Unit 4: Narrative as a Tool for Reflection

(Go back to Narrative in Instruction and Assessment)

(Go back to Unit 1: The Power of the Narrative Form)

(Go back to Unit 2: Narrative in Instruction)

(Go back to Unit 3: Narrative for Assessment and Differentiation)

The Value of Reflection

The reflective process is currently receiving increased attention as part of what it is that effective educators do. Rather than merely planning a learning activity, presenting the activity, and assessing the product from that activity before moving on to the next, instructors are increasingly encouraged to spend time reflecting on their classroom practice and outcomes.

Here are some ideas and insights about the importance of building reflection into your instructional practice:

Reflective Practice as a Teacher

Note this key quote: "You can't reflect if you can't observe." In order to create meaning out of an event, one must have the ability to perceive the event clearly.

Narrative Reflection Practices

One extremely effective method of being able to see events clearly (and later to reflection on them) is through the power of narrative. Through detailing a series of events, either verbally or in written text, the instructor is better able to perceive multiple facets of an event, as well as connections between events over time.

In this brief video, an instructor is interviewed about her own reflective practice of keeping a journal:

Reflective Practice - keeping a reflective journal

There are two key points to note in this video. The first is the emphasis on honesty as being an essential aspect of reflection. As will be further discussed below, a narrative approach to reporting one's experience is likely to yield more honest observations than a mere listing of activities, methods, and results.

The second important detail from this video is where the instructor indicates that reflective journaling allows her to "get patterns of things that happen." This is, again, an aspect of the narrative element -- recurring events, or motifs, indicate information worth noting. These patterns may not be easy to notice unless the instructor is writing down narratives of classroom activities over time, and later reviewing these narratives as part of the reflective process.

Narrative and the Candid Revelation

One striking example of power of narrative to reveal honest and candid revelations comes from Kathleen Weiler’s “Reflections on Writing a History of Women Teachers” (1997), in which the author reflects on her previous historiography of Country Schoolwomen, a study of women teachers in rural California.

Here, her interview of Ruth G. is, at first, tempered by the subject’s concern for presenting a socially-correct image -- at that time, a woman who is content to leave a career upon marriage and devote herself entirely to her home and family. However, Weiler’s ability to engage Ruth G. in the narrative of her experience yields an unexpected result. (from Weiler 1997, p. 364)

Ruth G. also left teaching during the Depression when she married. In the interview, the following interchange took place:

Ruth G.: I got married and they weren’t hiring married teachers. But I didn’t want to teach then anyways.

K.W.: That’s interesting too. Once you got married at Thermal they wouldn’t have kept you on?

Ruth G.: No, they wouldn’t have over at Oakland Colony either, that’s the school out by Tulare. The principal was married, but she had been there quite a while. A woman. Well, she taught it as a one-teacher school. But they wouldn’t hire married teachers after that. There weren’t enough jobs really.

K.W.: Did they give reasons?

Ruth G.: No, except there were, there was a surplus of teachers, and that was one way of not hiring. Married teachers, their husbands could support them. Other than that I don’t know.

K.W.: Wasn’t that kind of hard on you, to give up your job in the Depression?

Ruth G.: Well, he was working. He made enough. Ninety-eight dollars a month, and it was ample compared to now. I subbed some, quite a bit. No, that amount seemed to go as far as, a great deal more than now-a-days. I can remember, on our honeymoon, in September, and we’d drive by these schools with people in them and I’d sit there and cry and he’d say, this is a heck of a honeymoon.

K.W.: You were crying because…

Ruth G.: I wanted to teach (Weiler 1997, emphasis added).

Note the points of emphasis: the initial claim, the question about conflict (which also serves as an invitation to engage in narrative), and finally the contradiction of the initial claim. Which rings more true, the claim or the contradiction?

Often when asked to share our feelings about an event, we seek to offer a response that will be deemed acceptable. We assess the audience’s viewpoint, and then provide a response which we can justify to that audience. Above, Ruth G. provides an initial claim that she can justify through logical reasoning, and which matches the cultural expectations of the time.

However, when we slip into narrative, when we recall our experience, bringing memories to the fore and reliving them even slightly...then any pretense of justification is challenged by the truth of experience, and we share our more candid selves.

In this way, narrative is a powerful force for accessing deeper parts of our cognition. It can reveal truths we hadn’t recognized (or hadn't permitted ourselves to acknowledge consciously), and it can help us connect the abstract to the familiar. As a reflective tool, there is simply no equal.

Indulge in a Memory

Take some time now to settle with your favorite writing medium, whether it be keyboard, pen & paper, or something else. Make sure you will not be interrupted for at least half an hour, and turn off your cell phone. Select an instructional experience you have had -- not a generalized experience, but a specific moment in time that you think you can remember clearly. Write out, as thoroughly as you can, how it happened. Include as much description, detail, and dialogue as you can muster.

Begin now...

Once you are done with writing out your narrative, answer the following questions:

1. Can you identify what it is about that experience that made it stick in your memory?
2. Did you suddenly recall details while writing that you hadn't been thinking of before?
3. Do you feel any sort of emotional echo after writing about the experience, as if you are re-experiencing the same emotions you experienced at the time?
4. Most importantly, in looking back on this experience, what do you learn about yourself? Are you the same person now as you were then? Do you have any opinions about your actions at that time?

Not all narrative reflection experiences are going to be transformative, especially not when they are performed in a vacuum. A narrative is a sequence of events; similarly, narrative reflections are most valuable when they are conducted over a period of time, such that they reveal patterns that cannot be viewed from a single "snapshot."

References

Kathleen Weiler (1997) Reflections on Writing a History of Women Teachers. Harvard Educational Review: December 1997, Vol. 67, No. 4, pp. 635-658.

National Louis University. (2012, Jan 31) Reflective Practice as a Teacher. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaG3EiiS-7k

Reflective Practice - keeping a reflective journal. (2010, Jun 8) [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84Egv2GEC1I.

There and Back Again

Time to finish our adventure at the End of the Journey.