The Walkabout in an Alternative High School: Narrative As a Social Practice for Reflection on and Analysis of Experience
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The Walkabout in an Alternative High School: Narrative as a Social Practice for Reflection on and Analysis of Experience DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Larkin Weyand MFA, B.A. Graduate Program in Education: Teaching and Learning The Ohio State University 2016 Dissertation Committee: Dr. George Newell, Advisor Dr. David Bloome Dr. Valerie Kinloch Copyrighted by Larkin Weyand 2016 Abstract The field of English Language Arts has a long history of valuing students’ experience and placing it at the center of curriculum and instruction. However, the means of making experience educative for students has proved to be a challenging conceptualization, especially within the realities of classroom life. This dissertation addresses this issue by exploring how a particular school used an 18-week experiential program called “Walkabout” to create opportunities for students’ experiences to become educative individually and collectively through narrative performance. In Walkabout, students reflect upon the educative value of their experiences through multiple oral and written narrativizations of experiences over time. I frame the practice of making experience educative in two ways. First, I build upon Dewey’s (1938) notions of continuity and interaction. Second, I rely upon sociolinguistic scholars who conceptualize narrative according to its situated function as manifested by language-in-use. The larger ethnographic research project from which this study is taken was a two-year study tracing the writing experiences of two senior classes involving 18 case study students. This study was the focus of the second year of the larger study. I use the methods of case study and interactional ethnography to trace students’ participation with narrativizations of experience according to Rogoff’s (1995) three planes of activity—apprenticeship, guided practice, and participatory appropriation—to structure my discussion of students’ sociocultural participation with narrativizations of experience over time on institutional, ii interactional, and individual levels. Students were apprenticed into making experience educative over time through three primary moves: (1) making immediate evaluations tellable (2) constructing identities through narrativizations and (3) engaging in reflective meaning making on previous and ongoing narrativizations. These moves were evident in the students’ evolving language in use in how they narrativized their experiences over time in different narrative environments such as journals, class discussions, class papers, and public presentations. These moves were also influenced by the historical, institutional, and interactional forces that shaped the Walkabout program and its teachers, including an emphasis on individual and community growth and readiness to transition from adolescence to adulthood. By addressing student-generated narrativized topics over time, teachers were able to transform students’ immediate narrativized evaluations of experience into more complex topics. Three case study students demonstrated both resistance and acceptance of teachers’ attempts to engage them in reflective meaning- making but in all cases students did engage in robust dialogues where they at least considered alternate constructions of meaning regarding their narrativizations of experience. This study offers narrativizations of experience as a way to realize Dewey’s (1938) argument that experiences can be made educative through continuity and interaction and carries theoretical, pedagogical, and methodological implications for the value of using students’ experience as heuristic for teaching and learning. iii Acknowledgments While my name will be on the degree, many others deserve to share this honor with me. In fact, finishing the PhD would have been impossible without the help of many. I first want to thank the teachers at “Lincoln” for welcoming me into their wonderful school. I happened upon Lincoln about two weeks after arriving in Ohio, and “Chase” and “Leslie” were quick to share with me their experience and expertise in helping students learn through Lincoln’s unique experiential philosophy. I instantly knew I wanted to study their classes. Both have helped me see the profound value of designing curriculum that positions students as contributors. Chase, thank you for the crossing the street story and the Dumpster donuts story. Leslie, thank you for helping me finish this “blah de blah” even when things were kind of “blah blah blah.” You have helped me “be listenable.” My PhD was my Walkabout. You helped me learn and grow through my experiences much in the same way you’ve helped decades of students. You belong on the Mount Rushmore of Lincoln. I’m so glad we found each other before your retirement. I believe it was meant to be. Sorry you don’t love your pseudonym. J Thank you to the seniors of Lincoln (classes of 2014 and 2015) for allowing me to inhabit a spot in the corner for two years. Thank you for learning to live with the constant video and audio recorders. Many Lincoln students agreed to be my case study students over the two years. They willingly gave of their time in interviews and willingly shared iv their candid and often very personal thoughts by allowing me to read their journals. I am especially grateful for “Heidi,” “Cheryl,” and “Mallory,” whose generosity and narrativizations of experience shaped much of this study. Thank you to Dr. George Newell, my advisor, for taking me under his wing. I’m so grateful to you for the opportunities afforded me by working with you on the Argumentative Writing Project. You have shown me what it means to be relentless as a scholar. Thank you for supporting my dissertation work and suggesting the types of contributions I might make with my study. Thank you Dr. David Bloome and Dr. Valerie Kinloch for modeling scholarship for me. You are both tireless in your efforts. Thank you to my fellow past and present doctoral students, particularly Brent Goff, Allison Wynhoff Olsen, Jen VanDerHeide, Eileen Buescher, Minyoung Kim, and SangHee Ryu. I have learned so much by preparing class and conference papers with each of you. Thanks for always being collaborative and quick to laugh. I am grateful to my teachers. Mrs. Lloyd started my fire for English in ninth grade with “The Most Dangerous Game” and Romeo and Juliet. Mrs. Mary Sue Mousseau, who I did not like at first, became my very favorite high school teacher. One of her projects ruined my Christmas break during 10th grade, but I’m still proud of it. Two of my college professors, Dr. Debbie Dean and Dr. Chris Crowe, have inspired me through the years as both a student and as a developing teacher. In fact, in the summer of 2011, I asked Debbie Dean, “How do I become you?” Her answer helped put me on this path. I am grateful to my longtime colleagues at American Fork High School. I interviewed very poorly for this job, but somehow I got it. Working with forces of nature v such as Sam Beeson, Wendy Frazier-Snyder, Laurel Shelley, Leilani Sheen, Shelley Shupe, Christine Neher, Kira Ludwig-Shelton, Melissa Gibbons, Scott Lind, and Christie Hoopes continually influences my attitudes toward teaching and students. Most importantly, I want to thank my family. Thank you to my parents—John and Charlene (The Duke and Chuck)—for giving me an excellent childhood and for always valuing education. Thank you to Roy and Marilyn for their unflagging support of an English major. Thank you to my four kids: Ashley, Abby, Paige, and August for being so brave about moving across the country and starting over with friends. Ohio has been good to us. The tears you had over moving to Ohio have been replaced with tears for moving away from Ohio. Finally, and most importantly, thank you to Marianne. We had a good job, a good house, good friends, and two cars in Utah. When I suggested trading all of that for the repeated privileges of helping me make transcripts and picking me up late at night in the McDonald’s parking lot on High Street, you were quickly on board. We didn’t know how this would all work out, but I’m so grateful that you always had faith that it would. Completing the PhD would have been impossible without your generosity and flexibility. You are beautiful inside and out. I love you. vi Vita 2001…………………………B.A. English Teaching, Brigham Young University 2003…………………………MFA Creative Writing (Fiction), University of Maryland 2003-2012…………………..American Fork High School, American Fork, UT: English Teacher; Art Teacher Publications Newell, G.E., Bloome, D., Hirvela, A., with Lin, T.VanDerHeide, J., Wynhoff Olsen, A., and Buescher, E., Goff, B., Kim, M., Ryu, S., Weyand, L. (2015). Teaching and Learning Argumentative Writing in High School English Language Arts Classrooms, New York: Routledge. Instructional Video, “Finding Sources for a Research Paper” published on the OSU flipped ESL YouTube page, October 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xt2aNWTuRJk Instructional Video, “Show Me, Don’t Tell Me: Using Concrete Details to Hold the Reader’s Attention” published on Coursera’s “Writing II: Rhetorical Composing” MOOC, May 2013 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vBvwtsZWO0 Book Trailer, “Stories That Speak To Us Race and Gender” published by Utah State University Press, April 2013 http://ccdigitalpress.org/features/stories-speak-us- race-gender-trailer Fields of Study Major Field: Education, Teaching and Learning vii Table of Contents Abstract ..............................................................................................................................