consistently referred to and explored
issues of power, particularly power difference based on race, social and gender.
When compared with other participants the ways she talked about power are
quite striking especially when we look at power as it is used in students' final
reflections on the course and their learning.

Whereas other participants either imply or state directly that stories are
power, Regan comments that "A word after a word after a word is power." In
other words, literacy is power. This is a theme Regan pointed out earlier in
her sharing about Sister Helen Prejean. Power is also a key element that the
authors address in recommendations that Regan makes for books/ articles to
read when the course is taught again. For example, for future offerings of the
course she recommends reading Lisa Delpit's (1995) book, chetieenle's
Children, W by bell hooks (1994), and Kohl's (1991) 1
Wen. Regan typifies the kind of teacher that Cochran-
Smith (1995) has in mind when she writes: "the system needs teachers who
regard teaching as a political activity and embrace social change as part of the
job."

Although we have seen that personal narratives and autobiographies
can be used to essentialize, they can also be used to support explorations of
power. "Contemporary ethnic autobiographies partake of the mood of meta-
discourse, of drawing attention to their own linguistic and fictive nature, of
using the narrator as an inscribed figure within the text whose manipulation

calls attention to authority structures, of encouraging the reader to self-

178

consciously participate in the production of meaning" (Fischer, 1986,p. 232).
Such devices draw the reader in as a participant in ways the reader was not
invited in before in traditional autobiographies. Although authors attempt to
describe their lives and ethnicities, the texts move beyond such description in
"attempting to activate in the reader a desire for communitas with others,
while preserving rather than effacing differences" (p. 232-233, italics in the
original). Regan realized that she is not just "white girl from Plentywood,"
and this is reflected in both her meta-discourse and strategies she uses to
describe her experiences (e.g. the open-endedness, the multiple presentation
of self, the intense self-evaluation and introspection). Like the
autobiographies Fischer writes about, Regan's narratives move beyond a
caricature of her ethnicity to reflect on power and position, what Fischer
refers to as "authority structures." Her insights reflect the need for
community but also a desire to be part of the larger community, and to
critique her place in it.

Regan more than any other student, demonstrated how complex and
different narrative structure can be thorough her blending of academic
discourse with story structure. The ways that Regan used narrative point to
further limitations of narrative structures. Regan's identification and critique
of the "grand narratives" that are prevalent within our culture indicate draw
our attention to how sedimented these narratives are and how even our
short anecdotes will often "pay tribute" to the grand narratives of culture.
Regan's case also shows us that critique of the grand narratives are limited by
one's own personal experience or knowledge and how difficult it can be to
raise issues which challenge existing systems of oppression. Across the course
discussions and narratives, we see that it is difficult for teachers to raise and

sustain discussion of issues related to power and oppression. Even where

179

there is a shift in discourse and teachers appear to engage in more exploration
of these topics, it is important to look the kind of engagement teachers
participate in. For example, although all course participants made more
references to power in their final course reflections, thus indicating some
increased awareness of issues of power, when I looked more closely I realized
that the types of power they referred to, for example, the power of story or
power of personal experience, did not address social or language systems
which create and maintain power relationships.

Teachers and Teacher Educators Learning Through Narrative

Narrative must be used with caution. Assigning literacy
autobiographies or narrative descriptions of a student's personal background
are not sufficient activities to push students to question and examine cultural
issues in light of power, and such examination is a critical part of exploring
topics such as racism, sexism, classism which reflect the need for individuals
and groups who benefit from these "isms" to preserve their power. In part
this means that teacher educators must question their own teaching practices
and motives. With students teachers can model the complex forms and
functions of narratives. In particular, all teacher educators, not just literacy
educators, who are striving to instill cultural sensitivity in their students
must recognize and help their students to recognize that the language which
crafts narrative, the language we use to describe our experiences also shapes
our thought about culture. As Gee (1989a) notes, for example, all discourses
are infused with both explicit and implicit ideology which functions to
strengthen their position. Thus, narratives reflect biases such as racism,
classism, and so forth. Therefore, we cannot be content to see student
narratives as simple constructions and reflections of themselves and their

views. We must press beyond to help students critically engage their own

180

 

stories to examine how the students position themselves and others through
their stories (Zuss, 1997).

As Miller (1998) writes, we must "theorize social, historical, or cultural
contexts and influences, including language and discourse, on constructions
of the 'selves' who have those 'experiences."' (p. 150). Students and teacher
educators must examine narratives in their social, cultural, and historical
contexts in the same way, for example, that I presented Cathy's narrative
within the context of discussion on one night of the course, within the larger
course, within Cathy's own learning, and within broader societal concerns
about white teachers working with ethnically and culturally diverse students.
In assisting students, we must also help them to critically examine language
and how it reflects and constructs both self and others. "Becoming a
multicultural teacher entails becoming a multicultural person" writes Nieto
(1992, in Zeichner & Hoeft, 1996, p. 529). Preservice and inservice teachers
must learn to ask themselves difficult questions about what their discourse
says about how they position others. Such inquiry should not result in
proclamation that teachers are "racist" or "not racist" or other evaluations.
As we saw in Ellie's case, discourse markers that may be perceived as racist,
for example, depersonalization of African Americans, can exist side-by-side
with discourse that explores prejudice or bias, for example, Ellie's question:
What if I have a problem [with race]?

As teachers reflect on the discourse used to craft their narratives, we
must also assist them in reflecting on how this discourse and the experiences
it represents have constructed our identities and our perceptions of others.
Obviously, this is a daunting task, particularly since we know that individuals
avoid this sort of self-directed examination particularly around hot lava

topics. For this reason, it is critical to foster engagement with published

181

narrative, or narrative written by individuals outside the teaching site.
Critiquing discourse and experiences provided by others can be a constructive
Educative Narratives, Literacy, Learning, and Experience
T E h a Le rn
As mentioned above teacher educators play a critical role in using
narrative in their classrooms. How they carry out this role and interact with
students can be enhanced through inquiry into their own teaching and
learning. In Chapter 2 I wrote that being both the researcher and teacher on
this project enabled me to "see with new eyes and hear with new ears." In
exploring the intricacies of my role as a researcher, I suggested that the
tension between being a teacher and a researcher helped framed the questions
I originally raised about personal narratives and the analysis of those
narratives. Researching my own practice has allowed me to participate in a
close examination of my own beliefs. Cochran-Smith (1995) writes that this
examination is something in which all teachers and teacher educators should
participate:
In order to learn to teach in a society that is increasingly culturally and
linguistically diverse, prospective teachers, as well as experienced
teachers and teacher educators, need opportunities to examine much of
what is usually unexamined in the tightly braided relationships of
language, culture, and power in schools and schooling. This kind of
examination inevitably begins with our own histories as human beings
and as educators; our own experiences as members of particular races,
classes, and genders; and as children, parents, and teachers in the world
(emphasis added, p. 500).
As a participant within the course and as course instructor, there were

obviously many opportunities within the course through reading

182

autobiographies, articles, and student work and in orchestrating and
participating in discussion to examine the relationships of "language, culture,
and power in schools and schooling" and to share personal narratives.
However, acting as a researcher magnified the lens with which I viewed my
teaching. Analyzing our class discussions recorded on audio tapes and
through field notes reminded me again and again of how difficult it is as a
teacher to assist students in their exploration of "hot-lava" topics (Glazier, et
al., in press). Many times in listening to audio tapes or reading through
transcript I observed that my responses to students stalled conversations or
moved us away from hot-lava topics toward safer ground. For example,
during the discussion following Cathy's oral retelling of "Black Child Placed
in Crisis" conference I commented that, "If we take race out of the picture..."
The words reflect my attempt to re-position the conversation away from the
hot lava of race, and yet, I made this statement with the intention of
furthering the conversation. Researching my own practice and acting as a
participant made me keenly aware of the challenges of using oral and written
narrative as a pedagogical practice to scaffold students' explorations around
issues of diversity.

As I have revisited the findings of this study and discussed both
positive benefits and limitations of narrative, I have suggested that not all
narratives are educative. Attempting to address what teachers did learn
through narrative, that is, how narrative is educative, was a difficult task.
Discussing student learning is difficult because it involves judging students'
stories, and in the need to comment on student learning, I encountered the
tension between the role of researcher and teacher. This tension is, however,

a useful one because it reflects yet another dilemma of using narrative as a

183

tool for teaching and learning in the classroom. How do we evaluate what
students are learning? How do we assess the stories that others are writing or
telling?

Although I have not solved this dilemma to my own satisfaction, I
believe a partial answer lies with Dewey's notion of experience in education.
Of this he writes:

If an experience arouses curiosity, strengthens initiative, and sets up

desires and purposes that are sufficiently intense to carry a person over

dead places in the future, continuity works in a very different way.

Every experience is a moving force. Its value can be judged only on the

ground of what it moves toward and into....It is the business of the

educator to see in what direction an experience is heading (Dewey,

1938, p. 38).

In saying this, Dewey is not dodging the pedagogical responsibility for
assessing both student learning or the curriculum, but he is stressing that
learning may not appear as discrete time bound "outcome." Thus, a teacher
may be hard pressed to state definitively what students have learned or are
learning through particular narratives read, told, and re-told in the context of
a fifteen week course. The interplay between narrative construction of self,
other, and culture is complex, as is the relationship between how narrative as
a tool focuses on both the outward actions of experience and the inward
manifestation of language as sign. However, as both teacher and researcher, I
am responsible to identify the direction in which students are moving.
Although course assignments, discussions, and writing provide an
incomplete picture of what kind of knowledge is being internalized and to
what extent knowledge is internalized, such artifacts do provide evidence of

how students are beginning to change and the direction in which they appear

184

to be growing. Much of this dissertation has described with examples the
trajectory of learning by such moves as re-emplotment as well as the
resistance to learning as is evidenced in the perspectives of some deeply held
master narratives. Narrative can be, in Dewey's terms, educative, but the
work of such learning is difficult and requires thoughtful curriculum,
teaching, and time.

Although as teachers we often hope that our students will arrive as
some final destination which is explicitly described and document--for
example, developing a insightful unit that demonstrates knowledge of
culturally appropriate instruction, culture as dynamic, and includes literacy as
a multifaceted tool--the chances that students will internalize and make
public these various forms of knowledge in the context of a fifteen-week
course is slim. However, what we as teacher educators can focus on is not
just the content that is being learned (e. g. Ogbu's (1992) classification of
minorities and his recommendations for teachers) but the development of a
disposition toward learning about culture and literacy. This disposition, as
Dewey (1938) noted, is often more important than the explicit content to
which students are exposed.

Being cognizant of culture, aware of what Au refers to as "culturally
appropriate instruction" (Au, 1980) does not require identifying a set of
constructs and applying them to particular groups of students saying for
example, "I'll use 'talk-story' with my Hawaiian children, episodic narratives
with my African American students, and so on and then designing
instruction differently for each child depending upon his or her ethnic and
cultural background. Rather it requires an attendance to culture as a
changing, evolving entity. "Viewed this way, culturally responsive

instruction involves identifying features of both teachers' and students'

185

experiences that can be drawn upon and transformed to create educationally
productive dialogue" (p. 12, Florio-Ruane 6r McVee, in press).

Narratives of personal experience need to be represented in teacher
education courses in ways that demonstrate their dynamic, multiplicitous
viewpoints. Narrative is not just "one form" but has the potential to be
many constructions and therefore to perform many functions. Like the
aspects of culture it reflects, narrative is dynamic. It embodies the
possibilities of change even as it holds forth the possibility to reify beliefs and
ideas. The greatest opportunities for transformation and learning through
narrative occur where teacher educators consider narrative form, function,
and content in relation to context. In the best of all possible worlds, narrative
provides preservice and inservice teachers with educative experiences which
teacher educators can point to in order to document a predicted trajectory of

growth and learning for students.

186

 

APPENDICES

187

APPENDIX A
COURSE SYLLABUS

TE 891 Culture, Literacy and Autobiography
Fall Semester, 1997

Instructor: Mary McVee

Office hours: By appointment Phone: 355-6135 (hm)

Email: mcveemar@msu.edu 432-0133 (wk)
Fax: 355-6135

Fall, 1997 Mondays, 4—6:50 pm. 107 Erickson Hall

TE 891, Culture, Literacy and Autobiography is a masters course with three
objectives: (1) to examine the social and cultural dimensions of literacy in a
multi-ethnic society; (2) to read and discuss ethnic autobiography and fiction
as a source of insight into both the authors' and readers' diverse experiences
of literacy; and (3)to learn about and practice peer dialogue in support of oral
and written response to literature. Students will read and discuss ethnic
autobiography or fiction, review selected research academic on topics
including culture, personal narratives, and literacy development; and engage
in inquiry and writing about language, culture, social identity and the process
of schooling.

The course offers several different kinds of learning oriented discussions. On
alternate weeks students will deliberate in seminars about key concepts
including ethnicity, autobiography, the cultural aspects of literacy
development, and the role of teacher and school in educating diverse youth.
In the intervening weeks, students will participate in book clubs organized
around one of five published ethnic autobiographies or one fictional work.
Students will also complete the following written work: (1) a pre- and post-
course questionnaire concerning literacy, autobiography, and culture (for
course planning purposes only and not graded);

(2) a series of narrative vignettes reflecting culture, language, literacy (not
graded); (3) a "sketch book" where students will include their works in
progress (graded P / N) (4) a reflective essay (graded); and (5) a written and oral
final project (graded) selected from one of the options listed below and
supported in class by periodic discussions of student work-in-progress.

In addition to selected readings from educational research available in a
student reading packet , the major reading of the course will be six narratives.
One is written by white teachers working among culturally diverse students
(Vivian Paley, W); two are written by American—bom members
of "involuntary immigrant groups" (Maya Angelou, Kn

BingSings; Richard Rodriguez, HnngeLefJL/Lemeiy); and two are written by
voluntary immigrants to the United States (Eva Hoffman, Lest in

188

Imnststien; Jill Ker Conway, Ihefiesgtfiemgeemin). One work (Amy Tan,
Ihe_K_it_chen_C_e_d_'s_M,te) embodies the blurred border that exists between
autobiography and fiction. All works have been selected to offer readers a
chance to explore the concepts of culture, ethnicity, social identity, literacy,
and schooling in depth.

This will be a graded course, and no "deferred" grades will be given. Grades
will be based on a total of 100 points. Points will be assigned to activities as
follows.

d'
(1) Oral participation in each of the course's six book clubs: 30 pts

(2) 6 entries in the Sketch Book: 30 pts

(3) One personal essay: 15 pts

(4) Ungraded: Series of Vignettes

(5) A final project presented orally and in writing at the end of the course: 25
pts

(Grades: 92-100 pts.= 4.0; 85-91 pts.=3.5; 78-84 pts.=3.0; 70-77 pts.=2.5;62-69
pts.=2.0)

Attendance policy: Students are expected to attend all classes. One absence per
semester will be allowed. For each additional class missed, 8 points will be
deducted.

Assignment Descriptions

Sketch Books: At the end of the semester we will take time through our final
projects, reflection, and discussion to trace our thinking and explore how the
autobiographies, book clubs, research articles, and discussions have affected
our thinking. Each student should keep a sketch book with items they feel
relate to the course. Students are encouraged to explore multiple formats and
multiple entries for each week. Things to consider might be: personal
responses to the readings, reflective or analytical responses, poetry, titles of
books you wish to read in the future, thoughts on your final project,
newspaper, magazine, teaching articles relevant to the course, your project, or
interests.

We will take class time to do some in class writing in response to prompts.
This too will become part of your Sketch Book.

This writing will be looked at by the instructor six times during the semester.
At the end of the semester, we will take time to reflect on the Sketch Book
through discussion and writing. Each entry is worth 5 points toward the total
grade for the course. Evaluation of the Sketch Books is on a P/ N basis.

189

The personal essay is worth 15 points of the total course
grade and will be due mid-semester. The purpose of the essay is to take time
to reflect on major themes in the course and how these themes might affect
one's views of culture, language, literacy, and/ or teaching (suggested length

apprOx. 5 typed pgs.)

Nemhyelignettes Students will write a narrative about a time when they
or someone they know attempted to enter a new social arena, had beliefs
challenged by a new experience, or had a school expeience that underscored
differences beteween family and school environment and relationships. We
will revisit these narratives throughout the semester as time allows.

: Students may choose among the following options in
developing their final project of the course. The project will be presented
orally to the rest of the class and also in a written document (suggested length:
10-15 pages, typed, double-spaced) due on Tuesday of finals week. The project
grade will reflect both written and oral work and totals 30 points of the final
course grade. Options for the project include the following:

(1) Choose, read and write about two additional published ethnic

autob1ograph1es /autoblograph1cal novels (. e. g. IheWemenWanie: by
Maxine Hong Kingston; WWW by Julia
Alvarez; W by Victor Villasenor; IheiLEyesWexe—gtehingfiefi
by Zora Neale Hurston; 1M5: by Bharati Mukherjee; Ihe_Centsnr_by John
Updike, W James McBride. W12

Ceefihyes by Sook Nyul Choi. )

You should write an extended report both summarizing the important
content and themes of the books for someone who has not read them, and
also analyzing the books' content in comparison and contrast with one
another and in relation to the other autobiographies we have read and the
course's key themes and topics as appropriate. You are also encouraged to
read what other reviewers/ critics have written about these books and
incorporate them into your writing.

(2) Identify a "book set" and develop a Book Club plan for an Ethnic
Autobiography Unit you might teach in your own class. The purposes of this
unit should include fostering appreciation for the literature, teaching
comprehension and writing by means of peer discussion and literature study
and teaching about culture and cultural difference to your students. When
presenting this unit to the class, be prepared to share the published
autobiographies you chose, the rationale for choosing them, as well as your
design for the unit and any materials you develop in support of it.

190

(3) Write your own extended personal narrative (or series of brief narrative
vignettes) of cultural experiences and literacy development. These "literacy
narratives" should stress the roles played by cultural / ethnic experience,
gender, social class, and / or other social characteristics of your youth as they
related to your experience of becoming literate in school. Also include some
reflection upon these narratives and what you have taken away from them.
(This can be dispersed throughout or done at the beginning or end). You
may also include artifacts/ performances reflective of those experience as well
as expression in multiple modes and media (e.g. drama, dance, music,
artwork, photography);

(4) Research peer dialogue and the role it plays in learning both about
literature and culture. To complete this project, you will use audio tapes of
one or more of the Book Club meetings in which you have participated as
well as any "field notes" you take as an "observant participant" in the book
discussions. This analysis can be presented in the form of a case study of a
book club and its conversations over time or as a report of conversation
within a single club meeting where important issues were deliberated.
Completing this project would give you some tools for studying peer
response to literature in your own classroom.

(5) View and analyze two of the following autobiographical films and write
an analytic review of them: "Educating Rita," "Avalon," "Hoop Dreams,"
"Stand and Deliver," The Boyz in the Hood;" "The Joy Luck Club" (or others
in the same genre and of your own choosing). Requirements same as in the
autobiography project described in Option #1 above.

(6) Propose an alternative project that ties into the themes and concerns of

the course. Please meet with the instructor to discuss this, or discuss over
email.

191

 

AUGUST 25

a v ' w
Class One: Introduction

SEPTEMBER 1, LABOR DAY (University Holiday- No Class)

SEPTEMBER 8

SEPTEMBER 15

sSEPTEMBER 22

SEPTEMBER 29

OCTOBER 6

OCTOBER 6

OCTOBER 20

OCTOBER 27

NOVEMBER 3

NOVEMBER 10

NOVEMBER 17
NOVEMBER 24
DECEMBER 1

DECEMBER 8

Class Two: Book Club I
G Sketch Book Due

Class Three: What is culture/ethnicity?: Implications for
the work of teachers

Class Four Book Club II
i Sketch Book Due

Class Five: Ethnic autobiography: A literature for
personal and cultural exploration

flgnettenssignmenmue

Class Six: Book Club 111
i Sketch Book Due

Class Seven: Cultural perspectives on teaching and
learning literacy

W

Class Eight: Book Club IV
i Sketch Book Due

Class Nine: Teaching and teacher education in
multicultural school settings

Class Ten: Book Club V
0 Sketch Book Due

Class Eleven: The role of narrative and dialogue in
literacy learning and cultural understanding

Class Twelve: Book Club VI

i Sketch Book Due

Class Thirteen: Film Club 8: Project Work (including
reflections on the Sketch Book)

Class Fourteen: Final Project Presentations I

Class Fifteen Final Project Presentations 11
(Final Exam Week)

Annamfinamrmecmdueluesdaxflecemm

192

COURSE READINGS

AUGUST 25

Class One: Introduction

description of course content and format

introduction to book club

introduction to ethnic autobiography and course readings
research on narrative

film clip: Avalon "mini book club discussion"

reading due: none

SEPTEMBER 1, LABOR DAY (University Holiday- No Class)

SEPTEMBER 8

Class Two: Book Club I (see attachment for content and format of book club
classes)

Paley, V.G. (1979 / 89). Whitejesehet. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.

SEPTEMBER 15
Class Three: What is culture / ethnicity?: Implications for the work of teachers

Read articles #1 8r 2 and read either #3 or 4; other is optional

(1) Ogbu, J U. (1992). Understanding cultural diversity and learning.
EducationaLResearcheL 21(8), 5- 14.

(2) Singer, A. Multiculturalism and identity. W6),
24-28.

(3) Eisenhart, M. (1995) The fax, the jazz player, and the self-story teller: How
do people organize culture? WW 26(1): 3-

(4) Florio-Ruane, S. (1995). Crossing borders in education. In Florio-Ruane, S.
anddeTar,J. 11 ‘ 1.11- 11 0‘ o1.-.1r' ' . f11111‘: 1‘

leammgjhoutculturuniliteracx (Unpublished manuscript)

SEPTEMBER 22
Class Four Book Club 11

reading due: Angelou, M. (1969). Lknenmlflemegeimgsmgs New York:

Bantam.

SEPTEMBER 29

Class Five: Ethnic autobiography: A literature for personal and cultural
exploration

193

reading due: Read articles #1 5; 2 and £111.16]; #3 or 4; other is optional)

(1) Greene, Maxine (1994). Multiculturalism, community, and the arts. In

Dyson, A. H. and Genishi, C. (Eds) The need fer stem: Cultural diversity ir_1
W Urbana: NCTE
(11-27).

(2) Abt-Perkins, D. & Gomez, M. (1993). A good place to begin-~Examining our
personal perspectives. W 193-202.

(3) Edelsky, C. et a1 (1993). Lost and found. The Review Qf Edueatien. 15. 307-
315.

(4) Proefreidt, WA. (1989/ 90). The immigrant or "outsider" experience as a
metaphor for being an educated person in the modern world: Mary Antin,
Richard Wright and Eva Hoffman, MELUS, 16(2),

77-89.

OCTOBER 6
Class Six: Book Club III

reading due: Hoffman, E. (1989).;25113 nan elgdgng [if e in en l'langfl! anagu g:
New York: Penguin.

OCTOBER 13
Class Seven: Cultural perspectives on teaching and learning literacy
reading due: Read a_11 three

(1) Ferdman, B. (1990). Literacy and cultural identity. The Hazard
W0), 181- 204

(2) Dasenbrock, R. W. (1992). Teaching multicultural literature. In Trimmer, I.
andWarnock, T. 1 r 11-11 1 r: 1_ra 11 r1 — 11- a 1-11-

MW Urbana: NCTE (35-46)

(3) Trueba, H. T. (1989). Cultural embeddedness: The role of culture on
minority students' acquisition of English literacy. In W

111‘11‘ 1"1_1 11111 R 5111 f1 '1- 111
W). Conference Series 89- 1. National Center for Research on
Teacher Learning. East Lansing: Michigan State University. (77-90).

OCTOBER 20
Class Eight: Book Club IV

reading due: Rodriguez, R (1982) MW
Riehardjgdfiguez. New York: Bantam.

194

 

OCTOBER 27
Class Nine: Teaching and teacher education in multicultural school settings
reading due: Read articles #1 5; 2; #3 is optional)

(1) Paine, L. (1989). Orientation towards diversity: What do prospective
teachers bring? a h R - . a i na nt f r R

Mg. East Lansing: Michigan State University.

(2) Grant, C. A. (1989). Culture and teaching. What do teachers need to know?
In 1111‘1-1°Vii11_“ah n1‘1wl°‘: r11111 1111-111 :-

WWW Conference Series 89-1 National

Center for Research on Teacher Learning. East Lansing: Michigan State
University (55-76).

(3) McDiarmid, G. W. (1990). What to do about differences? A study of
multicultural education for teacher trainees in the Los Angeles Unified

School District W
W. East Lansing. Michigan State University.

NOVEMBER 3
Class Ten: Book Club V

reading due: Tan (1991) The Kitchen God's Wife. NY: Ivy Books

NOVEMBER 10
Class Eleven: The role of narrative and dialogue in literacy learning and
cultural understanding

reading due: Read #1 and read either article #2 or 3, ad eiLher #4 or 5;
others are optional.

(1) Florio-Ruane (1997). To tell a new story: Reinventing narratives of
culture, identity, and education. Education and Anthropology Quarterly 28 (2
NOTE: This article is at the end of the course pack.

(2) Soliday, M. (19914). Translating self and difference through literacy
narratives. W6), 511-526.

(3) Rosen, H. (1987). The nurture of narrative. In t ri
Sheffield, UK: National Association for the Teaching of English. (6- 2-1).

195

(4) Burton, RS. (1992) Talking across cultures. In Trimmer, I. and Wamock, T.
11‘ -11_r.11- -1-..1 1--1-1 11‘ 111- “- 1-111

11121111111. Urbana: NCTE (115-123).

(5) Florio-Ruane, S. and deTar, I. (1995). Conflict and consensus in beginning
teachers' discussion of ethnic autobiography. English Edueatien. 22 (1), 11-39.

NOVEMBER 17
Class Twelve: Book Club VI

reading due: Conway, I. K. (1989). W. New York:
Vintage.

NOVEMBER 24
Class Thirteen: Film Club 8: Project Work (including reflections on sketch
book)

DECEMBER 1
Class Fourteen: Final Project Presentations I

DECEMBER 8
Final Examination Week: Final Project Presentations II

written projects due on Tuesday, December 11 no later than 5 PM

196

Schedule of Book Club Activities Total time: 2 hrs. 50 min.
4:10-4:30 Projects/ Sketch Books / Announcements

4:30-4:50 Community Share

4:50-5:00 Writing Response

5:00-5:20 BREAK

5:30-6:40 Book Club (lhour 10 minutes)

6:30-7:00 2nd Community Share

Announcements/Projects/Sketch Book: 20 minutes

Community Share 1: 20 minutes

whole class time to review issues of content and process in previous Book
Club meetings and focus talk and writing for the day

Response Log Writing: 10 minutes

sustained extemporaneous writing in response to prompt about today's book
from the teacher; organizing response to the literature in preparation for
Book Club discussion

BREAK: 20 minutes

Book Club Meeting: 1 hour 10 minutes
in peer groups of five students / group; dialogue about today's book)

Community Share 11: 30 minutes

whole class sharing of Book Club discussions focusing both on issues of
substance and process; looking back at previous meetings and looking ahead
to the next book)

197

APPENDIX B
September 22, 1997 TE 891, section 03 McVee
Narrative Vignette Activity

Think about a time when you, a friend or family member tried to enter a new
social arena, had beliefs challenged by a new experience or had a school
experience that underscored differences between the private world of family
and the public world of school. Record your vignette in "free writing" in you
sketch book. Its length should be about half a page, though you can write
more if you choose. You should write it relatively quickly and without
excessive concern for editing, revising or polishing. Our aim is to take what
otherwise might be an ordinary life event and shape in into a "story worth
telling."

Please bring 8 copies of your vignette to class on September 29. You will share
this vignette with other students in the course.

Working with the Vignettes
We will work with the vignettes in two ways:

1. We will share them in class and compare and contrast vignettes in relation
to the following questions:

How is literacy defined in the individual's group and what is its
significance? What significance do particular texts have for an
individual's cultural identity? How does school relate to the
individual's motives or sense of identity? What messages do school
languages practices communicate to the individual abut his or her
culture and its value? What relationship does the individual perceive
between the tasks assigned in school and his or her cultural identity?
Must the learner change his or her self concept in order to do what is
asked by school? (adapted from Ferdman, 1991, pp. 110-111)

2. We will reflect on the process of writing, sharing, analyzing the vignettes.
This will be part of rewriting or revisiting vignettes on November 10.

For examples of vignettes, see the attached page.

Vignette activity adapted from Susan Florio-Ruane TB 882, 1995

198

Examples of narrative vignettes

Mary McVee
Vignette Oct. 2, 95

It was 1983, and I was seventeen, a freshman newiy arrived to the University
of Montana campus . I had grown up in the eastern part of the state on a cattle
ranch thirteen miles from the closest small town. For school we were bused
one or one and a half hours to schooi. Twelve years after I began school I
graduated with 90 students in my class, most of whom I had known for most
of my life, some since I first began riding the bus. Thus, coming to a
university of 7,000 students (tiny compared to MSU!) was intimidating to me.
One of my first experiences was to take a written placement test for freshman
composition in one room with several hundred undergraduates. Sitting on
tiered platforms in odd shaped desks, we were given blue books, told to
choose from two topics provided, and given a half hour to write. Looking
around, I knew no one. No one knew me. And I had never taken a timed
writing exam. Although I was a solid writer (I'd won several awards, received
good grades, and hoped to be a "real author" someday), I failed this test quite
miserably and was assigned to a remedial composition class.

I am cross-legged on the floor of my comfortable living room in a pleasant
midwestern university town. I am hosting dinner for a small group of young
women who are learning to be teachers. We gather here monthly to dine and
discuss autobiographies dealing with culture, literacy and education. Tonight
we are discussing the work of teacher and author. Vivian Paley, a
selfproclaimed thite teacher" who, when working with racially and
culturaily diverse children in a Chicago pre-school, newly encountered her
own ethnic identity and her biases about people different from herself.
Talking about her story over dinner leads inevitably to telling stories of our
own. Nell, one of the student teachers in our group, recalls a multicultural
festival at her elementary school. Nell and her classmates were required to
make oral reports about their ethnic backgrounds. She did not know much
about hers so she asked her mother to describe where her family came from
and what their customs were. Her mother seemed vague and not very
interested saying, "Some mix of Irish and English, I think." She had no
colorful details for Nell to include in her report. Nell recalls, "I dreaded
having to give that report." To make things more interesting she says, "I
faked being from Poland." (Florio-Ruane with deTar, in preparation).

199

APPENDIX C

Ellie's Narran'ye #1
Sketch book writing
Week 2 of Class, 9-8-97

Book Club of Vivian Paley's M91112:

Note: I've tried to capture the way Ellie wrote this on the page since it
conveys a particular emphasis. In Ellie's handwriting one typed line here
extends across an entire handwritten page.

I walked in-

There it was--The picture--
Black 8: white of AL students
Black only.

I always thought it would
never bother me. I hoped now
it wouldn't.

Then behind me was another
picture: Jesus 8: the 12 Apostles
dressed in African garb,
on the African plains.
<Jesus lived in the Middle East.
This bothered me until I talked
to my partner:
"If it makes the kids feel
better to see Jesus in a way they can
identify with--then so be it."

Life Magazine< Chinese
Russian
African
female--too far

200

APPENDIX D

W
Oral narrative told in First Community Share
Week 2 of Class, 9-8-97

Book Club of Vivian Paley's White {I'eaeher

(1.00 minute)

Excerpted from talk about Vivian Paley and White I'eaeher. Students were
talking about what they had included in their notebooks. This is the second

course meeting.

Ellie: The first time I walked into the building I taught in in Flint. There’s a
big picture about 16 x 20 of the whole school. And I immediately
notice of course how there is absolutedly no white faces in the whole
thing except teachers. And my first thought was "Oh, I thought this
would never bother me. What if it bothers me?” And I turned around
and there’s a picture of Jesus in African garb and all the Apostles are
African and their all in their African huts and their all on the plains of
Africa and that just bothered the heck out of me. ’Cause I’m like look,
”It says right there he’s in Jerusulem. He wasn’t in Africa.” That just
drove me nuts and then um I was talking to my partner that I ended
up teaching with and this is us right here and one of my classes
(pointing to picture in note book).

Mary: That’s when you were doing your ]
Ellie: That’s when I was wor.. in Flint ]
Mary: In Flint, okay ]

Ellie: Yeah, this is one of my classes in Flint and um she said you know it
used to bother me too but if it makes them feel a closer connection to Christ
because they see him like they look, how can that harm anything and then I
just wrote down here Life magazine there was an article that came out right
after that Life Magazine did on Jesus. There were like 15 different pictures of
Jesus. The Russian Jesus, the Chinese Jesus, the this Jesus, the that Jesus and it
kind of, um, just came out in my mind. So I kind of just jotted that down.I
kind of threw some pictures in too.

201

APPENDIX E

l ' ' ' #
Oral narrative told during small group book club discussion
Week 2 of Class, 9-8-97
Book Club of Vivian Paley's White flfeaeher

(1.00 minute)

Ellie: It was really interesting about the Jesus really bothered me. It really
bothered me because it was, it was right on the, I, I went right on the
footsteps of all those arguments you heard in the, in the media about,
you know, the, the black leaders are trying to prove that Jesus is black
and I’m like ”Look, let’s just take, if you believe the Bilbe is what it is,
you believe what it says you have to believe that he was a Jewish boy.
He probably had olive skin, a big nose, and, and dark hair, you know.
But, but then to hear her, you know, her tlak about it and say, If it helps
them to identify hwith Him just to see him like them, you that really
kind of changed. The one that really got me though was looking at
Time-Life Magazine and they had the female Jesus and I’m like, now
that’s too far. That, that one, jus..that one, that one went over the edge.
I could even do the Chinese Jesus, I thought, ”That’s kind of cool” the
Russion Jesus, I thought Okay, I can deal with this, but the female
Jesus...

202

APPENDIX F

£11., ll . Ell

written narrative for vignette assignment
Week 4 of Class, 9-29-97

I entered the doors so excited at the possibility of a new teaching job--my first
teaching job.

There on the wall was the 16 x 2, black and white photo of the entire
student body and faculty; a sea of black faces only broken up every now and
then by the adult white one.

At that moment, everything I had always prided myself on was
challenged. I never thought I would ever have a problem with teaching a
child of any race, but here I was standing in the hall just about to interview to
teach at this school. What if I did have a problem with race? What would
that mean I was?

I did get the job. I entered the school my first day still so excited, but
now, not the least bit concerned about the kids' race.

I learned so much about the black culture working there and honestly
never felt the difference between us was a problem. They were my kids. I was
their teacher.

203

APPENDIX G

511' . ll . #5
revised written narrative for vignette assignment
Week 11 of Class, 11-10-97

I walked [in] the doors so excited, at the possibility of a new teaching
job-my first teaching job (emphasis in the original). After a year of substitute
teaching, I longed for my own classroom. I dreamed about having my own
class of students, how I'd be so happy to be their teacher and love every one of
them!

When I entered the building, there it was, on the wall facing me, a
portrait of Jesus Christ. A black Jesus Christ. I had heard so many talk radio
discussions about 'Was Jesus Black' and I always found myself yelling at the
radio "He was from Jerusalem! He was Middle Eastern! Why is that so hard
to understand!" It would bother me that some black leaders felt the need to
change my Savior to boost their image.

As I looked around the other walls, there was a black Mary and child,
and a picture of the Last Supper taking place in an African grass hut, where
black Jesus again, and his disciples were wearing African clothing. I was
beginning to feel very uncomfortable. I would probably have a difficult time
at this school if I was expected to accept a black Jesus. But then I saw it. The
16 / 20 photograph of the whole school population; a black and white
photograph, mostly black. There were a few white faces; those of adults-
teachers and administration-swimming in this sea of black children.

At that moment, everything I had always prided myself on was
challenged. I never thought I would ever have any problem teaching any
child of any race, but now, here I was faced with things I did not believe (black
Jesus) and something I never thought I'd face-a class of all black children.

What if I did have a problem? What if I found I was uncomfortable
here? What if the children did not want to listen to me? Would the
principal see something in me I never thought was there; that I did have a
problem with race? If so, what would that mean I was?

I don't ever recall race ever coming up in the interview. The
interview went well. So well in fact, I got the job. When I got to the school my
first day, I was again excited-excited to have my own class, children I can teach
and love.

I learned quite a bit about the black culture working there, and
honestly, I never felt the difference between the kids and me was ever a
problem. I was their teacher, and they were my class.

204

APPENDIX H

i ' r a ' #
final oral retelling in small group discussion around
re-vised written narrative for vignette assignment
Week 11 of Class, 11-10-97

(4:45 minutes)

Evaluative clauses are italicized.
FA = Flash Ahead Sequence

FB = Flash Back Sequence

SS = Side Sequence

 

 

\OCDVChUIIbUJNi—I

 

Ellie: Uh, no, I took the same story but I elaborated more on it.

I don’t know if you guys remember my story but it was
about when I went in for the job interview and I walked in
and I saw the big picture of the whole student body on the
wall. And they were all black and the only white faces on
there were teachers. Yeah.

???
Ellie: And um, I honestly did not know anything about

northern Finley. I mean, he [the principal] asked me on the
phone you know ”What do you know about northern
Finley?” I’m like

Regan: It’s in northern Finley. ]
Ellie: It’s in northern Finley ] laughter

That’s all I knew I didn't know anything about, you know,
the socioeconomic area, I didn’t know anything about the
population, nothing. Um, so it’s pretty much the same
thing, only I kind of, I elaborated more on it that it wasn’t
just that the, the big portrait of the student body, but when
you walk in the door, right in front of you is a picture of a
black Jesus. And then next to it is a black Madonna and
child and then there’s a picture of the last supper taking
place in a grass hut in the, you know, Savannah out in
Africa and Jesus is black and all the disciples are in African
garb and everything. And it really challenged something
that had always frustrated me like I, I, you commented
hearing these radio talk shows about you know people
going up saying things about saying ”Jesus is black.” And I
keep going ”He was born in Jerusalem; he was middle
eastern. What is so hard about this? ” You know. And it
really bothered me. And I didn’t put anything in here about
when it stopped bothering me, but mostly it was just that
initial shock of being faced with my own feelings. And it

 

FB
FB
FB
FB
FB
FB
FB

FB
FB
FB
FB
FB

 

205

 

Ellie's Narrative #6, continued

 

 

33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
7O
71
72
73
74
75

 

wasn’t like I all the sudden went ”Oh my gosh I don’t think
I can work in this school, but it was just an overwhelming
thing. I had actually never thought about a school that
could be 100% black. It, you, to always to me it was there,
there were some of them in your classroom. It was just
really hard to think of it being, you know, a 100% ’cause I
didn’t grow up in an area like that. I wasn’t teaching in,
even Lansing isn’t like that, you know, its... So I had just
honestly never thought about it and I was just facedwith:
What if everything I've always thought of myself is not
true? What if I find that I’m in this interview and they see
something in me that I’ve always said wasn’t there? You
know, what, what if it’s there? And I didn’t hones..., I didn’t
ever stand there and go ”Oh my gosh there’s no way I could
do this, but I was afraid that there actually was something in
me that was, that would be prejudiced or biased against this
or something because my first initial reaction was about the
black Jesus was like ”Come on, no way” But, then I was
faced with looking at this sea of people and it was almost
like I’m gonna be outnumbered here. What if they make
me teach this? What if they make me stand up there
working here and I have to start teaching this things I don’t
believe in. You know, And the whole thing with the black
Jesus was like ”Well, if it makes them feel better to see him
look like them, well, great, you know...

Regan: And they have white Jesuses everywhere too.

Ellie: Oh, yeah,

Regan: White Mary’s.]

Ellie: Yeah ]

Regan: When I went to Catholic school everybody was white]

Ellie: Yeah it was, It was a Catholic school in Finley. ]

Marsha: All black. That’s interesting. ]

Ellie: And I happened to see an article, I think I’ve mentioned
it a couple of times, it was in Life magazine recently after
this incident, that talked about Jesus and then it had like 12
or 16 just pictures of all the different Jesuses, even the
female Jesus and I went ”Now wait a minute” I can deal
with Chinese Jesus, I can deal with the Russian Jesus, but
the female. No, that I can’t do. I’m sorry but a woman
hanging on the cross just to me was a step too far. No
offense, Regan, I know you’re into this whole female thing.

Regan: No, that’s okay. I’m, I’m pretty sure that Jesus was a
man. It’s okay

 

SS
SS
SS
SS
SS
SS
SS
FA
FA
FA
FA
FA
FA
FA
FA
SS
88
SS

 

206

 

Ellie's Narrative # 6, continued

77
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93

 

 

94

 

Ellie: But that kind of helped me too work through you know

dealing with that one issue cause that was the one thing
that really bothered me. But mostly my concern was what if
I get this job and I’m in this room and all of the sudden it’s a
problem and it's something that I never thought would be a
problem and it really is. And that’s mostly what my
narrative was, was kind of waking up to who I really, who I
really was and what if there was a person in me I never
knew was there--someone I didn’t really like

Regan: Hmm, That’s interesting

Ellie: Do you know what I mean? Does that make sense? That
was mostly what the issue was, was just kind of being faced
with: What if I am something I’ve always said I wasn’t?
And I’ve always

Regan: Like if it just comes out one day when you’re talking]

Ellie: Yeah, or like, I mean, I was thinking about what if you’re
in this interview and this man is asking me all these
questions I can’t answer. You know, things I’ve never
thought about or.

 

207

 

 

Complete List of Words Coded for Repetition in Ellie's Narratives

APPENDIX I

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WORD #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6
Africa/ 3 5 0 0 2 2
African
black 2 0 2 3 12 9
bother/ s 1 4 2 0 1 3
bothered
bother-
ing
challenge 0 0 0 1 1 1
-ed
culture 0 0 0 1 (black c) 1 (black c) 0
face /s 1 0 1 1 1
(n-)
face (v.) 0 0 0 0 2 4
faced
facing
feel (v) 1 (3'3) 0 0 1 (e: feel 1
meam uncomfortabl
identify e
feeling 1 0 0 0 0 1
feelings
Flint 0 4 0 0 0 5
identify 1 0 1 0 0 0
Jesus/es 3 7 6 0 6 12
Christ
picture/s 2 5 0 1 4 4
photo-
graph

ortrait
race 0 0 0 3 3 0
white 1 1 0 2 2 4

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

208

APPENDIX J

Timeline for Class on 9-29 and Cathy's Story: "Black Child Placed in Crisis"

 

Time in Minutes

Topics

 

10

Midterm assignments

 

15

Sketchbook sharing
bilingual debate
racial discrimination suit
affirmative action
Black Americans in Africa
narrative cluster-culture as exotic, culture as other
Jamie
Ellie
Jamie
Cathy
(Transition: Mary)

 

13.5
1.5
5.0
7.0

Angelou video 8: discussion
Mary introducing video
Video playing
Discussion

(Transition: Mary)

 

19

Discussion of Abts-Perkins 8: Gomez

Cathy: everybody needs to reflect

Cass: what if there are many diverse students?

Jamie: how do we meet the needs of diverse
students?

Cass: aren't good at communicating, example of
article's second student, don't understand all the
cultural implications

Ellie: reframes question: We're uncomfortable with
race

Jamie: returns to Cass's question, one black child

Toni: also one African American child, bothered
when discussions are only "black 8: white"

(Transition: Mary)

 

 

Introducing Vignettes

 

15-20

 

 

Break 8: reading vignettes

 

209

 

 

Time in Minutes

Topics

 

62
7.5

30.5[

13.0
7.0
4.0
7.0

4.0

Discussion of all narrative vignettes

Cass: first teaching job

Ellie: former teachers in her school

Jaime: going to university
(Redirect to vignettes: Mary)

Jairne's narrative

Toni: gender

Ellie: gender

Regan's narrative

Ellie: centers

Toni: gender

Jamie: changing schools
(Redirect: Mary)

Cathy's story

Cathy tells her story
various resolutions

home visits
(Attempted redirect: Mary)

parent conferences
(Transition: Mary)

 

 

20

Maxine Greene article discussion

 

Hoffman review discussion

 

 

Class ends

 

210

 

APPENDIX K

Transcript of Maya Angelou's Poetry Reading1

Angelou:
I have written a poem for a woman who rides a bus in New York City.
She's a maid. She has two shopping bags. When the bus stops abruptly,
she laughs. If the bus stops slowly, she laughs. If the bus misses someone,
she goes "ahahaha." So I watched her for about nine months. I thought,
"hmmm, uh huh." Now if you don't know Black features, you may think
she's laughing, but she wasn't laughing. She was simply extending her
lips and making a sound "ahahaha."
"Oh," I said, "I see." That's that survival apparatus. Now let me write
about that to honor this woman who helps us to survive. By her very
survival, Miss Rosy, through your destruction, I stand up. So I used the
poem with Mr. Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem "Masks," written in 1892,
and my own poem "For Old Black Men"

We Wear the Mask

We wear the mask that grins and lies,

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes;-
This debt we pay to human gile;

With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be overwise,

In counting all our tears and sighs?

Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, oh my Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arrive.

And we sing, [she sings, snapping fingers

”Hey baby, bye, hmm we sing, hey”)

We sing, but oh the clay is vile

Beneath our feet, and long the mile;

But let the world think otherwise;

We wear the mask!

 

1From: "Facing Evil with Bill Moyers," a co-production of Public Affairs
Television, Inc. and KERA/ Dallas, March 28, 1988. Transcript by Journal
Graphics, Inc., New York, 1988, p. 3.

211

When I Think About Myself

When I think about myself,

I almost laugh myself to death,
My life has been one great big joke,
A dance that's walked

A song that's spoke

I laugh so hard I almost choke
When I think about myself.

Seventy years in these folks' world
The child I works for calls me girl

I say "Yes, ma'am" for working's sake
Too proud to bend

Too proud to break,

I laugh until my stomach ache

When I think about myself.

My folks can make me split my side,

I laughed so hard I nearly died,

The tales they tell, sound just like lying,
They grow the fruit,

But eat the rind,

I laugh until I start to crying,

When I think about my folks.

And the little children.

Song For The Old Ones

My Fathers sit on benches
their flesh count every plank

the slats leave dents of darkness
deep in their withered flanks.

They nod like broken candles

all waxed and burnt profound

they say "But Sugar, it was our submission
that made your world go round."

There in those pleated faces

I see the auction block

the chains and slavery's coffles
the whip and lash and stock.

212

 

My Fathers speak in voices

that shred my fact and sound

they say "But Sugar, it was our submission
that made your world go round."

They've laughed to shield their crying
then shuffled through their dreams
and stepped 'n fetched a country

to write the blues with screams.

I understand their meaning

it could and did derive

from living on the edge of death

They kept my race alive.

. . . By wearing the Mask.

[ Three tormented laughs and then a gasp. ]

213

APPENDIX L

Questions Cathy Asked During Her Interviews
With African American Educators

1. What was your socioeconomic status as a child?

2. What were your family's values as related to education? What type of
support and/ or encouragement did they give you?

3. Where did you go to school?

4. What type of school did you go to? (public, private, parochial, rural, inner
city, suburbs)

5. Was your school situation one in which you were in the racial minority or
majority?

6. Did you have many / any black teachers?
7. Did you experience specific instances of racism in school?
8. Did school play a part in shaping your sense identity? In what way?

9. What messages did school communicate to you about your culture and its
value?

10. What relationship do you perceive between tasks assigned in school and
your cultural identity?

11. Did you ever change your self-concept in order to do what was asked by
school?

12. What do you believe to be the more significant factor in determining
success or failure in school; race, socioeconomic status, family values 8:
support of education, gender, or what combination?

13. How have your own educational experiences affected you as a teacher?
What part does your race play in this or does it?

14. Do you feel you are better able to identify with black students than white
teachers can?

15. Do you "see color" in your classroom? Should teachers?

214

16. Do you treat black or other minority students differently than white
students? Should they be 8: why?

17. What can white teachers do to better educate and relate to black or other
minority students?

Suggestions for Teachers2

1. Respect children for who they are as individuals regardless of race or
culture.

2. Challenge all students, keeping in mind that many black children are not
accustomed to being challenged in school.

3. Learn more about the history of other cultures. Read From Slavery to
Freedom by John Hope Franklin for accurate information on African
Americans.

4. Get to know each student as an individual. Become interested in what they
do, attend their games, recitals, performances.

5. "Connect" with every child daily. Some children get lost in the hustle and
bustle of the day. Speak to each one every day.

6. Never give up on any student, no matter how strong the urge and
regardless of how unsupportive the parent is.

7. Remember that each child is as precious to his/ her parent as your child is
(or would be) to you. Remind yourself of this when you are at the height of
frustration.

 

2These suggestions are based on recommendations, suggestions, and comments made to Cathy by
the African American educators whom she interviewed. She handed out copies of her questions
and the suggestions at her final presentation based on the interviews she conducted.

215

APPENDIX M

Example of a Narrative Written by Regan in a Conventional Form (Abstract,
Orientation, Complication, Evaluation, Resolution)

Regan the Nurse

When I was in kindergarten, we did a unit on different kinds of professions.
It was a sort of "what do you want to be when you grow up" activity. We
talked about different jobs over the course of a week or two, I think having a
"profession of the day" or something like that. They were the typical
professions covered in this kind of unit: doctor, nurse, fireman, policeman,
teacher, etc. Looking back, I realize how sexist, classist and limiting the
options were. There were no options like mother, father, writer, artist,
carpenter, or truck driver. In any case, we were supposedly encouraged to look
at all different kinds of options.

My mother was a second grade teacher who had stopped teaching when I was
born. She was very involved in my school life and always had a good idea of
what was going on in my classroom. During this career unit, she was talking
to me about what I had learned at school and asked me what I thought I
might want to be when I grew up. I told her I wanted to be a nurse. Being a
strong, feminist woman who wanted to keep all the options open for her
daughter, she asked me: "But Regan, why don't you want to be a doctor?" I
responded: "Because boys are doctors and girls are nurses."

I don't remember this story, but my mom sure does. She attributes my
response to the media to which I was exposed in school and in popular
culture. I had learned my gender stereotypes early and well. She knew that
she couldn't completely shelter me from outside influences that would limit
my world view because I was a girl.

216

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