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THE NARRATIVE ACHIEVEMENT OF TEACHING PRACTICE: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL CASE STUDY

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

By

William C Pasters, B.A., M.Ed.

*****

The Ohio State University 1995

Dissertation Committee: Gail McCutcheon, Chairperson Approved By:

Robert Backoff Gisela Hinkle Amy Shuman Advisor College of Education UMI Number: 9544662

DMI Microform 9544662 Copyright 1995, by DMI Company. All rights reserved.

This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.

UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 In Memory Of My Parents, John M. and Eleanor A. Pasters. Their Spirits Created The Idea For This Work.

To Susan and Zack Whose Patience and Tolerance Made This Work a Reality. Thank You. To The Teachers At Lila Belle Elementary School Whose Participation Gave This Work A Voice.

11 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank all the teachers at Lila Belle Elementary School who made this dissertation possible. They shared more than I expected and more than I have brought to voice in this work. Their time and willing cooperation and their stories will be with me forever.

I wish to thank all those who have contributed to my growth and development as graduate student and researcher at The Ohio State University. I am especially grateful to the following Professors : Dr. Gail McCutcheon, who has provided inspiration, and personal support for this project, and acted as gentle critic and trusted confidant throughout ny work at The Ohio State University. She will never be forgotten; Dr. Robert Backoff, whose wise and spiritful counsel taught me to step "within iry circle" during my course work.

His wisdom, leadership, and voice will be heard throughout this dissertation; Dr. Gisela Hinkle, who changed the lens through which I view the world. It is a much deeper and fascinating place now that I see with "both eyes." Thank you for the "storyful"

iii idea which, in novice sculpting, has found a form in this dissertation;

Dr. Amy Shuman who gave me the "gift of story" and many

of the narrative concepts which appear in this work. Her ability to bring to language those issues which remained a mystery to me is a gift I will carry forever;

Dr, Gerald Reagan who taught me the importance of human dignity and respect for persons; Dr, Antoinette Errante for being an incredible listener and mentor. All of the above have made rty stay at The Ohio State University a rewarding, challenging and exciting experience.

IV VITA

April 8, 1946...... Born, Marion, Ohio 1968...... B.A. Otterbein College Westerville, Ohio 1969-1974...... Special Education Teacher Westerville, Ohio 1974-197 5 ...... M.Ed.-Kent State University Kent, Ohio 1975-1977 ...... Special Education Supervisor Richland County Schools 1977-1979...... Ohio Department of Education Columbus, Ohio 1979-1984...... Director, Special Education Programs, Delaware City Schools, Delaware, Ohio 1984-1991...... Principal, David Smith Elementary School, Delaware, Ohio 1991-1993...... Graduate Research Associate The Ohio State University 1993-1995...... Graduate Teaching Associate The Ohio State University

PUBLICATIONS Pasters. W. (1979). Learning Disabilities Guidelines. State of Ohio Department of Education. FIELD OF STUDY Major Field: Education TABLE OF CONTENTS Page

DEDICATION...... ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...... iii

VITA...... V Chapter I. INTRODUCTION...... 1 Standing In Wonderment to the Problem...... 1 A Confessional Tale: Establishing the Background for the Study-Introduction of Key Concepts...... 3 Overview of the Study...... 5 Research as Surrender to the Lived Experience...... 6 Questioning as Standing In Wonderment to the Lived Experience...... 8 Interpretation and the Authority of Naming...... 10 Methodological and Interpretative Considerations..... 12 The Development of an Epistemology of the Engaged-Respecting the Human Dignity of Persons...... 15 Justification for Researching the Nature of Teaching Practice Through Story...... 21 Words as Sign of Voice...... 26 Naming the Lived Experience-Selection of Participants and Site...... 30 The Research Questions...... 32 Storytelling and Practical Knowledge of the Lived Experience-Framing the Study...... 34 A Stipulative Definition of Reason...... 38 An Argument for Understanding as a Dialectic Between the Personal and the Lived Experience...... 41 The Personal Experience Stories of Craig Hastings...... 46 II. LITERATURE REVIEW...... 79 Thinking and Knowing...... 79 The Use of Story in Research...... 83 Narrative as a Practical Means of Studying the Achievement of a Teaching Practice...... 87 The Development of Teacher Thinking Research...... 88

vi A Discussion of Teacher Practical Knowledge...... 94 The Importance of Language in Teacher Thinking and the Achievement of Teacher Practical Knowledge...... 102 Understanding the Achievement of Practical Knowledge as Connection Between Individual and Community...... 107 Teacher Practical Knowledge as an Engagement in the Lived Experience...... 116 Narrative Ways of Knowing and the Importance of Hermeneutic Phenomenological Research...... 131 The Nature of a Narrative Lived Experience...... 135 The Personal and the Lived Experience Cannot Be Separated From Narrative...... 148 A Discussion-Qualitative Research as Framework for This Dissertation...... 159 The Personal Experience Stories of Abby Mayfield...... 170 III. METHODOLOGY AND RESEARCH DESIGN...... 204 Introduction...... 204 The Lived Experience as Touchstone for Hermeneutic and Phenomenological Research...... 2 07 German Phenomenology...... 208 Understanding as the Basis for Reasoned Action...... 214 The German Phenomenological Perspective of Kurt Wolff...... 217 Claim for the Ontological Significance of Hermeneutics and Phenomenology...... 219 Leveling the Research Playing Field...... 223 Reasoning as Essence of the Lived Experience...... 227 Justifying a Connection Between Reason and Understanding in the Lived Experience...... 231 Beginning to Wonder About the Lived Experience...... 237 Narrative Knowledge of the Lived Experience...... 240 The Research Design...... 245 Framing Questions About the Lived Experience...... 249 Standing In Wonderment to the Lived Experience...... 252 Investigating the Lived Experience-A Personal Reflection...... 254 The Researcher Examines His Domain Assumptions...... 256 Establishing a Starting Point for Surrender to the Catch; My Personal Experience Story...... 2 60 The Nature of Interpretation in the Catch...... 265 Nature of Knowledge in the Lived Experience...... 2 68 Moving Toward the Catch of Lived Experience...... 271 General Research Question...... 273 Guiding Questions...... 274

vii Preparing for the Catch...... 274 It Is Difficult If Not Impossible to Engage a Catch of the Lived Experience Without Human Resources...... 277 Opposition to the Catch. Dealing With Gate­ keepers ...... 280 Weakening the Catch...... 285 Standing In Wonderment Before theCatch ...... 290 Becoming Aware of the Power of the Passions in the Lived Experience...... 304 Establishing the Trustworthiness ofthe Study...... 310 The Personal Experience Stories of Carolyn White...... 314 IV. TOPIC-CENTERED NARRATIVES AND THEMES IN TWO STORIES...... 346 Reasoned Action as Self-Awareness of "Being" in the Lived Experience...... 348 Developing An Interpretative Point of View...... 354 Engaging in Interpretation-Disengaging From Analysis...... 3 61 Catching the Significance of Engaged Interpretation...... 365 Engaging the Themes...... 369 Arriving at Lila Belle School...... 374 Drifting in Stories Toward the Themes...... 389 Justifying a Dual Interpretive Stance to the Lived Experience...... 400 Interpretation of Two Personal Experience Stories...... 417 Joyce Conners-Standing in a World View...... 417 Craig Hastings-Standing for Human Dignity...... 442 The Personal Experience Stories of Joyce Conners...... 458 V. DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS OF NARRATIVE RESEARCH...... 497 Attending to the Guiding Questions...... 507 What is the Nature of Experiences Shared in Story Which Somehow Make Teachers Better Teachers? What Practical Knowledge is Located in These Professional Success Stories?...... 514 How Do Teachers Learn About Themselves and Their Practice From the Experiences They Tell About in Story?...... 520

Vlll What Do These Stories Say About the Funda­ mental Thinking and Practical Knowledge Which Teachers Hold About their Practice?...... 527 Can An Argument Be Made That Story Telling Is An Educational Form of Life?...... 537 Can An Argument Be Made for the Existence of Untenable Stories?...... 543 Is Storytelling a Suitable Means By Which One May Investigate the Primary Research Question?...... 551 Implications of this Research...... 562 REFERENCES...... 566

IX CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

STANDING IN WONDERMENT TO THE PROBLEM The purpose of this research is to wonder and then attempt to answer what might be learned, in a hermeneutic phenomenological sense, about the nature of and essence of the achievement of a teaching practice as it is told through personal experience stories by elementary school teachers as reflection on and understanding of the role of their practical knowledge and thinking in the growth and maturation of their teaching practice. Chapter I provides a general introduction to the essence of the problem and the nature of the investigation.

I want to begin this dissertation with an entry I made in my field notes (FN) on a cold November night in 1994. I was using a new computer program specifically designed for analysis of fieldwork data collected during this study. I present my own personal story as my experience of the surrender to the wonderment and lived experience of teachers whose voices appear in this dissertation. The following personal experience story represents a short confessional story (Van Maanen, 1988) about gaining a grip on the essence of writing a qualitative research dissertation, the articulation of an implicit research stand, and surfacing domain assumptions I carried to the research process which later on would dramatically change how I would engage the data. I eventually interpreted the data in a relationship of connected, reasoned, personal engagement to and immersion in, the data rather than standing in rational disengagement from it. The concepts of surrender and catch (Wolff, 1976) and wonderment (Green, 1971) used in this introduction will be fully explained and defined within the document later on in subsequent chapters. I am merely establishing my voice as researcher early in the document to foreshadow those voices of the teachers who follow at the end of chapters I through IV. I had planned on separating this story from the rest of the study and placing it in an appendix to the work to avoid the charge of subjectivism in research work. However, I lived this project for two years and I want the reader to know that my voice, my experiences as researcher, and ny emotional connection to the work, and the teachers who became part of it represents the professional and personal qualifications needed to engage the fieldwork and interpretation of the data in a sensitive and caring fashion. This story will also serve to foreshadow the important concepts of the hermeneutic phenomenological methodology used to collect and interpret the data. A CONFESSIONAL TALE: ESTABLISHING THE BACKGROUND FOR

THE STUDY-INTRODUCTION OF KEY CONCEPTS I can't feel this dissertation inside of me; not one bit, not anymore. My spirit is quiet; in permanent hiding. This place I find myself in November is an unforeseen and uninviting place, not predicted, totally unanticipated. The writing seems as lamp to the mirror (Abrams, 1953) not a stand in the warm light of radiating self discovery as much as a cold reflection of a distanced object, of a reflection of a reflection; of self-interprétâtions that are along with this data cold, not clear nor bright, not radiant but more distanced and dim and cold in my spiritless gaze to the computer. I am numb in both mind and spirit this day and the data is silent. I wonder if I haven't consciously committed a sort of inner suicide; an act designed to permanently destroy all feeling for the data, much as this computer program drains the life from these stories along with the mental and emotional cramping its analysis insists upon. What a relief it would be just to turn and break away from its icy grip and chilling stare, to find and gather together and fall upon the warmth of the remnants of a personhood and spirit of these teachers I once knew but now hide or worse, hopelessly wandering spirits without direction, lost. Certainly now, at this very moment, and in this crisis of will I understand and feel what Kurt Wolff (1976) means to finally surrender to something and in that ultimate surrender lose sight of oneself in a total concentration, in a total dedication and devotion when paying the utmost attention to the everyday and mundane life, to surrender so completely to something that it throws one back on what they really are, what is tacitly shared with all persons in a society and in the surrender that uniqueness which is humanity and humanness which, in crisis, appears as clearly as it can appear (Wolff, 1976). As Hegel recognized, "What makes the beginning...must...be taken as something non- analyzable, in its simple unfilled immediacy, hence as being, as the wholly empty" (Wolff, 1976). The beginning of this dissertation has been born within this hole in the spirit; born from the overwhelming sense of nothingness and confusion and...nebulous data, at every personal and idiosyncratic confrontation reflects back to me ny competence as analytic, researcher or lack of it, ny future as interpretive researcher or lack of it, which in every sense of the word as graduate student I have come to know myself as; person, writer, creative mind. In this context is great fear in the acknowledgment that traditions and personal histories which have shaped me as a person just do not hold much hope in solving this present crisis; located in the writing, the study, the interpretation of this work. There is a tremendous sense of mental disruption coming squarely face to face with feelings wholly unanticipated but not foreign; a writing crisis unprecedented in its complete cramping of the spirit, lack of clarity and in its vagueness and ambiguity; a cold alienation of the soul and a felt sense of lost personhood I cannot explain, much less understand. The reason I even mention my affect at this time is by the very nature of bringing it to language, by giving my best account of how this dissertation experience feels, can I push against the whole of the cold, disengaged, and reflected emptiness of this moment in the rediscovered warmth and engagement of self, who I will become as a reasoned person; to exercise my freedom and in small steps and measured pace walk through this crisis in surrender to it and within the journey re­ experience the freedom of my own newly created and radiated historicity and personhood in a new and unfamiliar world. Kurt Wolff (1976) in speaking to the concept of alienation related to surrender, makes the same point:

The person who can speak about his crisis and act on his speech is no longer confined by the crisis; he is no longer in an 'extreme situation.' For he has asserted his reason and his freedom, the autonomy given to man; and within its limits, he knows what he must do and what not. He has rediscovered that his reason and his freedom, however overwhelmed they may be, cannot be alienated from him nor he from them; and knowing this, he also knows that the rediscovery or discovery is one that all men are capable of making-one which reminds him of his understanding of man as a being so capable, (p. 31) OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY

In the surrender is the catch. The catch is that part of humanness, a part articulated from within rather than reflected from without, which after the surrender is brought in interpretive stance to the data in a aura of new understanding and new openness to the phenomena under study. This openness is not contaminated with presuppositions, untested beliefs and dusty ideologies lost in the surrender but remains naive to the communication and understanding of the phenomena at hand. There is a paradox here. In a state of surrender I open myself for total engagement of the data in a dialogical tacking between making new personal warranted claims that are intelligible and illuminating while doing justice to the data, interpreting stories teachers tell of their practice and the cultural context in which they are told. The catch is the warranted claims about the data which become, in the completed dissertation a full net of interpretations. I have discovered my crisis. I cannot help but be surprised at what ending will be written to this story, in the surrender and in the catch. I have only my reasoned sense of interpretation on which to personally rely as a guide for developing and analyzing the questions in whose answers eventually will determine not only how understandable a story of data analysis can be written but what story of understanding can be sensible constructed from within the process of hermeneutic interpretation. I must depend on my own sense of personal caginess and professional stealth in sneaking up on and confronting the data with a sense of naive surprise; to catch the data in a new way or beginning and to render the data refreshingly sensible. However, such a sensibility can only be acquired in a phenomenological relationship with the data, one which is carried out in a sense of reasoned wonderment about it guided by my own sense of being as a historical person operating within my own traditions of public elementary school teacher and administrator reframed and newly positioned in a sense of awe in the surrender. Although the meaning of this dissertation is located within historical traditions of my personhood I share these personal traditions of humanness and humanity as broader cultural traditions with others in the surrender. Therefore, new understandings generated in this dissertation can be shared through the writing of it with others in a sense of collective understanding.

RESEARCH AS SURRENDER TO THE LIVED EXPERIENCE In the asking of new questions about the data; new for me in the sense of being thrown into a different and unfamiliar world of traditions and place in the surrender to it, I must necessarily frame new traditions in order to answer the questions. And so I find myself somewhere between the numbness of existing traditions which only reflect my present being in the world and throw little light on the data as it currently is, and the necessity of committing some sort of inner suicide, to throw out the who and what I am, to surrender that absolute certainty of my personhood which simply cannot provide the answers to these new questions and embrace the new traditions which, in their newness and surprise hold a certain sense of fear of failure, in fact a terror that the new traditions as ideas generated from this dissertation will be neither absolute nor taken absolutely seriously. In surrender I am suspended between the numbness of fading certainties in the face of new surprises and the terror of inconsequentiality. The catch will be the courage to write in reason and in freedom about the sense of wonderment of the surrender which I bring to this research experience; to write about engaging new traditions caught as elements of surprise, of becoming what I can become in all of its honesty, mystery and wonderment in the fullest exercise of my reasoned surrender; to illuminate and understand the multiplicity of the stories teachers tell about their practice; to stitch these patches of new traditions in all their colorful multiplicity and plurality to a traditional tapestry of fading certainties. 8

QUESTIONING AS STANDING IN WONDERMENT TO THE LIVED

EXPERIENCE

Research and writing are considered simultaneous events in the catch of this dissertation (van Manen, 1990) . It is researching and caring and writing about the teachers whose stories appear in this document. However, above all else, the research is a wondering about the lived experiences of teachers as they tell about their personal lives and professional practice in story. In the surrender is the catch of hermeneutic phenomenological wonderment portrayed in writing which Van Manen (1990) understands does not offer the possibility of effective theory with which one can now explain and/or control the world, but rather offers the possibility of plausible insights that brings one more in contact with a socially constructed world of reasoned and sensible ideas, personal histories and cultural traditions of thought about the storied events of teaching practice. The importance of asking the right question of phenomena in the natural and social world requires submitting that world to a personal sense of wonderment (Green, 1971). That is, to focus and wonder on a particular concept is to develop a questioning attitude toward that concept. This attitude is made real through a set of questions which in and of themselves comprised words which have various meanings and present in some puzzling form a language as discursive thought which can be empirically and conceptually studied. What I mean is, of course, questions can be answered. Qualitative research seems in the actuality of the writing a process of inscription as writing and rewriting based on movement between the questions asked of the data; the data always standing in the shadow of the questions about self, about other, text, art, world and story. But the researcher can never stand in her own shadow and therefore always must remain at some personal and professional distance from that which she questions and studies (Geertz, 1983) . The catch, as Geertz notes is setting aside presupposed conceptions about where the shadow is to be traditionally cast and seeing the experiences and stories of others within the framework of their own ideas, experiences and stories and how those stories differ one from another.

The researcher is responsible and accountable for the questions she asks and within the answering creates a personal, local and socially constructed and illuminating way of knowing which guides the research project to its final and idiosyncratic conclusions. This process of submitting to question the world of teaching experience represents a sense of personal wonder about how teachers think about local events and situated personal practical knowledge of elementary schools which make up and point to the social 10 construction of teacher understanding and meaning through narrative or story telling. This dissertation is a surrender to, as well as total involvement in the act of wonder, interpretation, and engagement within the act of writing and re-writing which gave painful birth to it all. It is an unconditional experience of surrender to personal reflective feelings and it is from the depth of this reflection, in the afterglow of its birth that I write about not only the uniqueness of the teachers whose voices carry the traditions of those gone before and represent in unique ways their own and those to come; but the manner in which those traditions have touched upon my own personal ways of knowing and have changed, above all else, rry human capacity to risk inconsequentiality and to search for and find wonder in a special kind of personal ignorance (Green, 1971).

INTERPRETATION AND THE AUTHORITY OF NAMING The dissertation grows from a recognition that there is a feature of the lived experience of teaching, a connection, a relationship between the edge of personal lived experience and the edge of practical professional knowledge, that is not understood but given time and patience and due regard for the mystery and wonder and acknowledgment of the human spirit caught in this writing, such features can be brought into the open, assembled, put together and understood and named within 11

a map by which teachers find their way around in the context of a teaching world. To the extent that I have understood their stories enough to interpret a bit and write clearly about them and to the extent that I have represented their voices in truth then so, in truth, have I been guided to what they believe and subsequently to what I have come to believe about them. It is the blending of the uniqueness of their voices with the uniqueness of my surrender to them that will be the most visible exercise of a feeling, wondering, sensible and reasoned dissertation. This dissertation represents what Hinkle (1993) calls a "wording of the world" which prioritizes situated, local and constructed knowledge over abstract knowledge and the entrusting of naming legitimate and valid truth to the voices of the actual participants in the study; the subjects and the researcher. This work represents a shared authorship in two ways. First, the teachers are with me in spirit in the words which find their way to these pages. I re-live through daily remembrance our dialogues together and feel a sense of wonderment as well as mystery at the evolving stories which are graciously and easily given as gifts. Second, I make no claim to be better informed or more knowledgeable about the teacher's personal and professional lives than they are and that is as it should be. I am only interpreting, that is opening and examining in wondering and wonderful ways, the 12 gifts given to me by each of them; the gift of their stories. These are gifts differing and it is the connections between the differences of the personal and professional stories of these teachers that is examined, wondered about, interpreted, written, and named in this dissertation.

METHODOLOGICAL AND INTERPRETATIVE CONSIDERATIONS

The methodological aim of this dissertation is to dispel the basic conviction that, in Bernstein's (1983) words, "There is or must be some permanent, ahistorical matrix, framework or grid to which we can ultimately appeal in determining the nature of rationality, knowledge, truth, reality, goodness, or rightness... that there is a world of objective reality that exists independently of us and that has a determinate nature or essence that we can know." (p. 8) . This description can be readily applied to the scientific method and its construction of descriptive as well as objective "explanatory" methodology which insists upon the disengagement of the subject from an emic, or subjective understanding, whereby meaning can only be achieved when the subject correctly mirrors or represents this objective reality, rather than illuminating a reality which radiates as an Aristotelian practical understanding (Nussbaum, 1986) and wisdom from within it (Dallmayr & McCarthy, 1977) . I argue in this dissertation for an alternative form of social knowledge construction, one based on giving voice to 13 the teachers who speak from within these pages, giving the gift of their local and situated personal and professional experiences to the reader as an illuminating truth of the realities of their own practices. This qualitative study begins in the writing of an ethnography within the historical and linguistic immediacy of the local and situated experiences (Clifford & Marcus, 1986) of elementary classroom teachers, within what Hinkle (1993) describes as a situated and local knowledge where knowledge and experiences of the actual participants in the research as well as the researcher herself is entrusted and accepted as truth over the abstract and universal knowledge claims of the empirical sciences, It is a type of research experience and constructed knowledge Geertz (1983) understands as a reasoning about lived experiences which is not some organized and recognized but hidden universal and hierarchical order of the way things really are, but rather a common and practical way of linguistically negotiating and socially constructing a seen one. The stories teachers tell and the interpretation of them has been a coming, for this researcher, the different ways in which these teachers locally and in a specific context of one public elementary school in the Midwest construct their personal and professional lives within the practical actions and practical knowledge of the action of achieving them and leading them within the context of the 14 school. Interpreting these stories within my own story is a blending of both texts and the consequences of this blending always reflects the sensibility and reasoning which rests in the surrendered to new interpretive methodologies of the researcher and the catch which is the unique and surprising interpretation of the teacher's stories in light of the new traditions. Seeing oneself among the other in the power of the naming of the other brings these stories to interpretive life. Questioning and wondering, assembling and stitching together the teachers' realities located in story in Hopkin's (1994) terms directs the thinking of the researcher to difficulties, troubles, puzzles and problems which are situated in the teacher's own intelligent recollections, rememberings, knowledge and understandings. This dissertation is as Hinkle (1993) notes, "A double reflection", a reflective folding of my wonderment and questioning into and around the locally situated knowledge of elementary school teachers. Double reflection led to the development of my own approach to interpretation, a "dual interpretation" of these teaching stories. I argue in this dissertation for story as interpretations of interpretations (Taylor, 1985a) The power of naming one another's sensibilities and understandings of their own reality, in the name of research, as interpretations of their reasoned actions and understandings 15 of who and what they are always falls into a broader and deeper moral and ethical act of naming which this researcher engaged in carefully with the close collaboration of the teachers (Richardson, 1990): I discuss the issue of ethics in qualitative research in chapter III.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN EPISTEMOLOGY OF THE EN6AGED-

RESPECTING THE HUMAN DIGNITY OF PERSONS Ethnographic writing and hermeneutic phenomenological writing engaged in within the pages of this dissertation surely carries with it a respect for what it means to be a teacher, to understand the personal and professional pressures of teaching and how those pressures restrict, expand, narrow or widen the meaning of teaching when presented in story. Understanding the world of the teacher requires patience and tolerance and respect for the human "dignity" of teaching and the dignity of their stories. In every regard such a phenomenological description carries with it the power to name these stories and in the process name the person who created them; a moral force which the researcher must contend with while respecting in the naming the essential core of being, that is, the human dignity of the person which is of unconditional worth (Pratte, 1992). Clifford and Marcus (1986) establish the importance of asking the right questions in qualitative research and believe the role of questioning in ethnography is always a 16 moral issue and is, "Situated between powerful systems of meaning to which it poses its questions (in a sense of wonder) at the telling...of collective order and diversity, inclusion and exclusion, innovation and structuration, and is itself a part of these processes Therefore, the writing of cultural descriptions is properly experimental and above all ethical" (p. 45). This dissertation reflects a reasoned stand to the lived experience. I mean by 'sense of reason' a belief in my own abilities as thinker, researcher and writer. I position myself to teacher stories in a reasoned and dialogical and linguistic sense of wonder which is represented in writing not as the mere stringing together of disconnected images, misplaced aims or intentions, inane speculation and dull dialogue, but rather in a clear and present interpretive struggle to understand the lived experiences of teachers whose lives inhabit these pages. This dissertation also provides the opportunity to gain a broader understanding of my own lived experiences in the process of interpreting the lives of others. It represents what van Manen (1990) describes as a moving or dialectical relationship between the levels of my self-understanding and the understanding of others. As Bateson (1991) notes the edges of events and experiences always contain the news of difference. And the bringing together, in dialectical movement, the edges of the 17 personal and practical experience of both researcher and subject always, in some way, give the news of difference and surprising catches. Ferreting out this news of difference and working the edges of teachers' personal and practical knowledge in relation to my own background is always done with the skillful use of comparison and contrast. This dissertation represents above all else such a comparison and contrast of the meaning of teacher story. It represents my struggle to grow in interpretive ability, in reasoned action toward understanding, and in the ability to write about the shared experiences between researcher and researched in making explicit and bringing to name the multi-layered, personal and historical traditions which simultaneously render teachers' stories complex, ambiguous, mysterious, vague, and full of wonder. This dissertation constructs a methodology which is the writing itself that moves in a continuous dialectical tacking between what Geertz (1983) identifies as the local detail of a situation (the reasoning, experience and understanding of the participants) and the horizon of orientation (their world views, forms of life, the themes (van Manen, 1990) found in their stories) in such a way as to bring these storied forms of life simultaneously and their simultaneity into view. It is the surrendering of old and fading traditions of standing in disengagement to the data of the other for the often 18 halting and sometimes vague and ambiguous engaged interpretive naming of creations of the news of difference. It is only by way of surrendering to and wondering on and questioning the mysteries of these stories through a hermeneutic phenomenological interpretive writing that their essential orientation to a moral, rich and thick, strong, deep and authentic tradition (van Manen, 1990) of interpretation is understood and achieved. Van Manen notes that it is an interpretive style of writing human science which is driven by an orientation to the good located in each of the teachers stories. At the same time it is rich and thick in its description of the context in which the stories are told and how they are told. The dissertation is strong in the sense that it is centered in the notion of wonder as inquiry developed through a "strong questioning" and "dual interpretation" of the data and it is deep in the sense that meaning of the stories is achieved by moving within and between the different levels of themes and topic narratives generated which further powers interpretive questioning into a spiral of penetrating and interpretive motion of understanding which has both breadth and depth and is not linear in its presentation and form. As Gregory Bateson (1979) notes information as difference is stacked at the edges of events and experiences. Bateson (1972) notes that difference is a matter of seeing 19 the world in depth. Such a seeing draws two or more sources of information together to give information of a different sort, a news of difference, than what was in either source taken separately. This is a binocular rather than monocular view of the realities of teacher's lived experiences and represents well how my descriptions and interpretations, questioning and wondering, assembling and stitching together of teacher's realities located in story in Hopkin's (1994) terms, "directs the thinking of the researcher to difficulties, troubles, puzzles and problems which are situated in the teacher's own intelligent recollections, rememberings, knowledge and understandings (p. 49). As van Manen (1990) notes the depth of writing comes from the dialectical movement between these edges of experiences and events as they are framed by the researchers questions and told in stories when taken together generate their own news of difference. The difference in these stories is most nearly the discourse that is held open for interpretation, that is compared and contrasted thoughout this dissertation. Max van Manen (1990) believes research experience as news of difference is, in its totality, inseparable from the writing experience. The total process of reading, thinking, writing and reflecting is the research process. The telling of the story by the subject and the interpretation of the 20

story by the researcher is at once an orientation to the wonder of the total research process which is, "The cultivation of one's being, from which the words begin to proliferate in haltingly issued groupings, then finally in a carefully written work, much less completed than interrupted, a blushing response to a call to say something worth saying, to actually say something, while being thoughtfully aware of the ease with which such speaking can reduce itself to academic chatter" (p. 79). This study presents teacher narrative or storytelling as a moral and ethical recognition of the human dignity and respect in teaching as an honoring of respect for all persons. In further elaboration, narrative is the recognition of self in connections and relationship to others. Narrative is the wording of a living world of teacher practice which is based on the further recognition that giving shape to that world through narrative or storytelling is staking a claim on not only what is done in the world, but what one is in that world, and staking such a claim to both a practical knowledge and personal identity of oneself is claiming an understanding of, an argument for a connection of personal worth as respect for personhood and human dignity in an achievement of a professional identity, a warranted claim for the significance of both a personal history and a professional teaching life as it is lived and told about in story. 21

JUSTIFICATION FOR RESEARCHING THE NATURE OF TEACHING

PRACTICE THROUGH STORY Charles Taylor in a wonderful book entitled The Sources of the Self (1989) takes much the same position concerning the significance of life expressed in narrative when he notes that, "What we need to explain is people living their lives; the terms in which they cannot avoid living them cannot be removed from the explanandum, unless we can propose other terms in which they could live them more clairvoyantly. We cannot just leap outside of these terms altogether, on the grounds that their logic doesn't fit some model of 'science' and that we know a priori that human beings must be explicable in this 'science'. How can we ever know that humans can be explained by any scientific theory until we actually explain how they live their lives in its terms? This establishes what it means to make sense of our lives. The terms for the story are the terms that make the best sense of us, until we find other terms, other more clairvoyant substitutes. It is the 'best account' of our lives we can give at the moment" (p. 58). This dissertation claims that a general kind of science embedded in the search for some universal truth and explanation about the nature of human existence must be set aside. The nature of human "being" cannot be understood in terms appropriate for the study of the hard sciences. Such 22 empirical rationalism simply forgets, or for that matter, never acknowledges the voice of the teacher as person; how living in a school for eight hours a day relates to the development of a personal or professional self that must take into consideration the hopes and fears and struggles, the despair, the dreams, and the personal accomplishments in relating to students, curriculum and the entire milieu of the school. Such experiences can only be accounted for as ongoing events constructed in story (Clifford & Marcus, 1986) of what it is like to live in this pedagogic context as a human being. Narrative or storytelling is a "best account" of how all of this engagement in reasoned action in the teaching world feels at the time in the best sense of the terms andin the practical, personal and professional language teachers have to work with. This is a quite different account of the world of teaching embedded in the analytic language of statistics and quantitative research which would claim to disengage the reasoned action of teaching from its context as a "best account" of the teaching world. Green (1971) argues that to engage in and feel, in a phenomenological sort of way, a sense of "wonder" toward events and experiences, one takes a stance to a feature of the world which is not understood. This is a questioning stance which tries to reveal hidden features as well as the sense of mystery about the feature under study. One marvels 23 at it, and in the marveling of it, adopts a sense of curiosity toward it. One simply spends a lot of time thinking about it. Green notes that no matter how much one may know about certain features of the outside world such as automobiles, weeds, friendships or works of art or the inside world of thought, love, relationships, or intuition one can wonder about it only if there is something in it which is not fully comprehended. In a sense one can wonder about something only as long as there remains a sense of mystery, something unknown and therefore alluring about it. Mystery creates the wonder.

In short, creating and nurturing a personal sense of wonder always involves, it seems, some degree of personal surrender to a confession of ignorance and limitation about a particular event or experience. One can wonder about "Who is sending me roses now?" only as long as the mystery is preserved. In certain respects personal wonderment stands against a broader social and cultural background of tacit or unknown events or mysterious contingencies in which the wondered about event or experience exists. It is one thing think that Emily sent roses for no particular reason and quite another to be mystified and amazed by it. Being in a state of wonderment about the roses and the reasons behind their appearance is being in a state of curiosity. Such a state seems to involve asking questions; a wondering about 24 why they actually arrived at "that time" and on "that date" and what might be presupposed within the act of giving. Marveling at something, Green argues, always involves the confrontation of mystery, an admission of and surrender to a kind of ignorance, which is always the element of some form of curiosity. Perhaps Emily's gift giving can be adequately understood through a broad appeal to her sense of importance of maintaining meaningful relationships and giving gifts. But understanding why she sent the roses in the first place sets one to wonder, in an attitude of anticipation and joy and marveling at and about the broader meaning friendship and gift giving has for her in her own life. Wonder is the activity of motivating oneself and perhaps even others toward a less traveled path of personal inquiry, self-knowledge and self-understanding. This dissertation is just such a journey along a path less taken. It is a story of wonderment in the sense of asking questions framed within a phenomenological attitude about the essences of achievement of a teaching practice and the achievement of a professional self and how both are represented by and maintained within a linguistic form of life known as story or narrative.

The stories presented in this dissertation and held open for interpretation are the best accounts of that achievement of practice and self as revealed over a ten week study in an elementary school in the Midwestern United States. It is 25 recognition of and asking questions about a central theme which has been extensively studied and written about (Bakhtin, 1981; Bal, 1991; Ben-Peretz, Bromme & Halkes, 1986; Berger & Luckman, 1966; Bernstein, 1983; Boden & Zimmerman, 1991; Brittion & Pellergrini, 1990; Bruner, 1986; Butt, Raymond & Yamagishi, 1988; Carr, 1986; Carter, 1993; Cazden & Hymes, 1978; Clandinin & Connelly, 1994; Connelly & Clandinin, 1990; 1994; Cortazzi, 1993; Eisner, 1993; Elbaz, 1991; Geertz, 1983; Gergen & Gergen, 1984; Greimas, 1990; Grumet, 1988; Hymes, 1974; Kerby, 1991; Kwant, 1969; Leitch, 1986; Narayan, 1989; Nelson, 1993; Polkinghorne, 1988; 1992; Riessman, 1993; Sacks, 1995a; Schafer, 1981; Shuman, 1986; 1994; Tappan, 1991; Taylor, 1989; Widdershoven, 1993; Wolff, 1991; Wuthnow, 1991; Young, 1987) mainly the importance of language in debate, conversation and dialogue engaged in by individuals who treat each other as equal participants in the collaborative development of a practical knowledge locally situated and orally embodied in personal talk which stands, in this dissertation for the personal and professional lives of teachers. This is the central theme to which this dissertation will return again and again as it creates its own story through patient interpretation of evidence and calm discoveries of the wonders of the teaching profession revealed in and through the wondering about and questioning of the marvelous telling of teacher's stories; a way of 26

"wording the world of education" in a dialogical construction of professional practice in a public elementary school. What is meant by this phrase a "wording of the world?"

WORDS AS SIGN OF VOICE Words act as signs which in a simplistic and rather straightforward way say things about things which exist in the empirical world or in one's own thoughts and give those things meaning. The thing in itself is not the word, an elephant, by convention, could very well mean a four legged furry animal which barks at strangers and sleeps under one's bed. The meaning of words are socially constructed tools which are used intelligently by human beings so they can essentially understand one another and bring meaning to each others' actions. Words accomplish this because they are artificially constructed signs which convey meaning and can be interpreted (Wilson, 1967). Words function as signs which help us communicate with one another and understand one another. But, more importantly, the meaning of the signs as words rests in the socially constructed agreement about their use. Words do not have meaning in themselves, only in relation to the agreement about their use. As long as we think of words as tools, as simple signposts which direct us within an empirical world which we do not call into question and treat as straightforward and uncomplicated, where words merely reference things as the descriptions of them which go 27 unquestioned, then our lived experiences remain at a simplified level of static and unchanging awareness, an otherwise uncomplicated stance as map reader within a living, linguistic, dynamic and extraordinarily complicated socially constructed world whose direction often changes faster than the maps which represent them.

If we were to consider the use of language as more than some simple agreement about where and to what each individual artificial sign as word points to, we would have to arrive at some agreement of how language would be used in the construction of meaning. This use of language in the social construction of meaning sense seems to be a concept which cannot be treated in any uncomplicated fashion or something which is simply taken for granted. Such a social construction must be treated as an achievement of personal human action taken within a community (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1993; Dallmayr & McCarthy, 1977; Deal & Kennedy, 1982; Dewey, 1910, 1958 #407, 1975 #77). For in understanding one anothers' words we cannot talk of words as having meaning in and of themselves, but only in their uses in specific contexts in which the meaning can only be explained through "forms of life" (Winch, 1958) represented by the socially constructed tapestry of lived achievements, concerns, traditions, histories and practical knowledge concerning everyday activities. The socially constructed nature of language is a 28 human achievement which employs understanding and interpretation of a certain attitude toward the world, a world view, which is situated in the nature of personhood, that core of being embodied as a social and interpreting person coming to terms with life through narrative and story. In coping with the enormous diversity of the ways in which humans construct their lives and in particular, the personal actions of achieving them and the practical actions of leading them and representing them in a socially and collaboratively constructed language one enacts the achievement of a personal and professional life. One can give, in language, the best account of one's story. If nothing else this dissertation is itself a story. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. It is temporal and constructs its own history, physical space and position in time by creating in the reader a sense of awareness of an historical past and a situated socially constructed present of not only the voices of teachers whose professional lived experiences comprise the bulk of this ethnography but of the voice of researcher's lived experience of its writing as well. There are two stories and histories intermingled in this work. I try to make both of those voices known to the reader. MacIntyre (1984) has written "That in arguing what someone else is doing or up to we always move towards placing 29 a particular episode in the context of a set of narrative histories, histories both of the individuals concerned and of the settings in which they act and suffer" (p. 211) . The writing of this dissertation reflects the dialogical conversation encountered between the researcher and the researched. Strong voice is given to both. Apart from this introduction and overview I intend to blend my voice with the voices of the teachers heard throughout this dissertation. However, hermeneutic phenomenological writing creates within the lived experience of the reader, as audience, a practical and identifiable and felt recognition of both the researcher's voice and the voices of the teachers. Capturing these voices is fundamentally and foremost a writing activity and is the responsibility of the researcher. Within that activity the essential aspects, the meaning structures of both the lives of the teachers and the research experience as lived in and surrendered to in words and writing by this researcher are brought to language within this dissertation in such a way that the catch of the meaning in both is recognized and understood as one of a possible number of practical experiences which the reader as audience brings to the text. There is always a connection between the data, the writer and the audience as reader who all stand as constituent elements in the life, the living, of any text. 30

The meaning and understanding of this research is in, as process, the writing of it,

NAMING THE LIVED EXPERIENCE-SELECTION OF PARTICIPANTS

AND SITE Ethnography, in this case a study of the stories teachers tell about their practice, is an interpretation of the nature of experiences as storied events (Shuman, 1986) which teachers have daily in a public school located in the Midwestern United States. Such an interpretation is first and foremost a written and thickly described (Geertz, 1973) interpretation, a study of the stories of teachers' lives lived in a specific cultural context of an elementary school. But it is more. As Lawless (1993) notes, "Once the events have been described it is the ethnographer's task...to interpret, to analyze, to reflect, to conjecture about what makes the event meaningful, to the persons involved in the event and finally to the ethnographer and her audience" (p. 75) . What evolves through this ethnography and others of the same genre, it seems, is the researchers capacity to tap, through thick interpretation, a deeply rooted self-knowledge held by an audience via thick descriptions and rich definitions of the self-knowledge carried by the subjects encountered in the research and presented as distinctive voice of those subjects. 31

The meaning of the researched and the audience is intersub]ectively threaded and blended and connected to what Taylor (Rabinow & Sullivan, 1987) says, "Are strong webs of signification spun in narrative by ourselves which are always historically situated, practical, and accessible by others" (p. 7). Good ethnography, in this case, puts the audience in a position to understand and bring a situated and personal meaning to what is at "narrative stake" according to those whose voices are directly involved in creating it (Geertz, 1983) . The nature of creating a good story rests on the surrender of the audience to its meaning in terms by which they can recognize their own stories in the stories of the other. Within the storied nature of lived experience which is always and foremost intersubjectively shared in language there exists, as van Manen argues, "A phenomenological nod of agreement to what is read". Narrative always carries, it seems, a recognizable voice claiming sensitivity to the linguistic rules of the culture as well as describing the commonsense ways of doing things (van Manen, 1990). The most captivating stories, the stories most easily surrendered to and whose meaning is most easily understood are exactly those which help the audience understand better what is most practical and most taken for granted as common lived experiences and what is of most concern directly, obviously 32 and personally to them (van Manen, 1990). It is the best account of a subjects experience held up and accepted as the best account of the audience's common experiences. In summary, the nature of this research project is not to estrange or silence the voices of those whose stories are told here, but rather to purposively bring them closer to the audience, to draw the audience into the trinity (those researched, the researcher, and the final text) of collective and collaborative meaning making, into the lived experiences of public elementary school teachers who through their stories tell about and give credence to and make recommendations for acting in aimful, practical, knowledgeable and understandably teacherful ways. Through their stories they "word a world" (Hinkle, 1993) of personal and practical professional knowledge and in the process create a situated and local way of knowing, a standpoint epistemology (Smith, 1987) a socially constructed teacherful practice which reveals a situated way of acting personally and professionally in the world where such knowing is achieved and constructed in the connections of the personal events and practical knowledge in story.

THE RESEARCH QUESTIONS Several assumptions are made in this dissertation and will be discussed briefly here then described in depth in later chapters. First, this is an interpretive dissertation. 33

It is an inquiry into and a wondering about the ways in which teachers talk about their professional world; the history of its construction, significance of its character and the actions necessitated by the context in which it is embedded. This dissertation is primarily concerned with the nature and essence of a teacher's reality of her practice as constructed in story. Second, it is an in-depth examination of story taken to mean an examination of a personal and professional self; a description of the most important experiences given as one's most tellable events as the best account of that experience. It is ascertaining what is personally and professionally real in teachers' best accounts as storied events of teaching experiences, Third, what can be discovered and said in story about iry own growth during this research process and how within the writing of it does my voice stand in relationship to the voices of the teachers. This question can only be answered by the reader. Fourth, and most important this dissertation is an attempt to answer the primary question, in a hermeneutic phenomenological sense, about the nature and use of story in the achievement of a teaching practice. It is an effort to increase ny knowledge about teacher's practical needs, desires, fears, aspirations, aims and goals in the narrative achievement of a teaching practice in the hopes of learning about what personal and professional conditions would be most favorable or 34 unfavorable in the achievement, growth and maturation of such a practice. In addition, it must also be asked whether the analysis of story is a suitable means by which to study the achievement of a teaching practice? By this is meant does story play any active role in the achievement of a teaching practice in its most local, personal, practical and situated form?

STORYTELLING AND PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE OF THE LIVED

EXPERIENCE-FRAMING THE STUDY Narratives or stories as descriptions of what we are up to and doing seem to have what Young refers to as a "double orientation" (Young, 1987). Stories are at the same time descriptions of events themselves, which in most cases, refer to events which are not of themselves but of the experiences which comprise them; experiences of the past. Stories are fenestrations laid within the walls of lived experience spontaneously accrued in the present through which light of actions taken in the past narrated in story illuminate and guide anticipated actions to be taken in the future. Narratives re-present lived experiences in alternative modes of storied reasoning as events whereby experiences are gathered together (Ricoeur, 1991) through story and narrated into an understandable whole by shifting active participation in those experiences to an active reflection on them as storied events (Shuman, 1986). We all are, as active agents 35

in the lived experience, embedded in the creation of, at the same time spectators to, and eventual tellers of the narrative meaning of our lives. Narratives structure the

sequence of our lives (Young, 1987). Narrative is a form of local and personally situated knowledge which is human knowledge inescapably practical, personal, and embedded in the traditions and histories of our culture (Gadamer, 1992) , Stories are, by the rendering of making our experiences known, always lived before they are told (MacIntyre, 1984), Therefore, the stories teachers tell and the interpretations they applied to them are repesentative of lived histories and traditions which in turn represent a certain kind of basic and essential nature which characterizes and frames a teaching practice (Young, 1987). I argue in this dissertation as Taylor (1989) does for a definition of meaning and understanding which captures that kind of basic and essential nature of teaching as the best account of the affirmation of the ordinary, the personal, and the practical lived experience of teaching. It is also argued throughout this dissertation that the lived experiences shared in the form of stories told by elementary public school teachers not only frame a narrative world of professional practice, educational context, and personal experience which constructs their lives as those of teachers but locates within those lives a sense of practical 36 reason, an essential nature of meaning and understanding which is in all cases spoken in the language of the ordinary, the mundane, the personal, and the practical. Every teacher story in this ethnography is a story of multiple selves not only as a teacher but parent, daughter, head of a household, wife or husband working to earn a living, raising a family, making ends meet and on more than one occasion struggling to just get through the day. These stories represent the practical and mundane and coherent truth that most of the time, for many of the teachers whose voices are a matter of record in this dissertation, things do, in practical and mundane ways, hang together, make sense and reveal a narrative coherence (Carr, 1986) in spite of the chaos experienced from coping with often frustrating and infuriating and unanticipated outside events and circumstances. I argue in this dissertation that a standard of what constitutes a teacher story and subsequently what constitutes teacher thinking, not only of her practice but of herself, is inherently practical and embedded in the ordinary activities and actions taken in the course of daily teaching and living. Teaching is to think, feel, judge, deliberate (McCutcheon, 1995) reason and wonder within a framework of the practical (Schwab, 1978) . The stories told in this ethnography provide an opportunity for an understanding that 37 teacher narrative reflects a matter of coping with and bringing to a best account everything which may be needed to make the story understandable to those who listen. These stories have narrative coherence, in the sense Carr (1986) nicely argues when he notes that : So it is with the events and actions of our lives; either they are already embedded in the stories provided by our plans and expectations or, if they are not, we look for and anticipate the stories to which they do, will, or may belong. Narrative coherence is what we find or effect in much of our experience and action, and to the extent that we do not, we aim for it, try to produce it, and try to restore it when it goes missing for whatever reason, (p.90) The language used by teachers as they talk about their teaching experiences as storied events not only represents a point of view about the world in which they work but it is also references the use of mind in relation to that world of work (Bruner, 1986). The use of story in the language of education (how the teachers talk about their professional worlds) provides meaning, a sense of belonging to the world, and attaches them to the historicity of the others in their place and time; in a social context in which the stories are collaboratively constructed. Together these teachers weave a rich tapestry of meaning and understanding of their lives in the classroom. I will argue throughout this dissertation that stories are the lives and minds of the teachers who tell them 38 and these lives are worth telling and the minds are worth knowing (Geertz, 1995). Descriptions of lived experiences as narrative turn out to be ways of gathering and piecing together experiences and events within an understandable whole. Such descriptions presuppose the active acquisition of information about the world by taking action in the world and formulating and bringing that action to language in a practical and particular self; a "wording of the world" always at the ready for sharing in the form of story. Teacher stories carry with them then, a sense of activeness in the gathering of practical experiences and the rendering in practical language the stories of those experiences as events of their practice into an understandable whole. I argue narrative is an active linguistic achievement of a teaching practice.

A STIPÜLATIVE DEFINITION OF REASON I noted previously that Young (1987) understands narrative or storytelling achievement as a double orientation of reasoning. Additional clarification of this sense of reasoning is needed. Stories are descriptions of reasoned realities which are descriptions of events in themselves which in most cases refer to events which are not of themselves, to spontaneous experiences of the past. Story- then is necessarily descriptive of a lifeworld which shifts from an active participation in it as experienced to an 39 active reflection upon it as told as events in story. Young notes that it may be possible to interpret (to understand) at least two ontological, or necessary beings, in presentations of story which will not be treated in depth here but lightly touched upon as representative of two distinct forms of reasoning. The taleworld is a realm of events transpiring in another space and time, imaginative narrative which is always of the past but presented in time present. The taleworld establishes a collective horizon against which the story is told and played out. It is what the story is about. Such a horizon of orientation is intersubjective in the sense that although the taleworld is not part of the real world and cannot affect it, the stories told and heard about the taleworld can because these stories are understood and can be interpreted against the horizon of the taleworld that is intersubjactively accessible to all. I will refer to this horizon of orientation which is known only through the storyrealm as an example of intrinsic reasoning, or as Schuman (1995) argues an ever present allegory, against which the story is always told and through which the horizon of orientation or allegory can be inferred and made known to the other. Taylor (1995) refers to this phenomenon as subsidiary background against which reasoned action is taken, Polyani (1983) argues the same but refers to the background as tacit knowledge. I argue later in this dissertation that this 40 background can be found in story as interpretive turns which represent deeply held values and beliefs as intrinsic reasoning forming themes by which stories are framed and interpreted. The storyrealm is the design and action and actual construction of the story. Participating in the storyrealm as the construction and the active telling of stories participants are aware of themselves as co-present as speakers and listeners in the active social participation of the telling. Absorption into the storyrealm through participation in the realm of interaction as a telling of the story is the gateway to the taleworld which rests behind and beyond the story. The storyrealm and the taleworld interact within the telling simultaneously. Speaker and listener in collective action construct the story which is the entrance to the taleworld. I will refer to this storyrealm as an example of instrumental reasoning in the sense that both teller and listener are taking action in the social construction and achievement of an immediate experienced world. I argue later in this study that instrumental reasoning is embedded in the topic-centered narratives teachers tell about the ordinary activities that occur within their work worlds. These topic-centered narratives are the stories constructed as the best accounts given to the listener in the tellable moments of story construction. 41

Teachers practical knowledge is noticeably located in the topic-centered narratives as the storyrealm. This active storytelling speaks of the action taken in a teaching practice, not what actually, in a much deeper sense, frames the action. Actions taken are instrumental in getting the job of teaching done in the classroom. The notion of the instrumental and intrinsic sense of reasoning takes center stage in the interpretation of these stories. It does so because virtually every author who writes about the narrative construction of story (these will be reviewed in Chapter II) speaks to the existence of both a local and practical knowledge and a global or world view knowledge which, although tacit, influences the local and practical. When I speak of reason within the body of this dissertation, I stipulative define it as comprised of both intrinsic and instrumental reason.

AN ARGUMENT FOR UNDERSTANDING AS A DIALECTIC BETWEEN

THE PERSONAL AND THE LIVED EXPERIENCE Understanding for Gadamer (1992) is the construction of meaning which comes into being only through the happening of understanding which arises in a distinctive mediation between what he calls the particular (local knowledge) and the universal (the historical and cultural traditions). The meaning of objects only comes into being through the dialectic movement, which is the hermeneutic circle, between 42 the local situated history and knowledge of the interpreter which is in all cases bound to broader social and universal traditions. For Geertz (1983) understanding is a dialectic between describing a reasoned and particular local course of events highlighted against a reasoned overall conception of what, indeed, constitutes the good life where the play between the two each reinforces the credibility of the other. Geertz notes that it is not only understanding that a baseball game involves a bat , a hit, an inning, a left fielder, a squeeze play and a hanging curve but also the broader conception of what the game in which these "things" as elements are all about. Aristotle's description of Phronesis or practical knowledge (Bernstein, 1983) is a form of reasoning that is concerned with choice and involves deliberation. It deals with that which is variable and about which there can be differing opinions. But always it is a type of reasoning in which there is a mediation between the general principles and concrete particular situation that requires choice and decision and in deliberation there is the stress of moving between the two types of reasoning; intrinsic (general principles) reasoning and instrumental (dealing with concrete particulars) reasoning. 43

Shuman notes there is always the incommensurability between the narrative as personal story and the allegorical meanings of which the personal is always about. This describes what has been called the hermeneutic circle of uncertainty in the tension between the personal and the allegorical. For Shuman there is no way around an account as personal narrative being only of and for itself. It is always about something larger and beyond the personal which becomes allegorical in speaking of the other.

There exists in story and presented in the telling a larger heritage of community and cultural traditions, evidenced by these authors, which proposes a rather complex relationship between personal lives and a broader world. But the local and situated knowledge and the broader world view are never sealed off from one another so that one never leaks into the other. They can be compared and contrasted. There will always be, as noted by van Manen (1990), Geertz (1973) and others cited in this ethnography, a dialectical movement between what is understood as explication and interpretation, instrumental and intrinsic, meaning and understanding, experience near (local knowledge) and experience far (the culture), between getting inside the text (inner world) and relating the text to something else (the outer world), between getting it right and making it useful, between appearance and reality and between personal narrative and 44 allegory. It is in the striking together of the edge of difference in the local situations told of in story against the edge of difference of the larger horizon of orientation in which the story is constructed that news of such difference is created and it is this news of difference that is anticipated in the sense of wonderment and questioning about the telling of teacherful stories. The interpretation of this news of difference (Bateson, 1972) is framed by the nature of the questions asked as discussed at length at the beginning of this chapter. Hopkins (1994) notes that questions must be framed in order to expand the nature of the inquiry to generate enough indeterminacy to create a field of wonder in which the researcher may roam, and play, and search without worry of flattening or narrowing the focus of the play. Questioning always stands as one way of experiencing and understanding the world. Wonderment is the process of opening the mystery of life and story to a phenomenological questioning and attitude toward the world; a wording of the world which takes on as its content and focus the troubles, problems, foibles and news of difference about the lived experience of teachers and opens them up to a play of imagination and creativity which broadens those experiences. The meaning of story or narrative is not hidden or buried to be dug out of or found within certain texts or lived experiences, but is rather accumulated and gathered 45

together, accrued within the process of telling about the experience. Meaning is always reached through the thoughtful interactive process that takes place between the audience and the author and the text. Meaning is always created in the work of interpretation which must necessarily move between the local and the situated knowing by which people represent themselves to themselves and one another (Geertz, 1983) and forms of life which are the historical and cultural traditions which fashion these situated lived experiences (Winch, 1958) What, in any case, is needed is a sense of wonderment and imagination and good hard questioning to explain and interpret teachers living their lives in school. Hermeneutic phenomenological investigation of the lived experience, as represented by the methodology engaged in this dissertation. Human science has traditionally been established in Western culture as a science which distances the subject from their lived experience. The point of viewof the subject is observed from outside, from a vantage pointof above or below the subject, or looking through the subject with one eye, a monocular seeing. Within the narrative turn human science in the investigation of how persons talk about their lives establishes a point of view of research which is embedded within the subject, concerned with the interactions and differences of the talk, not only within the narratives themselves, but between them and between the historical 46 social practices and cultural traditions of which they are a part. The personal experience story found below is one of four teacher stories located at-the end of chapters I through IV. In chapters III and IV I explain how I arrived at the creation of these stories and their purpose in this dissertation. For now, they should be treated as the other voices which make up this dissertation. The stories are the data on which the interpretations in chapter IV and the implications and conclusions reached in chapter V are based. The reader has the same data the researcher used in arriving at the interpretations constructed and used in answering the research question and guiding questions which inform it developed in chapter III. Each of these personal experience stories is divided into topic-centered narratives (Riessman, 1993) as snapshots of past experiences woven into storied events which speak about and frame the experiences and are tied together by themes. Topic-centered narratives and themes are discussed at length in chapters III, IV, and V.

THE PERSONAL EXPERIENCE STORIES OF CRAIG HASTINGS Craig Hastings has been teaching at Lila Belle school for the past 25 years. We met each other for the first time in the hallway of the school and after exchanging 47 pleasantries, I asked him if he would like to participate in the study I was conducting at the school. He agreed and we met six times over the course of the ten weeks for approximately forty-five to fifty minute sessions Each of our conversations occurred in the lounge and each was audio recorded and fully transcribed. Craig is in his late forties and solidly built. His interest in weight lifting is evidenced in his build, but due to joint problems he no longer lifts. Craig always carried a smile behind a slightly graying mustache which sometimes complemented and always accompanied the ever present twinkle in his eye as he shared his stories with me. Wearing a green knit polo shirt, and white trousers we talked about his life. The casual clothes, the smiling face and twinkling eyes could not, at times, mask the difficult life this man has led, nor hide the weariness of a professional teacher managing, in his own words, "The class from hell."

HOW CRAIG HASTINGS CAME TO TEACHING All right, I was a problem child and I had a family that took care of me but neglected me. I grew up in one of the worst parts of Boardman. I didn't have a very nice childhood. I didn't live in a nice area. My family were blue-collar workers. Nobody in my family went to college. They were still living the Depression; they never got rid of it. So I really had a basic, pretty rough childhood. 48

I was raised on Broadview Avenue in Boardman which is one of the worst ghettos in the world. That's where I was raised and I didn't have any white friends until I was about eight or nine and then I had to move into a white neighborhood. My father refused to move into a better area because he wanted to go as cheap as he could so we went into another ghetto...we went into a white ghetto off 54th and Pinewood. Schools in Boardman were really good then. I mean, schools in Boardman were far superior to this school right here right now when I went to school. I had wood shop when I went to school when I was in fifth grade. Oh yeah, we had gym and we had music, all the things that this district has finally gotten, we had years ago in Boardman. Boardman had a fantastic school system.

But, I had a lot of trouble in school because my parents just were...they weren't neglectful but they didn't care. My father resented the fact I came along and my mother took care of me because it was her responsibility. I had an older sister, she was seven years older, so I fell into bad company which turned out to be my own cousins. They were pretty rough. So I just...it was really bad. M y father had a big family -- a lot of brothers and sisters -- and they all had children and their children were just right around my age so...that's the company I fell into. They all went to the 49 service because it was either go to the service or go to jail. We always had a party after an arrest. We knew they were going in the service. Nice, huh. I mean have a party, you know. Frankie got caught, it wasn't drugs then, it was just fencing...got caught fencing and they'd say, "Well what service are you going into?" And he'd just go down there and they would take him. One went into the Navy and became a Seabee and another one went into...became a Ranger. A lovely family, you know. That's the way they went. So that's, you know, that was it. My cousin and I, we worked at midnight auto parts, literally. You told us what you wanted and we found it and delivered it the next day. We had pulled an engine out of a car for a bunch of hillbillies because they were going to give us the rear end of the car. And then after we did that we took it to an empty gas station and turned it over, and we were taking out the axle when the police arrived. My aunt...my cousin's mother, she was pretty good. She got us off. She knew a lot of people and she got us off so we didn't have to go to jail. We were on probation for a long time, but she even got rid of the records. She got the records destroyed. She was pretty well known. Yeah, she saved our skin. My parents told me I deserved the punishment I got, but my aunt didn't. She got Bruce and I both off. But my other cousins, the Desmonds, they each one went into the service 50 because they were dealing...Bruce and I were building a race car, that's what we were doing. We needed parts and there was no money. But ny other cousins, they were just strictly in it for business. It was a business thing. Everybody did that. This was like when I was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. That's what we were doing. Everybody did it. It was the environment. That's the way you...that's the way it was. I didn't come from a nice area. I mean no one thought I 'd ever get through school and no one ever thought I'd get through college. But I did. I made it. I went to Community College in Boardman. It was very inexpensive. It was only like $150.00 a semester. And then I worked in the clothing factories behind the school. They had these big industrial clothing factories and I would work there and then I would go to school. My first job in the morning was to get all the wine bottles out of the doorways and hose down the doorway from all the winos so the women could get in, and then I would go to school and get my first class. In between classes I'd go back and I'd work in the factory moving material and boxes and stuff, and then I say I kept on doing that and then about three years later I went to a college called Empire and Empire took all my credits and I went down there and I had enough money saved up that I finished, could finish, my last two years. So that's how I got my degree. 51

So when I got out of school and I went to college, the first year was devastating because I had no idea how to study. I didn't know how you studied when you went to college and I had to take all these bonehead classes and I had no idea what was going on. But I was lucky. It was a real low key college, there was no competition, and I got through. See I wasn't prepared. See in junior high they started you right away. . .they started the boys in... they gave you shop...wood shop, metal shop, printing and drafting, as a...and then they gave you the basics. But you started that, unless of course you were one of the children that showed high aptitude. If you were high aptitude, you didn't get any of that. You went right into the better skills...better language, higher math, you see. But if you tracked low, then immediately they just plugged you into these training things. So I got out and I really liked drafting so when I went to high school that's when I went into, drafting. I mean like, it's amazing, all I could do when I got out of that technical school was to draft. I couldn't even write a complete sentence.

I mean I really literally could not write a sentence. I didn't know how to write a sentence. I didn't know how to even begin a paragraph. I'd never had to do any of that. Math, I had a lot of math because with the drafting you had to have math, so I had algebra and everything, but I had no 52 communication skills, no writing skills. The first report I had to write I had no idea what to do. So it was very- frustrating.

Well what happened then, and this is going to be real hokey...okay, so this is real hokey. Okay, you get this. I was in this church and they had school in the basement of the church. This was when Boardman schools were beginning to crumble because they just no longer were financially stable. And so they had a lot of church schools. And I got down there and I felt that I thought I would really like to be a teacher. I was kind of in that room and I saw that stuff and I thought, you know, I had such a crappy time in school, and I thought if I could be a teacher maybe I could meet the needs of some of these kids. Because my teachers were prima donnas. They asked the damnedest things from me not realizing I could not produce it. I had a few teachers that were very nice that understood the home situation and tried, but most of them were just, you know, prima donnas. So that's when I decided I would try teaching and everybody heard it and they all laughed. You know, what a joke, me become a teacher. And then I did. And then I got ny first paycheck and I got another job. This district paid me $5800.00 in 1969.

RESPECTING CHILDREN So when these kids come up to me and they're just frustrated to death, I understand where they're coming from. 53

I have been there. So...but it worked out all right. I understand when these kids come in, and they are berserk, they do hideous little things, I try to find out what triggers them, and if you can't...! had one child...! have to hold and hug him because that's the only thing he responds to. ! don't think that child's ever held or ever been held by his parents. And ! feel so sorry for him. And ! see that more and more and more here which is scary because ! would expect it in some of the buildings but not here, so if it's getting bad here, ! can't imagine what it's like in the other buildings, ! just can't imagine.

! do like the job and ! do like...! had a girl and her name was Gwynn and she always whined through her nose. Oh, my God, have you ever had a whiny child that constantly whines through her nose day in and day out. And !'d say, "Gwynn, you could be so pretty but you are just so hideous!" ! said, "Don't whine through your nose like that," you know. So ! was sitting there and this girl comes in and says, "Do you know who ! am?" And ! looked at her and said, "! have no idea." She started whining through her nose and ! said, "Oh, Gwynn." She said, "Yeah, ! don't do that any more." "Well, how you doing." "Oh," she says, "Great, I've gotten straight A's again." Then she says, "I'm going to college. ! have a scholarship." You know, that was nice, because that class was just so hideous, to see that somebody made it good. 54

It's really hard to let go. Especially if you're so involved with these kids. If you're not involved with your class... you're very cold with your class usually you really don't produce anything. I'm closer to these children than their parents are. I see them more than their parents do, you know. And then I know that I'll see them from now on but never like I did before, so it's hard. I don't have any children anyways, so it's like, I don't know, it's real different. Summertime comes and I need the break and I do have other jobs I do, but it's like the routine is stopped and I don't see them and, I don't know, it's very depressing. Parents request me. I'm requested. I get...it's real strange, my class is not the luck of the draw and I talk to parents later on and they said, "Oh, we requested you." You know. I had one child that everybody was scared to death of her because her mother was so vicious. I had that little girl in my room and she was a sweet child. I never had any trouble with her. Never. And I never had any trouble with her mother, and yet when she went on to the next grade immediately there was a problem, within two days. And I kept on saying to the other teacher, I said you know, "Lighten up," you know, "Lighten up." You won't have any trouble with the parent if the child's a good student. Lighten up a little bit. "Oh no, I have rules." Well perhaps your rules are a little bit out of line. I'm real easy-going. I tell the kids what we're 55 going to learn, what I want them to learn. I test them, I show them what they don't know, we practice it, and then I work with them and I give them a test. If they do real well on the test they get a very good grade. I have some children that will never do well. I was telling one of the teachers, I tested this child and this child got 20% on the test. After we worked on the project about four weeks the child got 55%. Well that's a 35% increase. I gave that child a C. I thought that was what that child deserved. They wouldn't. They'd give that child an F. That happens here all the time. I mean that's just not fair when you're practicing something to be graded on it. I mean they should do it and if they don't turn it in then perhaps it's too hard and they can't do it. But that's not what they do. They say, "Well they don't try." Well perhaps they do try. Perhaps it's too damn hard for them. And I think a lot of times this is it. And some of these kids have terrible home lives and then they expect them to do this work at home. What a joke! I know what some of these homes are like and so when they... Marty can't do any work at home. He's got seven brothers and sisters and they were living in two rooms. Can you imagine homework surviving in that mess. Well I couldn't. So I never like...I don't give Marty homework. I let him start on it after school and when he comes in the morning to finish it, and I know that he'll do 56 it. But if I would say, "Now Marty, you have to take this home and work on it," you might as well throw it in the trash can. Now that's not giving that kid a break. He needs a break. And I try to tell the other teacher...you know, you should do this, and she just can't see it. She just can't...see, she's had such a good, stable home and such a good environment that she can't imagine what a zoo that house would be. She can't comprehend that when she would come home...she has no idea, first of all, who will be in the home and what will happen when they arrive. I had two drunken grandfathers move in with me. You don't...you have never seen anything like two drunken grandfathers in the same home. I understand. I know what it's like not to have a stable home environment. I know what it's like to walk up and open the door and look in the kitchen and go, "Oh God look what's here today." And my mother's red in the face, just as hot as can be, because actually one was a great-grandfather and one was a grandfather. The two of them were there and she did not want them and she knew she was stuck with them. And ny father comes home and he's very mad at ny mother because this is her family, and he's mad because they're there, so you've got two drunken grandfathers and you have a mother and father who are on a rampage and you walk through the door and. . .no matter what happens you get it. You're an innocent bystander, but 57 they are so hot and hostile over the situation. . .And they were both drunks and my great-grandfather was French Canadian and he only spoke French and my mother spoke French and they would speak. And my grandfather, he refused to speak French, and these horrible arguments would start in two languages. It was like living in hell. I don't know, you get to the point where there's only so much you can do. I can't take these kids out of their home environments. I can't change their life for them. I can only give them an outlet. I've had children that really I'd tell them, you know, "I can't change where your home's at but this is different. I mean you're treated here differently and things here are different so you have to make an adjustment." It usually works.

We've got a teacher here who has no life, absolutely no life other than here, and she's blown her chance at marriage because she's so critical and she can't understand why everybody's not like her. Well they have a life, she has no life. She was so afraid to take a chance, so afraid that it wouldn't be the perfect world that she wants to have, you know, she's got a perfect controlled room in her, you know, classroom. But she doesn't. She has nothing, she has absolutely nothing, and all she does is school, school, school, school, and if that's what they think that a teacher should be. I'm wrong. How can you possibly work with children 58 when you live in a vacuum? How can you understand why... teachers come in to me, "I want you to punish this child," and I look at the child, I said I told you not to do that in front of ______. I know what that kid went through. Probably last night he got to see his dad try and put his mother's head through a wall for entertainment. I can understand. So he comes to school and he's aggressive and like, "I'll beat the ..." and on and on and on and on about how bad he is and I think to ityself, well, he could be a lot worse. He's coping with it the best he can.

OVERCOMING A DIFFICULT BEGINNING What I've done over the years is overcome a lot by having and making goals and figuring out what I wanted and how to achieve them, I bought a house in the ghetto for $1,600. That's all my first house was. It cost me $1,600 cash and I rebuilt it and sold it for $54,000. I bought another house for $4,000 in the ghetto on a place called Upton Lane behind me, and all I had to do was wait for them to take the occupants out. They had died in their sleep. And they took them out and I bought the house furnished for $4,000. The Salvation Anry refused to take the furniture it was so bad, and we're talking a place that is one-eighth of a mile from Rice's downtown. There's so much poverty...people don't realize the poverty in the city. And then I bought another house next to it for $6,000. So I get done buying these 59

houses, rehabbing and selling them. That's how I got where I

am today. It wasn't on this teacher's salary. One night I woke up with a terrible pain in my back. I mean it was like this agony. And here I'd laid on the bed with ny tools on and I was sleeping on top of ny hammer because it was in ny belt and it was digging into ny back when I woke up and I thought, "Oh ny God, I've been

hammered. " I got to the point where I didn't want to live in a rental any more and I wanted to get ahead, so I just...I knew I could do it. I mean I went to the store and got a Reader's Digest "Build It Yourself" book for $15, and I looked at it

and I thought, "Well I can do this. It's not that hard. And I had a friend that was in real estate and she was trying to sell and I jokingly told her, I said, "I got $1,600, get me a house." She came back the next day -- "Got it." And I says, "Oh sure. I'm going to live in this hovel." And she says, "Well the city's offering a five percent loan to develop the city. You can borrow all you want at five percent. All you have to do is own a house." So I bought the house and I contacted the city and they came out and says there ' s a mistake. I thought, "Sure, I knew this." They said, "It's three percent, not five." So I borrowed the money at three percent. And I taught here and I went home and I worked on it and I'd come back and teach. 60

A BAD STORY-EXTRACTING JESSICA Oh, I have one that just came up today. Ralph Mertz, our Principal, was out there with a parent trying to get a child out of the van and three years ago I had a child and her name was Jessica and she was in my room. She was in my home room and then she went to Betty's room for instruction. And Jessica had a phobia about coming to school, brought on by her mother. Her mother was a monster. And her mother, when Jessica would come to school she'd scream at the top of her lungs and literally we'd had to, you know, she would come to school but it was a chore getting her in the room. When I got her she wouldn't even leave thecar. So I had to go out in the mornings and literally pull her out of the car. Oh and then she'd scream at the top of her lungs, "I want my Mommy, I want my Mommy." And then finally I'd come out to the car and she'd take the seat and ram it all the way forward so I couldn't get her out of the car.I'd just reach down and take the seat and ram it all the wayback, take her back pack, throw it in the lawn, put my arms around her, rip her out of the car, kick her mother's door shut and then her mother would drive five miles an hour out the drive in front of the school real slow and Jessica would be standing there screaming her lungs out. And then when she got far enough away that Jessica couldn't see her she'd just take off real fast. The woman was a beast. 61

So it got to the point where I would...you know I had to do it every morning but I was busy in the room, so the kids would take turns waiting at the door, and then they'd come walking in the room, "She's there," they'd say. And I'd go out there and take them with me, give them her backpack and pull her out of the car and just like she...no peer pressure would matter. She was oblivious to all of it. And then one time I was sick and I thought, now who got her out. Well, three of them went out there and opened the door and two of them dragged her out, and got her into the room. I thought that was amazing. That class was amazing. But her mother had a lot to do with the bad home situation. This was all a game they played. And they tried everything with her. They tried having her talk on the phone to her mother at break so she knew her mother was there and she wouldn't get off the phone. And Sue Riley works in the office and they'd say, "Your time's up," and Jessica would grab the phone and say, "No, I want my Mommy, " and Sue would just disconnect the thing from the phone, and Jessica... she'd see it was disconnected and then she'd go back to Sue and walk down to the room. It was the most bizarre behavior I've ever seen. Well, what happened was one morning I brought her in and she was at her locker. Once I'd get her in the room no problem. Not that morning. That morning she was standing 62 there and I was taking the attendance and one of the kids said, "She's gone." And I said, "What?" She ran away. Well you know once you bring a child into the school you're liable for them. So I took off trying to chase her down. That's when I realized I couldn't do it. She was in school and I said, "Jessica come back," and she started running down the hallway. So I took off after her and she ran out and I almost had her and then just as I was reaching for her she just took off and I couldn't grab her. So I came back and I said, "Call the police," and then Ralph said, "Oh no, we can't call the police," and I said, "Well somebody's going to call the police. She's a runaway child." And he said, "Oh, she'll just walk home. She'll be all right." And I thought, "Whoa, this sounds like a lawsuit and I'm worried." So after that I told Ralph, I said, "I'm not going to pull her out of the car any more if she's going to run away. I'm not going to do it." Then her mother started doing it, you know, grabbing her by the hair and ripping her out of the car herself and then

Jessica would do things like throw herself on the car and her mother would get the car up going fast so she'd throw her off the car. It was real entertainment. And then, it's strange, she got to the point then where she wouldn't run away, she'd just stand in front of the school and scream and walk back and forth, but she wouldn't come in. Then one day she just 63 ran out and some person was sitting there at the stop sign and she opened the car door and got in with them, and wanted that stranger to take her home. Oh, it just got worse and worse and worse, and then finally Ralph wasn't here and the staff development person was here and she said, "I've had it, enough." She said, "Jessica come in the school." "No," she started screaming, "I want my Momrty, " so Sue called the Sheriff and the Sheriff that came to pick her up was the son of the aide, so that's how we know all this happened. So they pick Jessica up and Jessica calmly got in the back of the cruiser and the guy drove her to the station. Well, she thought the guy was going to take her home. Got her to the station and it took three of them to get her out of the car. Sherry told her son, "You should have called up Craig. He could get her out all by himself." She held onto the seat, you know. It took three of them. They had to put a manacle on her legs and her arms and then it took three of them to get her out. Well, then Social Services got involved and they did absolutely nothing. So we finally...she had attended some fifth grade, I'd say out of 180 days maybe 90 days she made it. Got to middle school, after the third day she never went again. She must be 16 now and has not spent one single day in school...and no one cares. 64

STRESS This is the class from hell. They're much better now than what they were. Much better, but they have bad social skills. And I have about six that are on medication and their parents play games. They don't put a...they take them off the medication to see if I notice. They do. I called up one parent. I called him and I said, "It's now 11:45, come and get your child. This is Mr. Hastings. Don't talk to the principal, don't talk to the secretary, just come and get your child." And they showed up, took her, next day she was on medication. I had to do it. I mean it got to the point where it was like my stomach was being eaten alive. They can't sit together. They cannot sit in tables. They have to sit in rows. They still yell at each other across the room. It's just really bizarre. I had to go see the doctor because I had all this burning in rny stomach. I've been living on Pepto Bismol for two months. So I went in to see him and he said that I had so much stress that I've aggravated my esophagus and the top of my stomach and so I have to take some kind of an anti-acid medication for a month. I used to have stress so bad that after school I'd go home and I'd sleep for about an hour. That was my way of dealing with the stress of the day. Some people do have... there's some people that kind of walk around their 65 rooms doing nothing for about 20 or 30 minutes. Everybody has different ways of dealing with it. I used to go to the gym and work out before I had so many problems with my joints in my body. I'd leave here at 3 o'clock and lift weights for about two hours. That's how I dealt with the stress. But then I started getting a lot of joint problems and I can't do that any more. But I go to aerobics, I try to go to aerobics, a lot of us go to aerobics. I go to aerobics at 5 o'clock. The weights were really tearing up the joints in my shoulders and my arms, but it's important you have release. We have one teacher here that shops. That's how her release is. She's destroying herself. She spends money she doesn't have, but she has a compulsion to shop. So she leaves here and she shops. That's how she deals with the tension of the day. We used to have teachers who used to nip, had a bottle in their closet. They'd take a healthy belt. We had...when I first worked here we had a drinker. She had vodka hidden in her closet and she would hit it. She's gone now but that was her way of dealing with it.

I have got a class from hell. I'm serious, that day I said, "Did you see them running around with a head on a stick, that's probably my room." That's the way they are. It's just awful. I'm taking...I'm permanently on an antacid the rest of my life because these kids have caused me to have 66 almost an ulcer in my stomach. It's been a year of hell. I feel bad.

CÜRRICÜLUM-THE DICTATOR APPROACH They don't test...these children don't test. I gave them atest with math problems on it and they've all failed it. But when I gave them a practice -- if I isolate the problems and give them a practice, every day I give them a practice with the problems isolated — they do it quickly and perfect.

But if I take the different problems and put it on a test and mix them up, they fail it. I don't know what to do. Carolyn doesn't either. It's just unbelievable. Like if I had one number times one, one number times two, one number times three, one number times four, and I mix them up on a paper, they'll get the majority of them wrong, but if I had one number times four, all over the whole paper, they'll get a perfect page. So I take two numbers times two they'll do perfect but if I take two numbers times three and two numbers times two they'll get it all wrong. It's just mind boggling.

For example I gave them a language test and I said find the verb, and they can't. So I said, what's the subject? They told me. What's the predicate? They told me. What do you call the first word in the predicate? The verb. What's the verb? They told me. Now next sentence, what's the verb? Can't, dog, how. But if I would go to that child again and say, what's 67 the subject? What's the predicate? What do you call the first word in the predicate? It's a verb. Tell me the verb, so they'd tell me the verb. Now you tell me what I'm supposed to do. I don't know. I could send a child to the board and they got an F on the test. He could identify every part of speech — adjectives, adverbs, tell you what type of sentence it is, perfect. But if I would give him a test on it, reading the test to him, he'd still get an F. I don't know what to do, I just don't know. I've never had a class like this. See I learned how to use outcome-based education, I like that. They don't use that anymore. They use portfolios. They do. You pre-test, you find out what they don't know, then you explain to the children, "This is what you're going to learn, this is what I want you to do and this is what we're working on." Then you post-test. And then you take your pre-test and your post-test and that's what you get your grade from. And all the other work is practice. And then you put it in a folder. So now everybody is going to the big thing on portfolio. What do they have in their portfolio? Pre-test, post-test, on all subjects. But they dropped that program. This district has dropped every single program they've had since I've been here. I have been through Taba, Outcome-Based Education, Mastery, which was a form of questioning. Oh God, what was the other one? The other one was called Dictator School, where everything 68 was structured so much you'd almost throw up. We went through a period of time when in your lesson plan if it was 9:15 and it said you were teaching a subject, then by God, at 9:15 you had better have been teaching that subject. We went to work stations, we went to free-base stations, we went from discussion groups, we went from structured reading to informal reading, we have done it all. And every time we'd start a program...one time they took all the textbooks that we had, and a lot of them were new, and trashed them. Every textbook. Because we were going on Scott Foresman and they didn't want any of the teachers cheating and using the old textbooks, so they trashed them all and gave us all Scott Foresman and we were told that's the only program we were allowed to teach because it would cover any problems we ever had. And then we trashed Scott Foresman because we discovered it was crap, and we burned all that stuff and we got brand new books from McGraw Hill because it was going to cure everything. Now they're discovering, you know, McGraw Hill, just is not cutting it. It's just so nuts. I mean it's just...they went from textbooks to experimenting in science and then to cut costs they got another company to give the supplies through lab kits. What they forgot was, you know, it was going to come in bulk and not be ready to go in the kits. So we had aides come in and these women would spend hours 69 going through this stuff, trying to fill the kits with the right stuff. Nothing ever worked right. It has been a hands- on, but there's no money to buy the materials. I told Jim, I said you can't leave here while you're young. You're not tainted yet. I mean we've done so many crazy things over the years. The curriculum flavor of the month program.

That's why I keep folders. I've always kept folders. This is the latest thing, keep these folders. I've always done it, because when parents come in and say I don't understand, then I would say, "Well here's what I've done, here's what we're working on...here's where we started and this is what we're working towards." You know when I taught Special Education I had to keep weekly long-term plans and then on each child keep a plan of what they were going to do, compared to the weekly and long-term, and so I can do that now and then when a parent comes in and says I don't understand why this is happening, I can pretty much tell them in a matter of minutes where their child is compared to the rest and what their child really needs to work on to achieve. I had one parent just hideous to me because I wouldn't give her child straight A's, and I said, "Yeah, your child compared to the rest of the room should get straight A's but compared to what your child can do, your child is not working up to his ability." I said, "You don't understand when your child gets to middle school they're going to begin to 70 separate him and when he goes to junior high, I mean high school he's going to take courses for college." She said, "Of course." And I said, "Yes and there he's going to be with everybody of his own ability and if he doesn't know how to apply it now how is he going to apply it then." She hated me. She just went on and on and on and on. She...anyway years later she came and told me that I was right. But you're right, if a parent came in and saw what I was doing and said, "I really don't understand," well you know I'd sit down and talk to them

THE GOLDEN BUILDING There'S only a few golden buildings in this district. Geneva is a golden building. Whatever they wanted they got because the superintendent was going to make a reputation out of that building, see. When he had that building constructed it was one big huge building. The superintendent before. And that was his golden building and all the money went into it. That was his golden building. No matter what they wanted they got because that was his golden building and that building was going to work. And the other buildings got nothing, and of course they did not achieve as well as the golden building did. Well, he's gone now and this golden building is beginning to crumble because the new superintendent doesn't see a need for everything to go to it. 71

ISOLATION Nobody else from this end ever walks down there and no one ever from that end walks up here. Murphy does because she started in this end so she kind of moves back and forth, but nobody else does. They don't ever...when they have a break they don't ever walk into somebody else's room and see what's going on. I think they're so terrified somebody might do it to them that they can't...they're worried. And there's a lot of good teachers here but they're so...I don't know what the word is --defensive -- about what goes on in their room. They're all doing a good job but they're like...they get real upset if somebody walks in their room while they're working. Afraid they're doing something wrong, and that's so silly, but that's the way they are. I'm the only person who'll walk from this end of the building to that end of the building. When Brenda and Julie and I taught we would work together. I would just take Brenda's stuff out of her room. I'd say, "Oh, I can use this," and pick it up and walk away with it. She didn't like it, and then...but Julie would always, you know, Julie and I would always say, "What are you doing" or "How's it going," and then we would communicate a lot. The only...I have to ask the people I work with what they're doing. They never come in rry room and say well, "I'm doing this and this and this. " I always have to go ask them, and I show them materials I'm using and they say, "Gee, 72 that's nice." They never ask to use the materials or anything and they never share anything they're doing. Now they're getting better because...Karen and Beth are getting a lot better. And when we go to Benton Falls I'll teach the lessons for the four classes and I think they feel more comfortable around me now because when I teach the lesson they're right there and it doesn't phase me. I don't care who's there when I'm teaching the lessons.

ON ADMINISTRATION

We had a principal one time. He was a...he would not...would not give you anything and he stored stuff in that music room over there, and he was the only one with a key, and you asked for staples and he'd give you a box of staples. He'd give you one thing of staples, one at a time. And you had to write a written request to get it. If you wanted paper, you got one ream of paper and you weren't allowed any more for so many days, and then you would get another ream only on a written request. Well he finally left and that was terrible what they did to him, but they got rid of him. They opened up that storeroom...And they found everything. We didn't order any paper, pencils, scissors, crayons, you can't imagine. In fact we still have paper that we're using and this was 20 years ago. We have rolls back there that have dates on them, that are dated 20 years ago. I mean they've been back in the corner and people just kept buying stuff and 73 piling them on. I found them in the summer. We put them on the racks so the teachers could use them. They're weird colors, faded colors. There was so much stuff back there, you can't believe it. I mean for years we never ordered scissors, paste, staples, staplers, pencil sharpeners, we never ordered any of that stuff because it was back in that room.

TIME

I try to have a schedule and I try to follow the schedule. I used to go and not follow the schedule and kind of let things go, and I found that subjects that I really didn't enjoy working with I would avoid and that would only make it worse and so like say, per se, I have a class of poor writers and good readers, then if I didn't watch the schedule, before I knew it all we were doing was reading and then the writing would even get harder and harder to teach, so therefore, I have a schedule and I do pretty much follow the schedule, though I unify my arts, you know. But I...and also children, these children come from such unstable homes that if you have a routine and they know the routine is going to take place and they trust the routine, they settle down and they feel secure, and it's good for them because they have no routine or security in the home. So if you say we always do this...well these older teachers taught me that. They said you really have to give children routines because 74 they don't have any in their lives and so a lot of them if you get a routine and then they can become more stable they can produce and they get more trust, they feel more secure. And that's the hard part. So that's why I really do follow a schedule...! really... it's the same, start with spelling, then go to language, then go to reading, and by doing that then they feel comfortable with the day and they know what's going to happen and that helps a lot. Then in the afternoon they realize there will be more reading and language and math and then...so they really quite know what's going to happen when it's going to happen. I don't know, it's like it's a finality to the end of the year and I miss the children and I become very depressed because I'll never see them again. And I'm also depressed because I didn't get accomplished what I wanted to. I have severe depressions. Very, very...my family, it's hereditary. I used to take medication for it, but I've found other ways of getting over it. But it's very depressing for me the end of school. So now what I do is I go on a vacation. I will go on vacation...the day school's over, Saturday I leave and I go away for a week and I go to the beach and the shore and I'm gone and that's a better transition for me and I can handle it better. I don't know. I guess you're in really so much demand and you're needed so much. I wrote a friend of mine a letter 75 a long time ago telling him I'd really come to the conclusion that I'm a caretaker. That's rny role in life I've adopted and that's what I handle. And I said when summertime comes I'm no longer a caretaker and I'm at a loss for awhile. It takes me time to funnel my energies at different things. And I'm lonely, I mean I'm constantly around people and children all day long and you go from that suddenly to not seeing anybody for hours at a time.

SURVIVING THE YEAR FROM HELL IN A COMMANDO ROOM No, I just try to...I just try to, you know, just get through. I just try to be more positive. They are growing, they are learning, I try to think well they did learn, they are growing, they are learning, but like...it's just like, alright, we'll sit together in a group and go over this calendar. This is supposed to be really good. After beating each other for two minutes, oh, we'll skip that for this year and put it away. I found out what works and what doesn't. So I made a commando room. I put them in two rows and I worked in the middle. So they had a commando room. I had a commando room once before years ago and I remember how I set it up -- two rows. You take everything that...everything and put it away. There's nothing in the room. It's like a bare skeleton and you put them in two rows, they're both facing forward, you sit in the middle at the table so you have a clear view 76 of the room and you go from there. And you never turn your back, never. And it works.

PARENTS I kept Jana in iry room and I worked with Jana almost to the end of the school year. I mean I really worked with her. Her mother hated me, and the reason her mother hated me was that Jana wasn't eating and she started to disappear. So Children's Services called and I discussed the fact with them that I thought Jana was anorexic. Well her mother's such a sick pervert thing that she wants her daughter to stay skinny so she'd win a beauty contest. This mother has got noodles in the brain. So Children's Services weighed her and discovered she was way below weight and was losing weight. So I started monitoring what Jana ate. And I would demand to know, you know. I'd go. I'd be eating ny lunch and I'd know it was time and I'd go out there and I 'd look at what Jana ate and write it down. And the mother found out about it and screamed at me I had no right to do that. I was not a doctor. Right out there in the hallway, by the office. It's crowded with people and she's just screaming at me, and suddenly something snapped in my head and I screamed right back at her. And I said, "I have to do it because Children's Services demands I do it. If I don't do it for Children's Services I can go to jail." I said, "You're under investigation." And she just like froze, and everybody looked at her. Instead of making me 77 look like shit, she pulled the wrong person at the wrong time. I had a very religious mother who was crazy, I knew that but no one else did, and she had her son in my room and I gave him a book to use that was high, high interest slow reading and one of the things was about a Ouija board. I never thought about it. She grabbed that book and said I was teaching devil worship in my room, and I was unfit. And they really were...you know, like they were going to burn me. I didn't have a hope. So finally they asked me where I got the book from and I looked them straight in the face and I said, "I ordered it with school money. I PBBSed it." I said, "I didn't buy that book, the school bought it." Suddenly it became, you know, suddenly at that point I had a lot of support. Well they confiscated all the books I had bought from the PBBS and destroyed them all, even though that's the only one that had that stuff in there. So she went to see the...Superintendent then, and she was with the Superintendent talking about it and suddenly she said to him, "I can't talk to you any more, Christ wants to speak to me." And with that she went over in the corner and talked to God for ten minutes in the corner in his office, then came back and finished talking to him. Of course right then and there he knew, "Nut." And a week later she went to Livingston Sanitarium because the boy went to live with his 78 granc3mother. And his grandmother sent me a letter saying, "My daughter's in Livingston for awhile, I'll be taking care of Jack." But until the point that they found out it was their money that bought the books, I was in trouble.

BEING MALE AND AN ELEMENTARY TEACHER

You know, like here I am Mr. Personality and then the Kindergarten teachers think, "God this is nice, a man teaching first grade. We'll give him all the children that need a man." Yeah, oh boy, oh boy. I had 33 children. I had a child named Olive Munson and Olive Munson had never left the apartment where her parents lived until she came to Kindergarten, I thought...no first grade. She didn't even go to Kindergarten. They couldn't part with her. She walked in the room and I thought either this child is dumber than a door or there's something going on here. And then I found out. She ' d never been out of the apartment. And every room had a cousin or a relative of some kind that was a relative of this child. And then I had eight other children that they were just as bizarre. So I said, I said, oh foolish me, "I need these children tested." God, these parents came in and said, "You tested her 'cause she's black." I said all the children that are supposed to be tested please stand and all these seven white kids stood up. And I said, "They're being tested with your daughter." "All right, they said." You know? CHAPTER II

LITERATURE REVIEW

THINKING AND KNOWING PRESENTED IN THE GIFT OF STORY Robert Coles (1989) is a storyteller. His professional life as child psychiatrist, professor and author provide multiple lived experiences which constitute many collectively tellable stories making up some forty one books describing experiences of southern children, the lives of college students and the fears and phobias of severely mentally ill patients. Bringing these stories to print has touched the imagination of many who have read them and changed the lives of a few . The material for Coles' stories comes from the common lived experiences of his patients and from the expressions of compassion and love for children and friends and professional colleagues. His stories orient to the ordinary and the situated and the local meaning of the practical experiences of those whose stories call for his professional and personal attention. The storied lives of his patients, his peers, friends and colleagues are connected with the local and storied lives of those ordinary working women and men, as audience, who read and understand his call to find those storied lives in their own. Coles' stories are about the real experiences of those he has come in contact

79 80 with in professional practice and personal encounter. The power of his stories rests in the expression of common lived experiences brilliantly retold which force the reader to make familiar and take notice of the local historical traditions and situated personal and taken for granted practical experiences simply misplaced in the mundane routines of contemporary life. His work is a presentation of polyphony, of the multiple voices of students, children, patients and loved ones-the ordinary people who go about the business of ordinary living-in a normal but always uniquely local, contextually situated, biographically historical, ordinarily practical sort of storied way. Story is as Coles (1989) notes: "The immediacy that it can possess as it connects so persuasively with human experience in its power to work its way into one's thinking life. A story well told can enable any of us to learn by example, to take to heart what is, really, a gift of one another" (p. 191) . We carry our stories as tellable and offerable gifts in a community of sharing with one another. The telling of a story is gift giving in a greater sense of a personal and collaborative sharing of meaning and understanding in, what seems to me, a collective celebration of the self. To tell a story is to share part of our personal and ordinary lived experiences with another. The telling of a story about ourselves creates a public and community arena in which we 81 can discover through the presentation of our private thoughts made public, in story, what Taylor (1991a) understands to be originally human, to socially construct within a community of inquirers (Torbert, 1991) what it means to be ourselves. Taylor argues that within story each of us discovers what it means to be ourselves. But this discovery can't be made by consulting some pre-existing model or formulated hypothesis of what constitutes a full life, it can only be made by articulating it afresh. We discover what we have it in us to become, by becoming that mode of life, by giving expression to it by our speech and action. Havel (1991) argues the same point when he acknowledges : I'm interested in language as something that fashions life, destinies, and worlds; language as the most important skill; language as ritual and magic charm; the world as carrier of dramatic movement, as something that legitimizes, as a way of self-affirmation and self- projection (p. 193) For Havel the social construction of a "real reality" is enfolded in language which includes a world which is legitimized in a linguistic collage of artful and creative and gift giving (Coles, 1989) expressions of the self.

The revelation of a social and personal self made public through the creative expression of story must be treated as believable and embedded in a social and historical tradition within which the truth about each and everyone of us can be learned. Story is an immediate consciousness by which we 82 ascertain the "what is" of our existence. As Agee (1941) so eloquently writes and illustrates the power of the word and story as :

The immediate world, everything is to be discerned, for him who can discern it, and centrally and simply, without either dissection into science, or digestion into art, but with the whole of consciousness, seeking to perceive it as it stands: so that the aspect of a street in sunlight can roar in the heart of itself as a symphony, perhaps as no symphony can: and all of consciousness is shifted from the imagined, the revisive, to the effort to perceive simply the cruel radiance of what is (P. 11). And as Coles notes: "People bring us their stories. They hope they tell them well enough so that the truth of them can be understood. They hope we know how to interpret their stories correctly, so what we must remember is that what we hear is their story; a tellable story of the conscious self. The common and ordinary story, yours and mine-it's what we all carry with us on this trip we take, and we owe it to each other to respect those stories and above all learn from them"

(p. 30) . We learn from stories for the true and simple reason that there is no way of getting at the social and historical understandings of our lives, from which one either implicitly or explicitly infers the larger social and historical patterns of the meaning of our lives, except through some form of communication with the members of that society of which we are a part; and any such communication with those 83 members presupposes an understanding of their language, their uses of that language, their own understandings of what the people doing the observations are "up to" (Douglas, 1970) . As

Douglas notes, how we come to understand the everyday life of one another must begin with the actions and interactions of social members of any group or society making those actions understood to one another.(p. 11). I argue throughout this dissertation that narrative or storytelling is one of the primary means for making our actions understandable to one another. The literature review presented in this chapter subsequently informs the current research effort through what, in Taylor's terms (1989) is a metaphorical articulation of an old formulation or mode of knowing made fresh. This dissertation and the writing within which it is created is a story of the tension between science and the humanities, the tension between, in Bruner's (1986) thinking, the paradigmatic or logico-scientific mode of knowing which attempts to fulfill the ideal of a formal, mathematical system of description and explanation and the narrative mode of knowing which leads to good stories, gripping drama and believable historical accounts (p. 13).

THE USE OF STORY IN RESEARCH This study makes use of the historical "best accounts" (Taylor, 1989) of lived professional teaching experience 84 reflected in teacher story to further elaborate on how teachers think about, talk about and live within the tapestries of their teaching practice as they go about their work, explain their actions, and clarify their aims as well as their understanding in narrative arrangement and thematic connections in a linguistic achievement of their teaching practice. Within these best accounts of teaching lived experience-as narratives of professional teaching experiences-rests one of the central resources for studying teacher thinking, teacher knowledge and the social and cultural context in which such a practices are socially constructed (Cortazzi, 1993). In narrative, teachers not only recall and report experience, they repeat and through reflection on action (Schon, 1983) recreate it. Through narrative, the meaning of experience is reorganized and reconstructed both for the tellers and audiences. In telling their stories teachers tell of their personal and professional selves and of the knowledge and thinking which through reflection on the experiences as storied events

(Shuman, 1990) of their lived experiences construct what teachers know and how the think (Cortazzi, 1993) . This dissertation has chosen the flood plains over the high ground (Pope, 1993). Its focus and intent, its sole aim is to as Schon (1983) notes, "Deliberately involve itself in messy but critically important problems...To opt for and take 85 risks in the swampy lowlands as opposed to the those who choose the high ground of technical rigor," (p.43). Connelly and Clandinin (1988) iterate Schon's thoughts about the use of story in research:

Those who study personal experience must be open to a rich and sometimes seemingly endless range of possible events and stories and must be prepared to follow leads in many directions and to hold them all in inquiry context as the work proceeds. Experience is messy and so is experiential research (p. 417).

This dissertation examines teacher practical knowledge and teacher thinking as it is presented in story. It relishes in mucking around in the quirky and often unpredictable scenes, events and plots of stories of ordinary teaching practices which portray personal teaching experiences as trial and error, stumbles and falls, missed opportunities and wonderful surprises, of intuition, of passion and wonderment and especially hope, despair and frustration with, more often than not, the focused aim and determined intention of just muddling though the day. Mishler (1992) argues that story as personal experiences stories (Shuman, 1995), "recounted at any point," imposes an intelligible and followable order on an "inherently unpredictable" life course yet "represents the most internally consistent interpretation of presently understood past, experienced present, and anticipated future at that time" (p.25). The question held open for examination in this dissertation is how teachers come to know and achieve 86 a storyable and tellable, a best account, an internally consistent interpretation of the storied events of a teaching practice. To address the question is an effort to increase the knowledge base about teacher's practical knowledge about the needs and desires, fears and passions, aspirations and wonderment, aims and goals in the intelligent achievement of a teaching practice in the hopes of learning about which social and cultural conditions would be most favorable or unfavorable in the gestation, growth and maturation of such a practice. This study attempts to examine the practical but often tacit and private knowledge (Polanyi, 1983) teachers hold about their practice and its public articulation through the use of narrative. The authenticity of such practical knowledge is its very grounding and revelation in the achievement of a practice as it is lived through, deliberated about, interpreted, talked about and reflected upon in story. That narrative or story is a means of making sense of one's lived experiences as well as other's experience presents a distinct possibility that in discovering meaning and understanding of a teacher's practice in story we are apt to discover teacher thinking and teacher practical knowledge disclosed, which for the most part, determine and are responsible for the very practice which it describes. What then can we know about the experiences of teaching practice re-presented through typical stories as events told about it? 87

NARRATIVE AS A PRACTICAL MEANS OF STUDYING THE

ACHIEVEMENT OF A TEACHING PRACTICE The achievement of a teaching practice is considered both a creation, in the sense that it is a locally and situated social construction achieved through thought and action, as well as a revelation in the sense that such a constructed practice is informed by the local and situated context in which it is constructed as well as reflecting the social history and larger cultural formulations and traditions which give the narrative intersubjective meaning and understanding. Narrative makes fresh the old story of the relationship between teacher research and teacher practice. I want to argue as does Elbaz (1990) that teacher narrative is a form of complex backdrop which allows for a connection between the practice of teaching as an achievement or creation and the knowledge proper to it which is always a revelation of the practice itself. Narrative research is that which most adequately constitutes the process of achievement and then presents teacher thinking and knowledge as revelatory product. Narrative is the very binding thread of teaching, the tapestry which teachers weave together and within which the practical work of teaching is seen as making sense (pp. 32-33) . The following literature review examines portions of a huge body of research which assumes that teacher thought and action are dynamic and interactive and 88 when presented in story constructs the practice and locates the self in relation to a practical knowledge and thinking which informs them both. By knowing a teacher's story we can know a teacher's mind (Geertz, 1983).

THE DEVELOPMENT OF TEACHER THINKING RESEARCH In a 1986 article entitled Teacher's Thought Processes which appeared in the third edition of the Handbook of Research on Teaching (Wittrock, 1985) Clark and Peterson note that the fundamental assumptions behind teacher thinking research is that teacher behavior is eventually influenced by teacher thought and such research into teacher thought seeks to describe fully the mental lives of teachers. Teachers' actions and teachers' thoughts are inextricably intertwined in a tapestry of meaning and understanding which makes reasonable sense of the lived experience of teaching where thought and action, in intricate patterns of deliberation, reflection and judgment, inform one another. The tapestry metaphor will be used extensively throughout this dissertation to describe what Calderhead (1987) understands as the complexity of the teaching situation where the school and classroom as milieu (Schwab, 1978) clearly places a huge burden on teachers to attend to and process an enormous amount of constantly changing information and to continually juggle conflicting outside objective interests and activities and inside subjective values and beliefs. What forms of 89 thinking and what forms of knowledge teachers use to construct narrative or storied talk about their complex work is the "so what" question addressed in this dissertation. Calderhead (1987) understands the concept 'teacher thinking' as a term which has come to unite a body of research which has as it common core of interest and study the ways in which knowledge is actively acquired and used by teachers and the circumstances that affect its acquisition and use (p. 5). Halkes and Olson (1984) describe teacher thinking and teacher knowledge research in much the same manner as it is developed in this dissertation, namely : One that is not so much striving for the disclosure of 'the' effective teacher, but for the understanding of teaching processes as they are. Afterall, it's the teacher's subjective school related knowledge which determines for the most part what happens in the classroom; whether the teacher can articulate her knowledge or not. Instead of reducing the complexities of the teaching learning situation into a few manageable research variables, one tries to find out how teachers cope with these complexities. The way the complexities and ambiguities of teaching are processed into subjective theories for knowing how to teach in a personal satisfying way, might account for actual teaching activities. In short, what's in the 'mind' of teachers could explain classroom processes in one way or the other (p. 1). Teacher thinking and teacher knowledge research is clearly exploratory; exploring new ways of conceptualizing teaching, of understanding issues concerning practice, and alternative ways of understanding the teaching process and developing new perspectives on practical teaching problems. 90

Such research is a way of conceptualizing and understanding teacher's work and the knowledge base which is created in the dialectic between subject thought and objective action in the achievement and social construction of that work and its re­ presentation in story. Philip Jackson's book Life in Classrooms presents one of the earliest though somewhat

empirical attempts to describe and understand the mental constructs and processes that tacitly account for describing

in its full complexity teacher thinking and planning behavior (Clark & Yinger, 1987)

Historically, teacher thinking research was being conducted sporadically in America, Canada and in Europe during the early 1970's (Ben-Peretz et al., 1986). In 1974 a week long conference of the National Institute of Education was held entitled "Teaching as clinical information processing" (Wittrock, 1985). This conference subsequently fostered communication between those in America and Canada who shared an interest in teaching effectiveness and teacher thinking processes and was in part responsible for the founding of the American Educational Research Association special interest group on teacher and teacher cognition in 1983. Ben-Peretz notes that simultaneously researchers in several European countries founded the International Study Association on Teacher Thinking (ISATT) which promoted a worldwide exchange of ideas and experience in the field of 91 teacher cognition. In 1983 it held its first symposium on teacher thinking and its proceedings were subsequently published in a volume edited by Halkes and Olson (Ben-Peretz et al., 1986). In June of 1974 the National Institute of Education convened a week-long National Conference on Studies in Teaching to create an agenda for future research on teaching. In a report produced by the Institute in 1975 a rationale was developed and assumptions presented for the establishment of a proposed program of research on teacher thinking (Clark & Peterson, 1986). In the report, developers argued for the understanding of that which is most uniquely human in the process of teaching; It is obvious that what teachers do is directed in no small measure by what they think. Moreover, it will be necessary for any innovations in the context, practices, and technology of teaching to be mediated through the minds and motives of teachers. To the extent that observed or intended teacher behavior is "thoughtless," it makes no use of the human teacher's most unique attributes. In so doing, it becomes mechanical and might well be done by a machine. If, however, teaching is done and, in all likelihood, will continue to be done by human teachers, the question of the relationships between thought and action becomes crucial, (p.l) (cited in Clark and Peterson, 1986, p. 256) . Two paradigms of research have supported and contributed to teacher thinking research generally over the past twenty- five years since the publication of the NIE report (Shulman, 1986) . The first, which has been labeled process-product research explores teacher effectiveness by defining teacher 92 action and behavior as process and student learning and achievement as product. The basic goals of this process- roduct research has been to construct a scientific and explanatory basis for teaching which is both descriptive, correlational and measurable as determined through a series of standardized tests whose results collectively form a grid to define teacher effectiveness or map what empirically represents a primarily linear and statistical configuration of the achievement of a teaching practice laid over and against teaching action in a cause and effect relationship with student learning.(Anderson, Evertson & Brophy, 1979; Brophy & Good, 1986; Gage & Needles, 1989; Peterson, 1988; Shulman, 1986) This perspective has been associated with the metaphorical view of teacher as technician or mechanic where the teacher's primary role is to implement the expert and outside research findings of others concerning instruction, curriculum, and assessment on her own teaching style (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1993). Pope (1993) and Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1993) refer to this empirical and linear development of conceptual models of teaching which are developed exclusively by researchers outside the daily day- to-day practices of schooling as "outside-in" research where the voices of teachers' own experienced knowledge as practical knowledge is reduced to whispers or silenced completely by the hard edged din of expert knowledge in the 93 form of standardized statistical and mathematical manipulations as grid which overlays and informs teacher practice as the right way of doing things within the institution of schooling. Since the early 1970s a steady increase can be noted in research devoted to a second paradigm of teacher research; the interpretive or verstehen form of research concentrating on how teachers make sense of and arrive at an understanding of their lived experiences and how they construct meaning for both themselves and their students. That is, current research in teacher thinking is taking more interest in defining the unexamined edges of dialectical relationships (how thought influences action) between teacher behavior and her knowledge about the educational milieu in which she works (Clark & Peterson, 1986; Connelly & Clandinin, 1988; 1990; Elbaz, 1981; 1991; Janesick, 1982) rather than an analysis of her mastery of facts and subject disciplines and the development of empirical models which are used to describe her content knowledge in a structured, sequenced and statistical manner (Moore & Hopkins, 1992) Current research on teacher thinking is moving away from the development of models and schemas of teacher thinking which treat teachers as a primary data source (Clark & Peterson, 1986; Moore & Hopkins, 1992) to those models which help teachers give voice to their unique practices and practical knowledge which, as readily 94 accessible and applicable knowledge used to cope with real- life classroom situations, expresses a local and situated knowledge of lived experience in classrooms as teachers sense it, imagine it, participate in it, and socially construct it in the broader local and cultural context of the school community (Brown & McIntyre, 1986; Butt, 1984; Clandinin, 1985; Connelly & Clandinin, 1988; Elbaz, 1981; Lambert, 1985; McCutcheon, 1992; Munby, 1982; Ross, Cornett & McCutcheon, 1992). This genre of teacher thinking research treats seriously a research approach which generates theory from practice; an ethnographic and phenomenological approach which sees and hears the voices of teachers which in Lawless' (1993) understanding: "Is composed of contested codes and representations where science is not above the historical and the linguistic context" but recognizes the fact that whatever else ethnography in the classroom does, "It translates the voice, the lived experience, the context, the narrative understanding of a teaching practice into writing" (Clifford & Marcus, 1986),

A DISCUSSION OF TEACHER PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE The development of concepts related to a teacher's personal experience knowledge in the form of beliefs, values and principles has a long history of investigation and research, moving the teacher thinking research into an arena of questioning and research which makes known a teacher's way 95 of understanding and making sense of the world, of her knowing and her beliefs about the nature of her personal and practical knowledge about herself and others, and its impact on the development of her thinking, her curriculum development, and on the act of teaching in general. Much of the recent research in teacher thinking seems to center around this interpretive core of principled and valued understanding about the multiple ways in which teachers make sense of and find myriad ways to adjust to their classrooms and students and schools while in the very process of constructing a teaching practice which can make sense of it all (Pope, 1993). I want to argue along with Taylor (1985a) that much of what stands as practical knowledge is inherently and intuitively (Noddings & Shore, 1984) bound up with certain values, beliefs and past experiences which make up the identity of a person. Although I am not interested in discussing Taylor's complicated concepts of identity, what he says about language and the establishment of the self will be of interest now. Taylor notes that: Much of who we are, much of our motivation-our desires, aspirations, evaluation-is not simply given. We give it formulation in words and images. Indeed, by the fact that we are linguistic animals our desires and aspirations cannot but be articulated in one way or the other...Articulations are attempts to formulate what is initially inchoate, or confused, or badly formulated. But this kind of formulation or reformulation does not leave its object unchanged. To give a certain 96

articulation is to shape our sense of what we desire or what we hold important in a certain way (p. 3 6). In trying to understand what practical knowledge may inherently be defined "as", and through what kind of thinking and articulation it may be constructed, Taylor provides some framework by which we can make some intuitive sense of its genesis and subsequent development and achievement through language : It is language which lies behind the feature of articulation, that our feelings are always open to a further articulation just because they already involve articulation. It is because we are language-animals that we have articulated feelings, and that none of...our feelings exist out of the range of articulation. There is no human emotion which is not embodied in an interpretive language; and yet all interpretations can be judged more or less adequate, more or less distortive. What a given human life is an interpretation of, cannot exist uninterpreted; for human emotion is only what it is refracted to be in human language. To be human is to be already engaged in living an...interpretation of oneself and one's aspirations The point Taylor makes here is that as self-interpreting beings, the conditions of who and what we are can never be exhausted. In this regard teachers as well as anyone individually drawing breath while living in community with one another is constantly challenged by new experiences, so the larger issue for all of us trying to make sense of life, is not only where we are in our life, but where we have been and where we are going. And it is here that Taylor (1989) intimates that we all need an orientation to that which allows us to make some sense of, to bring some understanding 97 and meaning to our lives through language. He notes this human need as realizable in the use of narrative : What I am has to be seen as what I have become.. .Of course there are experiences in which we are carried away in rapture and may believe ourselves spoken to by angels; or less exaltedly, in which we sense for a minute the incredible fullness and intense meaning of life...But there is always an issue of what to make of these instants, how much illusion or mere 'tripping' is involved in them, how genuinely they reflect real growth...We can only answer this kind of question by seeing how they fit into our surrounding life, that is, what part they play in a narrative of this life (p. 48) . This interpretive model of research, looking to understand the subjective school related teaching processes of thinking and knowing as they are made available through language and narrative or story, most nearly frames many of the central research questions addressed in this dissertation. Such concerns address teacher meaning and understanding of their practice carried through teacher talk, or the stories teachers tell about their practice to one another and to others. It is the documentation of their "best accounts" of the understanding of a lived professional life as they engage in reasoned action within it and bring meaning to it in story. As Clark notes (1986): The teacher...is a constructivist who continually builds, elaborates, and tests her personal theory of the world...we have begun to move away from the Cybernetically elegant, internally consistent, but mechanical metaphors that guided our earlier work. The teacher thinking and practical knowledge literature reviewed in this chapter rejects the notion of the machine 98 metaphor; teachers as mechanistic implementors of curriculum or technical facilitators of instructional programs designed for maximum teaching efficiency. Rather, this research understands teachers as involved in a socially constructed tapestry as metaphor of professional practice where such a conception of teaching is a complex, varied, diverse and multiple yet practically-oriented set of interwoven and storied and thematic behaviors and actions which are used in developing subsequent teacherful practices. These behaviors, I argue later, are comprised of beliefs, intentions and passions, self-interpretations, and meaningful aims and practical achievements which constitute a practical way of thinking and knowing; ways of seeing, talking about, thinking and knowing and understanding their teacherful work. It is research as Lambert (1985) notes that is involved in understanding teachers' personal knowledge which always lays beyond the chalk dust and pencils and is most nearly what they consider important, what they know about students' needs and what the curriculum requires based on that knowledge. It is practical knowledge of the work of teachers which is, as Connelly and Clandinin (1985) have discovered, a kind of personal practical knowledge which is experientially based. 99 embodied in and socially constructed from teachers' work. This type of research according to Calderhead (1987): Ideally, views teachers as active agents in the development of their own practice, as decision-makers using their specialist knowledge to guide their actions in particular situations, underlining the autonomous, responsible aspects of teachers' work, and providing an appealing rationale for considering teaching as a worthy, complex, demanding profession, especially when contrasted with the previously dominant view of teaching as the mastery of a series of effective teaching behaviors.

Feiman-Nemser and Floden in a discussion of "The Cultures of Teaching" in the Handbook of Research on Teaching

(Wittrock, 1985) project a teacher's thinking and knowledge as that of image as metaphor which the teacher holds and uses to shape the work situation and guide her practice. I hold that this image is more multiple and diverse and open to investigation through story and narrative in which the teacher is treated more as subject than object, as active thinker, playful and creative actor, intuitive wonderer, and creative imaginer whose words created in story must always be heard in their own voice (Scheff1er, 1984) as the complex inside knowledge of a teacher's mind given perspective by her stepping, figuratively speaking, outside of it in story. Such knowledge is according to Connelly and Clandinin (1988) always reflected in, understood and investigated through narrative or story. 100

Teacher thinking is a self-reflective type of thinking and what emerges from it is a set of articulated beliefs, feelings and aspirations, which through its saying constructs a practical knowledge base which acts back and on the very thinking process which constructed it. Underlying this type of thinking is Schôn's constructivist view of reality where reflection-in-action leads the practitioner as teacher to see the constructing situation of her practice, not only as the exercise of her professional artistry but also in all other modes of professional competence. For Schôn (1987) practical knowledge is rooted in worlds of a teacher ' s own making that is constructed and accepted as reality. Through countless acts of attention and inattention, naming, sensemaking, boundary setting, and control, teachers make and maintain worlds of lived experience that become matched to and socially constructed by their professional and practical knowledge and know-how. Teachers have a particular, personal and practical way of seeing their world and a way of constructing and maintaining the world as they see it (p. 36) I wish to argue that when teachers engage in reflective narrative or storytelling, they make known and can reframe that part of the practice told in revealing the tacit process of meaning making and understanding which underlies all of their practice, the allegorical story behind their personal narrative story (Clifford & Marcus, 1986). 101

Language is an essential part of how teachers construct practical knowledge. It is the essential manner in which they express feelings, goals, aims, special relationships, and caring about others. It is essential to the description and construction of their practice. Through language the implicit knowledge of a practice is made explicit. Through language teachers bring to explicit awareness what was formerly inchoate and imageless. They must use language to describe a kind of knowing as well as a change of knowing, which cannot be originally represented in language.

This dissertation is dedicated to making the multiple voices of teachers heard and their varied perspectives on the work they perform knowable. Narrative is a form of research which provides access to a wording of a teacher's lived experience as a visible and knowable practice which within the wording not only constructs and informs the practice, but makes it explicit to others as well. This dissertation is by steady effort and practical intent designed to answer the question posed by Geertz (Geertz, 1983), do we know stories or do we know minds? This dissertation is also a story of how teachers come to make sense of uncertain, unique, and conflicted situations in their practice where professional knowledge learned in their education and training does not fit every case and in which there is not a right answer for every situation. 102

Narrative is one method of reasoning about and coming to understand their practice as a practical endeavor where "thinking like a teacher" and "talking like a teacher" in story is one way of, a form of inquiry by which teachers reason their way through a myriad of often pressing and confusing problems (Nespor & Barylske, 1991).

THE IMPORTANCE OF LANGUAGE IN TEACHER THINKING AND THE

ACHIEVEMENT OF TEACHER PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE The professional interpretive research on teacher thinking developed over the last ten years is diverse and complex most likely due to the nature of the problem being addressed, namely that of describing and interpreting the wording of teachers' minds in a description of teachers' lived experience as achievement of their own practice in their own language (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990) They understand this "wording of the mind", as constructed in story, as one of the basic human forms of experience of the world, a certain way of being in the world. The deliberate storying and restorying of one's life is, therefore, a fundamental method of personal and social growth. As Taylor (1985a) notes: Language is not an assemblage of just words, but the capacity to speak (express/realize) the reflective awareness implicit in using words to say something. Learning to use any single word presupposes this general capacity as background. Words make sense in the web of language. In touching one part of language (word) the whole is present. As in the nature of a web, it is 103

present as a whole to anyone of its parts. To speak is to touch a bit of the web, and thus to make the whole resonate (p. 230) Understanding is always webbed in intersubjective understanding. The cultural traditions and histories of the community allow for the understanding of each individual story within that community. Contextually situated knowledge frames the meaning of the story told. Personal and social and professional growth comes about through making private thoughts public in speech. It is speech as a public activity of language which Taylor notes can account for growth: If language capacity comes to be in speech, then it is open to being continuously recreated in speech, continually extended, altered, reshaped. And this is what is constantly happening. Persons are constantly shaping language, straining the limits of expression, minting new terms, displacing old ones, giving language a changed gamut of meanings (p. 231). Yet at the same time speech must rest against a background of what Gadamer (1992) calls traditions, an historical past which influences the ways in which we not only construct our language but ourselves. Taylor (1985a) holds to this position and its relationship to language as both a social and historical phenomena when he notes that language as articulated speech is: A pattern of activity, by which we express/realize a certain way of being in the world, that of reflective awareness, but a pattern which can only be deployed against a background web which we can never fully dominate; and yet a background that we are never fully 104

dominated by, because we are constantly reshaping it. Reshaping it without dominating it, or being able to oversee it, means that we never fully know what we are doing to it; we develop language without knowing what we are fully making it into. . .The background is only there in that we speak. Conscious speech like the tip of an iceberg. Much of what is going on in shaping our activity is not in our purview. Our deployment of language reposes on much that is preconscious and unconscious (p. 232). Taylor (1985a) expands on the notion of language as an expressive mode of making ourselves understood; a language which moves from the mere description of things to the social construction of feelings, emotions, attitudes and beliefs, ways of wording and understanding the world in which we live. Taylor argues that the language in which all of us are connected are webs of linguistic significations shaped by speech. This web of language is a part of our past and present, in tacit forms of history and traditions, and it binds us together in community and is always a language of community, not just "my" language but "our" language. Language then is constructive, in the sense that it can constitute different relationships in which we publicly stand to one another, intimate, formal, official, casual, joking, serious and so on. It is not just the speech community that shapes the language, but language which constitutes and sustains the speech community (p. 234). Language, then, is always a range of social activities, a phenomena of social construction in which each of us, in relationship to the 105 other, expresses and realizes a certain way of "being in the world". And that way of being is constituted in language which through speech constructs our emotions and identity and the human relationships of which we are a part. Persons are self-interpreting. Such interpretation is always through the use of language in a speech community and therefore the claim may be made that the interpretations of the self and the experiences which are brought to language about the self are constitutive of the self, of who and what we are, and therefore cannot just be considered merely a view of a reality that exists "out there", but must be considered a reality of an experience of things which is a self­ experience as expressed and created in language which is a self not independent of or separated from experience. Experiences and events are constitutive of what we are and language as expression of this experience is always bound up with and within the life of such experience (Taylor, 1985a p. 60). Language always expresses a sense of what it means to be human, of what matters to us as human beings. Language moves our experiences from the inchoate to the articulate. And in that movement, language articulates feelings, attitudes and beliefs, makes them clear and more defined and in that transformation from event to story, from experience to meaning, the event of self-articulation shapes the experience 106 and events in a reciprocal self-created understanding of them (Lawless, 1993) . If Taylor's theory of language is accepted, then the knowledge that teachers acquire about their practice is embedded in language which is not only a part of the school context in which they find themselves but also a part of their own personal history, feelings, attitudes and beliefs expressed in language as story. Taking action in the world and reflecting on that action through narrative or storytelling may be thought of as one theoretical model for the achievement of practical knowledge within a teaching practice. Such practical knowledge is constituted within an intersubjective web of language which is comprised of not only the intersubjective meaning and understanding of the community but also the individual within the combined processes of taking action in the community and then personally reflecting on it (Schon, 1983) and talking about it; bringing those communal and personal experiences as events to language as feelings, attitudes and beliefs in thematic ways that Taylor (1989) believes continually extend, alter and reshape the events but also create new personal visions and new understandings that redesign and reconstruct the practical and personal knowledge told in story that guided its development in the first place (Connelly & Clandinin, 1985) . I argue here not for a bifurcation of 107 theory and practice (Smith, 1987) but a way to integrate them through the use of teacher narrative or storytelling as description for a way of wording and being and feeling and expressing a personal lived experience in a community as teacherful world.

UNDERSTANDING THE ACHIEVEMENT OF PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE

AS CONNECTION BETWEEN INDIVIDUAL AND COMMUNITY Interpretative research in teacher thinking generally concentrates on the relationships among teacher thought, action and language, (Amann & Knorr-Cetina, 1986; Ashton- Warner, 1965; Austin, 1975; Bakhtin, 1981; Bal, 1991; Blakey, Chard & Turner, 1993; Brittion & Pellergrini, 1990; Bruner, 1986; Clandinin, 1989; Connelly & Clandinin, 1990; Eisner, 1993; Elbaz, 1981; 1990; Gudmundsdo11ir, 1991; Hopkins, 1994; Lortie, 1975; McCutcheon, 1992; Narayan, 1989; Nespor & Barylske, 1991; Noddings, 1993; Sanders & McCutcheon, 1986; Witherell & Noddings, 1991; Yonemura, 1982) I wish to define this relationship stipulativly as a practical achievement whereby the practice of teaching in both thought and action is not only constitutive of and embedded in a personal and practical knowledge of teaching but is, in turn, constructed by the very knowledge by which the practice is thoughtfully, reflectively, actively and teacherfully achieved. (Amann & Knorr-Cetina, 1986; Ashton-Warner, 1965; Austin, 1975; Bakhtin, 1981; Bal, 1991; Blakey et al., 1993; Brittion & 108

Pellergrini, 1990; Bruner, 1986; Clandinin, 1989; Connelly & Clandinin, 1990; Eisner, 1993; Elbaz, 1981; 1990; Gudmundsdottir, 1991; Hopkins, 1994; Lortie, 1975; McCutcheon, 1992; Narayan, 1989; Nespor & Barylske, 1991; Noddings, 1993; Sanders & McCutcheon, 1986; Witherell & Noddings, 1991; Yonemura, 1982). Personal experience and personal knowledge, thought and action constructed as a living, viable and tellable historical teacher practice is always informed and achieved through action taken in a locally situated context of school and classroom, is idiosyncratic {Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1993) and personally intuitive (Witherell & Noddings, 1991), uniquely personal, instructive, and practical (Butt et al,, 1988) and admits to locating the achievement of such a practice in story (Butt et al., 1988; Connelly & Clandinin, 1985; Elbaz, 1991). This stipulative definition of the relationship between teacher thought and reasoned action recognizes that teacher thinking is a construct of, as well as constructor of a dynamic and socially situated and locally practical and personal knowledge manifested in story as understandable and articulated teacherful experiences. These experiences as stories represents an enormous range of knowledge including knowledge of subject matter, of classroom organization and instructional techniques; of the structuring of learning experiences and curriculum content; of students needs. 109 abilities, and interests; of the social framework of the school and its surrounding community and of teachers' own strengths and weaknesses (Elbaz, 1981). This dissertation looks at the professional work of teachers as representative of the implementation of a kind of personal and practical knowledge (Connelly & Clandinin, 1988; 1990; 1994; Elbaz, 1981; 1991; Schwab, 1978) which teachers draw on to bring attention to; to deal with and try to solve problems and resolve dilemmas encountered in their work and in their personal lives as well. Lambert (1985) describes how teachers think about their classroom work using practical knowledge and historical and situated biography in stories she tells concerning her own teaching experiences in a secondary math class : The teacher's emphasis on concrete particulars in the description of a classroom problem distinguishes the perspective of practice from the perspective of the theory-builder. Another fundamental though less familiar difference involves the personal quality of teaching problems as seen through the eyes of a practitioner. Who the teacher is has a great deal to do with both the way she defines problems and what can be done about them. The academician solves problems that are recognized in some universal way as being important, whereas a teacher's problems arise because the state of affairs in the classroom is not what she wants it to be. Thus, practical problems, in contrast to theoretical ones, involve someone ' s wish for a change and the will to make it. Even though the teacher may be influenced by many powerful sources outside herself, the responsibility to act lies within. Like the researcher and the theoretician, she identifies problems and imagines solutions to them, but her job involves the additional personal burden of doing something about these problems 110

in the classroom and living with the consequences of her actions over time (p.180). Recognizing the importance of the teaching context in relationship to the historical self in making teaching judgments, Lambert notes that:

The kind of person I am with it^ students plays an important part in what I am able to accomplish with them. Figuring out who to be in the classroom is part of my job; by holding conflicting parts of nyself together, I find a way to manage the conflicts in my work...The self I bring to these problems is a complicated one. My personal history and concerns contribute to the judgments I make (p. 183) . Personal and practical teacher knowledge results from an interaction of self with a state of affairs encountered in everyday life within the community. Schwab (1978) believes that such an interaction, an encounter, presents an unusual opportunity to either adjust the conditions which we wish were otherwise, to change the parameters of the outside world or to adjust ourselves, to change our preferences, our likes and dislikes.

Practical problems always result from interaction and personal encounter of the self with a world of lived experience in which it finds itself. For Schwab (1978) the education world is characterized by and made up of four commonplaces-subject matter, milieu or environment of the school and community, the learner and the teacher. Interaction among the commonplaces constructs a practical teacher knowledge which is personal in the sense that it can Ill change how one feels about oneself; yet is practical in the sense that such personal knowledge is always embedded in the situation and objects in the everyday world it describes. Practical knowledge then, is not only embedded in the action taken within the world of teaching and the changes which occur in it, but in the very ways in which this teaching activity is interpreted, its personal influence on the order and structure by which teachers live their lives in their professional worlds and how that order and structure is made clear and defined through the use of language; in particular story or narrative. Creation of a personal and practical knowledge through an active relationship of the self in interpretive stance to the everyday life world (Schütz & Luckman, 1973) presents teacher knowledge as a complex and practically oriented set of socially and linguistically constructed understandings and interpretations of locally contextual and situated lived experiences as classroom demands and building problems which teachers actively interpret and construct as a personal and practical knowledge which is shaped and directed, felt and believed in as addressing the very work of teaching it describes and constructs. Such a constructed practice is thinking and a way of knowing which is embodied in, acted upon, reflected on and reconstructed through the tapestry of images teachers hold of themselves and beliefs about the 112 contexts in which they work. Taylor (1985a) would argue that how we feel about our lived experiences, how we come to describe and understand them are shaped by the way we see them, stand in relationship to them, and this relationship is, in turn, shaped by the very intersubjective and community webs of language which come to be able to be deployed or set in descriptive operation about them (p. 72) . Butt, Raymond and Yamagishi (1988) argue that teachers' practical knowledge is also a personal knowledge which is created in the interaction of the personal histories and traditions of the teacher with the local histories and traditions of the context in which she is situated. The notion that teachers create a body of personal and practical knowledge by standing in an active relationship to the everyday world recognizes that teachers learn from the experiences provided in their classrooms. Elbaz (1981) proposes that both teacher competence and the knowledge teachers garner in the development of, and argued in this dissertation an achievement of, a competent practice is reflective of the actual work of teaching and the exercise of a particular kind of knowledge teachers develop in the confrontation of all types of situations and problems which confront them daily in the classroom. This action by necessity of definition adumbrates the teachers lived condition, a condition which is at its most profound 113 understanding, the active involvement of human "being" in the phenomena of the classroom world which constructs its action as it is constructed by that action. Teachers are not outside observers of an objective knowledge which is a privileged reality laying beyond their understanding which can only be "discovered" or "found" by experts with privileged research skills within the technical rationality paradigm (Schon, 1987) but rather inside participants in a creation of an unlimited horizon of practical and personal knowledge which they participate in, share in its physicality and practicality, are constructed by it yet reconstruct it as meaningful, understandable and interpretable in the most human of terms ; language (Knoblauch & Brannon, 1988). This practical and personal knowledge binds together the essence of human "being" in a which the knowing subject as teacher has a biographical and professional history, a shared social practice within the milieu of the school and community, and engages in social and communicative activities within that milieu (Schwab, 1978) . Therefore, personal and practical knowledge proceeds from a historical, local, situated and socio-cultural tapestry of meaningful experiences which in the very action of bringing to linguistic expression re- situates the knower within a multitudinal variety of local, social and historical practices which creates and recreates meaning and understanding (Schrag, 1991). Teachers taking 114 action within their practice of teaching are capable of grasping that action and making sense of it, of creating a practical knowledge concerning that action, which can be achieved in taking the action; and this knowledge differs from knowledge gained from theory or experts. Teachers do not just receive information about the world, but critically act within the world in constructing a framework within the confines of language to make personal sense of that information and such sense of experiences and events is personal and practical because they themselves make it. Personal practical knowledge is the fruit of action taken in the world, of activity of formulating through language how things are, how they feel, believe, desire, think, and what they know in their hearts is true about their own teaching practice. Formulation of a lived experience in a medium of symbols and concepts as language of a personal lived experience is one of the fundamental activities and actions of life (Taylor, 1985a pp. 83-85). I am arguing teachers create their own knowledge of their practices and understand their practice from the inside out. They inhabit their own constructed world of the classroom and school consisting of a richness of meaning making and making sense of the practical and personal experiences which for Geertz (1986) exists: 115

within a collage of experiences which one must in the first place render oneself capable of sorting out its elements, determining what they are (which usually involves determining where they come from and what they amounted to when they were there) and how, practically, they relate to one another, without at the same time blurring one's own sense of one's own location and one's own identity with it. Understanding in the sense of comprehension, perception, and insight needs to be distinguished from "understanding" in the sense of agreement of opinion, union of sentiment, or commonality of commitment. We must learn to grasp what we cannot embrace (p. 274). Geertz speaks to the importance of understanding, and in particular, that the nature of personal and practical knowledge of the world of teaching must be understood from the perspective of the teacher within language that speaks to inside knowledge (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1993) as a subjective, actionable, and interpretive knowledge, to the comprehension, perception and insight and intuitions which reflects the richness of texture and complexity of the teaching experience as a personal and idiosyncratic, socially constructed experience and not to an outside knowledge which, gridlike, is overlaid on a teacher's practice and forces her experiences into a statistical manipulation based on previous hypothetical deductions, union of scientific sentiment, and commonality of positivistic commitment which edits out many of those rich and thickly described experiences which do not fit within the reductionist grid (Pope, 1993). In Polanyi's (1983) words knowing from the inside, "Brings home to us that it is not by looking at things, but by dwelling in them, that 116 we understand their meaning" (p. 19). Teacher practical knowledge as mind metaphor of reasoned teacher action does not epistemological stand in mere reflected images of the outside world, but instead radiates meaning and understanding, projects and makes a meaningful and personal contribution to the very context it illuminates.

TEACHER PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE AS AN ENGAGEMENT IN THE

LIVED EXPERIENCE

Teacher thinking and teacher knowledge is also personal and theoretical knowledge held about a practice and applied to the practice. Teachers are not distanced from their practice but live in them and practical theories about their practice indeed inform teachers' practice and their ways of knowing and thinking about and handling experiences in the

classroom. It is not concentrated solely on the perceptions, intuitions and insights of teachers but rather on the interactions of teachers within the context of the teaching experience. Teaching is viewed as a complex and context bound task that involves choices. As noted earlier, theory and practice are not separated. Sanders and McCutcheon (1986) have characterized teaching as: practical work carried out in a socially constructed, complex and institutionalized world of schooling. That world shapes action and gives context to its meaning. Educational practices are the media of professional action in that world, and they involve more than simply behavior. Professional practices are manifest in behavior, of course, but they entail thoughts. 117

interpretations, choices, values, and commitments as well. (1986, pp. 50-51) McCutcheon (1992) argues that teachers' theories of action consist of sets of beliefs, images, and constructs about such matters as what constitutes an educated person, the nature of knowledge, the society and the psychology of student learning, motivation, and discipline. Because of differences among teachers, these theories vary from one teacher to the next (p. 191) . McCutcheon realizes the significance of historical biography and historical traditions as a personal knowledge reservoir which accounts for many of these differences; experiences in growing up, going to school, working and interacting with people which shape the attitudes and values which account for the differences in teachers' theories of practice and classroom teaching. Teachers' personal past history as well as their interactions in the schools in which they work are all brought to bear either directly or indirectly on teaching thinking, teacher knowledge and classroom teaching. I argue that the nature of personal practical knowledge and the theories of teaching which it develops are embedded in a hermeneutical, phenomenological, epistemological standpoint which recognizes the clear inseparableness of the teacher from the life world in which she exits as person and professional. It is within this linkage of socially 118 constructed personal and practical knowledge translated into intentional action taken within the lived experience of the classroom which provides the background, the setting for the telling and retelling of human experience, a story of what life as a teacher is really like. And through the knowledge and thinking as personal theorizing of this experience teachers make sense of what they do and who they are. Therefore, teaching is embodied in and reflectedby the two central dimensions or concepts discussed, it is a professional lived life of a being who thinks, and this thinking is essentially an expression of a practical knowledge constructed of and ultimately expressed in the symbols of language. And in its achieved inferiority, (Taylor, 1985a p. 88) teacher thinking as mediator between the inside subjectivism of the self and the outside objectivism of the lived experience is reflective of a broader lived experience, a biographical and historical depth which, I argue later is plumbed and subsequently represented within the use of narrative or story. Teachers construct meaningful knowledge out of their experiences. Teacher knowledge framed as a personal and practical knowledge is according to Johnson (1989), "A personal practical knowledge which includes the entire way in which teachers have a structured world that they can make some sense of and in which they can function with varying 119 degrees of success" (p. 363). Butt, Raymond and Yamagishi (1988) speak of teacher knowledge as dynamic and historically situated in their own biographies:

The conceptualization of teachers' knowledge that we have evolved is based on the notion that teachers, as persons, bring to teaching a particular set of dispositions and personal knowledge gained through their particular life's history. This set of predispositions and personal knowledge that teachers bring from their private lives to the public act of teaching is termed the architecture-of-self. This continually evolving architecture-of-self is seen as having been learned or acquired through a life history of personal experiences of the teacher as person interacting with a variety of contexts. This process is viewed as continuing into the professional life of the teacher, who as an adult learner, continues to interact with a series of personal and professional knowledge which guides the way they think and act as a teacher. Teachers' knowledge, then, is grounded in, and shaped by, the stream of experiences that arose out of person/context interactions and subjective responses to those experiences. Eisner (1985) speaks about the artistic and architectural patterns of a constructed social reality where knowledge is both tacit and explicit in life; where taking risks and encouraging play within that personal world creates patterns of knowledge and meaningful structures that hang together, that are coherent, that express both order and interest and enable all of us to make sense of the world. Teachers, Eisner believes, are always involved in the artistic act of sense making where, "Teachers function as the architects of their own enlightenment through the dynamic creation of a classroom environment" (p. 365). 120

The dynamic creation of a classroom, a curriculum, or lesson plan always presupposes a practical and personal knowledge which grows out of a personal theory of practice which responds to some practical and particular, local- and situated context. Connelly and Clandinin (1988) frame personal practical knowledge as a particular way in which knowledge is brought to bear on situations. According to this view, a teacher's personal practical knowledge depends in important measure on its use in contexts (p. 26). In relationship to knowledge which is historical and locally situated (Elbaz, 1983) it is also context dependent and Connelly and Clandinin (1988) note that teachers are: In many ways different people, and may be said to know different things, when we talk to a child than when we talk to the principal and again when we engage in recreation, and yet again when we act as parent, friend or lover (p. 26). Elbaz (1981) looks at the kind of practical knowledge teachers use in their work and the role this knowledge plays in curriculum development. Elbaz identifies five categories of teacher practical knowledge including: situational, theoretical, personal, social, and experiential. These categories are similar to the categories of teacher personal and practical knowledge framed earlier, the notion that such knowledge is historical, locally situated in context, biographical, and theoretical in the sense that such 121 knowledge as beliefs, images and constructs as McCutcheon (1992) notes, "Consist of the common elements underlying teachers' practice which constitutes and shapes the practice of which it is a part" (p. 196). The experiential component of practical knowledge is always implied through the interaction with others. Elbaz (1981) argues that teachers hold and use practical knowledge in distinctive ways, and that this holding and using of knowledge in the context of work marks it as "practical knowledge" as something that is dynamic and held in active relationship to practice and used simultaneously to give shape to that practice. In characterizing the structure of practical knowledge, Elbaz organizes its relationship to practice through the use of three concepts : rules of practice, practical principle and image. Images have great importance for Elbaz because they incorporate the beliefs, feelings, values and needs of the teacher, her inner perceptions as personal knowledge of her lived experience, rather than reflecting the more generalized or outer situations of the school and community as represented by the rules of practice and practical principles. Images, Elbaz notes, "Combine teacher feelings, values, needs, and beliefs as she formulates brief metaphoric statements of how teaching should be and marshals experience, theoretical knowledge, and school folklore to give substance to these images. Images serve to guide the teacher's 122

thinking and to organize knowledge in the relevant areas. The image is generally imbued with a judgment of value and constitutes a guide to the intuitive realization of the teacher's purposes (1981, p. 61) . From Elbaz's (1981) point of view the power of image and the manner in which it operates on a teacher's practical knowledge is represented in a case study of a teacher named Sarah. Images influenced Sarah's: Organization of knowledge and in bringing that knowledge to bear on practice. Sarah appeared to make use of her knowledge in an intuitive manner using images to order her thinking and extend her knowledge. This analytic finding was corroborated by Sarah's own account of her work. When she encountered a new idea (through reading or course work), she tended to set it on the back burner; later she would find that the idea was "working itself out" in practice. Because of the primacy of the intuitive in Sarah's knowledge, I found that the specific images she used provided a focal point and a means of summarizing her practical knowledge, (p. 62) The research on teacher thinking and teacher practical knowledge unite to form an epistemology which emphasizes the importance and significance of experiential learning (Kolb, 1984) The literature recognizes as its touchstone the fundamental importance of teachers situated in relationship to a lived experience and to one another in wondering, questioning, dialogical, conversational and human inquiry in which thought and knowledge is linguistically constituted, practically implemented, and socially relevant as applied in its relationship with the teacher as self and practitioner in her intentional and teacherful actions in a professional 123 lived community experience in order to create an optimal learning environment. In summary, this literature review blends together research on teacher thinking and teacher practical knowledge into an epistemology, a view of how teachers know their world. I want to argue that teachers inhabit their classrooms and know them from the inside out. Teaching as the intent to create optimum opportunities for children to learn are aims that are inherently complex in action and rich in the texture of encounter between teacher and student, teacher and the curriculum, and teacher and the milieu which is the school and community. These commonplaces (Schwab, 1978) constituting the teacher's professional lived experience from which she constructs and fashions an understanding of her practice and herself evoke and represent, in no small way, what phenomenologists such as Dilthey (Rickman, 1988), Schütz (1973) Berger and Luckman (1966) van Manen (1990) and Gadamer (1992) refer to as the "life-world", a world described by Knoblauch and Brannon (1988) as, "That palpable, sensual, kaleidoscopic, mysterious reality that constitutes our material and intellectual existence" (p. 25). Research on teacher knowledge and teacher thinking creates an epistemology, or a frame for answering the question. How do teachers know the world of teaching? In response, I argue that teachers think about and know about 124 the world of teaching from their perspective, from their local standpoint epistemology (Smith, 1987) which in their talk about the work they perform, they socially and symbolically construct and reflect a local and situated knowledge about teaching experiences which stresses a view and a voice that builds on and develops from those local and actual and situated lived experiences (Smith, 1987) , A teaching practice is achieved in the sense that teacher thinking and teacher knowledge is not just primitive data or experience that is reflective as mirror image of those experiences, but rather is something that is actively constructed and illuminates and informs it in the very act of construction.

Teachers explain this construction from and within the action they take in their practice including the action of reflection and thinking by which they come to a self­ interpretation, an understanding which is eventually gained about what they are doing and what they are up to. Thinking and practical knowledge is developed out of the capacity to take action in the world. For Taylor (1985a) "We aim to make plain in public space how we feel, or how we stand with each other, or where things stand of us. It is a long slow process which makes us able to get things in clearer focus, describe them more exactly, and above all, become more knowledgeable about ourselves" (p. 91). 125

Often teachers' self-interpretive voices concerning their own situated knowing are silenced by what Geertz (1986) calls a "deafness to the appeal of other values" which is the application of power to achieve conformity to the values of those that have the power of naming what is "good" science. In this regard, empiricist forms of quantitative methodology which privilege the voice of the researcher over the voice of those researched creates the fundamental question of who can be a knower (Olesen, 1994) . Teacher 'voice' is a term that has been firmly linked to narrative research (Goodson, 1991; 1992). The term emphasizes the need for teachers to talk about their experiences and perspectives on teaching in their own words and as participants in the continuing educational improvement debate

(Cortazzi, 1993). What is fundamental about teacher voice for this dissertation is the recognition that narrative is not only fundamental to teachers' understanding of their own practice, but how that practice is made known to others. I will argue that teachers' voices emerge at their strongest in narrative best accounts of their practice. Located within the narrative voices of teachers is the tacit knowledge which is yet to be understood, the context in the which the narrative takes place, the history and traditions which give structure to its telling, the beliefs, wonderment, passions and values which are learned and the tellability of thinking and 126 practical knowledge which frames the action of what is told in dialogue with the other (Elbaz, 1990). I want to argue that qualitative research makes important contributions to the study of teacher thinking and teacher knowledge. Teaching is found in the actions of lived and everyday experiences in the classroom. It is as Ayers (1992) notes:

The very stuff that is washed away in most attempts to generalize about teaching. To unlock the reality of teaching is to move beyond the distanced and sanitized language of the social scientist, the bloodless objectivity of the technician and the expert-the official language of research, and increasingly the only acceptable language of public life-and to enter the messy, subjective world of teachers where the talk is idiosyncratic and particular, infused with immediacy and urgently linked to conduct. It is to pierce the veil of facts, and to partake of value-talk and feeling-talk, talk of the ordinary and the mundane, and yet talk that is frequently eloquent, consistently thoughtful, and almost always characterized by an abiding sense of care and connection (p. 152).

It seems to me the "deafness of positivism" to the appeal of other alternative ways of knowing perpetuates a continued selectivity and simplification of the complex ways teachers think about, talk about and come to know their classrooms. Teachers seem not to talk about their classrooms in strictly empirical relationships, in frames of right or wrong answers to complex problems or in terms of stimulus and response criteria, but rather in terms of developing a portrait (Lightfoot, 1983) or tapestry of experiences which 127 tends to depict a world of work which Knoblauch and Brannon (1988) describe as a close observation of: What the classroom looks like, the objects that define it as a material and social space, how the people in it look and talk and move and relate to each other in emotional contours of their life together, the things that happen, intellectual exchanges, social understandings and misunderstandings, what the teacher knows and does not know, plans for, hopes for and discovers, the subtle textures of the learning experience...which is itself partly intuitive...but whose "softness" is genuine and reliable in a knowing "felt-sense" of the meaningfulness of the complexity of that life (p. 25). I have argued teachers' ways of knowing are characteristically embedded in relationships with students, other teachers, the curriculum, the school and the community and the knowledge created from these interactions is a working knowledge, a personal and practical knowledge, a theory of practice available within the context of these particular activities as it is being constructed in conjoint relationship. In a sense qualitative research establishes the essence and importance of paying attention to often silent voices of teachers as they struggle to bring to language the demands of the school day and to articulate the enormous complexity of their jobs. And it is precisely there, in the articulation of the practice itself, as it is being done, that the tapestry of a teacher's practice can be viewed and held open for further interpretation and understanding. 128

Teaching is simply not something that is found in a landscape of a school system as one particular brick and mortar icon among the many, or so deeply internal and personally situated that it appears, like a lap, only in an attitude of sitting and thinking to only disappear in the action and movement of the actual teaching act, but is found in the action itself, within the relationship to all of these situations and it is constantly in a state of being talked about and brought to language for examination and scrutiny. Teaching is inherently a social, relational, reflective, moral and tellable activity.

Havel (1991) talks about the importance of finding the energy for social development not somewhere outside or above the world but : In the here and now, on the terrain of our social life. Transformations take place through social life and in it, somewhat the way a sculptor's idea "takes place" in the material he uses. Therefore, it is not true that you should first think up an idea for a better world and only then go out and put it into practice, but, rather, through your existence in the world, you create the idea or manifest it-create it, as it were, from the "material of the world" and articulate it in the "language of the world" (p. 12-13).

This dissertation is comprised of stories teachers tell about their practice. It is about the construction of teaching practice by living in the practice, working over and within as sculptor and molder of the living material of a teaching lived experience. The stories told about that work 129 are in substance, structure and character the research of a teacher's "languaging" of the world, the construction of a world view. It is concrete, and thick with the rich detail of a personal and practical way of knowing. But stories teachers tell also represents an achievement of state of mind, a way of understanding the world which reaches beyond the descriptions of the mundane and ordinary and radiates a personal way of thinking and knowing that, in the telling, illuminates the background, the tacit knowing which always appears behind the stories and orients and makes, as Knoblauch and Brannon (1988) note, "A living of life that is more coherent, more alive, alert and generous" (p. 26). The achievement of a teaching practice through narrative is a thoroughgoing individual as well as community activity which is always involved in making sense of what has happened in the past, how that sensibility is applied in the present, and what reasoned understanding is possible in the future. The stories told in this dissertation represent a certain kind of personal and practical spirit of teaching, characteristic, I suspect, of the intimate and private moments teachers' talk about their practice when given the opportunity of a listener interested in such qualitatively researchable matters. But I was not expecting moral or ethical matters to make there way into these stories. These issues will be dealt with in later chapters of this 130 dissertation. The only adequate description of this spiritful talk which is evident in these teachers' stories is Havel's (1991) eloquent and itself spiritual elaboration on the concept of hope. It is a hope, a positioning of a life toward the good, a passion that is manifest in many of the stories presented in this dissertation. Hope, Havel declares: Is a state mind, not a state of the world. Either we have hope within us or we don't; it is a dimension of the soul, and it's not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. In short, I think that the deepest and most important form of hope, the only one that can keep us above water and urge us to good works, and the only true source of the breathtaking dimension of the human spirit and its efforts, is something we get, as it were, from "elsewhere". It is also this hope, above all, which gives us the strength to live and continually to try new things, even in conditions that seem, at the time, hopeless (p. 181) .

It is only through narrative, listening carefully to stories which speak about local things but also of larger horizons embedded "elsewhere", that one becomes privy to this spirit of hope, where the beliefs, the values and the wording of caring persons, in private thought made public in 131 language, can be received as gifts o:.id collaboratively and carefully opened up for thoughtful interpretations.

NARRATIVE WAYS OF KNOWING AND THE IMPORTANCE OF

HERMENEUTIC PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH I want to argue in this dissertation that teacher stories reflect their personal experience and practical knowledge about their practice. As Cortazzi (Cortazzi, 1993) argues by encouraging the telling of teachers' own stories we encourage them to reflect on their on experiences and make them known to others. In all cases stories teachers tell make sense and they are always constructed from the social, the cognitive and the cultural traditions and histories which are always of interest to researchers. As White (1981) notes narrative might well be considered a solution to a problem of how to translate knowing into telling where teachers as professionals tell of who they are and what they might become within a professional world. These stories tell us about teachers' ways of illuminating, seeing, and knowing, and thinking about their worlds (Cortazzi, 1993 p. 139). Shuman (1994) contends that many if not most personal narratives (stories) are actually allegories. Stories are always about the relation of local things spoken about to some larger whole, an horizon of orientation or background of intelligibility (Taylor, 1991a). The story this literature review tells concerning how teachers think about and know 132 their practice rests against a broader background of a story behind the story; an older story of the relationship between science and the humanities, between the paradigmatic and the narrative (Bruner, 1986), between objectivism and subjectivism. I stipulativly define objectivism to suit the purposes of this dissertation as a body of knowledge which exists a- priori independently of human existence and human action, which by virtue of following the rules of empirical science we can discover it and know it. What is "out there" (objective) is presumed to be independent of who and what we are (subjective), and knowledge is achieved when a subject appropriately mirrors or represents objective reality (Bernstein, 1983).

I am stipulativly defining subjectivism as a way of knowing which is embedded in a socially constructed set of social practices which through individual preferences, beliefs, values and intuitions the objective is always interpreted and understood in dialogical and linguistic communication. What is presupposed here is the construction of practical knowledge which is not the mere reflection of nature or reality in words, symbols, and language, but rather the ways and means of constructing or making a reality within a community of inquiring persons which radiates from the individual to illuminate its meaning for a community of 133 others. I wish to argue along with Wittgenstein (1958), Gadamer (1992), Schütz (1973), Taylor (1991a), Rorty (1989), van Manen (1990), Smith (1987) and others the notion that a razor sharp distinction does not exist between the objective and subjective worlds of reality, but rather they are an integrated part of a constructed and connected lived experience, a self-interpretation, through which the realities of the social world are created and recreated by persons. Certain critical truth-conditions simply cannot be laid claim to, validated, until a great deal of understanding and insight is gained into a persons self-understanding about the lived experience. Language is simply not symbols used to code information about some independent objective reality, but rather a language which expresses concerns and knowledge and thinking embedded in certain contexts and the practices in which they are achieved and the ways in which such knowledge comes to serve the articulation of the practices which shape the reality teachers come know as such a practice. This dissertation is the story behind the story which informs the current literature review of teacher thinking and teacher knowledge; a story that personal practical knowledge as an understandable and interpretable knowledge is above all else dialogical (Morgan, 1993; van Manen, 1990), locally situated (Smith, 1987), historical (Gadamer, 1992) and standing always 134

in conversational and connected relationship to the commonplaces of teachers, students, curriculum and milieu (Schwab, 1978) in its linguistic achievement (Taylor, 1985a). In dialogical, conversational relationships understanding one another is necessary (Bernstein, 1983; Geertz, 1983). Dialogue, conversation, and understanding pervade the socially constructed activities of teachers which are presupposed as conversations which make and shape the very practices of which they speak (Connelly & Clandinin, 1985; 1988; 1990; Elbaz, 1981) Teachers have an active, linguistic roll in the social construction of and the enactment of their teaching practices (Berger & Luckman, 1966; Gadamer, 1992; Wagner, 1983) and additionally they create a knowledge base of experiences which relies not so much on finding an objective or literal truth about the world

"out there" as the development of an understanding and self­ interpretation of those experiences as they interact in the teaching world in which they live. Schrag (1992) notes that interpretation and understanding is not so much a theory of practice or the application of theory to practice as it is the dynamics of discourse and action within a dialogical community...which proceeds from a socio-historically mediated communication which situates the knower within a panoply of

social practices which comport their own insight and understanding (p.103). 135

I wish to argue that interpretation and understanding in discourse as narrative or storytelling emerges in a tapestry of socially constructed knowing where, in the stories told, both interpretation and understanding must according to Estes (1993) like story, "Be mined; for the scraped knuckles, the sleeping on cold ground, the groping in the dark, and the adventures on the way are worth everything" (p.81). This dissertation is a story of one such adventure in the investigation of the social construction and social character of practical knowledge and its local and historical situatedness in which self-interpretation as a way of thinking and making the self known to others is a matter of engagement in a speech community which has a history, shares intersubjective social practices, and engages in active communicative projects and practices through narrative or storytelling.

THE NATURE OF A NARRATIVE LIVED EXPERIENCE Narrative or story surrounds our every waking moment. Families share their stories of the day with one another at the dinner table often told between the stories watched and heard on the evening news. Children listen to bedtime stories, parents listen to other parents stories about their children's bedtime, and grandparents knowingly chuckle at all of them. Ministers tell of ancient parables to make sense of current stories, good and bad, and the movies and Madison 136

Avenue create new stories that shape the very images of who we are and who we are suppose to be which in a sense, keep the ministers in business. Stories are everywhere and they inform us, they entertain us, they inspire us and they shape us. Anderson (1990) notes that: Whether you get your literature from critics and university-press novelists, or from the latest item in the airport bookstore, or from the daily news, you are likely to get a similar subtext about the human condition; a message that life is a matter of telling ourselves stories about life, and of savoring stories about life told by others, and of living our lives according to such stories, and of creating ever-new and more complex stories about stories-and that this story making is not just about human life, but is human life. But the story behind this story seems to be as narrating persons we find our way within our world in communicative relationships with one another and the milieu in which we are embedded where understanding of the narrative resides as Schrag (1992) notes, "In the narrative itself as it is informed by the social practices, the intersubjective associations, and the institutional purposes that make up the socio-historical mosaic of our existence" (p. 105). Teacher stories are representative not only of the personal knowing and understanding brought to the narrative but also of the institutional purposes by which those narratives become accounts of practical activity which informs personal knowledge. Meaning, understanding and interpretation within this dissertation are informed by the practical involvement 137 of human life in the social achievement of both a personal and practical knowledge through narrative; the achievement of a teaching practice through story.

Narrative incorporates and exploits the subjectivity and intersubjectivity of human beings in the construction, understanding and knowing of the unfolding events in which they participate. As noted above, teacher narrative is a descriptive best account of local, historical and situated experiences as events where being able to give an account of teaching experiences is to actually know it, to describe it in language, and to be able to make sense of one's own experiences and the experiences of others within that linguistic account. That narrative is a way of knowing and understanding ourselves and others has been established and argued by psychologists (Brittion & Pellergrini, 1990;

Bruner, 1986; 1990; Coles, 1989; Gergen & Gergen, 1984; Kelly, 1955; Kerby, 1991; Polkinghorne, 1983; 1988; 1991; 1992; Riessman, 1993; Sarbin, 1986; Schafer, 1981) anthropologists and folklorists (Bateson, 1972; 1979; Clifford & Marcus, 1986; Geertz, 1983; Narayan, 1989; Riessman, 1993; Shuman, 1986; 1994; Young, 1987); philosophers (Austin, 1975; Bernstein, 1971; 1992; 1983; Carr, 1986; Davidson, 1984; MacIntyre, 1984; Rorty, 1991; 1992; Scheffler, 1960; Taylor, 1985a; 1985b; 1989; 1991a; 1995; Valdes, 1987; Wittgenstein, 1958); educators (Ashton- 138

Warner, 1965; Brophy & Good, 1986; Calderhead, 1988; Carter, 1993; Clandinin & Connelly, 1994; Connelly & Clandinin, 1985; 1990; Diamond, 1993; Eisner, 1985; 1992; 1993; 1983; 1990; 1991; Feiman-Nemser & Floden, 1986; Holly, 1989; Hopkins, 1994; Jackson, 1987; Lambert, 1985; Lortie, 1975; McDonald, 1992; Mclaren, 1994; Nelson, 1993; Schon, 1987; 1991; Schwab, 1978; Witherell & Noddings, 1991; Yonemura, 1982) and those interested in literary theory, semiotics, and historiography (Agee & Evans, 1941; Bakhtin, 1981; Benjamin, 1968; 1978; Bloom, 1975; 1982; Cazden & Hymes, 1978; Eco, 1992a; Foucault, 1970; Gadamer, 1992; Genette, 1982; 1988; Greimas, 1990; Hymes, 1974; 1973a; Ingarden, 1973b; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Mitchell, 1981; Munby, 1982; 1987; Rimmon-Kenan, 1983; Robinson & Hawpe, 1986; 1995a; Sacks, 1995b; Searle , 1992; Sontag, 1991; Tappan, 1991; White, 1980; 1981; Young, 1987) as well as sociologists (Berger & Luckman, 1966; Dallmayr & McCarthy, 1977; Denzin & Lincoln, 1994; Gouldner, 1973; Lemert, 1993; Lightfoot, 1983; Lortie, 1975; Rabinow & Sullivan, 1987; Schütz & Luckman, 1973; 1989; Smith, 1987; 1993; Wolff, 1976; 1991; Wuthnow, 1991) to cite only well known authors who value the use of local narrative in the development of self and society. Clearly, the study of narrative has produce a prodigious variety of research distributed among different disciplines of study. 139

Narrative as a way of understanding our social, cultural and historical experience is pervasive in our society. Roland Barthes (1991) in A Barthes Reader edited by Susan Sontag comments on the all-pervasive features of a narrative world: The narratives of the world are numberless. Narrative is first and foremost a prodigious variety of genres, themselves distributed amongst different substances-as though any material were fit to receive men's stories. Able to be carried by articulated language, spoken or written, fixed or moving images, gestures, and the ordered mixture of all these substances; narrative is present in myth, legend, fable, tale, novella, epic, history, tragedy, drama, comedy, mime, painting, stained-glass window, cinema, comics, news items, and conversation. Moreover, under this almost infinite diversity of forms, narrative is present in every age, in every place, in every society; it begins with the very history of mankind and there nowhere is nor has been a people without narrative...narrative is international, transhistorical, and transcultural; it is simple there like life itself (pp. 251-252) . Polkinghorne (1988) interprets Barthes as believing that narratives perform significant functions. At the individual level narratives carry meaning for a lived experience which enables them to figure out who they are and where they are going. At the cultural level, narrative gives cohesion to beliefs and transmits values (p. 14). Alasdair MacIntyre (1984) notes that narrative is not only of the individual but also about the history of the individual. MacIntyre argues that narrative as account of experience is always placed in a particular context of a set of narrative histories, histories both of the individuals concerned and of the settings in which they act and suffer. 140

It is because we all live out narratives in our lives and because we understand our own lives in terms of the narratives that we live out that the form of narrative is appropriate for understanding the actions of others {p. 213) . In a sense, MacIntyre (1984) argues for the existence of a story behind a story, an historical story into which each of us are "thrown" (Gadamer, 1992) and though which we construct our local and situated stories or narratives. MacIntyre argues : That the story of iry life is always embedded in the story of those communities from which I derive my identity. I am born with a past; and to try to cut myself off from that past, in the individualist mode, is to deform my present relationships. The possession of an historical identity and the possession of a social identity coincide,..What I am, therefore, is in key part what I inherit, a specific past that is present to some degree in my present. I find myself part of a history and that is generally to say, whether I like it or not, whether I recognize it or not, one of the bearers of a tradition (p.221). MacIntyre argues here that practical knowledge of the world by which we understand ourselves and others depends upon and always is a part of some tradition or history. Therefore, stories that are told about the personal, professional and practical aspects and traditions of teaching can be construed as constructed from the interrelationships the "interplay" of the personal, practical knowledge of the teaching events themselves, the particular ordering of the events in narrative sequence (Ricoeur, 1984) , and the 141 historical traditions of the context in which the teaching events occur.

Carr (1986) argues for the inherent practicality of narrative. Narrative, according to Carr is practical in two senses: first, practice or action unfolds in a sequence shaped by a beginning, a middle, and end. Second, the story­ telling aspects of the action sequences has the practical function of holding the narrated action together, organizing its parts and helping, through its organizing function to keep track of what is going on around us and helping to make sense of it all. That narratives serve to organize and make sense of the events of our lives highlights the fact that narrative structures or schemes pervades everyday life giving form to the events of our lives. The structuring of the experiences and actions of a lived life is for Carr a practical event: Narrative activity at the personal level is above all practical in character. It has a doubly practical function, that of constituting actions themselves, in the form of deliberation and planning, and the more general function of drawing together any temporally extended sequence, whether of action, experience, or even a whole life, when such a sequence has gone astray or lost its coherence. Discovering or rediscovering the story, picking up the thread, reminding ourselves where we stand, where we have been and where we are going- those are typical narrative-practical modes of discourse which are as prevalent and as important for groups as for individuals, (p. 71). Carr argues that narrative does not re-represent a reality construct or scheme that already exists or that 142 narrative is something like a single thing or apparatus that someone already has like a right hand or a left foot, whose actions are linked together within a single structure called the body and which move by the contraction of muscle. Rather, the body is unified and a harmonious rhythmic structure which expresses itself in human action as body movement which is as Polkinghorne (1988) notes, "The physical texture of an embodied agent's meaningful statement, and bodily movement is "caused" by the meaning expressed". Narrative is perceived not as some link between thought and knowledge and action as muscle links the hand and foot, but as a dynamic flow of unification and meaningfulness expressed in discourse which is not only constitutive of experiences as events which have a temporal beginning, middle and end, as well as turning points and reversals, departures and returns, but as the constructions of a reality of such adventures within the configurations of the telling as they are going on" (p. 168). Thought and action, thinking and knowledge are not linked by narrative, but are the very ingredients of the narrative itself as expression of an integrated person in a personal and situated involvement with the world (Polkinghorne, 1988). Elbaz (1990) links this constructivist relationship of narrative to teacher thought and action. Narrative may be thought of as both methodology and phenomena to be studied and this distinction will be discussed later in this 143 dissertation. But this dissertation is interested, as is Elbaz, Polkinghorne, Taylor and others, in narrative as the very purpose of research where narrative is not seen as a link between teacher thought and action and knowledge whereby each is a separate concept to be somehow pulled together in story but rather narrative as the very ingredient of teaching, the stuff of teaching by which teachers make sense of their teaching world and by which they achieve a sense of professional self within a teaching practice or educational context (p. 32). This notion of the self defined through action taken in the context of a lived experience is closely related to the notion Kerby (1991) develops that the self is given content, is delineated and embodied in narrative constructions or stories and to Bruner's (1990) and Taylor's (1985a) conceptualization of the self as developing through narrative always in the context of practice where it is necessary to understand what people are doing or trying to do in that particular context; asking, for instance, of a "best account" or self-interpretation of what one thinks one did in what settings and in what ways for what felt reasons (pp. 118-119) . This shifts the way teacher thinking and knowledge can be conceived which is to say that in giving a best account of taking action within the experience of teaching is to take into consideration both the context of the teacher's 144 individual history, the traditions that surround it, and the educational setting in which such teaching takes place or is played out. This integration of the historical self and the context in which it operates, highlights the fact that teachers do not operate independently of their past histories or traditions or the contexts in which they operate. What teachers do in actions taken in the classroom and how those action are accounted for in story have to make sense both in the practice of teaching and in the context of the society and its traditions of what it means to teach and to learn and become educated (Elbaz, 1990 p. 38). I want to argue that teacher thinking and teacher knowledge is implicit in the stories teachers tell about their practice, that teacher thinking and knowledge is, in fact, ordered and structured by the narratives in which it is held and made known and it is in Elbaz' words, "Only through 'story', in the sense, that I have been describing it here "that we can acknowledge and give a hearing to teacher's voice" (p. 32). Polkinghorne (1988) argues that narrative is scheme or apparatus or means by which human beings make sense of and bring meaning and understanding to life and joins everyday actions and events into episodic units of meaning. It is through narrative that human beings render their existence and their experience meaningful (p. 11). Shuman (1986) in arguing the same point defines the relationship between 145 narrative and experience and events and how one is constructed from the other: Stories, experiences, and events are different entities. Roughly, experiences are the stream of overlapping events that make up everyday life. Events, unlike experiences, have potentially identifiable beginnings and endings. Events are a category of experience; stories are constructions of experience. Stories frame experiences as events. Stories are one of the forms that transform experiences into bounded units with beginnings, endings, and foci, and events are one kind of bounded unity. A story is the representation of an event segmented into sequentially arranged units... stories categorize experience is an alternative to statements that stories replay, duplicate, or recapitulate experience (p. 20). Narrative does not mirror an established reality but provides a framework for socially constructing events which are made through narrative as episodes of experiences which become understandable to self and other. Carr (1986) argues that narrative is continuous with everyday life, that narrative is in and socially constructs the features of the everyday experience. This active construction of a narrative lived experience implies a narrative approach which involves an active organization of such a lived experience. He notes: When we speak of narration being intertwined with the course of life, it should be noted that we are not referring to the simple fact that a great deal of everyday conversation is devoted to telling stories...but that story itself constitutes the sense of action we are engaged in and the events we are living through. It organizes temporally and gives shape and coherence to the sequence of experiences we are having as we are having them. What is essential to narration is not that it is a verbal act of telling but that it embodies a certain point of view on a sequence of events. 146

What then should be said about narrative as an activity of social construction? Herrnstein-Smith (1981) argues that the events which are sequenced are, after all, scattered and most often out of focus come to be organized, integrated, and apprehended as a specific "set" of events only in and through the very act by which we narrate them as such (p. 225). Narratives, however, should be regarded not only as specific organizational structures of events, but also as acts, the features of which-like the features of all other acts-are functions of the variable sets of conditions in response to which they are performed (p. 226). Accordingly, we might conceive of narrative most minimally and most generally as verbal acts consisting of someone telling someone else that something happened. The importance of developing the act of narration in such a conceptualization nests the illocutionary speech act of narrative in action taken by the person. Ricoeur (1992) notes that if saying is doing, it is indeed within the terms of acts that we must speak of saying. By this Ricoeur defines the act of saying in narrative form as namely saying something about something where it is not statements that refer to something but the speakers themselves who refer, within the speech act of saying, in this way. Statements do not in and of themselves have a sense or signify something, but rather it is the speakers who mean to say this and that, who understand an expression in a 147 particular sense act on the events of their lives, who as Shuman (1986) previously argues categorize or gather together events in story as they relate to the plot or theme of the story. Story configures the events into a whole, and the events are transformed from merely serial, independent happenings into meaningful happenings that contribute to the whole through taking narrative action in the world. (Polkinghorne, 1988 p. 144) The active character of gathering up, of categorizing events in story into an understandable whole is also understood as emplotment (Ricoeur, 1992 p. 141) where life must be gathered together if it is to be placed within the notions of a genuine life. If it cannot be grasped as some singular totality, one can never hope to be successful, complete (p. 160). The competence to understand a series of events as part of our story informs our own decisions to engage in actions that move us towards a desired ending (Polkinghorne, 1988 p. 145). The action taken in making sense of a lived experience through narrative action is a "making sense of" an active categorization or pulling together of the events of our personal and social life in story. Narrative may then be understood as a series of categorizations of events which has a beginning, a middle and an end, or actions which arrive at some resolution of a problem or at some end state or goal. Narrative emplotment brings together action 148 and character or self. The construction of narrative, the telling of a story is saying who did what, and how, by spreading out in time the connections between those standpoints of the characters engaged in taking action in and making sense of the world. (Ricoeur, 1992). And the sense of the world for most of us most of the time is a sense that things do seem to have some structure, they hang together as it were in a narrative coherence of experiences and events and actions which is at the same time both historical and social, personal and oriented to the practical endeavor of making sense of a self-interpretation in story. The relationship of character and action in the construction of narrative accounts occurs within and must be imbedded in the personal and practical knowledge of lived experience.

THE PERSONAL AND THE LIVED EXPERIENCE CANNOT BE

SEPARATED FROM NARRATIVE In defining what constitutes practical knowledge in the construction of narrative I will be examining the relationship between action and narrative and arguing that humans taking action in the world is an expression of their communal existence and narrative the organization of the events of that existence. Narrative is the form of expression which is story and story informs the very decisions to take action within the community. I will be working between two 149 texts, Donald Polkinghorne's Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences and Paul Ricoeur's Oneself as Another in the construction of the relationship between action and narrative in the social construction of practical knowledge. Polkinghorne argues as does Shuman, Herrnstein Smith and others (Agee & Evans, 1941; Ashton-Warner, 1965; Bernstein, 1983; Coles, 1989; Gadamer, 1992; MacIntyre, 1984; Mitchell, 1981; Schon, 1987; Schrag, 1992; Tappan, 1991; van Manen,

1990; Witherell & Noddings, 1991; Wittgenstein, 1958) that narrative involves the gathering of events into a plot by which the events as they relate to the theme of the story are organized. The plot, in a sense configures and re-configures, categorizes the events into a whole, and the events are constructed from serial, independent experiences into meaningful events that contribute to the plot. But what is plot in the sense of a narrative organizing structure? Polkinghorne relates plot to human action which occurs in an intersubjective setting where action takes on the form of a public character. Thus action is taken with the knowledge of what it will mean within the community in which it takes place. Narrative then is a form of human action which is a self-interpretation and self understood while at the same time carrying intersubjective meaning for others. Action is itself the "living narrative expression of a personal, public and social life render in the organization 150 of events (p. 145). The plot of narrative for Polkinghorne is the organization of events, not as a static structure but as an operation or construction of synthesis (p. 145). Narrative plot is ultimately concerned with creating a dramatic or hermeneutic unity, the composition of narrative unity and establishment of meaningful and intersubjective relationships between the individual and the social history of the community of which she is a part, between the personal and reasoned actions of the present as they exist in the cultural traditions and histories of the past, which all contribute significantly to the narrative under construction.

Polkinghorne's position on narrative is "That we achieve our personal identities and self-concept through the use of narrative, and make our existence into a whole by understanding it as an expression of the unfolding and developing story." Self then, is not a static thing nor a substance, but a configuration of personal events into a historical unity which includes not only what one has been but also anticipations of what one will be. I will argue later on that the traditions within which we create, construct and organize our stories, and the historical settings of which we are all a part influence greatly the stories which we can actively construct and share. Ricoeur provides some additional assistance in stipulativly defining 151 plot as a narrative structure which is imbedded within a local and situated context. For Ricoeur (1984) narrative cannot be understood apart from the context in which it exists. Human action occurs within practices, within contexts that maintain an intersub]actively common and public understanding which are above and beyond the private understanding of the person taking action in the world. Action makes sense only under the practical actions of what constitutes the practice of teaching; actions which take place in a school, with students, with staff, with parents, with the administration, within a curriculum and within the socially constructed meaning that makes the work of teaching a socially constructed practice. This involves action ranging from assigning seats and establishing rules for use of the bathroom to asking complicated questions in a faculty meeting such as "Why teach a unit on Welsh Literature". The practice of teaching incorporates an infinite number of actions which by and large are constituted as something called a practice of teaching because they are located within a constitutive social system that is intersubjective in nature and commonly shared by all who are a part of such a practice. The practices of teachers, as noted before, have a public character and are not the private understandings of a private actor. The action of having students walk in single file 152 through the hallways of an elementary school will be understood by other teachers in the building as part of a necessary order; one of maintaining quite hallways in order not to disturb the learning environment in other rooms whose doors open onto the hallways. The communal significance of this action will be understood by other teachers as such an expression. As Ricoeur argues, "The form of life to which narrative discourse belongs is our historical and situated condition itself" (Ricoeur, 1981). Schütz (1970) argues for this sense of public communal and historical significance through his definition of the notion of the intersubjectivity of understanding : The world of my daily life is by no means my private world but is from the outset an intersubjective one, shared with ity fellow men, experienced and interpreted by others; in brief, it is a world common to all of us. The unique biographical situation in which I find myself within the world at any moment of my existence is only to a very small extent of my own making. I find myself always within an historically given world which, as a world of nature as well as a sociocultural world, had existed before my birth and which will continue to exist after my death. This means that this world is not only mine but also my fellow men's environment ; moreover, these fellow men are elements of my own situation, as I am of theirs. Acting upon the others and acted upon by them, I know of this mutual relationship, and this knowledge also implies that they, the others, experience the common world in a way substantially similar to mine (pp. 162-163). Ricoeur sums up the notion of this intersubjectivity of lived experience and how it impacts on personal action by noting the importance of context and its relationship to 153 action and the configuration of plot. What configures and constitutes a practice is the context in which the action occurs and the interactions and interpretations of the participants within the practice. Practices are, according to Ricoeur, based on action in which an agent takes into account, as a matter of principal, the actions of others. Action is social in so far as, by virtue of the subjective meaning attached to it by the acting individual in the construction of self-interpretation it takes account of the behavior of others, and also I argue the traditions in which the behavior is a part, and is thereby oriented in its course of achievement (p. 155). But there is another orientation in practice and that is the orientation provided by the context of the practice. Ricoeur calls this orientation constitutive rules which provides particular relations of meaning within the context of the practice. Using the example of a chess game, Ricoeur notes that the given move of the pawn on a chessboard "counts as" a move in the game of chess. Without the rules of the game the move would not exist. The rule, by itself, gives meaning to the move, is constitutive of it. Such rules within a context introduces specific relationships of meaning into the structure of a practice as well as defining relationships of those involved within the practice. Ricoeur then goes on to note that practices do not contain ready made narratives which are rule bound, but narratives 154 will have a certain organization to them which gives them a prenarrative quality which seems to be reflective of the context in which the narrative rests. It is what MacIntyre (1984) calls "the narrative unity of life" or the Diltheyan expression "the connectedness of life". It is Shuman's narrative allegory or the story which always rests behind the story and Gadamer's (1992) notion that traditions handed down to us are constitutive of what we are now and know now (p. 141) .

What Ricoeur and others in this literature review argue for one way or the other is the narrative construction of life. Such an identity is the unity of a person's life as it is experienced and made known as events in story. It has a beginning, a middle and an end and entails a script or plot which embeds events in a meaningful whole. By stressing the importance of context in the construction of plot and the framing of events in narrative Ricoeur argues that such a structure makes the meaning of the events as narrated more understandable and explicit within a rather global unity of a professional life. By and large our actions show a unity which can be expressed in a narrative whole and understood by others (MacIntyre, 1984). I argue through this literature review that teacher thinking and teacher knowledge brought forth in narrative is already present in the action of the story. I argue that 155 narrative is the way in which such thinking and knowledge as represented in a teacher's practice is itself the very process by which that thinking and knowledge is constructed. Teachers not only live their daily lives in and through narrative, but in the telling come to have greater understanding about those teacherful events and actions. Widdershoven (1993) argues, however, as I do that narratives by which persons articulate their actions and understand one another are really quite commonsensical. They represent what Geertz (1983) calls "the annotation of everyday experience which is called common sense" (p. 69).Narrative represents everyday life and everyday experiences as people interact in the intersubjectivity of mundane life and whose stories are braided one among the other in the explication of the ordinary. From a hermeneutical phenomenological point of view narrative identity is the mutual relationship between lived experience and events and action on the one hand, and the narrative in which the events are organized and constructed through narrative on the other. Widdershoven (1993) notes that personal identity, or what I am calling narrative identity presupposes this felt unity of experiences. This unity serves as a foundation for narrative identity, which is the result of a hermeneutic relation between experience, events and narrative, in with the experience elicits the narrative and 156 the narrative articulates and constructs the experience into understandable events. Narrative makes explicit the meaning that is implicit in the life as lived. In telling narrative we try to make sense of our lives, like making sense of a text when we interpret it. Narrative construction seems to be always an interpretive act in which the meaning of a lived experience is opened for public judgment and interpretation

(p. 9). Geertz (1983) argues from an anthropological interpretive point of view that to understand a teacher's practice through narrative is to understand the local detail of such a practice in relation to the most global structure of the context in which that practice occurs in such a way as to bring both of them into view simultaneously. Such action requires a sort of leapfrogging forward and backward between the specifics of the practice and the whole of the reasoning which allows a presentation of the practice in narratives, the forms of teachers' lifeworlds by which they come to understand, acquire knowledge about, and construct a meaningful practice. This hermeneutical circle is used not only to grip the context in which a teaching practice is constructed but lift from the narrative text how teachers make sense of the context as it shapes and directs them toward defining relationships and characteristics of what it means to achieve a teaching practice or what is presupposed 157 in the achievement of a teaching practice. In all senses teacher narrative is defined as the storied events of the ordinary ways or "forms of life" (Geertz, 1983) which hold the practical commonplaces of a teachers professional practice; reflections on the teacher, the curriculum, the milieu, and the student. From a hermeneutic point of view, the relationship between lived experience and narrative is characterized as interpretive. Narrative constructs and interprets a lived life in that it makes the meaning of such a life understandable and its meaning explicit to others. Story and life are interrelated in narrative which makes a claim for the intelligible and illuminating construction of a personal narrative identity while doing justice to the culture of which it is a part. To search for the allegory behind personal narrative, the story behind the story is always to recognize that human experience and action can never be detached or separated from the narrative activity which constitutes the culture of which it is a part. As Taylor (1985b) explains: A hermeneutical science of man is always a science of practices, of socially constructed actions which cannot be identified in abstraction from the languages we use to describe them...Hermeneutical science would be a reading of meanings, and its object would have three properties: the meanings are for a subject in a field or fields; they are moreover meanings which are partially constituted by self-definitions, which are in this sense already interpretations, and which can thus be re­ expressed or made explicit. Intersubjective meanings always embody a certain self-definition, a vision of the 158

agent and of his society, which is that of the society or community (p. 52). For Taylor our capacity to understand one another is rooted in our own self-definitions, therefore in who and what we are as we encounter others in the lived experience. We are in all senses a self-interpreting and self-defining animal, living always within a cultural environment, inside "the webs of signification, we ourselves have spun". In the examination of intersubjective community meaning as the social construction of events which are understandable to one another, Taylor argues that such understanding must be contained in a language not just of words but of action and communication which is embedded in a background of desire, feeling, emotion and through which as Geertz (1983) notes, "Each one of us can figure out and understand what in the devil the other is up to" (p. 58). We then can characterize understanding as a reality which is comprised of intersubjective meaning. Interpretative understanding and meaning will be further elaborated upon in Chapter III. Throughout this literature review I have argue that teacher thinking and knowledge can be examined through the stories teachers tell about their practice. I would like to conclude this literature review by turning to a brief examination of the differences between the natural sciences as an epistemology of technical rationality and the 159 epistemology of the human sciences which is dialogical, interpretive, linguistic and representative of reasoned action taken in the life world so that in the comparison and contrast between the two epistemologies or ways of knowing; may be seen and understood as inescapably practical, undeniably interpretive and historically situated (Rabinow & Sullivan, 1987 p, 2). This conclusion to Chapter II will also serve as an introduction to Chapter III.

A DISCUSSION: QUALITATIVE RESEARCH AS FRAMEWORK FOR

THIS DISSERTATION. The relationship of knowledge to language, action and experience is different in the natural and human sciences. The acquisition of knowledge constituting the natural sciences is essentially monocular. There is one way to see and understand the world; through grasping reality in terms of technical mastery. The nature of reality is explained through reference to a logical methodology positioning the subject under study in context-free situations whose actions can be generalized in a universal and uniform logical world where knowledgeable vision is clear but literally flattened by the very process through which such clarity is achieved. The human sciences are essentially binocular. Its vision of the world is based on breadth and depth and a holistic orientation of dialogical language whose depth cannot be comprehended or reduced through flattened linear 160 relationships but understood only in the complex narrative and linguistic practices of everyday life. Whereas the natural sciences are directed by technical rules and applies those rules from outside to phenomena under study, the human sciences are directed by social rules recognizing the existence of intersubjective meaning within a community, a common shared world of meaning within which human subjects actually represent themselves to themselves and others through words, images, institutions and behaviors

(Geertz, 1983). Through reference to a mutual recognition of social rules, to a recognition of intersubjective meaning (Schütz & Luckman, 1989) by which the members of a society understand one another is to argue that any action requires a reference to its larger context, a cultural and social world. Taylor (1985b) argues that intersubjective meaning gives people a common language to talk about social reality and a common understanding of social rules and norms and in this sharing of common actions, celebrations and feelings is created the sense of community in which the sharing is shared. This shared value and sense of community is always a part of a common social and cultural intersubjective meaning of the community. Whereas the natural sciences emphasize mastery over the real world as its goal which is based on an empirical knowledge of the world while it stands apart in relationship 161 to the world it wishes to explain, the human sciences recognize that all inquiry is necessarily engaged in understanding the human world from within a situated and specific context. This situated location for knowing is always at once historical, social, meaningful and interpretive (Rabinow & Sullivan, 1987; Rickman, 1979; Sarason, 1982; Schon, 1987; Schütz, 1970; Smith, 1987; Stenhouse, 1983; Taylor, 1991a; van Manen, 1990; Winch, 1958; Wittgenstein, 1958; Wolff, 1976). And it recognizes that science itself, like all human endeavors, is rooted in a context of meaning which is itself a social reality, a particular organization of human action defining an interpretive, moral and above all practical world situated in its own historical location (Rabinow & Sullivan, 1987 p. 21) . Through empirical-analytical technique the natural sciences gather brute data as information to be analyzed and categorized according to specific analytical grids around which the data is manipulated. The human sciences recognize the hermeneutical phenomenological interpretive aspect of data collection and interpretation, recognizing a very human world with all of its lack of clarity and seeming unity, its alienation as well as its breadth and depth when placed under interpretive study (Rabinow & Sullivan, 1987) turn out to shed light on people's lives who grow old together (Geertz, 162

1983), which is much different from the sort of data one gets from polls, surveys, and questionnaires. The natural sciences are interested in technical knowledge which seems, according to Bredo (1982), to incorporate two powerful bases for knowledge : an empiricism that bases knowledge on sensory or observational experience and a rationalism that bases knowledge on self-evident, clear and consequential logical arguments framed in technical and descriptive statements purged of value (p. 14). The human sciences stress the development of practical knowledge which is embedded in the actions of people. This notion of practical knowledge has its origins in Aristotle. Nussbaum (1986) notes that Aristotle in arguing against the Platonic aspiration to an external "God's eye" rational standpoint to the nature of knowledge and human ethics, defends the view of truth as internal, in the appearances as they exist within the person of practical wisdom. Nussbaum goes on to explain that the standpoint of rational perfection, which purposes to survey all lives neutrally and coolly from a viewpoint outside of any particular life, stands accused already of failure of reference; for in removing itself from all worldly experience it appears to remove itself at the same time from the discourse about the world. A person does not attempt to take up a stand outside of the conditions of human life, but bases his or her judgment on long and broad experience of 163 those conditions. The conditions of a good life is a life that is chosen as a good life for us, a life in which there will be enough of what makes us the beings we are for us to be said to survive such a life. The understanding of a good shoemaker or lyre player must begin from an understanding of what those functions are. The good functioning for any craft practitioner must remain within the boundaries of what the activity, in its nature is. What is valuable and rational for Plato is always totally severed from the particular context. What is valuable and rational for Aristotle is always embedded in context and follows from this point that discourse is not theoretical but practical (pp. 290-293). And this is exactly the point that Gadamer and Taylor make about the impact of traditions that shape us and constitute the historicity of our being in arguing for the interconnection of the theoretical and the practical in language with is not to be understood as an instrument or tool that is used in application or discovery, but rather as the medium in which we live and socially construct our lives (Bernstein, 1983 p. 145) For Taylor (1985b) practices, like the practice of teaching cannot be identified in abstraction from the language we use to describe them, or invoke them, or carry them out. The vocabulary of a given social dimension is grounded in the shape of a social practice in this dimension; 164 that is, the vocabulary of teaching would not make sense, could not be applied sensibly, where this range of practice did not prevail and the practice could not exist without the vocabulary. The language is constitutive of the reality and is essential to its being that kind of reality it is (p. 34), I have argued in Aristotelian fashion throughout this literature review for the establishment of a practical knowledge of teaching embedded in a language of narrative essential to its being; the kind of knowledge it is which for many including (Bernstein, 1983; Bruner, 1990; Buchmann, 1990; Connelly & Clandinin, 1985; Elbaz, 1991; Gadamer, 1992; Geertz, 1983; Polkinghorne, 1988; Rabinow & Sullivan, 1987; Ricoeur, 1992; Rorty, 1991; Sarbin, 1986; Schwab, 1978; Taylor, 1985b) is based upon the practical narrative activity of those individuals. As Rabinow (1987) argues the very possibility of coming to understand cultural and personal life flows from the very practical activity of that life (p. 19) . Whereas the goal of the natural sciences is the acquisition of applicable and generalizable knowledge, knowledge embedded in the notion of a tradition of explanatory certitude which is fundamentally univocal and consequently unambiguously represented (Rabinow & Sullivan, 1987 p, 77) the human sciences stress the preservation of the historical traditions upon which intersubjective 165 communication is constructed where understanding, interpretation and tradition is inseparable. Carr (1986) notes as does Taylor (1985b) that human science looks backwards. It is inescapably historical. Bernstein (1983) in discussion of Gadamer's hermeneutics notes the importance of history and tradition on the process of understanding and interpretation which will be discussed in Chapter III. For now it is sufficient to say that understanding of "things themselves" in the acquisition of knowledge must be attended to in an openness of interpretation which is always understood as inherently historical and inescapably embedded in tradition (Rabinow & Sullivan, 1987 p. 23). Understanding "things in themselves", being open to the claims and warrants of the truth they hold for us, always involves our past history, what Gadamer calls prejudgments and prejudices. The interpreter of texts always brings a core history of beliefs and values with her, by which she resonates with the text. It is only because this history and tradition cannot be bracketed, that interaction with, appreciating the fullness of a new text, buy opening herself up to the newness of what is encountered in light of her core beliefs, she grants the text the opportunity to appear as something authentically different and having its own truth over and against her own preconceived truth (Bernstein, 1983 p. 138) . These prejudices and prejudgments 166 are themselves handed down from the traditions that shape us and that are constitutive of the historicity of our being.

Our historicity reflected in our prejudices and prejudgments have a temporal character which is somewhat similar to the temporal character of the narrative. Such historicity is handed down to us through traditions, it is constitutive of what we are now and I argue as constructed in narrative. Berger and Luckmann (1966) note that history is the product of human activity. Reality is socially defined within and by the concrete actions of individuals and groups which serve as the definers of reality. Such a historicity is in the process of becoming. Such a history or tradition is socially constructed and originates and is maintained as real in the thoughts and actions of human lived experience. It is anticipatory-always open to future testing and transformations. Berger and Luckmann note that in this sense the experienced reality of an objective world, as massive as it may be appear is humanly produced and constructed. The world is objectivated human activity, and so therefore, is every single institution. The objectivity of the social world does not exist apart from the human activity that produced it. The relationship between human activity and the social world as its product is and remains a dialectical one; humans and their social world interact with one another and the product acts back on the producer, (pp. 60-61). 167

Bernstein (1983) argues that the central core of Gadamer's hermeneutical circle emanates from Aristotle's conceptions of Praxis discussed above. For Gadamer, "hermeneutic philosophy is the heir of the older tradition of practical philosophy" whose chief task is to "justify the way of reason and defend practical...reason against the domination of technology based on science" (pp. 145-146). The type of knowledge and truth that hermeneutics yields is practical knowledge and truth that shapes the very practice of which it is a part. The chief task of philosophical hermeneutic science is to correct the peculiar falsehood of modern consciousness and to defend practical... reason against the domination of technology based on science (p. 150) . Because traditions are socially constructed through a dialectical process Gadamer warns that they cannot be simply taken as given. They are not seamless wholes. There are conflicting traditions which make conflicting claims of truth on all of us (Bernstein, 1983). Since the social construction of reality then appears as an ongoing conversation in many voices about current reality, a process of hermeneutic interpretation is then needed by which the truth of such a reality can be argumentatively validated by a community of interpreters who open themselves to what the traditions have to say to them. This does not mean that there is some transcendental or ahistorical perspective from which we can 168 then evaluate competing claims to truth. Bernstein (1983) notes we must judge and evaluate such claims by the standards and social practices that have been hammered out in society and within the course of history (p. 161). Gadamer reminds us, as do Berger and Luckmann and Taylor and others that we belong to tradition, history and language before they belong to us. We cannot escape from the dynamic power of effective history, which is always, in dialectic fashion within the actions of human beings socially constructing such a history.

Tradition is always shaping what we are becoming as we shape the traditions of which we are currently a part. What I have been arguing for within this literature review is the embeddedness of teacher thinking and knowledge in a practical and socially constructed world of practice which shapes the teacher in the very act of its construction.

I have argued in Chapter II, which will be fully developed in Chapter III, a profound respect for and sense of the socially constructed meaning of reality in a teacher's practice. Such a practice is fundamentally dialogic, conversational and embedded in a language of passion, wonderment and hope understood by others as the mutual recognition of and agreement on traditions and "forms of life" in an intersubjectivity reality which is communicative, practical and embedded in traditions as the conditions of communication where mind and language and spirit are active in the social 169 construction of knowledge. Teachers do not discover or find practical knowledge somewhere in their practice so much as they make and construct it, I have argued that human science must incorporate as its principal focus the practical everyday socially constructed and lived experiences of human beings. As I will argue in Chapter III this type of human science is a phenomenological-hermeneutical and interpretive perspective. It is an argument to release the grip of empirical science with its monological emphasis on the separation of the mind from the world through technical rules applied to knowledge which is to be found in existence apart from the actions of those who live in it and to embrace a socially constructed knowledge which is instead historical, intentional, practical and locally situated. The purpose of this chapter has been to position the world of the teacher as a unique and socially constructed world which needs a unique set of theoretical assumptions about the way that world is in order to arrive at some way to know it. I wish to argue in the subsequent chapters of this dissertation that such a set of assumptions is embedded not in some universal measurement of the world of teaching, but rather within the practical dialogic, and linguistic, conversational, and questioning, and wondering lives of teachers actively involved in the ongoing construction and interpretation of their own 170 professional lives. As Aristotle noted in a discussion on ethics and deliberation some two thousand years ago: A person who attempts to make every decision by appeal to some antecedent general principal held firm and inflexible for the occasion is like an architect who tries to use a straight ruler on the intricate curves of a fluted column. Instead, the good architect will, like the builder of Lesbos, measure with a flexible strip of metal that bends round to fit the shape of the stone and is not fixed. Good deliberation, like this ruler, accommodates itself to what it finds, responsively and with respect for complexity. It does not assume that the form of the rule governs the appearances; it allows the appearances to govern themselves and to be normative for correctness of rule (Nussbaum, 1986 p.302)

THE PERSONAL EXPERIENCE STORIES OF ABBY MAYFIELD

Abby Mayfield is a petite, striking and confident young woman in her mid-twenties. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Elementary Education from a major research institution in the Midwest and is currently enrolled in the same institution working toward a Master's Degree in Educational Administration. Abby is a swimmer and has competed on several levels during her high school careerand after. She lives in a small town with her husband John in a new house. The house was under construction during our interview sessions and she was looking forward to moving in over the summer. This is Abby's third year of teaching and she is, by all accounts enjoying her experience with her kindergarten students. 171

When I first met with Abby in the lounge she was wearing a pair of designer bluejeans and an oversized yellow and white broad striped polo shirt. Her manner is direct, vibrant and confident. She is a very happy person, delighted to be teaching, delighted to be alive and engaging life. Abby is the essence of independence, youth, motivation, and

intelligence. She is in very sense of the word today's modern woman. Curling up in one of the uncomfortable metal folding chairs which cluttered the lounge, Abby shared her story.

HOW ABBY MAYFIELD CAME TO TEACHING Ah, probably for me, being in teaching, which is the same reason why I think I'm in administration now, is

because, I see...I see too many negative aspects...I've seen too many negative teachers or too many teachers, and I think, "Boy, I can do a better job." And that's why, you know, I went into teaching. Also I had done a lot of teaching swimming lessons and been around kids a lot when I was in high school so that was a big thing for me. I mean, I enjoyed children and I enjoyed teaching, but then through my own, you know, childhood I had so many poor teachers and I had not a real bad experience but I look back now and think, "Boy, I think I could have been a better student had this teacher done something differently." You know, I always felt like we were put into those little groups of the Red Birds and the

Blue Birds reading groups and I was always kind of in the 172 average one and I always kept trying irty best to get up into a better group but it seemed like no matter what I did I was always pushed down and always, you know, compared. And I can even remember teachers almost...! don't know if they actually said this to me or if it was through itty Mom that I found it out, but I remember in fifth grade I was put into the higher level like reading group and after like a few weeks, I mean, the teacher made it very clear that I shouldn't be there and I should, you know, be dropped down. And, you know, iry thinking was, you know. I'm doing my best but yet I think being with the upper group sometimes helps you to see where you need to go. It's like a role model, and without that role model you're going to stay in the same, you know, level if you don't have anywhere to see where you're going. And I can remember being dropped back. I was like devastated. "Why?", you know. I'm trying and tell me what I need to do to, you know, do better. And then I just...a lot of things I remember methods that teachers used, you know, just assigned the workbooks and memorization and how nothing was ever gone from like the work sheets and used in context of what you would do in real life with, you know, something like this, especially like vocabulary words was one that really stuck out in ity mind. It's like, why are we learning these lists and lists and lists of vocabulary words when none of them are going to stick in my mind. I mean, I probably 173 learned maybe two of them, you know, that I still use to this day. I think the other ones are just, you know, are lost. It was just like a, you know, a waste of time, you know, a timeless activity. I just see myself as wanting to do, you know, things differently than other people that I've seen. You know, which my high school experience wasn't very wonderful. You know, it was that same type, you know, just

"Here I am, write down the notes, this is what you do." And I just look at those people and I don't consider them teachers. I mean, it makes me ill, the things they were doing. I mean, oh, it's, actually right at my old school, now they're making history. It's the biggest strike, or the longest strike in the state's history. It's a nasty strike, and really as of now, the courts have taken it and they have an arbitrator and that arbitrator now is going to make the decision and the district is going to come up with a contract and the teachers can either take that contract, and the administrators are going to have to take it, or the teachers are going to be in contempt. I mean, I think it's bad that it has to come to that. But it was a very small high school. We had 196 in my graduating class, I mean relatively small. I started out in engineering, when I went to college, only because... I think I did it mainly because ity Dad was an engineer and so is ity sister, and I really enjoyed math and I think I would have enjoyed it but I was like scared out of my 174 mind. I took my first couple of math courses at Louisville University and got C's in them and I was like, "Oh, my gosh, if I'm getting C's in these, you know, basic math classes I'm never going to be able to get into engineering." I said there's no way. And it was like, "Why am I in this anyway." And it was like, "Well, I don't think it's because I really want to be. I think I'm doing it because my family is doing it." And I was like, "No, I'm going to go into education." And so the next quarter, you know, that's what I declared and I finished up in four years. So...and I love teaching. I mean, just like the other day I told someone, I mean, in the three years I've been teaching there's not a day that I wake up and think I don't want to go to work. And like someone else said I don't think of it as work. I mean when I get Ity paycheck it's like, "Oh I got to have all this fun and get paid for it." It's like, "This is great." I mean, it really is fun. But, there are days, you know, when you go, "Ahhhh"...

NEGATIVE TALK I remember first coming in and it was like anytime in the lounge I couldn't understand why everybody was always so negative. I mean, it seemed like whenever people were conversing it was something negative about a child. You never really heard anybody saying something positive. And you now when you're, you know, all geared up and so hyped up, you 175 know, what you're doing and it's your first, you know, real experience teaching and you're like, "Wait a minute. There's so many good things." So every time I would come in I would try to say something good and when I did it was kind of like, well why are you saying all those good things. You know, don't you have anything else to say. And that's kind of the way I thought people were talking. And even last year, I mean, I kind of, well not, yeah it was last year, that was my first year of teaching Kindergarten again, my first year of teaching with the third grade here in the building and then I went back to Kindergarten. And last year I just had the most wonderful class. I mean, there was nothing I could say about them that would be the least bit negative. I mean, I couldn't think of anything. And even the first grade teachers now I think would feel the same way. They are just an exceptional class, I mean, the way they work together, the parents, everything. And I'd come in here and I'd be like...the first grade teachers last year had an awful class and they'd be like...you know, about all these kids and how rotten they were being, what are we going to do, and I'd just like, "Well you know, you've got these kids coming up." I said, "Look on the bright side, you know, I mean these kids are wonderful. You're going to have a wonderful class, you're going to, you know, have these things you can do, you know, focus on that 176 if anything. Think of something positive", you know. That's like my first reaction when I think about teachers talking with one another in a big group. Now I think when I talk with people one on one, things are a lot more positive. You know, I don't know why that is, why in a group it seems like people need to talk about negative things, you know. That's just what I 've found. Like when I talk to Matt, I mean. Matt and I talk a lot and a lot about teaching too. I mean, most of the things we say are always positive. I mean, granted we get on our kicks and, I mean, even my husband says, "All you guys ever do is talk about negative things," 'cause a lot of times we'll all go out, the staff and go to like happy hour on Friday nights and, you know, then my husband, John, he's like, "Well I don't want to go. All you guys are going to do is complain." And I'm like, "No we won't. Just come along." I mean he always goes. But he's a teacher also, but he's high school.

REFLECTING ON CHILDRENS' NEEDS And I still have a hard time with that reflecting. Sometimes...like even next year I plan on going a little bit more towards just letting the kids experiment more and do more exploring rather than, you know, whole group, you know, discussions and that type of thing. You know, each year, you know, you get a little bit braver and you realize how much the kids are learning from that and you need that because you Ill couldn't just go in and say, "Okay, we're just going to have an experience or experiment every day and...here's the supplies and this is, you know, what you're going to do." It's not going to work that way.

BAD STORIES I didn't have any problems teaching the other grade after doing rny internship in Kindergarten but I guess when I went in there I thought the kids would be a lot...like I expected them to be older, I guess, their mentality to be older than what I got. I was very surprised. I think my biggest thing was, I mean, I enjoyed the kids when they enjoyed what they were doing, but it was real hard for me when they didn't enjoy something, and I'd be using, you know, any kind of strategies or methods I could find to help them or to even help them create something, you know, a project that they would enjoy doing that would still, you know, accomplish our objectives. And some of the kids just wouldn't even respond to those, you know, that kind of help. It was by, you know, by making it too specific of like a task they didn't want to do it or, by making it broad enough where they could choose their own type of project to do and telling them this is what, you know, you need to do this, this, and this. You can do anything you want, what would you want to do and they were like bored, you know, it's like, "Oh, I have responsibility", I could make my own decisions, you know. 178 they didn't know how to do that type of thing. So I didn't know how to find, like, the happy medium in-between there which may have caused some of the problems. I had a real bright kid named Mark Heath and it seemed like any one of those methods I tried just some days would work really well with him and then the next day he'd come in and throw a fit to the point where he'd hit kids. He'd start, you know, just making, you know, calling me names or, you know, lashing out at me which I took probably too personally as a first-year teacher does. It's like, "Oh my God, you know. I'm ruining this child, you know, and I know he's got good things in him, you know, and I'm not pulling them out." But he was just a real different kid. I mean, he had a lot of home problems but I don't want to say, "Well, it's because of that, you know, I mean I still need to do my job." But, you know, he was just like always back and forth and I just wish in a way I would have had more, I don't know, more classes or some kind of experience that would have helped me deal with him. And really, I felt like I didn't get much help, really, from other staff members or even from Mr. Mertz at that time. I mean he would help me a little bit but not, I guess, what I felt like I needed. You know, I wanted someone to come in and observe him and even another child in my class that was kind of the same way but not nearly as bright as Brian Davis because the other child was just having a lot of emotional 179 problems and I don't think it really related to school a lot of times and somehow I wanted to help them or counsel them but I didn't, you know, I don't have that kind of knowledge.

You know, I didn't know what to do for them. I did everything I knew of but it wasn't working. The kids would get so hyped up like in the morning if they had a bad, you know, experience at home and they'd come in and the one kid would throw desks, I mean he'd throw balls in the room, I mean, he was really uncontrollable and, you know, I look back on it now and it's like, you know, I still, I don't know what I would do. I don't know what I would do differently, you know, and that's something that really bothers me. And the more I talk to other people about it, nobody else does either, you know. It's like what do you do with those kids who are, you know, so angry that they're going to be throwing things and starting to hurt themselves and other kids because they're so angry inside about something. And yet no matter how many times you talk to them or try to make them feel like they can have confidence in you and come to you, you know, they still don't. You know, there's something going on in their mind but it's just killing them. I mean, even when you talk to the parents, if you could get them in, you know, they didn't...you knew what was happening at home by talking with them, but, you know, what can you say to them. 180

"You're doing a terrible job." I wish you'd do this, this, and this? It's hard to come across to them. I felt like at school I should have made a positive environment where at school they could feel safe and happy and not have to be so burdened. But then it seemed like the kids kind of turned on me some days and because they maybe knew I cared, I don't know, kind of my own philosophy, they would use that. You know, they knew that if they were so upset sometimes I would say, okay then, you know, we're not going to be able to do this assignment because they're throwing a fit or because, you know, they're doing something else. They knew they would get out of it. Not that, you know, I wouldn't still give them an Incomplete, I'd said, "You know you still have to take this home or something", and I don't agree with failing kids in that way. I mean, the one kid, Brian Davis, he could have done any of that stuff. I mean, he could have done it, you know, so fast, faster than anybody in that whole class and be done with it, but it was just the battle of getting it done and, you know, how could I do it differently. You know, he just didn't want to sit down and do it. Which, I mean, is something like when I first...my first year of teaching I, you know, you think...you do think you know it all in a way, but yet the stories that, you know, stay in your mind are the ones that you learned from, and 181 unfortunately, I think I told you this before, unfortunately for some reason those negative stories are always the ones that stand out in rry mind. But I learned from those negatives and I think that's maybe why they stand out more in my mind, because I'm always trying to do something differently so it doesn't happen again...hopefully.

I mean if something negative happens in my classroom, I mean, it takes me weeks to get over it. I mean, which is bad sometimes. It's probably... it's a weakness because I take it personally and then I take it home with me and every time I'm in the car by myself I think about it, you know, it's just like constantly on my mind, and it's hard for me to think about the good stories to overcome, you know, some of those slumps that I get in, but something always comes along like Myrna Jones and I were talking last night about our awards, which are when parents write good things about you and I got three good letters last year. She's like, "Abby you need to pull those out." And I'm like, "you're right." I mean I was upset with my. . .you know my kids parents the other night and I'm like I should, that's what I need to do is pull those stories out and look at those letters and think, "Wow, somebody does think highly of me." Not everyone thinks I'm such a bad person so, you know, you've got to give yourself some, I guess, highlights. Keep yourself going somehow, but there's always something that comes along. 182

And I was just like, okay, once I yelled at the one little girl when we were going to the bus. She was drifting off from the other kids and I kept saying, "You've got to stay in line." I had all the kids'with me. All the parents had already left at that point and I was like, "You guys have got to stay with me. We've got to get on the bus." For one thing we were still waiting on another child to be found and, you know, I was like ahhh, what am I going to do. You've got to...and I did yell at her. And I said...and when she told me that was the reason she wasn't going on the field trip to Benton Falls, I said, "Well did I have a reason to be upset with you that day?" "Well, yeah." she said. "Okay, well am I upset with you now?" "No." "Well, then why can't you go on Thursday. Why can't we try to have a better day?" But the parent wouldn't respond to ray note. I just said "It's been brought to my attention that, you know, your child has told me they're going to the movies on this day rather than going to Benton Falls and I just want to know what I can do to encourage your participation." You know, I said I'd try to make it as educational and manageable and as fun as possible for the kids. What else can I do? And I didn't get any response to the note, so it was like well... so I'm just going to drop it at that. She's kind of been picking on everything this year.

She's like, "Well I can't go because you hurt ray feelings." 183

And I said, "Well, when did I do that?" And she said, "Well, do you remember that day,.." which was like three weeks ago, and she said, "...that you yelled at me and Melissa for switching our names on our papers." And I said, "Yes, I was upset with you." And she goes, "Well, that hurt my feelings so I don't want to go with you to Benton Falls." But yet she went to the zoo. You know it's kind of like, okay, and then I talked to her about it and I said again, you know, "Did I have a reason to be upset?" "Well, yeah." I mean, the kids had...at age five, I was like shocked, when a substitute was there one day a couple of weeks ago, I had to leave and the one girl kept telling her, the substitute, that she was Jessica when she was really Melissa, and they had just swapped names. And they had done that in the class before but they always did it pretending and they always did it when they were playing, not when we were like in class, you know, or, you know, when I was trying to call their names. But they always did it pretending and I didn't...you know that doesn't bother me. They're pretending that they have different names, that's no problem. But then when they did it for a substitute I got upset, you know.

CURRICULUM I feel when I'm really, really teaching that when I feel like I'm doing something worthwhile is when I'm with this very small group of no more than five or six kids or when I'm 184 one-on-one with someone and that's when like the true teacher in me comes out You don't get to do, you know, one-on-one with your children very often. You know, that's very rare. Or, you know, being able to break down your kids and work with them some of the time, you know, and when someone else is in the room sometimes that turns up, you know, the kids' adrenaline, gets them, you know, looking at other things, and sometimes you feel like maybe you don't have all their attention. So I don't know but I would say if a person could come in and watch you do that, I would say that is observable. Now the part that it may not be observable is your ideas or thinking, in the teacher's mind of where you're going with that lesson or why you're asking those questions. You know, a lot of times, especially parents, and even some people in the education field, especially like going out to Benton Falls today is a good example. You know, they see us walking down the Falls and they're going, "Well, what are you teaching?" You know, they say "Why are you doing that? You're just playing." You're right, we are just playing, you know, we're having a good time, but we're learning because we're talking about what we're doing. The kids find something. They're asking questions. We're interacting and no sometimes there may not be...we're not exactly going along with the goal that I had in my mind but if a child picks up something and starts out with a question about it and the other kids 185 get involved in it and you start talking about it, yeah, suddenly the goal that you had in your mind and had written down maybe for that day for the lesson plan has switched. You know, and people don't see that. People don't realize that, yes, you have an agenda or a sequence and are following that but yet the children can change that at any minute. You know, and I would say that most people couldn't see that. It's hard for me to even see it sometimes. And teaching is an art in that way where the teacher is flexible enough to, you know, switch her ideas or switch her way or his way of thinking with the way the children are going. You know, I mean if you're the type of teacher who's going to sit up and say, "No, we're going to follow the goal of looking at these insects in the water today and that's all we're going to look at," and that's your goal and you're not going to be flexible enough to move from that and the kids find something else and you don't go with them on, let's say looking at, you know, the rocks in the water, the different colors that they're seeing, and they're off on something else and you're still trying to talk about the insects, then are you really teaching? Are you really getting anything across to them? I mean, you need to go with their interest, you know, which is sometimes...it's not something that you can write down, you know. It's not something, like the killer thing for me is looking at a teaching application, how do you 186 find out the children's interest? Well, that comes up in conversation and through, you know, teaching different things. You try one thing and it doesn't work so you go to another so you know, well, that's not interesting to them right now. Now maybe you could go back to it, you know, in a couple of months and they might be interested in it. But I wouldn't say you need to totally, you know, forget about it for the year just because they weren't interested in it that day, you know. But there are teachers that think well I've got this lesson, this is what we're going to do today, no matter what. But, I think, it's a true art that the teacher has when you're able to notice what the kids are interested in and to be able to go, you know, off from your lesson plans, you know, because I think there are a lot of people who have tunnel vision and the blinders on and they know...they are interested in the...can't you see? You're going hum, are they? I '11 tell you probably someone who could tell you the best story about it would probably be Mrs. Friend, my aide. Because there she is in the classroom thinking this is what we're doing today looking at my plans and all of a sudden Mrs. Mayfield is going off on this tangent with the kids and she's going wait a minute. How are we ever going to get this done, you know. Because sometimes she's a little more 187 structured than I am. And, I mean, let's see. I had an example just the other day too. We're doing...plant seeds...this week has been a blur. It really has. Let's see Tuesday or Wednesday we had an example like that where we were doing something with the plants...with planting our pumpkin seeds and all of a sudden one of the kids had an idea. We were comparing and contrasting the sunflower seeds and the pumpkin seeds and all of a sudden the kids were like --well, "Let's eat them", you know, and I was just talking about their senses and all of a sudden, yeah, but we can eat them? And I said, "Yeah, can you?" And originally in my idea in my sequence in my lesson plans I had planned on them eating them. Now I hadn't planned on them maybe doing that until later, but that was the first thing one of the kids wanted to do. So of course I'm like, "Yeah, okay, let's taste them." You know, because I think the more and more I watch other people, the more, I think flexible, you need to be. I mean, you can't really tell the kids all the time what to do. I mean I think they learn a lot more if they're gonna'...if they do what they want and then start discussing it with their friends. You know, I think just even someone helped me believe more in that point just the other day. There was someone from Australia who came over to talk about Big Books with us and his name was Rod Martin and he 188 said you know the more dialogue you can get from the kids...now as long as they're talking about what your subject is, you know, as long as they're talking about the pumpkin seeds and the sunflower seeds and they're comparing and contrasting them, you know, let them talk. Who cares about raising their hand or, you know, minding their manners, you know. I mean, let them eat them, you know, let them touch them, let them feel them, let them pick them up and toss them. Let them do as many things as they can with it and then talk about it, because there's always those kids...the more that we talk, the more they notice that day and the more I let kids just fly...you now, like I call fly fishing talking where they're just going back and forth and I'm not, you know, interfering.

And then sooner or later the more shy kids are getting involved and they're starting to talk. And they may be saying the exact thing that everyone else...all they're doing is repeating, you know, someone else is saying, "Oh, they're salty." "Oh, yeah, they're salty." "Oh, they're salty." I mean, we must have had ten people say that they're salty. But that's okay, because you're still getting those kids who are more shy or, you know, not real confident or have a high self-esteem, you're getting them into it and that's your goal, you know, a lot of the time. I think that's interesting, you know. But then again, it's an art for the 189 teacher to be able to look back at that and realize what happened, you know what I mean? Because some people would be just like, well, okay we did that lesson. That was it. You know, what did you gain from it? Oh we, you know, came up with five things here that were the same and five things that were different, whereas that really, you know, wasn't my intention. You know, I wanted to just get them thinking and they did. I mean they truly did that. So I guess that was one way we kind of went off on, you know, something that I hadn't originally planned on. Sometimes the kids will come up with something, "Well let's go outside and try this." You know, go outside and try it. I mean if that's what they want to do. We did that a lot today. We did more, you know, whatever you guys want to do, and it was great. And I think we learned more this time at Benton Falls than we ever had because I let the kids...we went back into the Falls...we go one time for forty minutes with the naturalist and we stay right there by the shore and the kids pick things up in the nets and then we observe them and that type of thing. But this time I took the kids on what we called the Falls Hike where we just kind of walked down the Falls and then all kinds of things came up. We saw a fish that we first of all thought was dead and it was floating and it was like this big, and then we realized it was breathing 190 and then the kids wanted to pick it up and move it back out into the Falls a little farther so it could swim away. Well, it didn't work and they were like, "Oh, it is dying," you know, "What can we do to help it?" I mean, again the conversation was just going. I mean I didn't have to do anything. It was just like, "Whoa, this is great !" And they noticed a...I mean our next thing after doing that was going and picking up trash and they were like, "Look at all the glass around here. Boy we should pick this up. Wow, we just happen to have trash bags and gloves that we brought, you know." I don't know, I think that kind of stuff is not observable. What the teacher is thinking and where they're planning on going. Their sequencing is not always observable, and that's a lot of what teaching is, especially I believe in...when the kids are five through age eight or nine. You know, so much of it is learning through planning and experiencing that most people don't see the sequencing or don't see why you're doing it. They don't see the purpose, you know.

ISOLATION I mean, when we get in a group like that, a lot of times things are negative, which, I mean, I think on Friday nights we're all like blowing off steam, you know. But I think one- on-one, I mean like Matt and I are always talking about positive things and always trying to think of new things that 191 we can do that are going to make...you know the kids work harder or help parents out, you know, that kind of thing. I think it is different when it's one-on-one versus a large group of people. The staff at my other school at Valley View, they're really negative...they're kind of different. I mean, I think all of us really enjoyed teaching and I think everyone there, you know, in my eyes are good teachers, but really there's no like pull to come together and try to do things together as far as even like planning together or coming up with units together or, you know, trading ideas. I think a building though really decides, you know, who's going to communicate with one another. A lot of principals were saying when we work on the new schools that are going to be built and we're looking at different layouts and a lot of principals commented on, you know, how the classrooms seemed to be situated in order to promote staff relations, you know. And I have to agree because I was like thinking of our building, you know, like its day and night. You know, it's just like...and people even...I had a fourth grade teacher ask me the other day, "Would you give me like an idea of what Kindergartners know or what they learn in Kindergarten?" I mean, this fourth grade teacher had no idea of what, you know, we really do. I mean, she's outside in the hall now, she's never going to come to sit down there, you know, and vice versa. Which I think is sad, you know, I 192 think...and that's something else I think would be neat as a principal is to have, like, I don't know some kind of visitation where you need to go to different classrooms and visit within your own building. Like Mr. Mertz always says, "We have so many resources here, why do w e ...." You know really when we have an in-service I thought it was neat this winter how we each talked about different things. Each grade level had something to share and that's what we did for our in-service, rather than going and paying someone to come in and talk to us. There's a lot of stuff going on in this building that we can use. I mean, a lot of teachers don't...I don't know, they feel uncomfortable about sharing what they're doing or presenting it, especially to the staff, you know, it's their peers and it's like, well I may be doing something that somebody doesn't like or, I don't know, they're just unsure about themselves maybe and with presenting it to their own peers. Even today someone had to present the new science curriculum. You could tell she was like real shaky and she even admits she is always that way. She goes, "I can't stand and talk in front of my parents, I can't stand and talk in front of anybody." And just with even the seven teachers that were there tonight she was just like real nervous and up tight. And it's like, "Connie, calm down, you know none of us are, you know, judging you or anything." And she was like, "I 193 know but I just get so, you know, up tight." I mean, you know, which is interesting. I mean that's fine and she knows that and she knows to stay away from those situations for the most part. But I used to be like that, too, and I just kind of...I've got to teach myself to be comfortable in front of a group. You know, I think, if that's her goal. I mean, like she doesn't care to, which is fine. But I knew at one point I was going to have to learn how to do that because if I wanted to be an administrator I'd obviously have to talk in front of people To be real honest the Kindergarten teachers as a whole really don't work as a grade level. The other teacher I was with here moved to the Norton Road Center and we just don't have the same philosophies or ideas or...she's an older teacher. Not that that has anything to do with it but she just keeps to herself and doesn't want to...she doesn't want to take the time to do anything else. You know, it would take too much of her time to sit down and plan something together.

ADMINISTRATION I mean, going into administration is a goal for me. I've seen a lot of principals that I feel could do a better job and do more as far as working with the children rather than staying in their office all day and continually working on paperwork and shuffling things around and that type of thing. And then I've seen a couple of administrators who are doing a 194 really good job, how they organize their time and find time to go out and observe each teacher, and I even experienced one principal where he would find a time each week to go into a classroom and actually like teach a small group lesson. And, I mean, I think that really says something for the principal. You know to find they're interested in the kids, not just the staff. And, you know, I think that's part of their job is to see what the kids are doing also, not just the teachers. Just recently, I had my teaching aide, Mrs. Friend, has a daughter in Valley View School and she came back with her report card and on it. It said, "Great job. Sierra," and it gave, I think her name was like Mrs. Graham or something and Mrs. Friend said, you know, "Sierra, who's Mrs. Graham," and she said, "Well, that's my principal." I mean for the principal to sign a grade card, I mean, that gives the children so much, I mean, a good role model and, I mean, for the principal to take that time to do something like that is a big, I mean, commitment, so, I mean, I didn't think...

I was talking to a guy the other day and the things he was saying just were so far out in left field from what like I was believing, you know, I mean as far as, you know, I think the principal should be, you know, open minded to staff and, you know, listen to what their feelings are and not make decisions totally on their own yet, you know. There are times 195 when you're going to need to make a decision on your own and then this guy was just like, "Oh the teachers should never have a, you know, say in that, and, you know, why should I take my time to go into the classroom. That's where the teacher needs to take, you know, their...that's their responsibility, not mine." And I'm just like, "Okay, we're black and white here." I think principals need to go into the room a lot more and not to make the teacher feel uncomfortable. Because if a principal had walked into my room or anybody in rry first year, that was fine with me. I'm very comfortable with people in my room. But I think even some teachers with 20 years of experience aren't comfortable with someone in their room. You know, I think that's something I'd want to work out with the first-year teacher, and if they don't feel comfortable with me being in there, you know, if they think that would, you know, try videotapes or try, you know, a tape recorder or anything, you know, just to kind of ease it. And then I'd want to be in there, you know, I mean sometimes, but if that makes them too uncomfortable we'll try other ways. But I think making them feel like they can come to you if they do have a problem, to come see you right away about something and to give them all the information you can and notonly give them. ..I mean I had a teacher in the building I could work with but, I don't... sometimes I guess I didn't feel very 196 comfortable going to that person. So I don't know how you would really try to match someone up, you know.

TIME I think each year again you learn something of how to manage things better so that you do have more time. I think that as far as transitioning, there's always like probably the month of June I try not to think about school at all, and then usually probably the middle of July I really get antsy, it's like, "Oh I've got to start thinking about this", or I want to do that, and it's always kind of like in the back of my mind but I try to put everything out once, you know, school is over and we put everything away. I close it up and I think, "Okay I'm not going to come back for a couple of weeks", but then usually by the middle of July I get really antsy to come back and get ready and get a new fresh bunch of kids and...it's hard for me to be over at the center because I don't get to see rry kids who are here. You know, that's really hard for me. But sometimes like last year was the first year I really felt crunched because ity sister had a baby in August and she had it in the middle of August and so it was like I wanted to be home for two weeks and I knew that. I'd known it all summer. You know, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go home for two weeks with her. And she did have the baby on time which was good, it's like, "Okay this is real good. We're doing everything on time here. 197

All right." I'm like I can be home for two weeks with you and then I can come back and get everything ready and I did, and I was...I didn't work on anything hardly last summer in my room until the week before school, which was really unusual. I mean, I was like, "Oh my gosh", panic. "I've got to get this stuff done." It's amazing to me having that time schedule I knew I had to work with I had everything up in, like, two days. I had moved everything. I mean everything was in boxes because we had boxed everything from here and moved it over there. Now the janitors moved it all for us but when I walked in one day everything's in boxes and I just started tearing...I mean I had it done in two days and the people at the center were like, "Wow. " I mean they were just like, "You want to come and do my room?" And I was like well you know I think I had it all in my mind how it was going to be done, where things were going to go, and it was just like all I had to do was go in there and do it and it was done. I mean, so it kind of makes you wonder, "Boy if I wouldn't have been under that kind of time constraint, I could have spent four weeks getting that room together, you know." Like last year, I mean as soon as we got out of school there were like two days -- we got out of school on Friday and on Monday iry husband and I left for a six-week camping trip out West. It was just like, "Whew, pack up, leave, we're out of here." And then, I mean, it was just like we were 198 going the whole time so it was like you don't even have time to stop and think. I never...I mean I've never had to stop and think, "What am I going to do this summer?" Like right now my husband doesn ' t have anything he ' s going to do this summer right now, and if that was me. I'd be going bonkers. You know, if I would have like that transition time I wouldn't know what to do with myself. I would have a very difficult time with that. You know, I have got to know what I am doing when school's out. I've got to have some way to deal with m y time, and if I just had time to sit around or to, you know, to think about what I was going to do, I would go crazy. But that doesn't bother him at all. I mean, even the summer before last we got married and the things...I mean people were like, "Oh that's all you'll do that summer is get married." And I'm like, "No I'm taking a class." And like, "You're taking a class?" And I'm like, "Yeah, why not." And that was rry class with Nancy Hue ling and luckily she let me finish up a week early so that I could get married, but it was just like I've got to have one hundred things going on, it seems like, otherwise I don't know what to do with myself. I'm still not a real good organizer at times, I don't think. I've got a lot to learn. I'm a very big procrastinator. But it made me feel good the other night in

Ity class. The professor said, she goes like, "Well if you're like me," she goes, "I wouldn't have even started on my 199 project yet." I was like, "Oh, good, there's someone else like me." It just makes you feel good that someone else would be doing the same thing. I mean I'm always asking people,

"Have you started that? Did you start that? Okay, good, I don't feel so guilty." I've got plenty of time. I mean just like this week...Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday I got up every morning real early and came here and typed on the computer and then right after school I'd be here typing on the computer. And I just made a schedule for myself. And then I'd go home for two hours and eat and then I'd come back at 7:30 P.M. and work until like 10 or 10:30 P.M., and it worked, so, I mean, that's the way I get things done, you know. I mean it's kind of hard though because then that puts stress on you up until that time, you know. Because you're always thinking about it. You never stop thinking about it, as you well know. But I don't know. Wish we had more time.

SURVIVING THE YEAR I mean, my big thing right now is to try to learn from my experiences and I think that's one thing that frustrates me from like ny third grade years is that, even to this day, you know, two years later I'm still, like, stumped — what do I do with these kind of kids. I mean they're out there and you can't just throw them away. I mean, there's got to be something you can do and I really haven't found anybody with the answer. I don't know if I will. 200

You know, I told people about the situation. I guess, like I said, I don't think anybody had the answers. And I guess I thought...! wish now I would have gone to someone and said, "Come into my room. See what I'm doing and see what we can do to help this." You know, but I guess sometimes on the days that that person was there maybe those things weren't coming up, you know, or, like I said, I would have put a video in rny room and see is there anything that I'm doing that's causing these kids to get upset all of a sudden and just start throwing the desks and just start, you know, lashing out at the kids and at me. You know, is there something that I'm doing or something that another child is doing? I think a videotape could add a lot, you know, to be able to show someone. To do something like that, to find out if there's a pattern of what's setting those kids off. At that time I didn't even know to look for something like that, you know, to start documenting every time that that was happening. So that was one thing that was some advice that people kept telling me. Make sure you do document it all. But I never thought after I'd documented it to go back and look through it and nobody said, "Hey let's go through your documentations to see what we've got from this kid." You know, you should sit down with the psychologist or, you know, a couple of teachers in the building and find out, you know, how can we help this kid. If we get three teachers working 201 together on this one case there's got to be something you could probably do. And I think that's maybe one thing I'll build in to my recommendations is having...the district there's supposed to be care teams, you know where people are...advise teachers on a care team where the teacher's having a problem...any kind of problem, I feel it should be. You know, whether it be with a parent, a child, or maybe even they're having problems with their grade level. But they should be able to come to that group and talk about it and get some help because we're not all experts. I mean, we all need help at some point or another. You know, I think seeing another person's point of view can really help out, at least for me. And that's something I feel I've always...I haven't had since I've been teaching is someone in ny grade level especially that we can talk to about grade level problems or, you know, problems we're having with students or parents or anything like that. There's not anyone...I know at ny grade level there's not and there really wasn't at third grade... there wasn't a real...when I taught third grade there wasn't a real bond. And I think you can probably see at some of the grade levels where there is and where there isn't. Now there are certain teachers I know I can go to in the building if I really need to, but you know sometimes when you go to a teacher after school and say, you know, can you help me with this, you know sometimes they're... sometimes they're willing 202 but then other times I kind of feel like, well. I'm bothering them or they might...they don't want to hear this problem. I'm sure they've got some problems of their own, whereas I think if we had a team setup that would, you know, be designated to help, you know, people that need advice could get it. But I mean there's so many areas of education, I mean, you can't be an expert in all of them. You know, I guess right now I'm finding that it's hard to choose which way you want to go because at that time it was like, gosh, I would love to go get ity Master's in counseling so then as a teacher I would hope to be able to counsel these kids better, because I think that's what a lot of them need. You know, they need someone to talk to and, you know, find out what's going on in their minds before you can help them out with English or Math. But now I'm kind of like swayed the other way now that I'm back in Kindergarten.

PARENTS I've had a lot of good experiences with the kids and with the parents and especially this year I've had a lot of parents who have come to me and said, "I need help. Can you help me?" And more or less in the way of how can I help my child? You know, "I don't know how to do these things at home. Can you teach me how to do this?" So I've had a couple of parent workshops throughout the year that, you know. 203 parents can come to and I've tried to provide babysitting so that, you know, I get a good attendance. But the ones who came are the ones who really, I think, benefited, you know, obviously, and they came to me and said, you know, "Gosh thanks for teaching me this. I would have never known how to do this on my own." You know, and they even said, "I wouldn't have picked up a book and wanted to, you know, read it and find out how to do it." It's just, you know, better for someone to sit down and show you some night what to do with your kids and how to question them and how to, you know, read a book with them and that type of thing. So now my big thing is, you know, parent education and what we can do to help them. That's why I feel this year even a little bit more...because next year will be ity third year in Kindergarten...I feel more comfortable and I feel like more if a parent would come up to ask me or if I need to, you know, explain myself to someone I have more of a base, you know, I can bring up these examples and say, well this is what has happened last year or the year before and that's why I feel it's important to have this type of environment for my classroom. CHAPTER III

METHODOLOGY AND RESEARCH DESIGN

INTRODUCTION In a novel, a person has his meaning, his existence, entirely through the writer. Here, a person has only the most limited of his meaning through me; his true meaning is much huger. It is that he exists, in actual being, as you do and as I do, and as no character of the imagination can possibly exist. His great weight, mystery, and dignity are in this fact. As for me, I can tell you of him only what I saw, only so accurately as in my terms I know how; and this in turn has its chief stature not in any ability of mine but in the fact that I too exist, not as a work of fiction, but as a human being. Because of his immeasurable weight in actual existence, and because of mine, every word I tell of him has inevitably a kind of immediacy, a kind of meaning, not at all necessarily, "superior" to that of imagination, but of a kind so different that a work of the imagination (however intensely it may draw on "life") can at best only faintly imitate the least of it (Agee & Evans, 1941) Several pertinent issues must be discussed prior to the development of the research methodology chosen to examine the role of teacher narrative in the achievement of a teaching practice. First, I will locate narrative study within an epistemology of verstehen or understanding and reason variously defined as the understanding of a complicated world by those who live and interpret and make reasoned sense of their lives within it. Second, there must be a clarification of terms. I will discuss phenomenology and hermeneutics, and argue for the combination of both of these as an interpretive

204 205 program of inquiry or way of understanding the role of narrative in the achievement and structure of a teaching practice. Second, I will attempt to define some important terms that will be used extensively throughout Chapters III, IV and V. These terms include, but will not be limited exclusively to judgment, experience, understanding, reason, intersubjectivity, interpretation, wonderment and passion. I do not plan to present each of these words separately, as icons pointing independently to a distinct concept which exists outside the storied context of this dissertation. Rather rny aim will be to weave each concept into a tapestry of interpretist inquiry designed to examine the nature of everyday lived experience from the point of view of those who tell about it and whose storied experiences comprise the body of this dissertation. These stories of the lived experience will be subsequently represented and interpreted through an interpretive qualitative research design as a form of understanding represented by and contained within the phenomenological and hermeneutic philosophies of the human sciences. Third, I will be discussing how the hermeneutic phenomenological methodology informs the analysis and interpretation of narrative or storytelling. Finally, I discuss the qualitative research design implemented and followed for this particular study. 206

Basically, the study was an ethnographic encounter with and study of a professional world that I knew something about, but by entering it and experiencing it from a different standpoint or way of knowing, approaching it firsthand in a state of surrender (Wolff, 1976), I made something familiar strange, and then tried to make some new sense of it by combining both my perspective and the perspective of those involved in an interpretation of a shared lived experience. This chapter, as well as the entire dissertation, is a story of how teachers' create meaning and make sense of their personal and professional worlds. In Agar's (1986) words this dissertation is an ethnography where, "One sets out, in an ethnographic sense, to show how social actions in one world makes sense from the point of view of another" (p. 12) What is at issue here is the importance of conveying to the reader my own personal development and emerging insights into the original problem I formulated for study, the reasons for approaching the problem and studying the persons involved as I did, and the methods by which the study became a forum for the writing of ny own lived experiences within those of others whose stories are, for now, situated in the pages and the life of this text. This work involved intense personal involvement in data collection and subsequent interpretation, flexibility and improvisation in the fieldwork techniques 207 used to collect data the site as well as intense personal learning experiences which arose as a result of making a lot of mundane as well as extravagant mistakes.

THE LIVED EXPERIENCE AS TOUCHSTONE FOR HERMENEUTIC

PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH What the human sciences take for granted in a normative epistemology of the interpretive study of lived experience developed in Chapter II includes several assumptions. First, taking action in an intersubjective world where persons exist within webs of signification (Taylor, 1985a) is necessarily constructed within the symbols and signs, rhythms and rhymes of a socially constructed language. Second, the constitutive nature of the organizations and institutions of which persons are a part are legitimate and part of such a linguistic, dialectical and socially constructed lived experience (Grumet, 1988). Therefore, narrative should be understood as inseparable from the context in which it is told and from the expressive linguistic operation that says it; narrative does not preceed reflection of the lived experience but is a result of it. Narrative events are the best account of the lived experience that presents itself as adequate for the moment of the telling (Polkinghorne, 1988 p. 30). Third, such a lived experience is constituted and reconstituted through narrative as meaningful, understandable and reasoned action taken in the world. Such action creates a tapestry of 208 personal possibilities and passions (Nussbaum, 1986) which represent traditions and histories which hold special

relationships to its participants, and that all of these personal as well as public actions, experiences, possibilities and passions pre-suppose understandings and reason which are often, in the dialectical interplay of experiences in the life-world, taken for granted by the members who produce them and who are, in turn, produced by them (Rabinow & Sullivan, 1987). This epistemology of understanding, this sharing of the possibilities and passions of a reasoned life well lived and constructed within the webs of signification like crossed taut strings of a cat's cradle (Grumet, 1988 p. 103), bind us to one another and shapes our consciousness of the world in a remarkable panoply of interpretations. This form of knowing is in marked contrast to an objective and empiricist way of knowing a world which is "out there" as merely fields of dichotomized subjects and objects to be seen and discovered through the use of "the right methodological tool" for creating a portrait of a monocular universal truth.

GERMAN PHENOMENOLOGY Phenomenology designates and permits understanding of the lived experience as the core foundation of inquiry into the varied interpretations, the emic understanding of what appears to others not as the monocular single portrait or 209 presentation of a single universal truth, but rather the creation of multiple truths encountered within a binocular landscape. In phenomenological inquiry, one sees with both eyes (Walzer, 1987) Phenomenological investigation of the lived experience has probably been best articulated through the work of Alfred Schütz (Schütz, 1970; 1973; 1989; Wagner, 1970; 1983). Schütz integrated Edmund Husserl's philosophical and psychological phenomenology where belief in the "reality of the outer world" is suspended or "bracketed" so that one can come face to face with the ultimate structure of consciousness with Max Weber's verstehen sociology as a science which attempts to understand social action interpretively and, thereby, to explain it causally in its course and effect (Wagner, 1970).

Schütz constructed a phenomenology of sociology whereby the observer brackets her own taken-for-granted orientation to the outer world and then focuses on the social action of the members of the life world who themselves are involved in interpreting that lived experience. Phenomenological study then becomes the study of how members of the life world construct their meaning and understanding of what they know is real in both individual experience and in the pre-given patterns of social relationships (Wagner, 1970) . Phenomenology is concerned then, with the understanding of a reality embodied in human experience and expressed in 210 reasoned action comprised of stocks of knowledge, common sense constructs and categories of understanding that are social in origin and shared in immediacy with others (Holstein & Gubrium, 1994). For Schütz, verstehen or understanding is a grasping of the intersubjective meanings and understandings constitutive of a lived life understood as and made sense through stocks of knowledge about that world. Stocks of knowledge are shared and constitute not only the person but the life world understood as the lived experience (Wagner, 1970). Making meaning and understanding the actions of others within these stocks of knowledge is not discovering the meaning or understanding but is a task, a social construction that is to be accomplished, which is to make out of the stocks of knowledge something that is meaningful, understandable and reasonable (Polkinghorne, 1988). Narrative takes the threads of the lived experience as intersubjective stocks of knowledge, as experiences, and weaves them into a tapestry of meaning and understanding as events told through personal experience stories which become greater than the meaning such experiences held originally (Polkinghorne, 1988 p. 31). Schütz's life-world is simply the entire sphere of relationships embedded in everyday experiences which reflect the affairs of those carrying out the actions. The individual confronts and acts in intersubjective relationships based on 211 a stock of knowledge composed of commonsense understandings which are socially constructed through language (Wagner, 1983). This "stock of knowledge" or "store of experiences" achieved through living simply allows persons to make sense of their experiences, to construct meaning from and come to understand them. Intersubjective understanding is achieved through these stocks of knowledge and may be understood as "the bulk of one's ongoing life experiences which confirms and reinforces the conviction that, in principle and under

'normal' circumstances, persons in contact with one another 'understand' each other at least to the degree to which they are able to deal successfully with one another's actions (Wagner, 1970). Stocks of knowledge not only produce, but are produced by a familiar, similar, and understandable world view expressed in personal experience stories (Holstein & Gubrium, 1994). Actions taken by individuals in the life-world are conscious and reasoned actions. They are based on an understanding that such actions are intersubjective; they are experienced in fundamentally the same way and understood in fundamentally the same fashion by all community members as reasonable actions. One assumes that one experiences the world in fundamentally the same way that others do, and therefore one can understand one anothers actions. Such understanding is possible through reference to conceptual 212 schemes (Agar, 1986) or typifications (Schütz, 1970) by which one renders experiences as falling into particular types or a limited number of classes of similar phenomena or actions (Wagner, 1970). Understanding and reason are always reflexive. Through deliberation, judgment, and reflection understandings come to be fixed or typified (Schütz & Luckman, 1989). The construction of typifications occurs when the social life takes up and freezes into itself the understandings we have of it. Thus, social structure is the sum total of typifications and of interaction established by means of them. In this sense persons are engaged in the accomplishment, the social construction of a social reality (Young, 1987). Phenomenological intersubjective knowledge is essentially whatever a person taking action in the everyday life thinks is the case. Essentially, phenomenological knowledge considers the practical matters of the lived experience as stocks of knowledge. As a whole this stock of knowledge is open ended and only partially clear. It serves its purpose adequately as long as its reasonable exercise by persons yields adequate results in taking action in the world and provides satisfactory explanations by which such action may be judged to be reasonable by others. Stocks of knowledge as teacher practical knowledge then, is to be understood as 213 teacher reflections on and interpretations of their own teaching actions taken in the context of the school including all the gaps and holes, leaks and weeps, consistencies and inconsistencies of a thinking which is personal and practical, self-determining, self-interpreting and practical by nature. To engage in phenomenological understanding is to comprehend knowledge as the meaning of something. What is understood is knowledge which is meaningful and reasonable. Understanding is the basis of all intersubjectivity. Persons deal with one another successfully only to the degree to which they reciprocally understand each other's motives and intentions. Understanding is "the experiential form of a common-sense knowledge of human actions and affairs.(Wagner, 1970). By contrast, scientific knowledge serves purely intellectual interests and is subject to controls, principles of coherence, consistency, validity and generalization (Wagner, 1970). Understanding, reason and meaning making are not independent or disconnected from the spoken language which speaks of the lived experience. They are "of the actions" taken in the lived experienced and connected within the individual and the community through language. 214

UNDERSTANDING AS THE BASIS FOR REASONED ACTION Phenomenological understanding or verstehen seems to center around at least three themes as developed by Schwandt (1994). First, understanding has little to do with introspection or pointing to the subjective states of the actors, and more to do with the intersubjective character of the world and the complex processes by which persons come to recognize their own actions and others as meaningful and reasonable. This phenomenological display of reason is also the display of the intentionality of intersubjective action taken in consciousness of the objective world of others in reciprocity with the subjective world of the self. The subjective is engaged with the objective. Subject/object dichotomy is eliminated.

As Young (1987) notes, whenever one comes to understand herself the whole fabric or tapestry of the perceptual world comes too, and with it comes the others who are part of it.

From the intersubjective viewpoint one becomes aware of divergent perspectives of the lived experience. Angles of appearances are not just apparent from one point of view but from many points of view. All reasonable and understandable action is implicated in the world together. The world each inhabits is from the outset an intersubjective one. The language one possesses was taught by others, the manners in evidence at the table of life are not ours alone, whatever 215

talents, abilities and interests one develops were always nourished by a social inheritance in a shared world (p.5). Second, understanding as the basis for all intersubjective action and meaning is the well from which all inquiry in the taken for granted life-world springs and within which it is carried out. A phenomenological epistemology encourages the researcher to pay exclusive attention to the intersubjective knowledge of everyday life embedded in the actions of persons and understood within their reflections on such actions. Understanding is method peculiar to the human sciences. It is a method by which each of us makes sense of what the other is doing in the everyday world and is clearly a process by which the social scientist attempts to make sense of the former. Third, phenomenology constructs and articulates a sociology of knowledge which interprets, explains and provides an understanding of how others come to know their world in the experience of living their lives. Phenomenology is important to this study because it is the study of lived, everyday experiences of persons taking action in the world.

It is also descriptive of the practical knowledge, the common sense and taken-for-granted application of practical knowledge which emerges from the lived experience. The application of the phenomenological method in the examination of teaching practice is a commitment to describing the 216 interaction of the teacher and her world in search for a knowledge of her practice which is not isolated from but intrinsically part of and constituted by the particular context in which she finds herself. Phenomenology as a method of examining the lived experience is always conducted with , what I came to understand, a forced detachment which seeks to describe what exists, what happens and who took action when. Phenomenology is important to this study not only because of its emphasis on understanding and how we interpret our world, but as a methodology where the researcher must "bracket" (Schütz & Luckman, 1989) his past experiences and professional and theoretical assumptions inorder to set aside his own taken for granted assumptions of the everyday life (van Manen, 1990) . I struggled constantly in the collection of these stories to maintain an attitude of wonderment and questioning toward the stories told; to listen in a naive manner, buffered from over twenty-two years of experience as a public school teacher and administrator. Maintaining a phenomenological attitude, bracketing my own assumptions and beliefs, in light of the data collected became an important and enormous personal challenge during this research. Phenomenology is also a methodology where "realities" are not discovered but rather are held open to descriptions 217 and interpretation. What is suggested here is that data is collected without previously existing attitudes or a priori theoretical structures interfering with or obscuring the emergence of concepts which deal directly with the question under study. What one strives for in approaching a world, in a phenomenological attitude, that is seen, that is heard and is felt as a most familiar world is to make that world a world where one can also feel the most lost (Grumet, 1988 p. 65) by making what is familiar strange.

THE GERMAN PHENOMENOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE OF KURT WOLFF Phenomenology as a methodology for collecting data, as a stance to the everyday life-world is probably most emphatically and dramatically represented by Kurt Wolff's phenomenological notion (Wolff, 1991) of "surrender and catch". Surrendering to the field of study is to enter fieldwork, the site to be studied, in an attitude of surrender in as unprejudiced a manner as possible; with eyes open in active and unbiased involvement with the characteristics that are exclusively human; the human spirit and its manifestations, among them ritual and poetry, art, religion, verbal language and other kinds of symbolism, and all the feelings associated with them (p. 25). But the surrender is also to the histories and traditions, the features of society in which these most human products of action are found. The catch then, is what has most profoundly 218 appealed to the researcher while in a state of surrender to the lived experience, a state where suspended or bracketed frameworks of pre-existing beliefs and assumptions do not become a part of, or interfere with, what the researcher studies. The maximum suspension achieved is the surrender to that which is studied and its result or outcome, is the harvest of the catch. This surrender and catch phenomenology serves as a mediating methodology which binds the tapestry of the lived experience to what Wolff calls a surrender of the researcher to himself (subject) and to the life world (object) where, in the description of the surrender to both experiences, the phenomenologist catches the lived experience as reciprocal and reflective events, constituted both by the subjective person and the objective world (Grumet, 1988) . Later in this chapter I explain how I surrendered to my most basic beliefs and assumptions which became part of the interpretive methodology used for this dissertation. The catch, or new knowledge, is always a reciprocal of the surrender to self and the world. For this study, the surrender is both to myself and to the stories teachers tell about their practice. The catch is in the interpretation of what is being studied, the new ways of understanding the lived experiences of others and oneself. Phenomenology becomes increasingly grounded in the knowledge of becoming a knowing person and in saying that one knows oneself and 219 increasingly comes to know oneself it follows that such a knowing is the continuity between knowing oneself and knowing the world (Wolff, 1976). The phenomenological catch is always a mediated catch of truth that is always reciprocal between the self and the world.

CLAIM FOR THE ONTOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF HERMENEUTICS

AND PHENOMENOLOGYAS KNOWLEDGE DERIVED FROM

THE LIVED EXPERIENCE.

Interpretation is an integral part of the methodology of this dissertation and it is to hermeneutics that I now turn to further develop an epistemology of interpretation. Later, I will try and combine phenomenology and hermeneutics and argue that both are not only a methodology for the human sciences, but indeed the ways in which we actually live our lives. Any discussion of the interpretive human sciences and verstehen or understanding must be conducted within the early hermeneutic work of Wilhelm Dilthey. Early hermeneutics as an interpretive epistemology seems to have been developed from Wilhelm Dilthey's methodologies of the human sciences presented as a way of knowing and understanding the human mind within a tradition or history which establishes an inner life, a point of view which can be expressed, presented and listened to in intersubjective dialogue with another human being. For Dilthey, the lived experience, a life emerging, is 220 the sole basis of knowledge and the only proper subject of philosophical study (Rickman, 1979). In this sense hermeneutics or interpretation, as a methodology must be embedded not only in human nature and the mind but in the society and culture of which both are a part. In this regard the human sciences must take into account the whole physical environment in which human beings take intersubjective action. Therefore, personal actions as part of the lived experience are characteristically socially influenced. The investigation of the physical nature of the person must be combined with the investigation of social and physical forces that affect them. The characteristic of individual existence is its embeddedness in historically determined features. Human beings are essentially historical beings (Rickman, 1979) Hermeneutics outlines general guidelines for a distinct methodology for understanding the human sciences in which the products of human action in the world, letters written, pictures painted, poems and novels composed, and, I argue, stories told provide a basis for practical knowledge which reflects the nature of human action as an ongoing practical affair which is historically situated as a way of being in the world. In all cases knowledge must be practical and guide action (Rickman, 1979) . 221

Dilthey argued that all knowledge acquisition was circular and a reflection on the lived experience. To know what a squirrel is, to make judgments and draw inferences from encounters with one, we must have been seen, otherwise how would we have known what had just been seen and passed judgments about and made inferences on. We could not pinpoint a concept in our experience or in our language, Dilthey argues, without it being embedded in a context by which we came to understand it. We cannot step outside or beyond our experience, it is both within and about the total context in which we find ourselves. What is important for the purposes of this dissertation is Dilthey's notion of knowledge which is inherently complex and rich and structured and embedded in history and traditions but is also clearly an effort to search out and construct a methodology for the study of the mind and meaning; a methodology of developing an interpretive science of subjective human experience (Schwandt, 1994). I wish to argue along with Gadamer (1992) Taylor (1985a) Rabinow and Sullivan (1987) Ricoeur (1981) and Wolff (1991) that the activity of hermeneutic interpretation and phenomenological understanding is the very condition by which human inquiry itself is constructed. Rabinow and Sullivan (1987) note that interpretation and understanding is not simply a new methodology but, "an interpretive social science which reveals itself as a response to the crisis of the human 222

sciences that is constructive in the profound sense of establishing a connection between what is studied, the means of investigation, and the ends informing the investigators.

At the same time it initiates a process of recovery and reappropriation of the richness of meaning found in the symbolic contexts of all areas of culture" (p. 14-15). For Gadamer, Taylor, and Ricour the hermeneutical condition is a fact of human existence. It is primarily concerned with ontology or a way of being in the world (Schwandt, 1994) which proceeds from an intersubjective commonality that binds us to traditions of the community in general, to that which is the object of our interpretations in particular, and to our own subjective histories and traditions as inquiring researchers (p. 121). As Schwandt (1994) notes ontological hermeneutics (a way of being or acting in the world) supports a normative sense of inquiry. This conceptualization reflects a belief in a persuasive or practical reasoning of persons acting in the life world. The importance of this practical reasoning seems to rest on the ability of a person to make good judgments. And I argue here, along with Schwandt, that this ontological hermeneutic sense of understanding and interpretation and making reasoned judgments is not the application of rules and theory, but more the application of a practical knowledge 223 which is used in making judgments about action taken in the world.

Schwandt notes one tries to take responsible actions and to give good reasons for those actions, but the application of practical knowledge through practical reasoning requires the making of judgments on the part of the action taker. In fact, taking reasoned action in the world requires the exercise of judgment and therefore an interpretation of what seems to be the best action to take in a given situation and context. Therefore, the interpretation or decision made cannot be properly said to be verifiable or testable. Such action or interpretation can only be appraised by applying the norms or criteria that seem most compatible with the context and condition that demands we take the action or make the interpretation in the first place (Schwandt, 1994) . We are always in a hermeneutic circle of reflection, deliberation, judgment, and taking action in the world. The only question we may ask about the action taken and its resultant achievement is whether in that context and at that time was it considered useful and did it make reasonable sense and why?

LEVELING THE RESEARCH PLAYING FIELD This notion of hermeneutic phenomenology as ontology, a condition of being in the world, rather than a methodological device is what puts the researcher on the same plane of 224 understanding as those inquired into. To achieve understanding through interpretation is to accept a way of being in the world or a way of life which is understood by both those being researched and the researcher (Schwandt, 1994) , For the human sciences both the object of the researcher's investigations embedded in the intersubjective webs of language, symbol, and institutions that constitutes reality for the subjects and the tools by which the investigation is carried out share inescapably with both subject and the researcher the same pervasive context that is the human world (Rabinow & Sullivan, 1987). Both researcher and subjects are engaged in the lived experience and to disengage either one for the other is to render interpretation within the framework of a balance of power rather than a way of knowing rendered within the power of balance (Torbert, 1991) . It is interesting to note at this point that Wolff (1983) moves hermeneutic phenomenological interpretation of the lived experience to the human world where webs of meaning constitute human existence within an interactive and dynamically shared intersubjective and linguistic reality by which persons constitute and make sense of themselves and others (Rabinow & Sullivan, 1987). Wolff notes that if sociologists and anthropologists want to study groups of people whose ways of life and thinking they are not familiar 225 with, they had better "surrender" to the cultural situation into which they have intruded and forget about the preconceived theoretical schemes that guided them in the formulation of their original research objectives in order to catch the significance of what is happening or to figure out what in the devil persons are up to (Geertz, 1983) . If they do not do this they will come home with answers to the self­ confirming hypothesis that they mistake for an "understanding" of the group's culture (Wagner, 1983). The scientific validity of intellectual phenomena has nothing to do with their origin, only in their usefulness as accounts of the lived experience. But their intrinsic interpretation must be paired with the extrinsic interpretation of the conditions under which social phenomena occur. Action must be interpreted as occurring in a social context. Interpretation on the part of the researcher involves an hermeneutic taking between these two fields, the inside and the outside, the subjective and the objective, looking first one way, then the other, in order to formulate...social and intellectual issues that inform them both (Geertz, 1983). The common language that constitutes the meaning and significance of our lives is available to each of us for the objectification of experiences which can be intersubjactively shared one to another through language and speech. Interpretation of the lived experience through speech can be 226

seen to point to intelligibility, expectancy, understanding, reason, and meaning (Young, 1987). What I have argued is that narrative as discourse, as a speech act is not exclusively a product of the individual but is a socially and mutually constructed discourse that shifts the researcher from a monocular view of a speech act to binocular view of a dialogue. Berger and Luckmann note (1966) that we typically never re-produce the reality of spontaneous experiences (Polanyi, 1989) as storied events of our lives. As soon as we use our common language in interpreting our experiences, that is to translate the non-everyday and personal experiences back into the paramount reality of everyday life, events become, "Massively and continuously available to not only oneself, but at the same time to the other" (p. 38). Language as narrative does not project a reality of its own but operates to organize the lived experience into meaningful and understandable and storied events constructed within and through a dialogic relationship of individuals standing in inquiry to the context and community of which they are a part. Language typifies experiences, allowing a person to subsume them under broad and understandable categories in terms of which they have meaning not only to the individual but also to the community (Berger & Luckman, 1966 p. 39). 227

REASONING AS ESSENCE OF THE LIVED EXPERIENCE

Arguing that lived experience has a shared social and historical character which is characterized through and made known to one another through language is to argue for an experience that is socially and meaningfully constructed. In this sense, we can stand in meaningful relationships to one another and understand one another as reasonable persons. To be a reasonable person seems to entail believing in and using the power inherent in the interpretive acts of deliberating about our lives, making judgments, taking action and reflecting on those actions (McCutcheon, 1995). To be reasonable is to engage the world in a thoughtful attitude of deliberating, judging, taking action and reflecting on our actions which places us squarely within local and situated lived experiences which are comprised of practical stocks of knowledge which are sharable, intelligible, and intersubjactively understood as "the way things are done around here" (Deal & Kennedy, 1982) . Pratte (1992) constructs reasonableness, in part, as those actions involved in making responsible judgments and decisions in life and then reflecting on and applying standards that allow the assessment of these judgments (p. xviii). As argued previously, such standards are part and parcel of a practical knowledge which is always present as part of reasonable actions which reflect what is most common. 228 most taken for granted and what is of most immediate and ordinary concern to all of us. Reasonableness, according to Pratte, also calls for listening to the advice of others, seriously trying to understand diverse reasons and views thereby favoring a sympathetic attitude or disposition toward the views of others. A reasonable person in all contexts is to be understood as somebody who recognizes the importance and convincing force of self-understanding which respects the human dignity of the other (p. xix). Pratte notes that reasonableness demands the use of language and the development of a conversational attitude which calls for a sympathetic, empathie, and caring pedagogical attitude toward positions taken by others. The reasonable person seeks not merely reasons to guide judgment, which I argued previously are comprised of both instrumental and instrinsic forms of reason, but reasons that must accord with and develop within a local and situated context which references both self and the history and tradition in which it is embedded inorder to ensure intersubjective understanding. Reasonable action in all cases is socially constructed action which is recognizable as stocks of knowledge, practical knowledge, known one to the other as the way things are done around here which incorporates both instrumental and intrinsic reasoning. 229

In other words reasonable persons stand within diverse forms of practical knowledge which influence action and judgment taken in the world. We always stand to one another in multiple forms of praxis or practical knowledge. As we encounter one another in the life-world; we rub the edges of our idiosyncratic live experiences together (Bateson, 1979) as friend and enerty, colleague and spouse but we always remain at a distance to one another as a distinct project of our own lives, real persons who distinctness forces a reflection of who we are and how we stand in relation to others. But within these idiosyncratic relationships and stances in the life-world we are never separated from the historical traditions and intersubjective stocks of knowledge in which these encounters take place and in which we make sense of one another's uniqueness. The life world with its sense of intersubjective shared meaning and taken for granted practical knowledge and practical actions of everyday life, its social and institutional counterparts constitutes our reasonableness. As reasonable persons we are situated in traditions and histories, forms of life (Winch, 1958), webs of signification (Taylor, 1985a) and language games (Wittgenstein, 1958) by which we live out of a past, through a present and into a future. Our intersubjective understandings allow us to encounter one another in a reasonable attitude with little 230 effort, but it is this very reasonableness, this reflection on action taken in the life-world, which allows us to make sense of this living through.

What must be additionally understood, however, is that reasonableness is not a particular ideological notion or preference for a way of thinking or being, a methodology of rules which govern its application, but rather an attitude, an essence, a valued way of being which is an articulation of ontological self-understanding a way of "self-being" in the world, a way of manifesting and constructing who and what we are, meaningful action that is brought forward and made manifest in discourse which represents the very individuality of practical knowledge and practical thinking, conjoined with the history and social traditions that inform it. And here, in this articulation of practical language and comprehension constructed as understandable and meaningful relationships among persons, reasonableness moves into a hermeneutic philosophy where as van Manen (van Manen, 1990) notes, "The personal, the individual is always pursued against the background of the whole, the communal and the social (p. 7) . Schrag (1992) argues, as I do, that reasonableness is above all a practical endeavor : Reason is not seen to exercise its claim within the matrix of an epistemology of belief, but is resituated within a hermeneutics of praxis. The most direct consequence of this is a shift to the background of skills, habits, work and play that texture the holistic 231

space in which our dealing with the world takes place. The context of these social practices...precludes any final objectification and formalization of them along the lines of context-free rules or invariant matrices. Yet, some species of comprehension is operative in all this, for the speaker and actors within the web of these practices already understand themselves and their world in and through the practices. The role of reason is to track this understanding within the play of praxis. Reason...is translated into a demand for the articulation of the self-understanding operative within the panoply of the discursive and nondiscursive practices through which we make our way about in the world.

JUSTIFYING A CONNECTION BETWEEN REASON AND

UNDERSTANDING IN THE LIVED EXPERIENCE Now an argument for the integration of reasonableness and understanding can be established. Understanding is conjoined with reasonableness. For example, to take reasonable action in the world is to exercise, in my opinion, judgment and reflection and deliberation in asking the questions of one another in relationship to "who", "what", "when", "where", "with whom" and "why" in regard to any action (Ricoeur, 1984) . This reasonable action, however, must always be informed by and linked to the reasonable action of others which are constituted as their action and their aims and goals. How our actions affect not only ourselves but others, and to have the cognitive ability and conceptual apparatus to make this distinction, is to have understanding. In this case, understanding always precedes reasonableness in the sense that understanding enfolds the whole of human 232 action and informs all of it, while reasonableness deals with the basic elements of reflection, deliberation and judgment as its constitutive elements as they emerge from the whole of understanding. Reason and understanding inform one another in a reciprocal dialectic of both instrumental reasoning as recognizing one's own preferences and needs and getting them met and intrinsic reasoning as recognizing one's patterns of values and beliefs and how those relate to the good of the community at large (Chambers, 1983).

But what must be understood is that reason and understanding as they stand in dialectical relationship result in human action that is not informed by some theoretical grid or theory which stands outside the dialectic, but rather through the articulation of a practical knowledge or patterns of taking action in the world which are at the same time constitutive of reason and understanding while being constituted by them. Understanding and reason as Schrag (1992) notes, "Proceed not by dint of "pure theory" but rather through an articulation of patterns of praxis which fold over each other...as inventions of that which has not yet been said and not yet been done" (p. Ill) . But actions taken in the everyday life-world are always informed by past traditions and histories and practices in that if deliberation and judgment and taking action in the world occurs at all, "It takes its stand within the contextualized 233 social practices and historical memories...of predecessors and contemporaries as well as the envisaged possible forms of life as guided by the interplay of traditional, current, and futurally projected communicative practices that solicit a fitting response" (p.112). A fitting response, a reasonable response, I argue, is the determination and understanding of those actions which are constituted as being understood as reasonable, fitting and appropriate within the practical knowledge and practical thinking and social practices of those communities in which the action is taking place and by which the action will be rendered both understandable and reasonable. The deliberation, judgment, and reflection occurring in the moment of taking action in the life-world within those situated and local practices of any given community will render and make available the existing reasonable and understandable social practices of those communities. While such practices always occur within the historical traditions of which they are a textural part and intertwine within the tapestry that is their history and their contemporary social practice, it does not stand that deliberation, judgment, reflection and action is bound to the inherited practices of tradition, but, I argue, only emerges from them and does not necessarily, as Schrag notes, end with them (p. 113). 234

Taking reasonable action in the world is a display of understanding the practical knowledge and practical thinking of and about the contextual social practices in which one find themselves. It is to develop, to the extent possible, a full description of the life-world, to understand it in its most common form, in its most familiar garments which are the most self-evident, to keep oneself open to the understanding of the other by which each comes to know what is the other, to keep oneself chronically open to the practical knowledge, practical thinking, and reasonableness which is not a theoretical reasonableness, but a practical reasonableness which yields in an intertextual relationship with understanding the common and mundane attributes of the life- world which in deliberation, judgment, and reflection represents action which is, in every sense, always a practical activity. The presence of understanding and reasonableness in human life serves as a constant reminder that such a life is an engaged and connected life and therefore must be a life concerned with meaning in that to understand something and engage in reasonable action means to understand not only a personal but a social and cultural lived experience which can be understood by appeal to practice, a shared activity which is brought to language and made known in its embeddedness in the dialectic of communicative discourse, in narrative as 235 storytelling, and within the patterns of formulated existing practices, a phenomenological and hermeneutical standpoint through which is articulated and recommended a certain way of standing in relationship to the lifeworld. I argue that if others come to understand this standpoint to the lifeworld and come to know it as reasonable then it must involve an interpretation of such a practice as reasonable and understandable. R.S. Peters (1973) argues that no person escapes the call for reason and understanding. He says :

Man is thus a creature who lives under the demands of reason...How does it help the argument to show that human life is only intelligible on the assumption the demands of reason are admitted, and woven into the fabric of human life? It helps because it makes plain the demands of reason are not just an option available to the reflective human life bears witness to the demands of reason. Without acceptance by men of such demands of one another their lives would be unintelligible...Concern for truth is written into human life. (pp. 254-255 Reason requires one to give a best account of action that is reasonable and understandable and makes clear the intentions of why this action, position or standpoint is of interest, is found convincing for taking the action. Living a life is always a matter of interpretation and finding meaning in the actions of others because one has to come to understand their interpretations of others and their self-interpretations and thus the aims and purposes of them if one is to be able to make sense of, to bring meaning to, to understand the 236 reasonableness of actions, to interpret and explain, to make sense and bring meaning to their own actions. I consider this rather lengthy discourse on phenomenology and hermeneutics necessary in order to argue that the interpretive methodology of hermeneutic phenomenology bought to the analysis of the data in this dissertation simultaneously represents a social and hermeneutic phenomenological condition which is, in fact, representative of human existence, a way of being in the world. I am arguing for an ontological hermeneutic phenomenology lived experience which proceeds from what is actively involved in a socially constructed practical and intuitive community bound together through a language and communicative discourse to the traditions and historical situatedness from which it emerges and in making sense of it and bringing meaning to it, is the object of our interpretations. Through understanding and reasonable actions taken within the common stocks of practical knowledge available in the intersubjective everyday life-world, reasonable human action provides an understandable link between the binaries of past and present, the particular and finite, the practical and the universal, theory and praxis, the individual and the community to which she belongs. 237

BEGINNING TO WONDER ABOUT THE LIVED EXPERIENCE As discussed previously phenomenology is the study of lived experience, of the everyday experiences as they occur in the life-world of the person who is taking reasoned action in that world, which for the researcher, is always the starting and ending point of phenomenological research conducted toward understanding such action. Phenomenology also stands in a questioning relationship to the lived experience, in whose answer is the description of events with all the taken-for-grantedness and commonsense experiences which provide meaning of the event. Such a descriptive stance provides an emergence, a construction of meaning which proceeds from the events that reveal the essential structure of the experiences under study toward interpreted events which attempt to provide a full description of some aspect of the lived experience (van Manen, 1990). Hermeneutic phenomenology, as methodology, is a descriptive standpoint which is interested in the events of human experience as they are found, as they are described and as they are interpreted by the researcher. I am arguing that a hermeneutic phenomenology is both descriptive and interpretive. From a phenomenological perspective it must render a thick descriptive account of the social reality that has meaning and renders reasonable the action human beings construct for living, thinking and acting 238 within it (Schwandt, 1994). But at the same time that it descriptively names something it reveals an emphasis on interpretation. It mediates between the thing described and named in a reasoned and descriptive understanding; between its constructed meaning and the actual thing the description points to. It is not that phenomenology and hermeneutics somehow mirror an ideal interpretive epistemology of human relationships, but that they are found within the forms of dialogue and action, reflection and interpretation which not only represent a methodology which studies being in the world, but an ontology which represents a way of being in the world. And neither merely reflect the external world, but contribute to it through the illumination of understanding, meaning and reason. The ontological hermeneutics of Gadamer (Bernstein, 1983) and Taylor (Rabinow & Sullivan, 1987) always revolves around the interpretation of lived experiences. And here the value of an ontological hermeneutic reveals itself in closing the gap between interpretation and understanding. For Gadamer and Taylor all understanding involves interpretation and all interpretation involves understanding. For purposes of this dissertation we can speak of being reasonable in taking action in the world primarily because we take a reasoned and tellable standpoint to it. Therefore, our interpretations of lived experience can only be distorted when the process of 239 deliberation, judgment, and reflection in taking action in the world and in the interpretation of the events of the world are isolated from reason. But this is not possible, since meaning and understanding are constituted by and constitutive of a reasonableness which is always a part of the coming into being of meaning and understanding. But our reasoning about events and experiences is always open to change because we can and do ask different questions about the events we try to reason about and come to understand differently and therefore are able to tell different stories about them. For Gadamer the essence of questioning is opening up, and the keeping open of our understanding of events, we must listen to them so they can "speak to us"; we must be receptive to the claims to the truth they make upon us (Bernstein, 1983). Van Manen argues that to question something is to truly interrogate it from the "center of our existence" (van Manen, 1990) . I argue that to interrogate something from the center of our existence, is to reach out to it in our most reasoned manner of deliberation, judgment and reflection in a manner of interpretation of our actions and the actions of others when confronted within a standpoint of a best account, a narrative and story of what happened. This best account refers us to deeper core themes discussed in chapter IV and therefore towared more reasoned 240 understanding of who we are and what makes a difference in our lives.

NARRATIVE KNOWLEDGE OF THE LIVED EXPERIENCE

Scholes (1981) argues, as does Shuman (1986), that storytelling is a sequencing of events, that transform experience into temporal forms with a beginning, a middle and an end. Each story has its own temporal flow or temporal framework, but they do not necessarily conform or correspond to the events in the lived experience of the everyday life. As Shuman (1986) notes the concept that stories frame experience through events: "Is an alternative to statements that stories replay, duplicate, or recapitulate experience. Replays, duplications, and recapitulations imply a sequential relationship between stories and experiences. They imply a direct correspondence between the incidents described in a story and actual incidents in everyday life...If anything stories give the appearance of order to experience rather than vice versa". For Shuman telling stories about our personal experiences has a recognizable sequence of events, and in part, talking about those experiences is a way of searching for the sequence that makes the most sense (Shuman, 1995). Stories are the best accounts of what actually happens in the life-world. Narrative as Scholes notes: "Is a sequencing of something for somebody" (p. 2 05) in the sense that the stories people tell about their lived experiences is 241 a way of making meaning out of senseless events; socially constructing stories for the self and others which are recognizable and understandable as the best accounts of typical events (Shuman, 1995) . Mink (1978) argues that narrative transforms events into understandable stories that have meaning for oneself and for others. Narratives are understandable and carry meaning through structuring of the chaos of events which in and of themselves cannot be rendered reasonable or have meaning apart from the structure that we associate with storytelling. Stories as best accounts of events embeds them in meaning. Mink argues that events are so ambiguous and diffuse that it makes no sense to speak of an event or events at all but only of events which are in some form described and given structure through a description. Narrative, therefore, is a type of description which constructs a knowledge, an historical knowledge and temporal order which is a description of and constructs insights into the way things, and especially human things, really are (White, 1980). White argues that to give a name to this kind of knowledge which, while not exactly scientific or rational, is nonetheless a real knowledge, is to argue for a "common sense" knowledge (p. 253). I have argued at length for narrative knowledge as practical knowledge. Narrative knowledge is a giving of a best account, a coherent temporal sequencing of events which 242 is in its most primary and irreducible form, the construction of a reasoned way of acting in the world; a practical and reasoned and storied way of understanding the world.

White further argues that the sequencing of events in narrative is a construction of what I have presented in Chapter III as a construction of practical knowledge where: Narrative is a form which,..represents something that may be true or false; and this something, I would argue, is nothing other than a set of commonplaces comprised of beliefs about the meaning or ultimate nature of reality, shared by the average members of any given culture-what we call "common sense" (White, 1980) I noted previously that the development of reason as it relates to the development of practical knowledge involves the interactive relationships of deliberation, judgment, and reflection on action taken in the life-world. White now posits these concepts within narrative structures when he notes : Story forms...represent an armory of relational models by which what would otherwise be nothing but chains of mechanical causes and effects can be translated into...terms which allow us to judge the moral significance of human projects and provide the means by which to judge them even while we pretend to be merely describing them. (White, 1980 p. 253)

Making sense of our lives to ourselves and others is a reasoned activity. What can be learned from the construction of narrative, reading them and listening to them is what it means to make sense of the events in our lives. And this making sense is what is learned from our actions and the 243 actions of others as we deliberate about, make judgments on and reflect about our relationships with others. How things are in our life which can be interpreted by others as "that happened to me too" (Shuman, 1995) represents a deep practical knowledge of how to tell stories and how to make sense of them as they find a place in our commonsense notions of how to tell about the way things really are in the world and what we are, in the most reasonable sense, up to in the construction of our lives. I have tried to argue for narrativity or storytelling as representative of a personal and practical knowledge, a commonsense way thinking and taking action in the world which transforms the chaos of events into a structure of sense making which emerges as story; displaying a reasoned coherence, an intuitive integrity, a well conceived and full portrait of a deliberative, judged, and reflective lived experience. Storied events are the most commonsensical and practical ways of knowing which serve as the central organizing structure of meaning and understanding; an epistemology whose standpoint does not look out upon the world and report back about the events in it, but from the standpoint of a social construction of a reality where events speak about themselves as they emerge, illuminated, in story. Story becomes a manner of making events tell about themselves. And the interpretation of those events is seeking out and making 244 sense of how persons in a particular context, in a particular culture engage in reasoned behavior in creating meaning and understanding by figuring out what they are doing and what they are up to (Geertz, 1973). Bruner notes that through story one: Tries to gain an account of what one thinks they did in what settings in what ways for what felt reasons. It will inevitably be a narrative, as Polkinghorne remarked...and its form will be as revealing as its substance...Our interest is in what the person thought he did, what he thought he was doing it for, what kinds of plights he thought he was in and so on (Bruner, 1990 p. 119) What I have attempted here is to argue for a human science which is not reflective of mind body dualisms but to encourage and establish justification for a human science which is focused on intuitive, intentional, meaningful and engaged action taken within a life-world that is linguistic, socially constructed, embedded in a history and tradition as a stock of knowledge that is practical and understandable to others and which acknowledges a dialogical, descriptive, communicative relationship between the researcher and those researched.

I have also argued that narrative is a way of making oneself understood in the world. But I have also argued that narratives must be considered reasonable, reasonable in the sense that one structures the often chaotic events or their lives in such a way that it carries meaning and understanding 245 of the larger stories, the allegories, the deeper themes which represent the not only the personal traditions and histories but the culture in which personal stories are constructed. Therefore, narrative reflects not only the mastery of language; the ability to organize experiences into events through words, but the mastery of what is considered the commonsense ways of making meaning within the culture so that the stories which tell of personal experiences as events make sense to others as an extension of the practical knowledge of lived experience, the extensions of intersubjective commonplaces of the culture and context in which the stories are told. One learns the commonsense and practical ways of human society and human culture; of human life lived as particular ways of knowing bounded by the traditions and historical accounts of times past. Narrative helps each and everyone of us better understand that which is most commonly regarded as making the most sense; as rendering action and behavior in its most reasonable form which, often like hope, seems to come from somewhere else but expresses a faith that when we share a story we make things understandable and intelligible to one another.

THE RESEARCH DESIGN Here at a center is a creature: it would be our business to show how through every instant of everyday of every year of his existence alive, he is from all sides streamed inward upon, bombarded, pierced, destroyed by that enormous sleeting of all objects forms and ghosts 246

how great how small no matter, which surround and whom his senses take: in as great and perfect and exact particularity as we can name them: this would be our business, to show them each thus transfixed as between the stars' trillions of javelins and of each the transfixions: but it is beyond my human power to do. The most I can do-the most I can hope to do-is to make a number of physical entities as plain and vivid as possible, and to make a few guesses, a few conjectures; and to leave to you much of the burden of realizing in each of them what I have wanted to make clear of them as a whole : how each is itself; and how each is a shaper.(Agee & Evans, 1941) Qualitative researchers are in the business of telling stories. They need to be able to tell and able to write (for dissertations, ethnographies and letters home to Mother) stories which are crucial to the enterprise of their research (Wolcott, 1994). These stories are the focus both of and for the power of ethnographic representation which have, for the most part the following features as determined by Atkinson and Hammersley (1994) and Jorgensen (1989) and argued for previously in this Chapter: • a strong emphasis on the examination of the social and human lived experience. • operating with "unstructured" data, that is, data not influenced by a predetermined hypothesis or theoretical grid. • the phenomenon of investigation is observed within the everyday life-world or situated lived experience. • the phenomenon is sufficiently limited in size and is to be studied as a case. 247

• the problem addressed can be examined by qualitative data collected on site through direct observation. • utilizes a form of theorizing stressing description and interpretation and understanding of everyday life as viewed from the perspective of those members engaged in living it. • communicates deep and rich description, in story form, the analysis of data and theoretical interpretations to others grounded in the commonsense realities of everyday life. I have argued that stories are no only a method-in-use for the production of researchable qualitative data but are, as well, an ontological way of being in the world where in the very construction of the personal experience story of the researcher and the researched lays an ethnography about the construction of the research story itself. Ethnographic stories are also stories about ethnography. The stories researchers tell about others seem always informed by the researchers' own stories. I wish to argue that no emergent story, no creative work of art, no chatty letters to Mother are ever independent of the traditions and history of those who came before which link those works to ones created in the past. How then do qualitative researchers deal with the sticky problem of understanding the other when their values, their lived experiences are informed by different traditions. 248 different histories and subsequently informed by attitudes, preferences, beliefs, and values which are not their own? The hermeneutic phenomenological method may provide some resolution of the issue. Hermeneutic phenomenology as methodology is both the collection and description of intact realities and lived experiences in the life-world as well as the interpretation of how these realities are achieved or constructed and how their achievement by others is understood as an emic or insider's view of making meaning and making sense in a reasonable, local, and situated context. Stories that teachers tell ought be treated as narratives made up and out of practical knowledge and the commonsense ways of engaging in and achieving a teacherful practice. These stories must be treated as recommendations for purposeful action which reflects a standpoint epistemology (Smith, 1987), a way of being in the world, a narrative version of how it is to be a teacher whose actions are deliberate, reflective and always informed by the context of the school by way of reasoned judgments about "the way things are done around here" (Deal & Kennedy, 1982). By treating teacher talk as narrative or story then, I treat it as having its own ontological status. Stories reflect not only teacher practical knowledge but also the domain assumptions, the world views that in self- 249 understanding constitutes and constructs the very teaching practice it references. I argue these are referenced in interpretive turns teachers make about their practices in the stories they tell about them.

FRAMING QUESTIONS ABOUT THE LIVED EXPERIENCE The question this dissertation is concerned with is the nature and use of story in the achievement of a teaching practice. It is an effort to increase my knowledge about teachers' understandings of their practical needs, desires, fears, aspirations, aims and goals in the intelligent achievement of a teaching practice expressed in story with the hope of learning about what social and cultural conditions would be most favorable or unfavorable in the gestation, growth and maturation of such a teaching practice. It must also be asked whether the analysis of story is a suitable means by which to study the achievement of a socially constructed teaching practice. Does story play any role in the achievement of teaching practice in its most personal and local, contextual and situated form assuming the investigation of and description and interpretation of narratives already held by teachers (Polkinghorne, 1988).

I contend that a teacher's practice emerges from, in a sense is born of the lived experience within the classroom. Therefore this investigation emerges from the teacher's perspective, from how teacher's think about their practice as 250 constructed in story. The stories emerged from their talk about their practices and not from some predetermined theoretical perspective derived and offered up by the researcher, I was interested in how they thought about their practice and what they knew about it. As a result a qualitative research methodology was chosen to probe the participants perspective of their teaching practice as a lived experience. Such methodology is foremost descriptive and interpretive; its aim is to render the narrative best accounts of teachers already in place which are used to order and make events understandable, meaningful and reasonable. The criterion for evaluating this kind of narrative research is the accuracy of the researcher's description and interpretation of the narratives presented (Polkinghorne, 1988). Max van Manen has formulated a descriptive and interpretive methodology for the interpretive human sciences and it will be used, in a somewhat modified form as the research design for this dissertation. For van Manen, hermeneutic phenomenological research is seen as a dialectic and dynamic relationship between : • a phenomenon which seriously interests and commits one to the world of lived experience. • experience as it is lived rather than as it is conceptualized. 251

• reflections on essential themes which characterize the phenomenon. • phenomenological thick description (Geertz, 1973) of the phenomenon through the art of writing and rewriting.

• a strong and oriented pedagogical relation to the phenomenon. • hermeneutic interpretation of the analysis of data by considering the parts in relationship to the whole.

I will be using this methodological structure as a framework for discussing the design of the study, data collection, and data analysis as well as the issues of reliability, validity, the notion of trustworthiness and the ethics of qualitative research. Within this discussion I want to take van Manan's structures of hermeneutic phenomenological research and illuminate them under a stronger light, radiating a more revealing and penetrating and thorough examination and understanding as they relate to participant observation, the phenomenological sociology of Kurt Wolff (1976), the interpretive hermeneutics of Gadamer (1992) and Taylor ( 1985a) and then examine some strengths and weaknesses of the design in light of the research methodology. During this discussion I will be also telling a personal experience story as it relates to this ethnography. 252

STANDING IN WONDERMENT TO THE LIVED EXPERIENCE;

Phenomenological investigations must be driven by- wonderment. Wondering is a way of standing in the world of being which takes the mundane and common lived experiences of the life-world and frames them into questions which probe the very nature of, the very understanding of what that experience means to those who take action in the world.(van Manen, 1990) . Standing in wonderment to the lived experience is always like standing in a swiftly flowing river. One never stands in the same river twice. Wonder is ceaseless, in the sense that it can never be exhausted and is always changing as the things most close at hand change. Wonder has much to do with a consistent and predictable stance to the world but it also has much to do with the contingency of our existence. Within the contingency, the propensity of things to change, lies the mystery of our being in the world (Green, 1971) One knows that leaves turn brilliant colors in the fall and spring rains help May flowers grow and birds' eggs are sometimes blue and always hatch in the spring (Green, 1971). But the fact that these familiar events occur at all is related to the consistent and predictable fact that they always do. However, the wonderment of it all, the mystery and marvel of their occurrence is that one simply does not fully understand why. Why is snow white and are robins' eggs blue? They are and the nystery of it is that though they are, they 253 need not be.(Green, 1971). The capacity to wonder is to stand within the lived experience and simply say, "I do not understand" why things are the way they are. Standing in wonderment to the world is standing in naivete, in surrender to what may become fresh and new and exciting in the essences of a lived life born not out of ignorance, despair or impoverished conditions but in social and collaborative participation in the construction of further knowledge. In this sense wonder is a not an individual but a collective state of mind, a way of being in a social world which is at the same time an orientation to the mystery and marvel of socially lived life, an individual questioning of the essences of that lived experience which, like Havel's "hope", transcends the world that is immediate and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizon (Havel, 1991). Wonder in its most immediate experience has the structure of an individual and collective hope. In every wondering stance, in every question one asks of the lived experience, in every social construction of every piece of knowledge about that world emerges the capacity to re- imagine, to re-describe, to re-interpret and make new and hope for the best. When research of the life world is embedded in a sense of wonder, imagination, description and interpretation become a spontaneous bloom, a celebration of the mystery of a 254 budding life, a consistent and essential knowing not that things will always turn out well or for the good, but that an action, a way of being in the world makes some reasonable and understandable sense (Havel, 1991). Wonder is always emerging from Wolff's (1976) "surrender" to the mysteries and marvels of a world which in many ways corresponds to a hope one tries to describe that the world need not be as it is but can be imagined, described, interpreted and "caught" as otherwise.

INVESTIGATING THE LIVED EXPERIENCE-A PERSONAL

REFLECTION The question investigated in this dissertation emerged both from rry current situation as graduate student and my past personal history as teacher and elementary school principal. I have always been interested in teacher talk and often reflected on the many personal experience stories (Shuman, 1995) related to me during ity seven years as an elementary principal of a building housing 425 students and 30 staff located in a quiet neighborhood in small mid-western town.

I had totally forgotten about those teacher stories of hope, fear, frustration and elation shared in time of stress and joy; forgotten until a lunch appointment during a late summer day in 1993. Sitting in a local fast-food restaurant with one of ity dissertation committee members, our talk found its way to the new post-modern research of the "narrative 255 turn"; the use of storytelling or narrative in qualitative research. As a result of that meeting I started to formulate the idea for collecting teachers' stories and submitting them to an analysis. The wonder about the nature of storytelling and its relationship to the development of teachers' practical knowledge about their teaching practice led to formulating questions concerning the achievement of a teaching practice and a subsequent decision to use a qualitative research design to investigate the problem. The issues emerged from wondering about and questioning what it might be like to be a teacher as seen through story. What is it about that form of telling a professional life, that storied way of being in the world that makes teaching, like white snow and a robin's blue eggs, as it is and not otherwise? The development of this question seemed to emerge both from my graduate school experience and from my past history as a public school teacher and administrator. Therefore, investigating lived experience, wondering about and formulating researchable questions about a teaching world started not only from where I was located in rry current student experience but certainly from rry past professional involvements as an educator and personal life experiences which shaped the beliefs and pre-suppositions, assumptions and values which breathed life into the body of this work. 256

Lofland notes (1984a) "qualitative research starts from where you are" (p. 2), and by virtue of my own wondering and questioning and searching the mysteries of the teaching "other", I always returned to, listened to and plumbed the depths of my own personal experiences stories.

THE RESEARCHER EXAMINES HIS DOMAIN ASSUMPTIONS One of the problems facing phenomenological investigators of the life-world is the question of how to deal with past experiences, histories, and traditions which form the pre-suppositions and beliefs which may in numerous tacit ways (Polanyi, 1983) covertly influence the interpretation of the data. Clearly, the phenomenological literature of Martin Heidegger (1977) Edmund Husserl (1970), and Alfred Schütz (Wagner, 1970) requires the investigator to suspend or "bracket" personally held presuppositions; hold them at bay with one hand in order to catch the phenomena with the other. Then somehow, this detached knowledge of the self, once removed and distanced like black sheep cousins, provides a clear view of the life world untainted by the blemishes and streaks of past prejudices, preferences, values and beliefs. Instead of embracing the power and authority of these traditions as who we are; histories and prejudices as guiding influences must be treated as unessential, contingent and arbitrary nuisances to be done away with as quickly and efficiently as possible. 257

I simply was not successful in "bracketing" a past history and established traditions of successful teaching and administration during the formulation of the problem statement, the data collection and the data interpretation stages of this dissertation. Twenty one years of professional experience crept into my questions, slinked around ity interviews and hung out at the dimly lit corners of rry interpretations. The feelings associated with those images of times past, resurrected at the creation of this dissertation, floated like angels above it all and instead of hindering any of the research, actually provided a breadth and depth, a binocular rather than monocular view (Bateson, 1979) of the site and data and at times. I'm sure, foreshadowed many intuitive road maps which I followed later during the interpretation of the data. Instead of fencing up feelings in relation to the study, I set them free and embraced them. In the process of letting go previously unexamined life experiences, ny understandings, biases and assumptions, presuppositions and my own theory of practice came to reciprocal and dialogical terms with the work. I want to argue that ironically, by coming to know and recognize my feelings and assumptions in relation to this work, a stronger sense of validation of the value and worth of the work emerged. 258

I am clearly not a non-educational researcher. My professional and personal being is that of a caring, responsible teacher. It is, in fact, an unavoidable part of who and what I currently am and certainly the attitude I carried to the research site. I entered the site as more than a detached and distant researcher. I entered it as a fully functional, integrated and whole person and a good portion of that personhood is framed (Torbert, 1991) as a professional educator. The idea that I could enter into and participate in an elementary school for ten weeks in some transcended state of a pure and knowing mind, a seeing of the "site world" though pure crystal was not my experience with the field work. At times doing the research was like looking through a muddy windshield of a car in the worst of an Ohio winter thaw, knowing that I was on a road, but not able to see where I was going. At those times I had to depend on my past experiences and knowledge of the field of education to clear the view and guide me along. It was at those times when I would lose sight of the problem, the direction of the data, and the motivation to complete the work, that I pulled at the depths of who I was as a person, not researcher, to focus on, reconsider and make known and reconfirm what I believed about rry own research abilities, fieldwork methodology, the purpose of the study and iry self-esteem as knowing participant in an always ambiguous endeavor. Otherwise, how else would any of 259 us, nyself and the teachers who comprise this work, shape the stories that are told here? These are stories of getting lost and being found, of troubles and struggles, making lived experiences whole, and talking it all toward a personal and professional completion. But most of all, these are stories of the heart. The validation of these teachers and their work comes as Lawless notes (1993) not by viewing the outsider's "objective" point of view as the legitimate point of view, but rather the subjective view, the insider's view, which has been authenticated, validated and recognized and presented as imbued with the power and authority of understanding and meaning, (p. 286). I want to argue that the brief personal experience story I'm about to share about iiy own practice as a teacher, like the longer personal experience stories of teaching lives shared in this work, is a story that is spoken from the depths of a teaching personhood. As I have spoken from my own personal experiences, so the teachers have spoken from theirs. We both speak of teaching and learning, buildings and administrations, and especially of the children we were given in trust, whom we loved each year and then lost to others. And so I invite the reader to listen well, to understand these stories as educator stories and to explore within each story not only the insights about teacher practical knowledge and teacher thinking which I have gained by interpreting them 260 but the other interpretations which remain embedded in them and are, for each of us, reader and researcher yet to be discovered.

ESTABLISHING A STARTING POINT FOR SURRENDER TO THE

CATCH. MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE STORY How did I come to the teaching experience? I remember being at loose ends about ny life not long after graduation in November of 1968 from a small liberal arts college in the mid-west. I had no job and worse no job prospects. During December of that year I heard about a teaching job in Plymouth, a large and sprawling city within driving distance of ny residence. During the interview I was told the class had had four teachers from September through Christmas break and, if hired, I would be their fifth. The position was presented as a mental and physical challenge, which for the right person would provide enormous personal gratification as well as professional satisfaction. Mr. Right started teaching the class on January 3rd. There were ten children who greeted this fifth teacher with more than some suspicion. The first question asked, "Are you gonna stay"? was answered with a resounding, "Yes." I stayed, however, only through the end of the school year. The children and I lived together for the remainder of that year in a small room in a cavernous basement next to the boiler room. Every so often the boilers would succumb to the pressures of a chilly and drafty building and would spring to life in an explosion of angry fury; a metaphor for the often chaotic pressures of urban life and explosive student behaviors which were a part of rry everyday existence at Camdine Elementary. Camdine was an urban school. Most of the students were from the projects located within a stones throw of the treeless asphalt playground, which unlike the yellow brick road to Ozz, paved a dark and oppressive alleyway to a reality "made in America". All of rry kids were needy. Over the course of five months I bought seven pairs of tennis shoes because most of rry children were coming to school with only parts of shoes in the dead of a particular nasty and cold mid-western winter. We also shared breakfast together, some morning food provided by the school but always supplemented by boxes of crackers and other snacks I purchased and kept on hand in the 261 room which were rationed out in an emergency. Initially, the children were always good about letting me know if they had missed breakfast, which, as it turned out over the long haul, became a daily occurrence. My coat closet quickly turned into a food pantry. The faculty, as it turned out in hindsight, was the best I would have the opportunity to work with. We were all involved in the decay of an educational enterprise which in spite of wrenching poverty and the odds that many of these children might not see their sixteenth birthday, challenged us to respect the good, the moral personhood of those who came to us each day by giving them the best of what each of us had to personally and professionally offer. It was here at Camdine that I fostered and developed what it meant to be an educator and those early values and attitudes and presuppositions are the story behind my professional experience stories lived over the past twenty years. All of us at Camdine had to overlook the physical attributes of a decrepit school, tattered lives and shattered dreams. The brutality of the context in which we taught was simply accepted as a way of life which surrounded us. What became of central importance for our kids and for our own mental health and subsequent personal survival and was to focus on, to see and in many cases to construct a certain centeredness, a connected and shared vision or mission as it were which was kept steadily before our eyes and the eyes of the children. This center, for me, evolved personally into a value, an attitude which concerned itself with a respect for the character of a person, what constituted the children as moral beings comprised as a spirit and beauty which rested beyond the wounded eyes of their impoverished lives. This center of a human life was the living character of the children, the spirit of communal caring, the socially constructed and collaborative manner of making fun and making community which in this center of caring and joy we burst free from the attributes of a deadening trade on constant poverty, suffocating emotional need, loneliness, the soulbreaking idleness of mind and spirit, worn-out clothes and the hopelessness of changing the chaotic order of the matter and manner of their lives. This is as it should be written; much as an image of horrific fantasy as the reality it was, my coming to teaching fostered a living of the day intersected in all regard with the respect for personhood in which by virtue of collaborative songs or lonely soliloquy I created and sustained a lyrical and lighted hearted centeredness of a teaching life, a 262

deep and abiding moral respect for children and for persons, which in the interactions and inter­ interpretations of a lived experience gave a supportive voice to the goodness of spirit of those children whose lives were being smothered by the silence of hope. In all regard, and especially for the lives of children at Camdine, a good teacher was the hope that "lay elsewhere" (Havel, 1991). Van Manen (1990) argues that the phenomenological researcher needs to be reflectively aware of certain experiential meanings. To be aware of the structure of one's own experience of a phenomenon may provide the researcher with clues for orienting oneself to the phenomenon and thus to all the other stages of phenomenological research (p. 57). In seeking a relationship to teaching I have tried to describe my personal human relationship to that phenomenon, and of course it is one of many descriptions I might have chosen. But the importance of any phenomenological description as investigation of a lived experience rests with making it known in one's own way and then in Wolff's terms, surrender to it. Following again the thought of Husserl (1970) and Schütz (1970) phenomenon is that which appears immediately to us. Our stance to it should be Wolff's surrender in that we stand to the situation as much as possible clear of prejudices and beliefs to allow the situation to present itself through as much of the bright crystal as possible. But there is always a dimming in the light because we simply cannot suspend all of 263 our concepts, knowledge and experiences as a social being because they are along with those of the presented object or situation the sum total of our culture (1991) . I have taken the stance to try and surface the very core values of what it means for me to stand in relationship to the teaching experience as one that holds in high regard the respect for what constitutes personhood and an orientation of the teaching experience toward the good. I can suspend some of the experiences of who I am, but I simple carry with me, those values, those beliefs, those pre-suppositions, a world -view of teaching written about above. Those are the constituent beliefs and assumptions I cannot suspend or surrender to. As Wolff (1991) notes: In other words, we cannot ascertain how another human being truly is because in trying to do so we have nothing at our disposal except our culture, and this culture, by definition, is not that of any other human being. In this sense, surrender is necessarily a compromise, a compromise between the impossibility of approaching the other-if we were to shed all of our culture, which we cannot do anyway- and a distortion, inasmuch as no matter how far we can manage to go in suspending our notions, it cannot possibly be all the way (p. 61).

What I have tried to make explicit is the values, the very beliefs, the core pre-suppositions and core assumptions beyond which I cannot transcend, but rather bring to the dissertation as a core self, a cultural being whose historical situation and traditional lived experiences phenomenologically informs rry thinking, rry observations, rry 264 data collection, my interpretations, my epistemological stance to the data. By making these domain assumptions known I can present them and commit them along with myself to an inquiring relationship to the site, to the teaching experience and the total research design at hand. The importance for any qualitative researcher to surface out and stay in contact with core values and assumptions during the research effort has been extensively examined by Alvin Gouldner (1973). I want to use Gouldner extensively in this chapter to justify ray own research position for getting and staying in touch with those core values which I know have influenced rny own sense of wonderment about the lived experience, the questions I want answered in this dissertation, and the interpretation of the data. I want to argue along with Gouldner that my interest in qualitative research, the questions presented in this research and the design itself grow out of tacit assumptions about the lived experience (Polanyi, 1983) which remain out of my sight. These assumptions operate as "hidden persuaders" in the research enterprise. Domain assumptions, as Gouldner calls them, are the background assumptions about a specific culture or society, such as the pre-suppositions concerning what constitutes the reasonableness of persons, that culture and society are a matter of social construction of meanings and understanding through language and dialogue, that human 265 action as reasoned action is based on deliberation, judgment and interpretation of the very action it reflects upon. Gouldner argues that whatever else researchers do they tend to commit themselves to domain assumptions, beliefs about that which they study which have significant consequences for the ultimate design and outcome of the research and theory it generates (p. 32) . Research is driven by core beliefs and suppositions for that is what domain assumptions are and in the creative relief by which one surfaces domain assumptions there surfaces also a type of research which has a human vulnerability to its prejudices (Gadamer, 1992) , to its beliefs.

THE NATURE OF INTERPRETATION IN THE CATCH Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics validates Gouldner's position. In the hermeneutic circle of interpretation I argued support for earlier, the recognition of prejudices and historical traditions enables researchers to understand that who they are as well as who they study are "constitutive of what each is and what each are in the process of becoming" (Bernstein, 1983 p. 138) . In bringing the "what" and "who" we are and who we may become to understanding we stand in an interpretive world where all understanding involves interpretation and all interpretation involves understanding (Taylor, 1985a). For Gouldner social theory and knowledge deriving from research is in part 266 extruded from and develops in interaction with the basic assumptions, the prejudices of our historical situatedness. This issue of domain assumptions is very important in the development of new knowledge from the data collected for this dissertation. Important, because of this notion of interpretation. Gouldner brings to the process of interpretation at least two issues which must be dealt with. First, the researcher must recognize that what is at issue in interpretation is not only what is observed to be going on in the world, but what is also going on in the researcher. The researcher must have the capacity to hear her own voice, not simply those of others and to make that voice known in the interpretation of the data. Second, the researcher must have the courage of her convictions, or at least courage enough to acknowledge her beliefs as hers, whether or not legitimated by reason and evidence. Unless her prejudices, her historical traditions, her domain assumptions are brought forth from the dim valley of subsidiary awareness (Polanyi, 1983) into the clearer plain of full awareness, where they can be held in view, they can never be brought before the bar of reason (I argue, held open to deliberation, judgment and reflection) or submitted to the test of evidence (Gouldner, 1973 p. 35). As Gouldner notes, "A theorist lacking in such personal insight and public courage is in the wrong business" (p. 35). 267

For Gouldner, the important thing in setting forth one's domain assumptions is to have the insight to see (and I argue to also tell and write) what one believes and the courage to say what one sees. Having the power as researcher to name that which is seen and told and that which is heard is to allow beliefs and suppositions to flow through understanding and interpretation of a world that simply cannot advance apart from personal knowledge and the researchers position in it.

The roots of research and particularly qualitative research pass through the researcher as a total person and therefore not only determines how the researcher stands in wonderment to the lived experience, how to question what is to be researched, but how to live her life. Gouldner stresses, and I have argued previously, that researchers as total persons create projects which are not value-free but projects which contain certain specific life events, values, and beliefs. In this sense, research would be, at its highest level, both valued, believable and moral and ethical research. The researcher as total person metaphor used by Gouldner picks up a central theme of hermeneutic understanding where Gadamer claims that understanding, interpretation and application of new understanding are not separate elements of hermeneutic methodology (Gadamer, 1992) but rather they are 268 all moments of the single process of understanding and all are internally related. Asking the question of how to live in relation to research is to argue for an interlocking of the ontology of being with a practical knowledge, not an objective knowledge that is disengaged from one's being but rather a knowledge that is engaged and constitutive of what is being researched with the self-knowledge of the researcher.

NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE IN THE LIVED EXPERIENCE Earlier in this chapter I noted that this research is designed to produce knowledge. I need to provide a stipulative definition of knowledge and its relation to this project and call again on Gouldner for assistance. Phenomenological hermeneutic research is about the description and interpretation of the essences of the lived experiences of others. The nature of knowledge in hermeneutic phenomenological research therefore is not something that is literally discovered mirrored in the reality of an outside world (Rorty, 1979), but rather constructed by opening oneself up inwardly, to present a total person to the awareness of that world. There is no knowledge of the world that is not knowledge of one's own experience with it and in relation to it. The researcher's knowing of herself-of who, what, and where she is-on the one hand, and of others and the social worlds of others, are two sides of a single process 269

(Gouldner, 1973 p. 493). Awareness of the self is seen as an indispensable avenue to awareness of the social world. Gadamer (1976) stresses that knowledge as new understanding comes from a relationship between the "things themselves" which the researcher must remain open to so they can "speak" and make their truth known. But on the other hand, the receptivity of the researcher to the events of the world is not sensitized by "bracketing" or forgetting all prejudgments and prejudices. On the contrary, it is only because of the relationship or play of these beliefs and prejudices against those events that the researcher is enabled, entitled to understand the "things themselves" (Bernstein, 1983) I want to adopt Gouldner's argument for knowledge as awareness, since it supplants nicely, the notion of a socially constructed knowledge as a relationship of the total person to outside events. The knowledge of awareness is a knowledge that has no existence apart from the researcher who pursues and expresses it. Awareness is a constituent of a personhood, an attitude by which persons surrender to and catch and use information about the world. Knowledge acquisition as awareness is the deepening of the researchers own awareness, of who and what she is, in a specific context and her practical knowledge which affects the work. This dissertation presents the 270 generation of new knowledge which represents not only a methodology or set of interpretive pre-dispositions, but a persistent commitment to the values, presuppositions and beliefs which sensitize an awareness of the relationship between the researcher and the persons studied; between the researcher and the practical knowledge which expresses itself and emerges throughout all stages of this storied work. Such knowledge is authentic in that it recognizes and is part of the commonplaces of the everyday life of the researcher and is created and maintained within the disgust, and elation, pity and anger, egoism and moral outrage, joy and sadness, angst and engagement which are the passions, interests, and suppositions of the research act not treated as blinders to understanding but rather opportunities for personal change and enlightenment through the very knowledge and understanding created from the research itself (Gouldner, 1973 p. 496). In all regard this work strives not only at deepening the knowledge about the growth and maturation of teaching practice but is also concerned with deepening and broadening rny own self-awareness. The research design developed in this chapter is more than a technical tool for excavating and extracting bits of knowledge from collected data, but is infused and embedded in assumptions and beliefs about the world from which the data was collected as well as 271 assumptions and beliefs about the role of researcher. The standpoint from which the relationship between the two yields a thick description and deep interpretation of the data establishes a dialectical epistemology or way of knowing which is a personal, practical, and reasoned way of approaching, interpreting, and linguistically coming to know the world.

MOVING TOWARD THE CATCH OF LIVED EXPERIENCE Throughout this work I will be using the following abbreviations when data is presented: FN ='s Field Notes; I ='s Non-Transcribed but important Interviews; T ='s transcribed data not appearing in the document. This goal of this ethnography is the production of knowledge about teaching. It's purpose is not to provide practical knowledge on how to solve particular teaching problems or resolve thorny issues even though the data on which this knowledge production emerges is ironically data about those very topics. Knowledge of teaching located within this work is knowledge born of interpretation. The data collected is grounded in the realities of everyday life, in the lived experiences of teachers as they make sense of their world and give meaning to it; as they act within and on a practical knowledge which is always seen as a reasoned way of approaching the world and each other. The everyday world constitutes what is real for the members of that world 272

(Bernstein, 1971; Geertz, 1973; Rorty, 1979; Schütz & Luckman, 1989; Taylor, 1985b; Wolff, 1976; 1991) . I have chosen a participant observation methodology as a stipulated definition for a methodology that "starts from where you are". In Jorgensen's (1989) view participant observation encourages the researcher to begin with the immediate experiences of human life in concrete situations and settings, and makes the most of whatever opportunities are presented. Through participating in the lived experiences of teachers and observing their behaviors firsthand, I learned how actions corresponded to their words and their stories corresponded to their notions of what constitutes a teaching practice. Participant observation is a rather vague term (Schwandt, 1994) in the sense that its essence as methodology ranges from mostly observation to mostly participation (Glesne & Peshkin, 1992). The current research is certainly more than just observation; keeping an invisible eye on the "goings on" of teacher behavior without their knowledge. But it is less than the complete or "full participation" in the ongoing events of the school community. I was not employed as a teacher and I did not participate in actual teaching activities in the classrooms. So where on this continuum do I place myself? Again, the research design driven by the questions under consideration required more participation 273 than observation but the participation was dialogic in the sense that an active exchange of talk presented personal reflections on their immediate acts of pedagogy as reflected in story. They are personal experience stories and in their sharing rests an acknowledgment of the good and the moral respect for persons which is a foundational commitment to a teaching practice. So in a sense I am an observer participant, but more active participant, more interviewer, story collector and subsequently story teller than passive observer. In all cases I served as the primary repository, transcriber and interpreter of these storied lives. Before turning my attention to further movement toward the catch of this dissertation I want to again present the questions which this work is most interested in surrendering to and answering. The general research question formulated prior to the research design and subsequent guiding questions which emerged during the data gathering process are noted below. I will attempt to answer these representations of a wondering mind in a questioning standpoint to teaching as a lived experience.

GENERAL RESEARCH QUESTION What is to be learned about, in a hermeneutic phenomenological sense, the nature of and essence of the achievement of a teaching practice as it is told through personal experience stories as reflection on and understanding about the role of teacher practical knowledge and thinking in the growth and maturation of a teaching practice? 274

GUIDING QUESTIONS • How is the notion of a good teacher framed through story?

• What is the nature of experiences shared in story which somehow make teachers better teachers? What practical knowledge is located in these professional success stories? • How do teachers learn about themselves and their practice from the experiences they tell about in story?

• What do these stories say about the fundamental thinking and practical knowledge which teachers hold about their practice? • Are there core sets of fundamental practical knowledge which teachers share in common? What are the emergent themes by which the nature of these core beliefs as practical knowledge are constructed and understood in story. • Can an argument be made that storytelling is an educational form of life? • Can an argument be made for the existence of untenable stories (Shuman, 1995) . • Is storytelling a suitable means by which to investigate the primary research question?

PREPARING FOR THE CATCH This dissertation is not only an ethnography as previously discussed but it is also a case study, a research design incorporating ways of interpreting lived experience applied when "how" and "why" questions are being asked, when the investigator has little or no control over unfolding events, and when the focus is on a contemporary phenomenon within some real-life context (Yin, 1989 p. 13). 275

Case studies may fall into three categories as described by Stake (1994): the intrinsic case study, the instrumental case study and the collective case study. This work may best be described as an intrinsic case study, an investigation of ' the phenomena of storytelling in the achievement of a teaching practice. Stake (1994) argues that an intrinsic case study is undertaken simply because one wants to understand a particular situation or case not because it represents other cases or illustrates a particular trait or problem, but because in all of its particularity and ordinariness, the case is of intrinsic interest in and of itself. The purpose of the intrinsic case study is not to come to understand some abstract construct or generic phenomenon. The study is undertaken because of intrinsic interest in, for example, a particular child, a particular school principal, or particular curriculum (p. 234). Stake further notes that the intrinsic case study design pulls the researcher toward an understanding of what is important about the case within its own world or context, the world of the researcher and theorist, and developing issues, and knowledge from interpretations. In intrinsic case studies researchers do not avoid generalizations, they cannot. Researchers generalize to happenings at times yet to come and in other situations. They expect their readers to comprehend their interpretations but 276 to arrive at their own as well. The intent of intrinsic case study then is to learn, in depth, about the case in order to encapsulate not only the complex meanings into an interpretive and finite report, but to describe the case in sufficient descriptive narrative so that readers can vicariously experience these happenings and draw their own conclusions (p. 243). This is an intrinsic case study which "tells its own story" (Anderson, 1990; Coles, 1989; Gudmundsdottir, 1991) . It is an interpretive study which seeks the emic point of view (Bogdan & Biklen, 1982), the meanings and understandings of the lived experience by persons within the case who are in the process of living it (Wolcott, 1994). But as I have argued throughout this chapter it is also a story told by the researcher, and like a story told includes markedly less than what was reported, but certainly more than what was originally understood. Although this work will try to stand on its own merits and strengths and speak for itself, it is primarily the work of the researcher; from the subjective construction of what was chosen to study, to the questions asked of the data, to the interpretations applied to all of it. In every regard this research design is to create a work as story; a disciplined but free-ranging description of a personalized but particularizing (Stake, 277

1994) best account (Taylor, 1989) of interpretive research of a lived experience as it is told, as it is lived.

IT IS DIFFICULT IF NOT IMPOSSIBLE TO ENGAGE A CATCH OF

THE LIVED EXPERIENCE WITHOUT HUMAN RESOURCES Although most phenomenological research literature (Agee & Evans, 1941; Berger & Luckman, 1966; Coles, 1989; Darroch & Silvers, 1982; Holstein & Gubrium, 1994; Husserl, 1970; 1973a; Ingarden, 1973b; Janesick, 1982; 1994; Kestenbaum, 1977; Knoblauch & Brannon, 1988; Kwant, 1969; Lawless, 1993; Polanyi, 1989; Schütz, 1970; 1973; 1989; Wolff, 1976; 1983; 1991; Yonemura, 1982; Young, 1987) does not concern itself with the notion of sampling. For purposes of this work and my role as student researcher it seems prudent if not vitally important to address the issue within this dissertation.

Qualitative research sampling typically focuses in depth on relatively small samples and even single case studies (n=l) (Patton, 1990). Morse (1994) suggests that sampling should always be conducted in light of those subjects who will provide information rich data for answering the research questions at hand. During the data collection for this work I was intently searching for those teachers who had not only a long history of teaching at the site building but those who were new; searching out not only those teachers who had initially volunteered for the project, but those teachers who did not and were recommended for interviewing by those who 278 did; not only those teachers in the primary grades but those in the intermediate grades; not only teachers, but support staff such as the secretary, custodian and the principal. In all cases those teachers and staff who originally volunteered as well as those referred later were interviewed. The sample of teachers and staff was made based on the question I was trying to answer, the fact that I had no funding for the project and the fact that the site selection and location itself was completely out of my control. These issues will be addressed below. For this research I chose a small sample size for in- depth interviews. This was a random purposive sample size since I wanted a representative sample from both primary and intermediate grades, from both experienced (more than three years of teaching) and non-experienced (less than three years of teaching) teachers, and a sample from the non-certifled staff (secretaries and custodians) as well as the principal of the school. This purposive random sampling of teachers was, at first, limited to eight teachers, two non-certified staff and the principal. Although this is a small sample from within a population of twenty-seven teachers, I was trying to gather in-depth data in story which would carry high credibility not a breadth of representiveness of a large sample size. Interviewing every teacher in the building was an impossibility, so this purposeful sampling by grade level. 279 certification, and experience added credibility to the study due to the fact that I knew I wanted a representative sampling of teachers across grade levels with varied levels of experience in teaching field. It is interesting that as I became acquainted with the staff during the course of my ten week stay teachers who originally volunteered for the study would refer others. So, my sample grew from the original eight teachers and staff to a total of thirteen. Patton (1990) describes this type of on­ site case sampling as a "snowball" or chain sampling technique where new cases of interest are identified from teachers who know other teachers who would be information rich contributors to the study. This sampling phenomenon, at least in this work, would happen spontaneously without asking for such information. Through this sampling I could have interviewed many more teachers and staff who became interested in the study, but because of time and the fact that I had decided to fully transcribe all interviews collected; time, money, and travel as well my limited and slow typing ability became sound rationale for capping the in-depth interviews at thirteen people although the opportunity to interview more teachers became an increasingly common occurrence as my relationships with them developed over time. 280

Patton notes that there are no rules for sample size in qualitative research. Clearly the questions I asked, the amount of time I could spend at the site, the amount of money I had for the project from my own personal funds and the distance I had to travel to the site all contributed to the sample size of this work. What was evident thoughout this research effort was that the design of the study remained flexible but emergent in light of the personal and financial constraints. Yet prior to entry at the site, I had specified a minimum sample size based on the criteria noted above. What I tried to keep in mind during this research was that the hermeneutic phenomenological method of inquiry as well as the interpretive insights generated from this research had more to do with the information-rich data of the cases selected and rny interviewing and interpretive skills than with any single sample size or sampling methodology. The effectiveness of the sample can only be judged within the context of this work and whether the cases presented do justice to the questions asked.

OPPOSITION TO THE CATCH. DEALING WITH GATEKEEPERS

As noted above the selection of the research site was out of rny control and in many respects problematic from the start. I was particularly interested in gaining entry to an elementary school building where innovative curriculum development had become a part of the school culture and the 281 ethos of the classrooms. I was also particularly interested in a large city school district because a majority of my past educational experiences had been in rural or suburban school districts. After discussing these criteria with iry academic advisor, she suggested the Claremont City School District and in particular Monnet elementary school which enjoyed a reputation for innovative curriculum development in reading and literature based instruction. My initial excitement in gaining entry to a large city school system and an innovative elementary school came to a quite unexpected and abrupt end. I initiated entry to the district by calling the Assistant Superintendent of Instruction on December 12. I was given specific instructions about writing and sending not only a letter of intent to do research in the district but a copy of my dissertation proposal along with an approved copy of the application for research which I had submitted to The Behavioral and Social Sciences Human Subjects Review Committee at the university on December 9. I gathered up the material, tucked in the approved Human Subjects Review Committee form, bundled it together and hurriedly mailed it the following day. I waited four weeks for the first response to ity inquiry. On January 7, I received a phone call from a different district Assistant Superintendent informing me that my original contact was "no longer doing that job" (I). Mary had 282 however, just received iry letter of interest and proposal, and would look it over and send it to Monnet school as soon as possible. Thanking her profusely, I recognized what must be a hard lesson for all researchers to learn, that the entry procedure was completely out my control. I had thought about driving out to the district and meeting face to face with the persons who were, quite matter of factly, not taking my proposal or my student researcher status seriously (FN). But I decided against this action for two reasons. First, I did not want to jeopardize the study. All too often gatekeepers serve as a "nerve center" in the flow of information into, out of, and within an organization (Mintzberg, 1979 p. 52- 53). They hold great power and it had to be recognized that the perceptions of the person I was dealing with toward my project might be negatively influenced by my "angst of the moment". I didn't want my anger to play out in a face to face meeting. Secondly, I needed to keep focused on the project as one which was back by a major research institution with an international reputation. If the institutional reputation was irrelevant in prompting a timely response then my status as student researcher in dialogue would seem to have little chance of success. As Punch (1994) argues, "The success of social research is not engaged by 'industry' or organizations, but by individuals in gate keeping or sponsorship through which the outcomes are mediated by their 283 own needs, organizational resources, and organizational roles". I surrendered, as I was to do many times during the writing of this work, to the loss of control and sat another two weeks before I was called again. This time the news was not encouraging. On January 20, (FN) Monnet elementary turned down the research proposal. I also found out in discussion with the new administrator that proposals such as mine are presented to the faculty as a whole and then the decision is made as a total staff. No luck, no entry at Monnet. However, Mary did say that she would submit the proposal to other schools and would get back to me. The entry process had now entered its second month. On February 1,(FN) I received another phone call and this time it was good news. The Lila Belle elementary school was interested in hearing about the project and I was instructed to call the building principal. I called Ralph Mertz the following the day and together we scheduled a meeting to discuss the project on February 15. I met with Ralph Mertz and Twila Burns, the staff development coordinator at Lila Belle for about forty five minutes on the 15th. I explained my dissertation proposal in detail to them. Although both were in agreement that the project sounded interesting they would need to present it to 284 the faculty for approval. They would talk with the teachers on February 21. On February 22, (FN) I received the call I had been patiently but anxiously waiting for. The project was accepted and I was placed on the March 7 faculty meeting agenda for a presentation of the project to the teachers. In the interim I met with Ralph on February 24, to secure a lunch meeting on March 1, to talk about my presentation to the faculty. During that lunch Ralph suggested the names of teachers I absolutely needed to talk to and he had hoped would volunteer for the study. Eventually, all three of the recommended staff members became an integral part of the project. I had decided before any contact with the building to allow teachers to volunteer for interviews. It was clear that all I could do was present my study as succinctly as I could on March 7, and hope that two or three teachers would initially be interested in an interview and then recruit others as the fieldwork progressed. The faculty presentation went well and I was ecstatic when more than eight teachers volunteered to be interviewed. I had made entry, finally, after two months of waiting for, what in rry view, was clearly a entry situation out of control. On March 17, I began the study with my first teacher interview. 285

WEAKENING THE CATCH I have come to know through this research effort the fallibility of being human, of being unable to surrender my humanness completely to the lived experience. There are those core beliefs which any researcher takes to the lived experience which simple cannot be bracketed or suspended. I have already discussed my core beliefs earlier in this chapter. Those beliefs can sometimes cause the researcher some troubles. The issue that I am about to discuss is above all else an ethical issue. Qualitative researchers, I am now convinced, are faced with a myriad of critical and often ambiguous decisions which constitutes much of joy and the angst of doing this type of research. All of the problems and dilemmas which confronted me during my ten week stay at Lila Belle cannot be discussed even briefly within these pages, but the reader must be aware of one situation which occurred during the entry phase of this research project. I am currently unsure concerning the effect this early decision had on the data collection so I present the dilemma here that readers of this work might take action on it, deliberate about it, reflect upon it and present some reasoned judgment about it. I also present it for those new to the research effort as a critical decision which for me was not only a 286 matter of coming to grips with personal belief and integrity but making an ethical research judgment "on the fly".. Prior to the faculty meeting on March 7 I had decided not to tell the faculty about ny real research intent, the collection of stories as data for the project. During my brief presentation to the faculty I decided I would simply not mention or refer to storytelling or narrative. Storytelling would not be found anywhere in my faculty presentation. I was concerned that the faculty would be thinking about stories to tell prior to interviews and I was afraid this might unduly influence the number and quality of stories told. After a forty-five minute drive I arrived at the school in the late afternoon of March 7. My presentation was buried at the end of a long agenda so I had time to think about ny strategy. I began to feel very nervous about hiding or reframing any aspect of the project, especially since the teachers had some familiarity with the research proposal as it had been shared with them earlier on in the month. But the issue ran deeper than that. It seemed to bring up from somewhere in ly soul the notion that hiding anything about this project would not respect the very "thing itself" I was wanting to investigate, an honest and straightforward best account of a professional teaching practice. I struggled with this issue during the entire meeting and finally at the 287 moment of presentation I made a judgment which was logged in rny field notes of March 7. I noted that if I was not going to be honest about what I was "up to", why would they have any better reason to be honest with me later on about what they were "up to" (FN)? Even before this project left the launch pad, I was having troubles with the guidance system. At the last possible moment, I decided to let them know that I was going to be in the business of collecting stories about their practice and presented it as such in a brief ten minute review of the project. An aspect of qualitative research, or probably any applied research methodology which investigates the practical knowledge of lived experiences is the absolute and now clear fact that one often doesn't discover mistakes in data collection or research designs until after the fact. Although I followed my suppositions and beliefs which at their core are oriented toward the good and foster a strong respect for persons which cannot be surrendered to, such core beliefs may have influenced this project. I do not know if teachers told the stories because that was what was expected of them or whether the stories were naturally occurring as a result of trusting relationships developed with them over the course of the observation period. I would like to believe the latter but the effect of "truthful admission" still remains an unanswered question at this writing. 288

I raise this issue as a weakness in the research design and data collection methodology because I simply didn't know how to overcome it at the time. Either I remained true to the project or true to myself. This is not an either/or binary I had anticipated living with but it certainly had a major impact on my role within the project. I found I could not divorce iryself, bracket myself, entirely from the work. I am always a story within the story that is this body of work. But it is more a story of how the outer world is shaped by the inner life and vice-versa. Qualitative researchers, as I have discovered through my own research experience, must make these moral and practical judgments as they occur and make them known as stories of troubles and predicaments that are rarely anticipated or cleverly foreshadowed in any tight research design. They must just be dealt with "as they occur", and the manner in which they are resolved reflects the researcher's standpoint to the project, to those I investigated and to myself. But for me there is the broader issue and the broader personal realization about how my personal and professional paths taken in living my life have greatly influenced not only what I have chosen to study but the way in which that study presents itself to the lived experience and to the reader. This is the real growth I have gained from this project; personal insight and the confidence that what I bring to the 289 research effort is imbedded in an orientation toward the good.

But the deeper issue is the notion of deception. Would the benefits of knowledge outweigh the harm of damaging trust between the researcher and the participants at the very- beginning of an important project? I suspect one need not be brutally honest, strikingly straightforward, or blatantly secretive about sharing all the details of a research project with the participants, but I clearly believe, at this point in iry own development that no researcher ought engage in disguise or deception if it can be helped. The decision I had to make, that I wrestled myself into, depended on making a reasoned judgment about being open or less than open, honest or less than honest. In the end, what I claimed to be unable to surrender to, what I carried to the site as beliefs and suppositions concerning a respect for persons and an orientation toward the good forced me to take into account the care and respect I held both for the integrity of iry research work and the integrity of those who participated with me. The crux of the problem, of course, is that deception, as mild as it might have been, may have enabled me to gain data I would not have otherwise obtained. However, at this point in ity research life I chose to keep my boots clean and ity hands above the table. 290

STANDING IN WONDERMENT BEFORE THE CATCH I have argued previously for standing in wonderment to the lived experience. Being in a state of wonder is being able to question what one sees, hears and in flashes of willful and disciplined insight come to understand and make reasoned sense of the surrounding world. I have also argued that we are reasoned persons in that we take action in the world, deliberate about, reflect on make judgments about and subsequently change those actions. And in wonder and reason we achieve a conceptual apparatus a fenestration to understanding and meaning which allows for a certainty that our actions make reasonable sense to us and to others around us. Wonderment and reason seem to be at least two primary ingredients in the recipe of intersubjective understanding. If we consider reason and wonderment as ranges of understanding and meaning making we encounter the first stages of what it means to achieve an evolutionary epistemology, a sense of the dynamics of a socially constructed practical knowledge of "things themselves" which remain open to wonderment and open to change. What we have come to know is that our being has been influenced by the questions we ask about the lived experience which surrounds us. Wonderment and reason places us in direct and engaged contact with our world, with "things themselves" which are the objects of our real experience. For if we 291 accept that we have no direct contact with our world of experiences, then there can be no wonderment, no reasoned judgments about what is right or wrong, good or bad, fluid or static.

When we stand in wonder at the lived experience we accept the phenomenological strangeness of an event and in wonderment there is a flash of insight, a calling to question as a quality of sustained awareness of a lived experience, thereby allowing us to frame and create an inquiring path which leads in a specific direction. In following that path we use whatever conceptual and methodological tools are available to clear out the underbrush of confusion and the feeling of uncertainty accompaning a sense of wonderment and questioning. When a question has yielded to the tool, and the researcher has found a solution, and seen the light, she reaches a reasoned understanding a flash of illuminated meaning where she can say, "So this is what it means." Wonderment is of the imagination and may not at all be found reasonable and shareable. Reason seems to be in quest of understanding and meaning, reaching a felt conclusion from what is palpably and actively known of the physical world. Wonderment is of the heart and soul and mind, a reframing of understanding and meaning which is always an intellectual question of "I do not understand and I must do something about it" which is in every sense an evolution from past 292 conclusions toward a future not known. When wonderment is dominant, when it is a part of being in the world, the researcher has the sense of an ontological epistemology which is primarily intellectual, primarily subjective. When reason is dominant the researcher has the sense of an ontological being in the world that is primarily physical and actively involved with the other, primarily objective in that others note, "Of course that is a reasonable position". Wonderment and reason acting together within the traditions and history of the lived experience provide a powerful dynamic interplay of wondering imagination and reasoned engaged action in the evolution of the intersubjective understanding and meaning making of a socially constructed life. Standing in wonderment to the lived experience and sharing a reasoned knowledge about it identifies two ways of knowing about the world, the physical and the conceptual. What I have tried to claim is that understanding and meaning making always involves mediation between the two. Reason involves a seeing and feeling of the lived experience, seeing what-is-there in deliberation and reflection which accounts for reasonable actions felt by the self and others taken in the world. Wonderment on the other hand is questioning of those things that are found to matter to us, holding us in a subjective contact with the lived experience that guides our reason and is always precipitated by our own creative and 293 imaginative quest of meaning and understanding of things unknown. The researcher as a "self-as-wonderer" is then a metaphor which in some constructive fashion holds the view that one is a person bounded by the physical and the conceptual, an integrated, a total person as an aware and knowing investigator of the lived experience which is both swirling center of intellectual and conceptual subjectivity and a reasoned objective awareness of sharable emotion, deliberation, reflection, judgment and action organized into an evolving whole which makes a claim to the universal intersubjectivity of understanding and meaning making embedded in both the intellectual, conceptual and physical capacity to imagine alternatives to a life well lived. An evolutionary life is a life bound in a dynamic flow of interconnected reason and wonderment about the ordinariness of life where reason informs wondering activity and wonderment remains essential to the development and evolution of reason which always informs it. The creative and evolutionary life is also a life of necessary and reasoned order (Scheff1er, 1965) . I have argued that the viable life is a life that is oriented toward the good. This moral standpoint then enlists the power of wonderment subjectively held by the self be used on behalf of the reasoned good of the other. In being a reasoned person one's wonderment in the lived experience is 294 enlisted on behalf of the other as well as for oneself. This is the moral foundation, the moral orientation which in every sense precedes what should be done and in every respect has directed this work. This standpoint, this feeling, this reasoned being in the world in relation to others is either directly or indirectly a construction of one's reasoned wonderment about it. We simply have no direct access to or ability to increase our breadth and depth of understanding and meaning without recourse to our wonderment and reasoned judgments about it. As I have argued, narrative is one method, one recourse to making wonder and reasoned judgments known to the self and to others. Narratives organize human experience in making sense of the everyday life. It is an integral structure that links meaning and understanding to the reasoned action of and wonderment about the self and society. Thoughout out this work I have argued for the importance of narrative in the construction of meaning and understanding. And in a sense of wonder, I ask questions about the nature of narrative and its relationship to the achievement of a teaching practice. The principal instrument of inquiry into the reasoned lived experiences of teachers, for purposes of this ethnography, is the interview. Asking questions and getting answers formed the data collection work for this 295 dissertation. And the work was much harder than it seemed at first blush.

Qualitative research has traditionally relied heavily on the interview as the principal instrument of research (Atkinson & Hammersley, 1994; Berg, 1989; Bogdan & Biklen, 1982; Darroch & Silvers, 1982; Denzin & Lincoln, 1994; Douglas, 1970; 1991; Eisner & Peshkin, 1990; Erickson, 1986; Fontana & Frey, 1994; Jorgensen, 1989; Kirk & Miller, 1986;

Lincoln & Cuba, 1985; Lofland & Lofland, 1984b; Marshall & Rossman, 1989; Miles & Huberman, 1994; Polkinghorne, 1983; 1992; Rabinow & Sullivan, 1987; Rudduck & Hopkins, 1985; Siverman, 1993; Van Maanen, 1988; van Manen, 1990; Wax, 1971; Wolcott, 1990; 1994; Yin, 1989). This qualitative research literature base consistently stresses the notion that asking questions of the lived experience one is interested in knowing about is always an artful (Jorgensen, 1989) as well as, wondering activity. Jorgensen categorizes several different types of descriptive questions which were meagerly used in the interview sessions conducted for this work. Such descriptive questions include but certainly were not limited to: • grand-tour questions-a request for an overview of some matter of interest ; • mini-tour questions-more detailed exploration of a particular matter; 296

• Example questions-requests for illustrations and examples of matters of interest; • experience questions-queries about people's direct experiences or what has actually happened; and • native-language questions-requests for extrapolation or clarification of particular terms, concepts, phrases, and the like used by insiders. This work required asking some experience questions but also included all the other types of questions noted above with the exception of "native-language" questions. The reader is referred to appendix A for a full transcript of one teacher interviewsas illustration of the categories of questions asked during the interview process. Interviewing may be categorized into formal and informal interview sessions (Atkinson & Hammersley, 1994; Bogdan & Biklen, 1982; Denzin & Lincoln, 1994; Eisner, 1991; Fontana & Frey, 1994; Van Maanen, 1988; Wolcott, 1994). Formal interviewing employs a structured set of questions. All questions are used in exactly the same way with all the participants. Also known as the structured interview, there is little room for variation in the schedule of questions presented. Data is recorded by the interviewer according to a coding scheme that has already been established by the researcher. The interviewer remains in control of the sessions by treating the schedule like a theatrical script to 297 be followed with deviation from the lines that are learned (Fontana & Frey, 1994 p. 363). Formal or structured interviewing requires the interviewer to play a neutral role in the interview process, never interjecting opinions about the respondent's answers. The nature of the formal or structured interview is aimed at minimizing errors and gather a highly uniform set of information (Jorgensen, 1989) . The informal interview or unstructured interview process provides greater depth and breadth of data. This type of interviewing is characterized by the give and take of the questioning format. Matters of interest to the researcher are pursued and the questioning is casual, flowing and free of pre-suppositions of how the nature of the topics will be discussed. Personal feelings are allowed to influence the questions asked and what is more questions asked by the participants are answered by the researcher. This is a far cry from the cool, distant and rational interviewer seen in the structured interview format (Fontana & Frey, 1994) . The narrative turn (Bakhtin, 1981; Barthes, 1991; Coles,

1989; Genette, 1982; 1988; Greimas, 1990; Mitchell, 1981; Polkinghorne, 1988; Ricoeur, 1981; 1984; 1991; 1992; Rimmon- Kenan, 1983; Rorty, 1992; Searle , 1992; Shuman, 1986; 1990; Taylor, 1989; White, 1980; Young, 1987) the recognition that people narrativise their lived experience requires a reconsideration of the interviewing process. Traditional 298 interviewing techniques seem less than appropriate when encouraging others to share stories about their lives. As Bruner (1990) points out persons that emerge from many interviews become artificialized by the interviewing methodology (p. 115). During the initial interviews at Belle school I found myself micro-managing the interview and ity relationships with the teachers. I found myself steering the conversations more toward what I thought I needed from the data (stories) and less toward just settling in and actively listening to the voices of teaching practices. I was enormously concerned that I made myself clear about what type of data I wanted and how I wanted it presented. I found my questions to be long and cumbersome, almost narratives in themselves because, at times I really didn't know where the questions would lead or whether I was even wording them appropriately. I wanted to be relaxed and unconcerned about my role as researcher but at the same time I needed to be concerned about how I was presenting myself and what kind of "professional research image" I was creating in the minds and hearts of the teachers (FN). One teacher by the name of Eve considered me a possible central office administration agent sent by the district to spy on the building. Because of this lack of trust and subsequent suspicion about my role as researcher within that particular interview context, I had to terminate our 299 relationship three weeks after it began (T). This experience sensitized me to the importance of the context of the individual interviews and my role as interviewer. I was concerned to the point of paranoia that other teachers were feeling this way, I made a point to check with each teacher about their perceptions of the interview relationships and was relieved to find out that none were feeling the least bit uncomfortable. Managing my perception as researcher was always at issue during the beginning of the study but as the research progressed I found myself, like Wax (1971 p. 77) gradually being pulled into the role of "willing learner" where instead of getting information through a stiff, dominant and formal interview, the teachers began to instruct me on the less confidential aspects and attitudes, beliefs and assumptions about their teaching practice. After a time in the building and the establishment of a certain level of comfort and, I believe trust, the teachers began volunteering and pushing information toward me as opposed to my initial interviews and questions which served as nothing more than verbal pliers designed for pulling information out of them. During my growth as researcher I moved from a role of micro-managing the relationships to a co-participant in the emergent and evolving stories of the teachers lived experiences. I learned that in the collection of stories, those interviewed must 300 have control of the interview situation. I had to let go of the management and control issues, to let the train derail, get off the track, and let it go in the direction the teachers wanted to take it. Letting go and settling in to the context sensitive nature of storytelling was clearly one the most valuable lessons learned during the fieldwork conducted for this research.

What made the collection of stories through interviewing difficult was not the solicitation of the stories but ray tendency early on in the interviews to cut these stories off at the start. Mishler (1986) describes exactly my early experiences in the interview process as, "A cumulative suppression of stories...where interviewers cut off accounts that might develop into stories, do not record them when they appear and select only those pieces that fit their coding systems". As my experience grew within the context of each interview situation the interviews and questions asked became more personalized and as the relationships between myself and the teachers grew, so did the length and breadth and depth of the stories. I also began to tell some of my own life stories as a co-participant in the interview sessions. This new relational dynamic based on sensitivity to one another and to the personal experience stories being shared in the context of trust and support provided for a larger range of responses and much greater insights into the stories and the lived 301 experience of the teachers. As Oakley (1981 p. 40) notes, "There is no intimacy without reciprocity" (p.40). The collection of stories as data is simply a fragile and delicate process as my experience with Eve shows. Therefore, the interviewer must be flexible and prepared to close interviews if they are not going well, if there is any sense that the interview is uncomfortable for the subject or there is an immediate danger that one tenuous relationship could possibly have unintended consequences on the growth and development of other subsequent interviews. The interviewer must be sensitive to the context of the relationship and the impact that relationship might have to the project as whole; to shift interviewing methodology from a monocular distant and mildly cool and detached view, to squarely watching with both eyes the emergent and delicate quality of the developing relationships between the interviewer and the respondent, adjusting the questions to minimize status differences and doing away with the traditional hierarchical situations in interviewing so that interviewers can also show their human side, share their own stories and express their own feelings (Fontana & Frey, 1994). As the interviews progressed I became less concerned with managing my presence in the interview context. I threw out most of the "tool kit how to's" of informal and unstructured interviewing mentioned by Patton (1990), Bogdan 302 and Biklin (1982) Lincoln and Guba (1985) which had been read and learned prior to the research and became more chameleon, more adaptive and creative in questioning the lived experience. Because each interview was allowed to follow its own course and no set of questions was the same for each interview the data collected and reported is in every sense polyphonic (Riessman, 1993). The voices of the subjects were recorded with minimal influence from the researcher. Each interview was different, a different set of questions, a difference path followed, a different story created a different voice signified (Fontana & Frey, 1994). The growth I experienced as researcher of the lived experience provided not only personal satisfaction, but represented an evolution a deepening of the ways in which one can wonder about life and the depth and breadth of a wider sense of reason about the role of story in the development of meaning and understanding of the lived experience. Clearly one gains a new sense of emergent reason and wonderment and insight into the lived experience only by climbing out of the old ways and into the new (Taylor, 1991b) But the old ways of formal and structured interviewing doesn't exclude talking about their ways of arriving at how others make sense of their worlds. What I have tried to argue above is that the informal ways of talking and sharing and 303 coming to grips with the different roles inherent in the interview situation is what, for me, approaches iny true self. The data collection presented in the following chapters simply operates within the notion that truth as intersubjective understanding of the world of others is located in the way we all live our lives and tell others about it. The truth in each of these stories is embedded in the transitions and transactions, descriptions and redescriptions of overcoming faults and heading for horizons of hope which by climbing out of error and finding new ways of wondering about and making reason in a sometimes cantankerous and unreasonable world, there evolves a discourse, a form of linguistic life which in taking action in the world, deliberating, reflecting on and making judgments about it represents an epistemology of alternative conceptions to approaching individual truth and a true self. (Taylor, 1991b) One simply cannot come to terms with understanding the context in which one lives and works and takes action in the world without some sort of language which engenders a view about the notion of personal truth. Evolving into a reasoned person, a true self, is to take a wondering stance to the world and to come to terms with it, to render it reasonable through the clarification of language. Narrative is the indispensable language form which assimilates the subjectivism of wonderment and the 304 objectivism of reason in a clarification of both the self and the lived experience and in that constitutive process rests the personal truth of self-understanding and self-knowledge. Clarifying our lived experience is inseparable from getting clear about our wonderment about it. One never frees oneself from the questioning nature of a reasoned life which in its evolution always stands on moving ground. There is no master narrative, no universal and objective truth about the self and the world. Living a reasoned life and coming to an understanding of the lived experience is a constructed truth that is meaningful of and making sense about specific interpretive communities located in limiting historical and traditional circumstances (Riessman, 1993). The nature of unstructured interviewing allows for the full blossoming of an evolving reality described and constructed in story which is the best account of local and situated events and not just the search for truth lying somewhere between the self and reality which can only be located by some generic tool kit with specific instructions on "how to get interviewing done right the first time".

BECOMING AWARE OF THE POWER OF THE PASSIONS IN THE

LIVED EXPERIENCE

Aristotle argues that standing in wonderment to the lived experience is the development of a reasoned character and exercise of reasoned action which is always informed by 305 practical wisdom which functions in close connection with the beliefs and assumptions associated with excellent character (Nussbaum, 1986 p. 308) . He notes that an experienced person (having practical wisdom) confronting a new and unique situation does not attempt to face it with the intellect "itself by itself", rather she faces it, instead, in action informed by a basic core of beliefs and assumptions always informed by deliberation, reflection and judgment, and I might add, an abiding sense of wonderment. For Aristotle, the pleasures and pains, the to-be- pursued and the to-be-avoided are marked out and illuminated by the very ways in which "things themselves" present themselves to the passions, those core beliefs and assumptions which cannot be surrendered in pursuit of the catch (Nussbaum, 1986 p. 309) As Nussbaum notes, "Frequently the perception of the salient features of a new experience will be achieved in a way that relies centrally upon the discriminating power of the passions" (p.308). I frame iry beliefs and assumptions within the passion metaphor for the following reason. In every respect this work has been a passionate endeavor. I spent over one hundred hours at Belle school over a ten week period observing the "goings on" in and around the building and collecting stories. I spent five months and close to three hundred hours transcribing, completely, thirteen tapes of recorded text. 306

And in that effort there was, there had to a discipline born not out of necessity or convenience but out of passion for the endeavor.

Nussbaum (Nussbaum, 1986) notes that Aristotle argued that without passion, without action embedded in the core of beliefs and suppositions by which one lives a meaningful and caring life, action ceases to be moral in nature. Passion is the essence, the awareness of being within and taking action in the lived experience which makes it more than something which is merely self-controlled. If taking generous action in the world is done only with a constant effort, strain and reluctance, one is not acting generously. If taking sincere action in the world is done only with a constant effort, strain and reluctance, one is not acting sincerely. And if one is not acting generously and sincerely, she is not worthy of the same commendation as the person who enjoys her generosity and sincerity as a matter of the whole heart and whole soul (p. 309) . If one benefits others but does not love them, she is lacking in practical excellence and practical wisdom next to the person who does.

What is evident in the over three hundred pages of single space transcripts treated as data for this work is the passion teachers hold for their practice. The stories presented in chapter I-IV are not stories about constant effort, strain and reluctance, although there is some of each 307 present, but rather stories about overcoming constant effort, strain and reluctance as a result of the love they hold for their children. Their passionate respect for their children as persons of great worth, their high regard for their profession and for themselves are the constituent and virtuous beliefs and assumptions which make the achievement of a teaching practice more than merely an act of the controlled self, but rather an act of selflessness in control which must be considered, in the context of this study, an intrinsic passion, belief or assumption which is the road map to a practical knowledge and practical wisdom of a teaching life well lived. I want to argue that there is need to talk about beliefs and assumptions of teaching as passions because it reflects the power of the narrative turn, of the recognition of the power of narrative in the examination of the achievement of a teaching practice. The stories told here are stories of and about the total person and the context in which the person is located. They are the acknowledgment of the practical features and knowledge of personal situations and contexts upon which the stories are based, a recognition of the practical. And as such, these stories are the stories of that which is non-intellectual (Nussbaum, 1986) . To worry and fret over a child who is being abused in the home, or a child who is failing in class is not to take note of this fact with 308 intellect alone. But rather it is the deliberation, reflection and judgment in passioned worry which is a passional response, as acknowledging of the situation for what it is, to see it, to recognize it and to feel it. For to disengage oneself from the other, to be only intellectually or rationally present, is to confront the lived experience as being-without-feeling which is not a human response. As Aristotle notes, "If there is someone for whom nothing is pleasant and one thing does not differ from another, she would be far from being a human being" (Nussbaum, 1986 p, 309) ,

Narratives are the way teachers physically and conceptually see, take in and recognize their practice. To separate practical knowledge, practical wisdom, the wondering about and making reasoned sense of a living, breathing teaching practice from the passions in which they are embedded and the narratives through which they are told loses them not only their informing power but also their intrinsic basic human worth (Nussbaum, 1986), I firmly believe as does Taylor (1991b) that one cannot walk away from the old epistemology without working out an alternative conception, which in some ways seems like a formula for remaining trapped in it to some degree, I have tried to argue in this chapter for an epistemology of hermeneutic phenomenological (Schütz & Luckman, 1973; van 309

Manen, 1990) wonder and reason informed by narratives of the lived experience (Taylor, 1989). I have argued for an interpretive human science (Rabinow & Sullivan, 1987) which incorporates an evolving sense of personal self-understanding embedded in the history and traditions of the lived experience (Gadamer, 1992) I have argued that the dynamic of wonderment (Green, 1986) and reason in dialogic relationship creates a linguistic form of life (Winch, 1958) which is the always evolving (Elbaz, 1991) narrative construction of the lived experience. And I have argued that such a lived experience is always a moral one in that the passions (Nussbaum, 1986) cannot be separated from the wonderment and reason which is always present in stories which speak from the center of human experience (Wolff, 1976) and beliefs and values as it concerns itself as well as informs itself with the practical knowledge (Connelly & Clandinin, 1985) that is foremost the knowledge of important human "things themselves". "Any attempt rigorously to eliminate our human perspective from our picture of the world must lead to absurdity" (Polanyi, 1958 p. 3). And it would be absurd to deny the practical knowledge and wisdom embedded in these teacher stories, or to deny the power of the passions which commit that knowledge to the care and respect for the personhood of each of their students. 310

ESTABLISHING THE TRUSTWORTHINESS OF THE STUDY Evaluation of narrative study remains problematic. By what measure is the truth of a narrative established? How does one tell a true narrative from a lie? Verification and generalization in the empiricist model of research operates on assumptions of tight research design and reliable sample sizes. None of those criteria apply to narrative studies. Personal experience stories are not meant to be read nor to be interpreted as mirror to a world "out there".(Riessman, 1993) . But the very nature of narrative as personal experience stories that persons tell about and construct their lives by represent what is culturally, contextually and socially available to them and stories about their personhood, their lives and their experiences must have these cultural and historical traditions which are constructed, communicated, negotiated and compromised within social structures and institutions. I have argued in this chapter that one way of getting a handle on what may be considered truth or the "way things really are" may be quite an impossible feat. All of us must bring some level of interpretation to what is considered reasonable action, to make sense of understanding not only our own actions, but the actions of others. In this case, one must be content with what I have called a hermeneutic phenomenological way of being in the world which is always a 311 mediation between, as Eisner notes (1991) a "mind-mediated version of what any of us take to the case" (p.109) and the reality as it really is. And since making reasonable sense of our lived experiences always requires deliberation, reflection and judgment in our interpretations of the actions of others in the world as well as own, we simple can not secure a purchase on "things themselves" without the prejudices of our beliefs, traditions, and histories being part of cost. We cannot ever be certain of having found the truth. As Eisner (1991) notes:

We are always "stuck" with judgments and interpretations. Interpretations are always inherently an act of judgment. The fact that we make judgments does not mean that we have no basis for judging the soundness of the judgments we make. We must consider the evidentiary basis of our judgments; whatever they are, they will always be fallible. It is reasonable to expect that we have good grounds for the judgments we make, but not that our judgments are certain, (p. 109)

And so qualitative researchers are faced with not so much searching for a truthful and objective reality so much as trying to establish some trustworthiness of the interpretation of the data whereby one increases the probability that a judgment of trustworthiness will be assessed by those who are in an interpretive position to know. I have dutifully followed the recommendations of Lincoln and Guba (1985), Bogdan and Biklin (1982), and Patton (1990) in building trustworthiness into the study. I maintained 312 rigorous field notes of day to day activities in additional to a personal log where notes from readings and personal reactions to daily occurrences within the site were maintained and consulted during the data analysis, I maintained excellent rapport with the teachers and if I was unable to make a scheduled interview I would call and reschedule. I engaged in triangulation, checking pieces of data gained from one source with another to validate one source against the other.

The entire transcribed interview was shared with each teacher as they were completed. Four of the teachers met with me for dinner in early November to talk about their stories and to ask questions of one another about their stories. All interpretations of the stories used in this dissertation were shared with the teachers as member checks for the purpose of establishing credibility of the interpretations. This sharing was done on a continuous basis. I also kept a reflexive journal (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) . This journal, a kind of personal experience diary, was used to basically keep up ny spirits when the words would not come easily or the logic would not move wisely. I used this diary to log those moments of absolute personal panic in order to stay focused on what really mattered; making the voices of the teachers known in this study. 313

But all of these techniques simply are not adequate to assess the trustworthiness of research done within the "narrative turn" and the interpretive human sciences. There are several reasons for making this statement. First as Riessman notes (1993) there is the issue of persuasiveness. Is the interpretation reasonable and convincing? Are the stories told and the interpretations made of them the best accounts of claims made that are supported by the evidence collected? Such persuasiveness for van Manen (1990) is embedded in the writing of the text where its depth and richness attains its credibility and trustworthiness though leading the reader to it, making her go through it, encounter it, suffer it, consume it and be consumed by it (p. 153). Persuasiveness ultimately rests on the rhetoric of deep and thick phenomenological descriptive writing. Secondly there is the issue of the interpretation itself, constructing adequate representations of what was seen and heard at the research site. But human stories are always moving ground (Riessman, 1993). They are not static and the meaning of experiences can change as the context of the situation and the consciousness of the teller changes. Member checks are always, in this sense, questionable and always open to debate as time passes between the collection of the data and the writing of the project (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). In the final analysis, the researcher has the power to 314 name and the power to make interpretations. This work is mine and no else may take the credit or the blame. I take the responsibility for whatever truth and reason and understanding the reader gathers from it. And so in the final analysis of trustworthiness within the narrative turn, credibility falls to the audience. All that can be provided in this study, in light of establishing credibility and trustworthiness is to describe how the interpretation of the data was produced, making visible the data collected and how I collected it, making primary data available for other researchers, and above all else, "making known and bringing to the surface the "foundational assumptions (and values) which have driven the research in the first place, not concealing them underneath the methodological artifice of science (Riessman, 1993). My voice is one source of the credibility of this work's authority. The voices of the teachers are the other. But all each of us have, certainly within the narrative turn as an interpretive human science, is the talk and texts that represent reality partially, selectively and somewhat imperfectly (Riessman, 1993 p. 15).

THE PERSONAL EXPERIENCE STORIES OF CAROLYN WHITE Carolyn has been teaching for the past twenty-four years. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree from a small 315 liberal arts college in the midwest and has completed graduate work in Education at a medium size regional campus which offers extension courses near her home. Carolyn is in her early fifties. She is a quiet person with a wonderful dry wit and caring attitude. Her manner is soft-spoken and she is very measured and precise,one would say stoic, in her description of her professional and personal life. I met Carolyn for five sessions, each lasting approximately forty- five to fifty minutes. I was always glad to meet with her, as with the others, but her experience and history at this school added an additional sense of the importance of the stories she was sharing with me. She was sharing her deep knowledge of traditions at the school, the way things have been done and are being done at the school. She carried the torch of wisdom which lighted iry path to the history of the building and those who worked there.

HOW CAROLYN WHITE CAME TO TEACHING I think I'm close to the same age category where women, at that time, it was kind of...if you were going to college at that time it was nursing or teaching. I didn't like blood, so I wanted to be a teacher and I never regretted that decision. I stayed in the classroom. I've not really wanted to get into the supervisory capacity. 316

CURRICULUM

But even one of rny real low ones said, "This is the best book I've ever read" so that, that means a lot when they do and say that. We work a lot on writing. We don't spend a lot of time... at this stage what I'm trying to do is getting them to be kind of prolific writers rather than picking at every little thing they do. Getting them to express themselves, I guess is what they get down on paper and feel comfortable with that. We do journals everyday and a lot of story writing and creative writing and publishing of books. In math I probably tend to be the most traditional in math although in things, like when I do geometry or we so some things with tangrams and some activities with that. But, multiplication, addition, subtraction I just kind of...you know really work at problem solving. But, then also how to relate it to everyday life. We do cooking and I do the "everyday counts" bulletin boards so that they see how math works into everyday life. That math is just not worksheets, but I also tend to be old fashioned about, "You have to learn your facts. " And you have to know how to do some of these problems. Every Friday we have what we call a "fun day" where we do Quizmo, a math game, or other math games. And they look forward to that. So math is not always pencil and paper. The relationships are different with different kids. I guess I really just, little Frederick, that was here after 317 school, my unusual and creative child, you know, so that's, you know, other teachers don't want him, you know, that kind of thing. You know, just having him Thursdays may not, I really, I enjoy him most of the time. There are days when he gets on your nerves, so I try to work around his quirks and maybe give in too often. I guess it's not really giving in, it's more finding alternative ways for him to do things rather than insisting, like you know, he doesn't like to read stories, so he can use the computer to write them out. Where other people would say, you know, twenty-six kids must do it this way and you have to conform and he is just not going to be. As an adult, I just don't see him conforming, he's not going to be that type of personality.

TIME

I think especially having a combination class. I'm really moving every minute and teaching every minute. And that is the reason that I had to put papers and things after school because there is never enough time...going from one group to the other continually. I get really frustrated by interruptions and having kids, and I know this is very necessary, but having kids, you know, I have someone from third grade who comes for reading. I have three kids from the Learning Disabilities unit that have to leave at a certain time. I have three that go to speech. So, juggling those times, it makes the time too structured for me. I would 318

rather not, I mean if we are on a roll in math class, I would rather not have to stop. Because, it's two o'clock and we have to start social studies, because Judy is coming from the other, and I also have another fourth grader who comes for math and so it's a lot of interruptions. I guess I shouldn't call them interruptions, it is more you know, having to stick to a very rigid time schedule and I don't like to be that routine. We pretty much start immediately in the morning. I always have something on their desks that they can be working on while I am doing lunch count. And those kinds of things we start immediately. In fact, I had one mother complain because I had marked her daughter tardy a couple of times, and I give them some leeway of about five minutes but, if they are not here, because we begin right away, you know, I do send their names down to the office right away and she has another daughter who's in the same building and that daughter has never been marked tardy and she had wondered if I had not made a mistake. And I just, you know, it is assumed that I, the mistake was that, you know, yes, I do think that time is important and they need to be here and starting. She dawdles in the hall, isn't here and, you know, the bell, the tardy bell's rung, so I mark her tardy. I get frustrated with time in my life, I guess. Because I end up spending a lot of time carrying things home. I'm envious of people who walk out of here at three and come in 319 at eight and don't take anything home. I don't know how they do that. Sometimes I think I must be terribly disorganized or something. But I can't...I've cut down a lot on paper work that I, you know, have kids do but there is still a certain amount that is needed. I figure if they do it I need to go over it and also try and keep current on it so that it, you know, if we did something today and ten of them don't understand it then we can always work on that tomorrow. It doesn't do any good to grade it two weeks from now and find out that they didn't understand it, you know? And I've also found that, and somebody had to point this out to me, that summer time and vacation time it takes me a week or two or reset my clock because, as I said somebody pointed this out to me that we're so used to lesson plans that, that are written down and that it's ten o'clock and you do this that and I use to set myself crazy at home because I, you know, it was like, "Oh my gosh, what am I going to do when I start something", and then it was like, you know, I should be doing something else and I was just completely almost a nervous maniac. And I shut all these things in my mind I was going to do and, and somebody pointed out that, you know, it was because of that very structured time, you know, that, yes, we do this, and then this, and then this (in the classroom) and at home you don't have this 320 unless you make yourself a lesson plan. And finally I started to understand that and how the structured school time affected me at home Sometimes Ian, my husband, and I need to get away right after school is out so that I can just sit and read or do whatever, just, you know, away from everything because if I am home, you know, there are things to be done and I want to clean drawers and wash windows and have too many things that I want to get accomplished. And, yet it sometimes takes isolation or separation of probably about a week or two. Yeah, it probably is, you know ,it takes a week or two to decompress and I've talked to other people who are the same way. So iry husband would come home at night and say what have you done today and it was like, "Aaahhhhh, I was gonna, you know", then I'd walk into another room and start something else, and it's like to start and clean a drawer and like as I say, I would start things and stop things, just like spelling and now it's time for math, and I get really frustrated at home moving from one thing to another. I guess the thing I find like the week before school begins I'm almost in a depression thing. It's, it's almost like I'm never going to have any more life; of the things that I've done in the summer. It's like, it's and again it's a mental type thing that, "I won't have time to read, I 321 won't be able to sew, I won't be able to do these things." So it's kind of like "Get everything done" because that life is ending and you're going into another.

A BAD STORY

I would say it's always been uphill. There has never... possibly one year I had a real difficult group that, you know, I would say if I ever thought about moving in another direction, it could have possibly been that year. It was just a combination of real difficult kids. I think at times my personality tends to be pretty level. I don't raise...1 very seldom raise my voice with kids. I think, I think I'm thought of as, you know, fairly stable and consistent loving type with the students. And sometimes when you are that way you get a lot of kids that need tender loving care and if you get too many kids who need TLC and they're bumping heads with each other...That year I had a boy who was borderline autistic, I had a severely emotionally disturbed; I had two severely emotionally disturbed kids, I think just going through, not that anybody is normal, but I think there were eighteen or nineteen very difficult students in that room out of twenty five or twenty six students. I was loaded. Again, I think, you know, just kids being placed there because the rest of the staff at that particular grade level were...I don't mean to be "screamers" but, you know that type...and so, you know, I just got more than I could 322 work with, you know, you get too many of those kids together and you just can't fill...I never looked for a good week or a good day or a good hour, you know. It was like, if I had a good fifteen minutes.

In fact the one little boy we ended up having, he went down into...the custodian had had to carry him in off the playground. This was the emotionally disturbed child. He'd gotten out of control out there, put him in the principal's office and he was going to bang his head into the wall, you know, and seriously injure himself. They ended up calling the Sheriff and a couple of squads. There were like five or six uniformed people in the principal's office and this child still would not stop. You know, like nothing; afraid of nothing.

It was five or six years ago. I just had a bad combination of kids, you know. You can get too many problem kids in one classroom and it was just overwhelming; the classroom management and very frustrating because you just felt like you were getting nowhere. And again, you felt sorry for the students who were there and wanting to learn and I guess they learn in spite of us. But, it just, there were a lot of distractions that were very hard to go through. As I said it makes you appreciate the good. And the last, I guess, five years since then I certainly have had the good. 323

The little boy who was borderline autistic was the kind who would, you never knew what would set him off and if something did he'd sit and bang his head on the desk or he always felt kids were looking at him, you know. That would just set him into a frenzy, a screaming type frenzy of some kind. If he and this emotionally disturbed child would...you know, I had to keep them kind of separated because if they would tangle they would be into a fight or a screaming battle of some kind. The one that I felt had some autistic tendencies, one of the characteristics that he was able to do was tell you directions anywhere. You know, if Mom went to the outlet store he'd say, "We went to Rice's outlet" and he'd say, "Now we took interstate 40...", and he would give you all these detailed directions which is characteristic of an autistic person, you know, who can just rattle off all the street names and just knew things perfectly. So he was interesting. There were, you know, a number of other children in there who had home problems and just, it was constant. Oh, another one that was in the class that I had forgotten about, a girl who would scream and cry about coming to school and she did this through fifth grade. She's in middle school now. I have not heard whether she's actually there; very poor attendance record. She would drive up out in front and Mom would bring her to school. She lived in apartments over here. Many times 324

Mom could not get her out of the car. We'd have to pull her out of the car. She would scream and carry on and I guess the thing that was hard for me to understand, and this is probably again, a characteristic of perhaps an abused child. Mom looked like a lady wrestler. And Mom would drag her in by her hair! You know, kind of shove her in the room. And this kid is screaming that she wants to be with Mom! And I'd stand there and, you know, here I am, very quite, surrounded by mild kinds of kids, you know, and she'd rather be with this woman who is yanking her hair! And, this continued on, as I said in every class she was ever in. You know, Ralph would go out, try and get her in. Craig, you know, would practically physically bring her in some days. It just got to the point, many times they would just let her stand outside. She'd stand out in front of the school and scream and cry and carry on. And so Jessica would be screaming outside the room standing and yelling obscene remarks and Terry would be banging his head on the desk. I remember going through that year and kind of checking off the kids and, you know, not just that there is such a thing as "normal" but I guess, you know, what you tend to think of as stable home situations and things, all things going fairly well, and I think there were only like five or six kids in that entire class that could be classified somewhere within that stable category that didn't 325 have something going awry somewhere. So, I guess that was a bad story!

ISOLATION I think' so many times though we probably make the mistake of trying to deal with those situations in our own way. I almost feel like it's a reflection upon us, if you try and get some support from your peers. I suppose that is one of the feelings that I remember most is that there is something wrong with me or my teaching. I guess I was glad I taught as many years as I had, and had successful experiences. I had to keep being reminded that, "Yes, you are a good teacher" and "Yes, you can". This is not all your fault. My husband, probably, kept telling me that. Other staff members, as well, were supportive when they realized... and helped me through that, but I think that's... I would feel real badly for, say, a teacher within their first five years to experience something like that because I think they really probably would take it very inwardly and think it was, you know, something wrong in their teaching. I'm thinking, one of the reasons I had gone into the PAL mentoring program was my cousin's daughter went into education and had the type year that I did. And over, in Connorsville, or someplace, some small school district like that, came in maybe a month after school started. I'm thinking it was an area where, probably, a very small town type area. I think she was 326

"dumped on." The type kids that she got in her class...people picked their worst kids out to give her and then the rest of the staff had been there a long time did not support her and she ended up with a mental breakdown and left teaching. And I kept thinking, you know, had there been somebody there to help her through that I really think she probably would have been a very fine teacher. So, we don't always want to reach out or to help if it's always there.

Teaching can many times be kind of an independent type of thing, you know, we say, "Oh, we close our doors and we act like we are being judged." It can be competitive. Sometimes I feel that competitiveness. Sometimes I think it is when we are working so hard. Within the PAL program we're doing some things now with peer coaching and I think that would be such a good type program. Bernice and Mona and Shirly and I have done some of that type of thing and I think that is where we really need to get to the point where it is not, you know, where you help one another and it is not as much of a competitiveness or hate, but more collaborative approach is what we need. We need much more of that. I think that is a good thing that has been happening recently that is getting more to that point. I remember when we first began and we talked about this before. I was out at New Hope school and I remember very well, of course, I didn't have children at that time yet. 327 getting to school really early in the mornings because that was, I mean, you would go to the lounge or someplace to have coffee or just sit and talk before you started the day. And no one seems to do that anymore and I don't know whether it's because we feel more pressures of more things we have to get done than we used to. I can remember even at like lunch time bringing knitting along and doing things like that. But that just doesn't seem like...but there are other buildings when I was substituting; there would be buildings that would do that. The other kind of sad thing that we have here, I believe, also is our staggered lunch periods. So there are people in this building that I never interact with because our lunch period is like eleven to eleven-thirty, so there are three or four of us down there at that time. And that's, it's not real good. The thing at Benton Falls the other night was probably the largest group of staff members that we have ever had at one time together in one place. And that was a real mix, that was a real mix. We planned like Christmas parties and, you know, a couple of other social events during the year and we'll be lucky to have, including spouses, eighteen or twenty people. I had been in the primary hall when I came here as a third grade teacher. I've been in five rooms since I've been here. I've been across the hall in third, then I moved down to...I had a two/three spilt in this hall, then I moved down 328 to the second grade in the first and second grade hall. There had been a group of us for a time and that's kind of again because of time schedules and so forth that we used to, once, like once a month go out to dinner with a former secretary from here and do some things like that which is...but scheduling got to be a problem. A lot of people live a great distance from here and many times, you know, when there is an activity they just don't want to come back wherever it is going to be.

But it's a strange building. Again, having been a substitute, I think that is a good experience for everybody to have somewhere along in their career. I've been in other buildings that were much more cohesive that did things together, and even included me as a substitute, many times, like in Christmas parties and I really felt a part of that building. They included me in social events and things outside...but it's been, it's always been a problem here. Whether it was the way the rooms, the rooms seemed to be arranged about the same. In this wing our time schedules seem to be quite a bit off. We only react like with fourth grade or interact I should say with fourth grade. We eat so early, fourth grade eats at eleven. There are four of us, two people are on duty, so it's just kind of one to one. Bert and I go out to lunch on Thursdays. Craig and Mona tend to leave right after school so there is not a lot of interaction there. 329

In the mornings everybody tends to be in their rooms getting ready. Melanie, who is the LD teacher does, she and I have been friends a number of years when I was down in that area and she usually comes down and we talk in the mornings. But that's about it. I think I mentioned before how, when I substituted in a lot of different schools people would come in the teachers lounge and I remember teaching in Plymouth and, you know, you met there every morning. It would just... you had your work done so that you could have that time together. I think it's part of the culture. I think it's somewhat, personality wise. I don't know whether it's...this is kind of, out of the way, some teachers lounges are a little bit easier...I mean they are right off the office. When I was at Pinebluff there was one right off the office so you just automatically checked your mailbox and went in there. I've not been able to figure that out here. I don't know what, why it doesn't happen more here. And I miss it because I, you know, I tend to be a social person and like to interact.

Sometimes, I guess, things... some people tend to be a little competitive and other people tend to be intimidated. I guess I look at some people who have taught as long as I have and a lot of them don't want to change or do new things. This is the way they have taught for 20 years and that's the way they are going to. And, they don't want to 330 change and therefore they don't want to have dialogue or discussion with somebody who likes to do things differently. They either feel threatened, I'm not sure whether they feel threatened or just that they don't want to do it, so they don't want to hear about it, I term it as a kind of negativism, that they just don't want to put forth the effort to change things. And then it becomes somewhat of a jealously; of people who do get excited about new things and change things. And I'm not sure how you break that down either. They are the same people that are the ones who don't want to observe in somebody else's room or get different ideas and so on; go to work shops and do new things. We mentor a first year teacher and we encourage that we are in each others' rooms and Brenda and I are both professional assistant leaders so we have done some, like what I was doing, models of teaching and she came in and watched me and critiqued me and watched me and I have done some of the same with her. We've done some work on peer coaching through that program. But again, she and I both see, we see it as valuable, but we're not sure we can convince other people again because of this fear, and maybe it goes back to the old time of what evaluation was like, it was not constructive criticism that was, it was destructive or looking for evidence of not doing your job. So whether that's it or not, I don't know. I think it's a lot of personality 331 involved. And teaching, elementary teaching, tends to be a very "go to your room and close the door" type thing. People aren't open to having people watch someone.

I guess I still ask the question, is it personality based? I don't know. You know. I...this sounds weird, but I kind of enjoy it when somebody is going to come in or because I feel like I'm doing some good techniques and some good things, not all the time, not a 100 per cent of the time, none of us do. But I thrive on that, a little bit, even though I see ityself as a quiet person and I probably wouldn't go, you know, "Come see me." I know I wouldn't. And other people get really uptight or upset about that if somebody is coming to observe or coming in. They just fall apart. So whether it is self-esteem, I just don't know. I think we have been very, in this building maybe, been very closed door type teaching. I think I have mentioned this a little bit before, that it's almost, somewhat of a competitive type thing, which has made people feel perhaps that their teaching isn't up to par with some other people. Just not realizing that there are different styles and maybe your style is OK, not maybe, but your style is OK, because that is your individual style, I think teaching is a very, you can't go with every model or style because your personality doesn't fit that, so you've got to go with what 332 you are comfortable with. And how you can present material the best. We work so hard teaching kids to work cooperatively and work together and we isolate ourselves. Elementary probably much more so than the middle and the high schools. Because they tend to work in teams and in departments.

ADMINISTRATION Evaluation, at least in iry experience, was more negative rather than positive. Where I think that whole thing has changed. Where now they are looking for good things. And they, I had...when I was in the Bloomington area the principal I had would, he would not leave your room until he found something that was wrong, be it locker doors are not closed, or that type of thing so it was a very negative approach, rather than "Hey, you're doing a great job or I like this or..." Getting back to, like, observing people's teaching practices, I think that is one thing that I dislike about the way observations are done now. You know, they have to let you know in advance, and so forth, so there are very few spontaneous ones anymore. And I think the spontaneous ones would be much more, would give you much more information as an administrator or a person who is doing observations. Because, I mean if you know they are coming in, you are going to pull your best tricks out of the bag. It is not going to 333 be you every day. Although, I remember a principal a few years ago saying, "You know, walking up and down in the halls, you know, they had more of an idea of what was going on in classrooms than they did actually coming in and doing a formal observation", which I would agree with.

FAVORITE STORIES

We should copy those stories down more than we have. One that I guess I have remembered the longest is, way back in... when I was teaching at Monroe Elementary in Farmington probably my first year of teaching and somehow we got into a discussion of...it was during the segregation times and we were having discussions about being prejudiced and I had this little Jewish girl in iry class. I still remember her name, Shoshana Lyle. And she started in, it was third grade, and she started in on this thing about if we're going to be prejudiced against anyone it should be the albinos. And she went on and on about how albinos.. .how they just cannot be that productive, they can't be out in the sunlight and they just, if you're going to pick on anybody then that's who you should pick on. I've often wondered, I mean she's old enough to have kids now and I've often wondered where she was, if she was still on her albino thing. I mean the rest of the kids were just looking at her...they had no idea what an albino was. 334

She was just a real precocious little girl. That's one of rny stories that I've remembered the longest, I guess. It seems like there is something every, every night that you go home and relate it at the dinner table but then they just kind of float away and trying to retrieve them is sometimes hard. You know, different things will happen that will trigger something and it's hard to get those out. Another story early in rny teaching career, I guess on a...it was kind of ironic because it was the day when we were signing our contracts for the next year and I had a child...the first thing in the morning that happened was somebody had given me some lilacs and I had them in a vase on top of a file cabinet and those were the days when we used the purple dittos type master things and you didn't have work books and you just had loads of those. I mean you spent every night making work sheets out that way and had them all filed and somebody knocked the vase over and so the water is running through this whole years worth of work and the purple is going everywhere. That is the way my morning began.

This was the school in which the kids walked to school and went home for lunch. These were the times of Moms not working and the kids were home and we had just a few kids who ate lunch, packed their lunches and ate at school. And this little girl had a spidery type monkey that she wanted to bring in, a live one. And she wanted to bring it in to share 335 during our sharing time. So I had told her that she could bring it you know, when she came back from lunch but to be sure that Mom came with her to take the monkey home and that it could not stay. So she comes back after lunch with it in a kind of bird cage type contraption and shares it with the kids. And I tell her, "Is Mommy going to pick up the monkey?" "No, I'm suppose to call her." So she goes to the office and calls Mom and of course Mom's not home. So the monkey stays on top of the bookcase. During the afternoon...well, later in the afternoon, we went outside to play a game of softball and never thought about the monkey or anything and the kids line up and they are following me outside and there happens to be a kindergarten class on the playground as well and she...all of sudden I hear somebody yell, "The monkey's loose !" And here she had grabbed the cage and was at the end of the line. She brought it out and the bottom fell out or something because she had the cage outside... so here are sixty kindergarten kids and thirty third graders and this poor little monkey who is scared silly, you know, running around and the kids are screaming. He climbs up the drain pipe and it was a flat roof school like this one, so it's up on top of the roof. We had to get the custodian to get the monkey; catch the monkey. The custodian never let me forget that. He never let me forget that he had to catch that monkey. 336

RESPECTING CHILDREN I had an interesting little boy in my class this year... and I'm going to, I may just ask them at the office since I have had third and many times I take the fourth, take them as fourth graders, next year I will have a straight fourth. I... so when his mom came in for a conference she asked whether I would take him again and I said I would and I turned the form into the office today they said, "Do you want us to lose this?", 'cause he is a difficult child. He's very bright, but no social skills...can't tie his shoes. I was just sitting in there tying his shoes for him before gym, puts his jacket on upside down, characteristic of a gifted child. Environmentally I'm not sure he is ever going to go as far as he should just because of environmental influences at home. But, I guess this a cute story. He came up to me one day and he said, "Mrs. White you'd look a lot better... younger." Frederick, my child that I told you about, the precocious one but very disorganized...the night before was most upset that he had to write, he, he doesn't like to write, he doesn't like to do cursive writing. And with his motor control problems it is somewhat difficult for him but he is also very strong-willed about what he wants to do and doesn't want to do. So he was upset with me the night before about, he had homework. And to finish his spelling which he 337 hadn't done in school because he sits and does math all the time. And, so he's just mumbling about that after school and I said, "Well, Frederick, it's up to you, you know, you can do it three times tonight or if it's not done in the morning then it'll be five times when you get here. So he goes out slamming...I saw his mother at the grocery store and she says, "Oh, there is that teacher that Frederick now hates. You know he's not even coming back to Lila Belle." So yesterday morning he came in and of course he comes in and hugs me and I said, "Frederick, I thought you didn't want to see me anymore. You were really mad at me." And he said, "I just said that to test you." And I was muttering under my breath, "You test me everyday!" That's a yesterday story that I can remember.

If kids don't like the person they are with then academically they are not going to do as well. You know, my first couple of weeks of school is really just building rapport with the kids and getting to know them and getting them comfortable and then we can move on into the academics. I use lots of activities and sharing, working and learning to work the kids together in cooperative type activities. And in a kind of relaxed atmosphere. You know, other people come in and you know, won't smile until Thanksgiving and...I set my boundaries and they know what those are. But, I want them to want to come to school and like to come to school and I think 338

studies have shown that if kids really enjoy it they will do better. And, I find that attendance, I really think attendance, is better when you have that too. If they, if you can, you can probably chart it in the classrooms of...you know, where kids are under stress and I think their attendance is much poorer than if it is an enjoyable situation. Trust-building and establishing that trust, trust building. And having had the kids you know, going into the second year, I think that helps also. I've done that for four years now and that also, that is already in existence once we begin. You know, with the new kids coming in and they, I think they immediately feel...the positive attitude and I know it's hard some years when you've got a group of kids that are very difficult and its hard to be positive but I guess I look at, just sitting as you do sometimes sitting in the lounge and you can pick positive people and pick negative people. And I think the kids pick up on that really quickly too. That the kids who are with negative people tend to have low self-esteem and don't achieve as well and then it becomes this vicious circle and people that are positive in their teaching and in what the kids do and can do, those kids tend to feel better about themselves and perhaps tend to do better. 339

I also think once, and I guess this isn’t true in all cases, but I think when you've had your own children, you are a different teacher than before you had kids or whatever because you realize that a lot of things...you'11 hear teachers who have no children of their own saying, "Well if these parents could do something with this child", or not basically academically wise, but just behaviorally wise and I think once you have had your own kids you realized that there is a lot of free-will there, you know you try as much as you can but there are certain things that your kids are going to do in spite of you or certain characteristics... such things that just can't...!, I guess being accepting of that more once you have your own kids. You aren't as judgmental on parents.

MORALE

It's, it's pretty low and not really wanting or thinking about putting forth much effort. Everybody, you know, is saying, "You know what, let's not put out a lot of our money next year like we have done in the past, because people are just expecting us to do it." You know we make up for the, slack. You know I spend between a thousand and fifteen hundred dollars of my own money every year on supplies and I'm going to have a hard time not doing that. Because a lot of things, you know, I enjoy doing with the kids as much as anything, but you know, I kind of wish there was something. 340 get a stamp or something and stamp these things, "This is not paid for with tax dollars." I do an end of the year book with photographs and the kids love it. I have between ten and fifteen of these pictures and photographs of activities this year of them, individually and so forth. And then they write about it and we do a spiral book and, you know, that gets into a lot of money with the photographs and all, and I like doing it, but...I've done it the last couple of years, but maybe I won't next year.

And a lot of it is just being taken for granted and taking for granted by the parents, expecting things to be given to them, or whatever to them and we're getting more and more of the welfare type kids, and I know it's not their fault, but even one of mine one day was throwing his whole lunch away and I said, "You know you need to eat some of that, that's been paid for." He goes, "No it's not. I'm free." And I said, "That's not the point." I said, "Somebody has to pay for that food. You may not be paying for that lunch, but you know, someone has to." But the attitude is "I don't care, I don't have to pay for it because I'm in the free lunch program. " The district will be cutting sixty-one certificated positions. A lot of those will be attrition type things. There will no longer be staff development people who are just like our assistant principal type figures. A lot of aides 341 will be cut and there are, I think, two or I guess maybe four or five principals, some of them are assistant principals at the high school that are retiring and they will not be replaced. We have a real small elementary down in Louisville that has always had its own principal and now they will probably share a principal with another school. They are talking...now we had heard that they were not going to cut busing. A few, two years ago I believe, when we were in financial problems they cut the busing to the high school and to kids who were two miles or less at the elementary. This was not a popular decision in the community.

TEACHING STYLE Just not realizing that there are different styles and maybe your style is OK, not maybe, but your style is OK, because that is your individual style, I think teaching is a very...you can't go with ever\/ model or style because your personality doesn't fit that so you've got to go with what you are comfortable with. And how you can present material the best. I suppose where you feel as though you have some expertise or feel comfortable and trying new things out or you've had some knowledge of some different methods and so forth, I think there are people who never, never observe anybody, never take any other classes, they are probably teaching the same way they taught twenty years ago because 342 they have never wanted to change, never seen anything different never...they don't want to try, try any different models or practices.

I think it is also being comfortable with yourself. That you have enough self-esteem. I think self-esteem enters into it. That you feel as though, that you can do that. Again I think maybe elementary teachers are...don't feel, always feel good about themselves. They feel like they are "elementary teachers" and that's like your not smart enough to be a high school teacher. I've heard people say, "I'm only an elementary teacher." So I think that might enter into it. I think people saying that nobody really knows where their teaching practice is, is probably really true because there is really very little observation that goes on. It tends to be, not just with this principal, but with any principal I've ever had it only is an observation because it comes down from Central Office that a person is up for contract so there has to be three evaluations, or a new teacher has to have two, so it's kind of, "Oh my gosh, the deadline is coming, you know, I have to be in before Friday", you know, the contract says the fifteenth or whatever. So it is not, it's more a "have to" type thing rather than what I consider an observation. Within the PAL program that a couple of us are involved in, you know, we do some of that with our inductee or whatever. . . set up some times to observe. Jean and I have done a little 343 bit of a peer type thing observing each other, just kind of for the fun of it. But it is not, you know...the district, I think, I would like to go into peer coaching and peer teaching but it's going to be a difficult thing I think to, because everybody is just very... I think it's being insecure or being afraid of failure or as I mentioned before it's especially older teachers thinking back to the time when administrators were trying to find something wrong with you rather than offering suggestions or patting you on the back. I guess my teaching practice is located within iryself. My teaching practice, I guess, it tends to, it must almost be emotional? You know, because I, I care about the kids and so it's, I want to, I want to meet them on the level that they're learning and yet they are enjoying it and that's not every day, either. There are some days that are up days and some are down days and there are days that... Probably looking at kids as though they were your own children. I usually try to think about, "If that child were mine", and I've often... and I would tell parents this at the beginning of school that. I'm a different teacher after I became a parent than I was before. Because you realize that at home you do things with your kids and you expect them to perform certain ways at school and act certain ways, you know, that "free wills" there and they're little individuals and you want them. ..If that were rry child I'd want my child 344 to be treated with respect and the most help given and discipline when needed, but you know, in a proper way. I really think, I think...thinking of each child as being how you would expect to be treated if you were the parents. That and the idea of not doing, always doing things the same way. Reaching out for new methods and keeping myself enthused about it. You know at this point I'm, I don't even like to think about retirement. Now if I get a really rough group I may, but it is just not in my mind at all. I don't think of myself as having been around as long as I have or, it's not something that I am real excited about like some people are. But like I say that may change. Maybe back to that idea of, you know, somebody not knowing one another's teaching is like, is selfishness of not hearing others....many times we're not, we're too, we're too selfish, too involved in our lives to reach out or to care about what another person is doing or want to learn from another person.

I think, too, a lot of people go into teaching because it is unlearned type thing. The other thing that I have found is when you have a lot of teachers together trying to work on things they have a hard time cooperating because they are so used to being in charge. It is hard to do things cooperatively. You're used to being in charge and, the head honcho, and to listen to other people and cooperate is 345 difficult. My husband is a minister and he says the same thing with them because they are again used to being in charge and you get a bunch of them together and they can ' t work together, Everybodys' ideas are right, and they want it their way. Little dictators! CHAPTER IV

TOPIC-CENTERED NARRATIVES AND THEMES IN TWO STORIES We have sought rather to advance a conception of research centered on the analysis of the significance of social actions for those who carry them out and of the beliefs and institutions that lend to those actions that significance. Human beings gifted with language and living in history, are for better or worse, possessed of intentions, visions, memories, hope, and moods as well as of passions and judgments, and these have more than a little to do with what they do and why they do it (Geertz, 1995 p. 127) Geertz (1995 p. 2) notes what we construct as interpretations of the lived experience, if we keep notes and survive the fieldwork, are hindsight best accounts of the interrelatedness of things that seem to have happened while mucking around in the experiences of the lifeworld (p. 2). Interpretation is the subtle and often delicate unwrapping of the lived experience. Interpretation of teachers' stories is finding the gifts in the fruits of narrative fieldwork which lay beneath the wrappings of the package, a surface to be uncovered, peeked through and slowly exposed in excited anticipation of what rests within. What has been revealed in this fieldwork are interpretive accounts of the stitched- together tapestries of the events of lives where understanding and action, as reasoned gifts given to one another reveal an intersubjective sense of hermeneutic phenomenological reflection as ontology of a being, a

346 347 personhood, a form of life standing in wonderment about how things have been, how things are going and what possibilities remain in future lived experience. Knowing these teachers' voices presented in this dissertation is knowing persons within a particular context and within a local and situated knowledge which emerges from action taken in that context. Each teacher carried with them the histories and traditions in which these stories were constructed. The themes and topic-centered narratives which comprise these personal experience stories move them from a situatedness in the past, to the present and into the future. The flow and motion and action within these stories renders them active portraits of teacher practical knowledge and thinking, in that they enable the reader and each teacher as story teller to anticipate the why's and how's of future action in the world by reflection on the past as it was related in story (Eisner, 1991)

These stories present portraits of lived experience as an embodiment of action taken in the world which remains continually open to interpretation, deliberation and reflection, therefore open to change through reasoned deliberation, reflection, interpretation and further understanding. Eisner notes (1991) that the process of interpretation seems to be embedded in the making of educational judgments, reflections and deliberations on 348 actions that are taken in educational contexts which are educational in nature and then making some determination on the essence or value of what has been seen and heard. Making claims about what is valued in education is making an interpretation that is not ever value free or free of the context in which such interpretation is made. Taking action in the world, interpreting such action, deliberating about it, making judgments based upon it and reflecting within it, establishes a sense of local and situated reason which gives a point to the very teacherful actions taken in schools and related in story.

REASONED ACTION AS SELF-AWARENESS OF "BEING" IN THE

LIVED EXPERIENCE Taylor (1995) argues that action taken in the lived experience has a point, a reason to it. Action has a certain reason to it that is essential to it, that is, in its absence would make the sense of the action incoherent, it would void the action being taken in the first place. Reason necessitates there be some self-insight, some self-awareness into the point of the action taken. Not everything will be known, there will be some things which will be hidden from the person, but will influence the action. The person must have some self-aware grasp of what is being done, and that grasp is involved in the doing, in taking the action. 349

What this action will amount to will vary within the context in which it is taken. But self-awareness is itself part of the action and the reason for taking it. The reason, the point of the activity, the absence of which would yield an inchoate and inexpressible event, must always include the person's awareness of the reason, or point for the action. One simply cannot engage in teaching and not know that they are doing it. The activity of being aware, of taking reasoned action in the lived experience, of understanding the point of the very essence of the teaching process is itself part of that reason for engaging in it. If a teacher couldn't recognize that, when all else broke down into confusion, and reason had failed, then one could not be aware of any reasoned teacherful action in the first place. One simply could not be aware of engaging in any activities which would count as teaching; those activities one couldn't help but recognize and know as a teacher, which would make any reasonable educational and teacherful sense at all. One simply would be unable to stand in wonderment to teaching, to ask questions of it, to get a grasp on any coherence of the teaching experience, to be able to tell any coherent story about it. The claim that Taylor (1995) makes here is reasonable action is just that, and what makes teaching a reasoned activity can be certain because it can be told in story and 350

the stories are grounded in the grasp of the point and reason of teaching, the grasp, the understanding one must have of the action of teaching in order to carry it out and tell about it. The teacher stories presented in this study articulate the essence of what entails reasonable and pointed claims and warrants (Pratte, 1992), necessary and sufficient conditions (Scheffler, 1985) of what makes a successful teacher and what is more, one can be certain that they do so rightly and validly, because to doubt these stories is to doubt the claims that teachers engage in self-aware and reasonable professional action and do so in the telling about it. As argued above, such a claim is senseless. It is not reasonable and it is pointless to make. Teachers taking action in the context of a school are embedded in a culture, a form of life (Wittgenstein, 1958) a lived experience of community and involvement which presents a model of an engaged and reasoned thinker (Taylor, 1995). Taylor (1995) argues that engaged agency, persons taking action in the lived experience is made reasonable and intelligible by being placed in the context of that lived experience. The action stands in relationship to the context as the experience stands to the self which in interaction establishes reason and intelligibility. The context stands as the unexplicated horizon within which or out of which the experiences can be construed into a storied event. Experience 351 told as events in story connect the context in which the story is told with self and the other. Taylor (1995) , citing Michael Polanyi (1983), argues for the importance of context in taking reasoned action in the lived experience.

Context is subsidiary to the focal object of awareness; it is what teachers are "attending from" as they attend to the teaching experience. Taylor refers to this context as the "background" which one is not aware of because its status is already one of providing the frame for the telling of an event. In the articulation of story, particularly the stories about teaching, what is made known as practical knowledge or ways of taking action in the lived experience of the school trades on familiarity with the background of what constitutes teaching (p. 69). What is brought to articulation is what one "always knew about teaching", or had a sixth intuitive sense (Noddings & Shore, 1984) of even if one didn't "know" it and would be unable to articulate it. This background is what, according to Taylor, makes certain experiences intelligible as events presented in personal experience stories. This background is closely related to Gadamer's traditions and prejudices discussed earlier which are part of each personal history carried to the lived experiences. What is argued for here is what has been argued throughout this dissertation; an argument that is concerned with the active creation of a reasoned lived experience which 352 is embedded in a context of intelligible knowledge which is practical and personal and subjective in its meaning and understanding and embedded in traditions and histories which in their articulation bring sense to the very forms of life they articulate. Articulating the background of traditions and history allows for the construction of the ways in which taking action in the lived experience can be used to deliberate, interpret, reflect and make judgments about our own motives, beliefs, attitudes and prejudices as actions taken as well as the those of the persons we are in contact with on daily basis (Taylor, 1995 p. 148) . Lawless (1993) argues that experience remains in the "background" as unarticulated action until it is framed in some way as an articulated point or reason for engaging it in the first place. Once action is framed, it becomes a story. And these stories about taking reasoned action in the lived experience become texts which can be held open for interpretation. Stories are events framed by the context in which they are told; teachers tell stories about teaching. They are personal teaching experiences which in their viewing and "re-viewing" as events in story can be analyzed, reflected upon, deliberated about and judgments passed upon them. Through thick descriptions of persons' lived experiences within a context which provides and is part of the background from which one subsidiarily and focally 353 attends to experiences had, (Taylor, 1995 p. 69) the ethnographer as researcher reflects upon, interprets and makes conjectures about what makes those experiences as storied events meaningful to those who participate in them. It is here in the wondering about the lived experience the importance of Taylor's (1995) background metaphor and Gadamer's (1992) metaphor of prejudices and traditions becomes apparent. The teachers in this study have not only spoken through their experiences, but from within them. The etic configurations of their lives, the domain assumptions from which they speak that life as provided by the background and context of the teaching situations in which they find themselves must, in some way, find balance with the background and the assumptions of the researcher. On what events,does one focus for interpretation? What kind of wondering, what kind of questions are presented to the stories for consideration. Which texts will best enrich the understanding of the essences of a reasoned teaching practice? How does one go about making some of the background of a reasoned teaching experience articulate and coherent. I have argued that narrative is influenced by the context of the telling, the etic prospective ( outer world, objectivity, schools) as well as the domain assumptions, the background, the world views of the teller, (inner world, subjectivity, experience as storied events in the lived 354 experience) as the history and traditions of those who tell the stories. Narrative truth as a way of organizing events into reasoned action ways has a point. Narrative or storytelling is a way of making sense and providing reasons for actions taken in the world as well as providing answers, constructing a point of view for why the action was taken in the first place. Narrative is interpretive and in turn requires interpretation (Taylor, 1985b). Interpretations of personal experience stories aim for believability, not certainty, for broader and deeper understanding rather than tangential generalizations (Riessman, 1993 p. 22).

DEVELOPING AN INTERPRETIVE POINT OF VIEW I have chosen to interpret the stories presented in this dissertation rather than submit them to a strict procedural analysis. My reasons for interpreting rather than analyzing are noted below. I call upon the interpretive work of Umberto Eco (1992a) and Jonathan Culler (1992) to clarify my position.

Eco argues that language is contextual (emerges from a history and tradition of use), holistic, and socially constructed. When we speak therefore, we speak from somewhere and of something. The knowledge of the lived experience therefore is contextual, relational and comprised of the experiences of living, as argued by Taylor (1985a; 1985b; 355

1989; 1991a; 1995) and others (Arendt, 1971; Bateson, 1972; Bloom, 1973; Bruner, 1990; Clifford & Marcus, 1986; Coles, 1989; Dewey, 1938; Eisner, 1993; Elbaz, 1991; Gadamer, 1992; Geertz, 1983; Gouldner, 1973; Grumet, 1988; Heath, 1983; Heidegger, 1977; Husserl, 1970; Jackson, 1986; Lightfoot, 1983; Lortie, 1975; McCutcheon, 1995; Polkinghorne, 1988; Rabinow & Sullivan, 1987; Richardson, 1990; Ricoeur, 1981; Schon, 1983; Schütz & Luckman, 1973; 1989; 1994; 1995; Smith, 1987; 1993; Stake, 1994; Stenhouse, 1983; van Manen, 1990; Weick, 1979; Wittgenstein, 1958; Wolcott, 1990; Wolff, 1976; Wuthnow, 1991; Young, 1987). Experiences cannot be separated from the language by which we construct them and within which we express them. Wondering about the lived experience then always requires, according to Eco, an interpretation. However, Eco argues that wondering about the lived experience, standing in questioning relationship to it, must have some limits placed upon. It is possible to say that as far as wondering about the lived experience, asking questions of it for interpretive purposes, anything goes. Eco argues that is true for many reasons, not the least of which is that context in the which events are framed as story or text always contains an intersubjective history or tradition or reasoning to it. The stories told about teaching experience makes reasonable sense to the teachers who tell them and to others who listen because what is interpreted, what is 356

intersubjactively understood as reasonable and making good sense is reasonable within the context in which it is spoken. Other interpretations can be brought to the text through wonderment because wonderment- is limitless and boundaryless, but not the point of or reasonableness by which the interpretation, within the context, is made. There are grounds of consensus of the community, intersubjective understandings made up of the histories and traditions of the teaching community which establish what it is that individuals simply cannot help knowing as a teacher and which one simply cannot tell a story about without knowing this.

For Eco what may be considered relevant and pertinent in interpretation are only the features of the story or narrative which are detectable as making reasonable sense through reflection, deliberation, and judgments of those who make up a community of inquirers (Torbert, 1991) . And through interpretation one isolates those features or themes which seem perfectly reasonable and relevant from the point of view of the lived experience, the domain assumptions of those whose stories frame experiences as events, the context in and through which the stories are produced, the given history and traditions of the communities which formulate the epistemology within which the stories are created whose collective focus gives a point of view, a reason for taking action in the life-world which is formulated from all of 357 these various aspects of the interpretive (Eco, 1992a p. 143) and enlightened eye (Eisner, 1991). For Eco (1992a) standing in wonderment to the lived experience, asking questions of the lived text of experience, is the source of all knowledge and such knowledge is the source of all pleasure and it is simply beautiful to discover why and how a given text, as story, can produce so many good interpretations (p. 147). But certain interpretations, Eco argues, can be recognized as unsuccessful because they are like a mule, that is, they are unable to produce new interpretations or cannot be confronted with the histories and traditions of the previous interpretations. Eco argues against the overinterprétâtion of a text. Culler (1992) on the other hand, argues for an excess of wonderment of the text. Culler is fearful that one should limit or repress the state of wonderment at the texts and interpretation, which seems all to rare today. Wonderment about the text and understanding the text is finding answers to the questions that the text insists on, based on context and culture. But one should not rule out standing in wonderment and asking questions that the text does not pose or demand of its readers. In this sense, overinterpretation. Culler argues, requires engaging in wonderment and asking questions that don't lead in any particular direction; they ask about what the text does and how; how it relates to other 358

texts and to other practices, what it conceals or represses, what it advances or is complicitions with. Overinterpretation stands in wonderment to the lived experience, to the text which extends the borders which the text itself defines. Culler argues that it can be very important and productive to ask questions the text does not encourage one to ask about it. Citing Booth (1979) Culler examines the core of overinterpretation : What do you have to say, you seemingly innocent child's tale of three little pigs and a wicked wolf, about the culture that preserves and responds to you? About the unconscious dreams of the author of folks who created you? About the history of narrative suspense? About the relations of lighter and darker races? About big people and little people, hairy and bald, fat and thin? What are sexual implications of that chimney-or of this strictly male world in which sex is never mentioned? What about all that huffing and puffing? Culler argues that many of the most interesting interpretations stand in wonderment not to what the text has in mind but what it forgets, not what it says but what it takes for granted. Culler demands of the reader, the interpreter, to push questions at the text which are not encouraged by it; asking questions which are not necessarily about teaching practice but which enable one to reflect on its very functioning. The questions I ask of the personal experience stories collected for this dissertation square with Eco's notion that as far as standing in wonderment to the lived experience not 359 anything goes. The questions asked of the data respect the context in which these teacherful stories were constructed and in light of the traditions and histories of those who told them. And the response of the text as stories are the themes which emerge in wonderment respecting a reasoned point of view, domain assumptions, world views and histories and traditions of a teaching profession representing an epistemology which is the compilation of these various aspects of the interpretive (1992a) and enlightened (1991) eye. At this point, in my emerging research career, not anything goes standing in wonderment to the lived experience. Interpretation of the stories of others and the subsequent understanding of others comes by letting them "be" in the lived experience (Taylor, 1995). Interpretation and the understanding that seems to come with it arises from standing in wonderment to the lived experience which in turns come from our ability to articulate such understanding formally taken as an unrecognized given (Taylor, 1995) . And one makes it recognizable, contrasts it, so to speak, with the background and the traditions of the lived experience one inhabits. And one constructs such a contrast in the language of one's own traditions and history. Interpretation must always be conducted within the background and the language by which the other is ultimately understood. Therefore, my interpretations, my language used to make the other 360 understood is shaped throughout by what I understand to be the reality of the case (Taylor, 1995 p. 153) knowing that what cannot be surrendered in the interpretation is my respect for persons and high regard for each of these teachers in particular and the teaching profession in general. Any number of interesting questions can always be asked of any text. But as I have argued throughout this dissertation domain assumptions one holds about the lived experience created from past traditions and personal histories influences our stand to the lived experience. In phenomenological research there is the necessity of surrendering as many of those pre-understandings and pre­ suppositions as possible to make a clean catch of meaning within the phenomenological stand. But one never succeeds in surrendering it all (Wolff, 1976) therefore, not just anything goes within the stand of wonderment. I have the power to name (Richardson, 1990), the power of my own perspective about the understanding these teachers bring to their practice. I do not take this responsibility of naming, of making judgments about others, lightly. Reasoned interpretations, I argue, are interpretations made where not anything goes. Reason always draws on the interpreter's background, on what is not surrendered which gives intelligibility to the wonderment about the experiences and 361

storied events of the lived experience told by others. The act of interpretation, of standing in wonderment, of asking questions of the lived experience presupposes a background of personal traditions and cultural history which simply cannot be surrendered. Interpretation is always a reading, an understanding from a particular point of view (Eco, 1992b). In the act of interpretation, not anything goes.

ENGAGING IN INTERPRETATION-DISENGAGING FROM ANALYSIS A full six months before I began collecting data for this study I heard about and subsequently purchased a qualitative research software package. The manual contained two hundred and ten pages of instructions. The software was touted as, "convenient to use permitting easy and flexible organization of data, storage, retrieval, and analysis of coded materials," and it cost two hundred and fifty dollars. I would be able to code any amount of data any number of times, manipulate the coded source material and test propositions and hypotheses about the overall meaning of the data. I spent two months trying to get the program to run on rry computer (the software was corrupted and I eventually had to order another disk from the company) and learning how the coding process operated. I was convinced, indeed, this program would do the dreaded coding; the "busy work" of qualitative research so I could be about the "real work" of interpretive research. 362

For fully one month after all data for this dissertation was transcribed I engaged in a deviant sort of behavior I have subsequently named a "coding frenzy." I became so involved in naming bits and pieces of the data, fragmenting the stories and the voices of the teachers interviewed that the whole of the person was lost. I was not interpreting but analyzing the data in a "coding madness" which was much more a production of linear thought pushing at the edges of a shallow puddle destined to evaporate in insignificance rather than the creation of deep interpretive pools which would, hopefully, outlast the evaporative winds of time and change. What I mechanically produced was a thin portrait, a small picture, a shallow piece of work which, although impressive in terms of the quantity of the codes produced, the quality of the codes was of little overall interpretive significance. It simply did not deepen the analysis of the stories by producing a state of wonderment, a quality of question which would penetrate, in a more significant manner the lived experience of teachers whose stories, unlike Eco’s mule, produced new questions, new wonderment, and ever new interpretations. Interpretation seems much more like binocular vision. It provides a depth of understanding of the lived experience through information provided by the retina of one eye always on the whole and the other always on the part and the difference between the two is always a 363 difference which carries new information and new interpretations (Bateson, 1991). I have argued above that the background of our own personal traditions and personal histories as well as the cultural traditions of which we are all a part are what we attend from as we make reasoned sense of our actions and the actions of others. Interpretation is keeping the whole of the story, the vantage point out of which teachers make sense of their teaching experiences (traditions and personal histories) subsidiary to the focal object of their awareness, the action of their practice (practical knowledge) These histories, traditions, and prejudices (Gadamer, 1992) are what they "attend from" as they attend to their experiences of teaching. Interpretation is the engagement of the researcher in both subsidiary and focal awareness, keeping one eye on the subsidiary awareness of the whole of the story while the other moves within and between the focal parts as teacherful events narrated in storied form. Interpretation is keeping both eyes in both arenas of awareness (Walzer, 1987) . Such interpretive action keeps the researcher engaged with the text as part and whole and with the person the voice of the person as well. I want to argue that data analysis, particularly computer coded analysis forces a dis engagement of the researcher from the text. Such a process is mechanistic in 364 that it can only be described in terms of the operations through which the input to the computer is channeled. The subsidiary awareness, that which is background and often unintelligible simply can't be processed (Taylor, 1995) . Coding is not hard-wired to a subsidiary world view. Therefore, during the coding process I was only working at the focal awareness level (Polanyi, 1983) without considering or keeping an eye on the whole of the story which always operates, in a subsidiary manner, on its parts. Coding, it seemed, only dealt with and operated from within linear assumptions and isolated and fragmented variables which become mechanically linked as fragmented input to a process that existed outside of the context of the whole (Patton, 1990 p. 423) . I simply lost, rendered invisible, erased and disengaged the voices of the teachers in the coding process. What these stories, in their wholeness as recognizable voices of teachers, presented to ny eye and ear, therefore, was a dynamic of interacting parts and wholes (Bateson, 1979) Interpretation invites the researcher into an "engagement with intelligibility;" (Taylor, 1995) a constant circular and interactive process, a loop of interpretive reason and learning in action as engagement between and within the phenomenon of the story as whole and the researchers abstractions and descriptions of its parts, between the storied and phenomenological descriptions of what has 365

occurred and the researchers interpretations of those descriptions; between the complexity of lived experiences storied as events and the complexity of themes the researcher constructs from them; between the circularities and intradependencies of the cultural traditions and personal histories of both the tellers and the researcher situated in the local demands of a teaching profession and the research demands of interpreting that profession. The process of interpretation as understanding the lived experience becomes an ontology of engaged research methodology; a way of "being" in the research experience, lived as researcher, which has a place for traditions and histories, backgrounds as subsidiary awareness which are distanced, disengaged within the empiricist methodology of reliability and generalizability. Interpretation is the celebration of reasoned and engaged wonderment over rational and disengaged certainty (Richardson, 1990).

CATCHING THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ENGAGED INTERPRETATION Making hermeneutic phenomenological sense of the stories presented in this dissertation is to come to interpretive grips with the notion of a lived-forward (phenomenology) and understood-backward (hermeneutic) phenomena that ethnographers are forced to live with (Geertz, 1995 p.167). Meaning making is interpretation of the best accounts given as stories told about teaching practice for understanding 366 sake (Eisner, 1991). Thick description of the context in which such stories arise is also a necessary component of hermeneutic phenomenological interpretation. Interpretivists see the goal of theorizing as providing understanding of direct lived experience instead of abstract generalizations. Understanding as originating in the traditions and histories of the lived experience which emphasizes that experience is not just cognitive, but also includes emotions, feelings, beliefs, attitudes, preferences, and values. The notion being that every human situation is novel, emergent, and filled with multiple, conflicting meaning and interpretations (Lawless, 1993). Interpretists capture the core themes of intersubjective understanding. What is interesting is the unfolding of a lived life rather than the confirmation such a chronicle provides for some theoretical grid laid upon the stories (Coles, 1989 p. 22). Orientation to the data in this dissertation is not one of control but of standing in engaged reciprocal interpretive relationship to it in continuous dialogue of wonderment as questioning, and remaining open to the essence of the stories that are told as teachers' practical knowledge and ways of theorizing about their teaching. In the production of these stories of teaching practice is the production of the speaker. In the production of the writing of this 367 dissertation is the production of the writer (van Manen, 1990) . What do I mean by remaining open to the stories shared in this study? I first encountered the stories through the transcription process. By taking the action of listening and re-listening, and bringing the voices of teachers to a visual life in print, I remained open to those aspects of the transcription process, hearing the fluctuations of voice, the interruptions of speech, the hesitations and the emotionality of the voices, which seemed most unpredictable and not "capturable" within the linear design of the print as writing. However, the transcription process lends itself, as process only, to a technical and rational input which accedes to the regular and predictable ways of taking speech and putting it into text. There are simply limitations to the amount of new possibilities of interpretation and imaginative thinking which emerges from the technical rationality of computer technology. The transcription, coding, and analysis as process and methodology kept me from thinking about and reasoning in a wholistic manner about the data which engaged my attention. Efficiency, I came to find out, impedes wonderment. Over the course of the past year and a half of writing and re-writing this dissertation, I realized that one of the tricks of interpretation is allowing oneself the time and 368

discipline to mentally drift within the data. I understand this "mind drift" as just the right metaphor to capture my understanding of this complex issue. On many occasions while engaging the stories, reading them as entities to be enjoyed in total affair, I allowed ny mind to be free and open, letting my eyes as well as rty

intuitions be sensitive to the currents of text and sub-texts located in this vast ocean of data. I would allow myself to drift on the currents of these stories, moving from beginning to end, middle to end, end to beginning in no set order of engagement, letting the currents of complex themes, goals and aims, traditions and histories, cultural epochs and personal epiphanies play upon ny own spirit and sense of wonderment. What comes of this "mind drifting" in the currents of personal experience stories as data is a wholistic sense of how things are now, how they have been, and where they may lead for the persons telling their lives in story. In this process I personally discovered that as I rested on these currents of the images storied events, I always came to recognize their location within a personalized yet recognizable whole of personal and cultural traditions and histories as themes of past, present, and future teacherful lives in which the drift moves between the ascending sunrise of such lives as it illuminates the here and now and the possibilities which lay ahead illuminated in the descending 369 sunset shadowing in twilight how things have been. There is a beginning, a middle and an end to each of these stories. As researchers engaged within the experience of data interpretation we can only look from behind where we have come. We are always in interpretive motion within a language; located and looking from "somewhere" between the rising and setting horizons and traditions of our own lives and those whom we write about.

ENGAGING THE THEMES Hermeneutic phenomenological interpretation is always a process of keeping the wonderment, the questioning of the lived experience alive. Wonderment stands in reciprocal relationship to the essence of the "thing itself" being questioned. The art of this type of research is to keep the questioning active, the interpretation engaged and in motion within the drift of the personal and cultural traditions and histories of the stories told. The researcher also stands in reciprocity and wonderment to the whole and the parts of each story as the "thing itself". Standing in wonderment permits a "possibility of interpretations," (Eco, 1992a) since within the questioning stance it is quite natural to make explicit what was formally implicit; to bring to focal awareness under the lens of interpretive wonderment what was formally subsidiary (Polanyi, 1983); to begin mapping and making known the currents of subtexts rather than just drifting in 370

uncharted motion. By becoming aware of ourselves as researchers we become aware of others and as we become aware of others we become more aware of ourselves. The very act of taking an interpretive wondering stand to the lived experience allows us to drift with intention, to articulate and map the currents of other-understanding (Taylor, 1995) in light of our own personal horizons which may as yet be unexplored and uncharted. Research as movement between the horizons of one another is an important source of the researcher's own self-learning and self-awareness and self­ growth. Interpretative research simply prys one loose from the walls of culturally induced technical rationality and allows for exploration of moving currents which, if allowed, sweep one toward new possibilities, new meaning, new interpretive understandings. The essential moments of understanding come in the writing of this dissertation. Research as van Manen (1990) describes it, and with whom I agree, exists at the source of its creation, in its birth through language as a creative act of writing which has as necessary order the themes as data about which it writes and speaks. The essential moment of insight in writing is the construction of themes and structures available in the writing as product of interpretation of the telling. Hermeneutic phenomenology for van Manen is the attempt in writing to capture the essence of 371

some experience of the lived experience in literary form, in phenomenological description. Writing for me, has been an experience which has transcended mere description in an interpretive act which has incorporated the wonderment, deliberation, reflection, judgment, and interpretation of reasoned action which, I have continuously argued throughout this work is both methodology and ontology or way of being in the world. It has challenged me to systematically engage in the writing process in the development of a certain narrative presentation of teacher knowledge which explicates the themes embedded in the personal experience stories presented in this study as a certain form of lived experience. Theme is the experience of focus, of meaning, of the points of view of the teacher stories shared in this work. These themes are not objects I discovered but the sense I made of them as I intuitively drifted within the sea of data. They are the "things themselves" caught in the surrender to the movement of the subtexts within the whole, the subsidiary awareness of the essence of the gifts of the text expressed in theme which then become the focal points, the thematic moments (van Manen, 1990) of explanation, the sense that is made of the "thing themselves". Themes are created, become available in the process of insightful invention, discovery, and eventual disclosure (van Manen, 1990). 372

Themes are the currents one drifts upon in the ocean of data. Sometimes these themes are mysterious in the sense that they take us to uncharted areas, unexplored intuitions about the notions of teaching and pedagogy where we are forced to find our own way. But as researchers we are always aware of the directions of the currents and the subcurrents. There is always a direction of drift to the flow. As researchers we negotiate these currents or flows, mapping first the direction of one and then the other and then comparing and contrasting them, mapping these directions one against another. In the end we have a map of the currents. This mapping and the choices one makes in their creation reflects the choices one makes in the charting, the interpretation the description of the flow. How one charts a current, a theme, and describes it and makes sense of its direction as opposed to others is how one surrenders to the drift, to the ocean of data from whence the thematic catch is made. The old slogan, "Did you catch rry drift" surrenders to a new meaning; a strong and oriented relationship to the story caught in an effective drift, a thorough mapping of the currents and the drift, an effective surrender and catch of interpretive meaning and understanding. According to van Manen themes serve a function. Phenomenological themes may be understood as the structures of experiences. So in the interpretation of data, in 373 attempting to understand the lived experience, we are trying to determine what the themes, the structures are, that make up that experience. Themes for van Manen serve several functions. They are first a means to locate and render reasoned sense to the meaning of an experience. They become the currents which are and make up the ocean of data. Themes give shape to the shapeless. Themes fix the often elusive essence of the meaning which flows from the stories related about the lived experience. Themes describe the content of experience. A well constructed or assembled theme provides a concise mapping of the new areas researchers try to understand. And finally, theme is always a reduction of an experience. It cannot completely make known the background of traditions and histories which subsidiarily provide the essence of a lived experience. I would add one addition function of thematic analysis. I contend it forces an intuitive and speculative attention to the bridging of the parts and the whole of a personal experience story.

It forces a strong reading (Bloom, 1975) of a text where some conclusions are made or drawn which in a sense lay beyond the text, in Culler's notion of forcing upon the text questions it does not prompt to ask. The formation of themes, I have found in. my own emerging interpretive experience, becomes a process of wonderment and imagination which is in 374 and of itself a way of becoming capably and reliably informed of traditions in the lived experience which can extend beyond an infinitely expanding universe of codes as facts. In fact, I need to say at this point from my own interpretive point of view, "This is what I make of it all".

ARRIVING AT LILA BELLE SCHOOL

The Claremont school district was formed on January 1, 1956 as the result of the consolidation of five local school districts and one exempted village school system. Prior to this time only one high school was in existence in this area yet six boards of education governed small individual districts each responsible for providing educational services. As the population grew and heavy industry began to locate in the area a sufficient tax base developed, and the five small communities decided to consolidate for economic reasons and greater financial security in the creation of and future support of a quality school system. The years from 1957 to 1960 were tumultuous ones for the district. Population soared within the sprawling district which now covers over 127 square miles and rests adjacent to the city Brighton, the state capital and the largest city in the state. On average more than one thousand students a year entered the Claremont district during this early period of growth. 375

As the area became more heavily populated, the exempted village became a chartered city in 1958 and on August 19, 1959 the Board of Education of the Claremont School district took action to become The Claremont City School district. Two additional high schools and a vocational technical training center were constructed during the early 1970's. During the 1993-94 school year the district's Board of Education controlled twenty-nine instructional/support facilities and two leased facilities staffed by 640 non­ certificated personnel, 1,006 certificated full time teaching personnel and 73 administrative employees to provide educational services to more than 16,564 students and community members. The School District is the seventh largest in the state (among 612 school districts) in terms of enrollment and the second largest district in its county. It currently operates fifteen elementary schools, five middle schools, three comprehensive high schools and one vocational-technical training high school. According to State Department of Education data compiled on a county wide basis, Claremont ranks next to last in average income and student proficiency test scores.

Lila Belle Elementary school serves the Village of Oakhurst. Built in the 1950's the village was developed by what is now the largest insurance corporation in the United 376

States. The central core of the village surrounds the school and comprises small and modest one story brick and frame homes. From the early 1950's when the community was first built many professionals moved to the village including doctors, lawyers, teachers, and executives who worked in Brighton. Tennis courts, garden clubs, an active residence association and women's club occupied their leisure time and were one of many social and community activities available within the village.

One interesting feature of the village is the absence of telephone poles and street lights. All electrical service to all the homes in Oakhurst is supplied by service buried underground. All the streets are concrete with curbs. As Ralph Mertz, principal of Lila Belle notes, "The insurance company lost money. They built it too well, is the story. Too much money went into the unique infrastructure and lot sales were not paying for it. So they lost money" (T).

The village was in its prime during the early 1970's. The residents association held their own Fourth of July parade and enjoyed the privileges of the Oakhust Lodge, a large and beautiful two story building with winding staircases, a huge restaurant with wonderful food and on Friday nights a seafood buffet became a standard dining experience for many of the people living in the village. 377

In the late 1970's the village started in decline, Oakhurst Village South was built and it was a very different community. Street lighting was not put in and the expensive infrastructure that made Oakhust so unique was substantially downgraded or missing altogether. New apartments were constructed to the West of the Village and some ended up as government subsidized housing. Ralph Mertz, the building principal at Lila Belle who taught at the school in the early 1960's made the following observation about some of the housing and the problems it presented: Two years ago we had some students who were really problem students, and I'd make home visits there. Roaches everywhere. We had a murder in the parking lot over there back a year or so ago. It wasn't a local person but there was some drug dealing going on. Ralph notes that there has been a social and academic decline in the students who now attend Belle school and this has created some security problems for the district and the school itself: I guess a good indicator of the change in the community and it sort of bothered me when I was here, they had trees out front of the building and 10 years ago or so they put in some playgrounds. The first time I drove by and saw that I thought how terrible, they just ruined the place. But then I found out that what was happening was they were trying to be responsive to the community. They put lights on the basketball courts and they were getting people out of the urban areas coming out here to play basketball out here late at night. When the lights would go out they'd bring their cars up into the yard to turn the lights on, the boom boxes, you know...So that's when they fenced it and put in a gate...and a lot of vandalism. You'll see bullet holes in a lot of the windows. You look at those plate glass windows you'll 378

see where there were BB's shot at them. And, it was during the time when the community was sort of on a decline. And, parents didn't really care about kids. They've had several break-ins here at the building. That's why the building has Sonatrol security. Once they fenced the area and put a gate...the young robbers were kept from driving around back and partying back there and carrying on in the woods. We've had one major vandalism problem since I've been here and that was actually just kids up on the roof with firecrackers and broke a window in the gym. It made a nice echo in there, set off the Sonatrol, they called the sheriff, the sheriff apprehended them. But, as I said I think the strong point is the kids. There are a number of families here whose kids went through this school, the parents went through this school and have chosen to stay in the community or move back and put their kids in this school. Ralph acknowledges a bit of a renaissance which has occurred in the Village over the past four years. The children who grew up in the neighborhood in the early and mid 1960's are moving back to the community and buying homes. The main apartment complex has been purchased by a real estate company out of Chicago, Illinois and they are putting a lot of money into the rehabilitation of the structure. And, notes Ralph, "They are kicking people out". As the rehabilitation of the apartment complexes continues the Village residents' association, defunct for almost ten years, is now experiencing a rebirth and is a working association taking an active role, once again, in the community. They also want to be involved with the school. Ralph notes that the association, "Paid for half the price of our school sign in the front yard. They want to get involved with the school. 379

The garden club, I don't think exists but the women's club still does. They help us out with receptions and sometimes recognize people...so they are still involved". This research study is based on ten weeks of on-site fieldwork at Lila Belle Elementary School, a suburban school located in the heart of the Midwest, from March 21, 1994 through June 10 of 1994. Two additional meetings were held with the four faculty whose stories appear in this study on October 4, 1994 at the school and on November 2, 1995 during a casual dinner at a small, yet trendy, restaurant in Brighton. The students attending Belle Elementary School either walked from the neighborhood or were bussed from other attendance areas in the district. Most of the 695 students attending Belle come from middle class homes and stable blue- collar families . Teachers refer to the school as a "blue collar" school (FN). Many of the parents are employed by heavy industry, primarily a huge auto parts plant located within the school's attendance area.

The average classroom teacher at Lila Belle during the 1994-95 school year averaged 13.4 years of teaching experience. Nineteen teachers have Bachelor degrees and eleven have Master's degrees. There is one full time administrator and one full time staff development person. The teachers receive some support service from eight full-time 380 instructional aides and fifteen full-time volunteers, but many teachers said this is simply not enough help for a building housing six hundred and ninety five students (FN) .

All teachers and administrators in the building are Caucasian (Mertz, 1994) . The school is overcrowded. Based on information gained from the State Department of Education the listed building capacity is 549 students and the total enrollment is 695 students. The average classroom pupil-teacher ratio is one teacher to twenty-five students. There are 657 Caucasian students, 30 African-American students, 6 Hispanic students, 1 Asian student and 1 American Indian student. Approximately twenty-three percent of the total student population qualifies for the Claremont free lunch program. Approximately five percent of the students at Belle qualify for a reduced price lunch. The average student daily attendance rate for the school is 681.9 students (Hutchinson & McCuen, 1994). Students arrive at the building between 8:15 and 8:30 A.M. No students are allowed into the building until 8:20 A.M. Faculty arrive at 8:00 A. M. This schedule provides the teachers an opportunity to plan for morning activities and a chance to visit. There is, however, little visiting during this time and this issue will be discussed in depth later in this Chapter. Most of the faculty go directly to their rooms as soon as they arrive at the building or visit the office to 381 pick up messages and mail which piles up daily in their mailboxes. There is some interaction in the hallways as teachers meet each other during their morning routines, but teachers at Belle simply do not "hang out" in the lounge or other areas to idly chat among themselves. There is a strong sense of focus on the day's activities ahead and little time is set aside during this twenty minute period for chit-chat, social or otherwise.

The building was constructed in the early 1950's. Following the classic ranch style home design of that era, the building is a long, one story, red brick building built on a slab with no basement. The school has no solid outside walls. Instead, huge windows run from the base of the slab to the very top of the roof and from end to end on both sides of the building. The school is completely open to the outside tree lined street on the West side and a dense woods bordering it on the East. It is completely open on the inside altogether. Windows run along the tops of lockers which span the entire length of the building on both sides of the school and teachers are visible to one another through these elevated windows. Some windows were always covered with art work or other paper, others always open to a view of typical elementary school hallway traffic; students, teachers, parents and on occasion the secretary and the principal. 382

On either end of the building forming the cross bars of a long capital "I" are playgrounds, one for the primary end of the school which houses the first and second grades and one for the intermediate wing, which houses the third, fourth and fifth grades The building is split evenly; conveniently separated into two linear wings by an octagonal "stop sign" configuration of various rooms made up of the school office, a tutoring area providing services to a wide array of special needs children, a large multi-purpose room which serves as gymnasium, auditorium and lunch room, and a small school library. The teachers' lounge is buried deep in the bowels of the library. The lounge eventually connects to a large kitchen where lunches are prepared on site and includes a large food storage area with a walk-in freezer and large industrial ovens and cooking ranges. Pots and pans hang from the ceiling over a gleaming stainless steel sink. Off the kitchen is a large cavernous boilerroom. And everywhere, one can stand there is a view of the woods, the parking lot, and green rolling lawn provided by the floor to ceiling windows as metaphor of the "publicness", the openness in which teachers in this building carry out their public teaching practice while ironically struggling to keep it private. I was given a small desk and work area in one corner of the library during my visit to Belle and I would often watch the fourth grade teacher, plainly visible as I was to her, in 383 a glass enclosed school such as Belle, teaching her students reading or math or science, working individually with needy students, planning lessons and obviously enjoying her work. I felt at times though, this disengaged observation of a teaching practice was, in some ways, indicative of the stories of teacher isolation which appear in this study.

Clearly, teachers see what one another do, but there is an invisible glass wall which separates each of them from actually talking about their practice, from actually participating with one another in it. Each can see a practice clearly, through the glass openly, but each is separated from it, disengaged from one another in an actual lived experience of private teaching in a open and public building. The paradox of this open seeing yet closed speaking phenomenon of teaching at Belle is not lost in the stories shared of the lived experience at the school. Every teaching practice at Belle is open for the seeing, but often blocked from the sharing and the hearing. Teachers are openly concerned about the private isolation they feel from one another. This issue will be discussed in Chapter V. My ten weeks of field work consisted in visiting classrooms, chatting informally with the staff and collecting stories in the teachers' lounge. The lounge itself was a large room with floor to ceiling windows on the North wall looking out on a huge expanse of lawn and dense woods. A 384 couch that had seen its day rested wearily along the South wall and several scratched and dented but sturdy Formica covered tables pushed together in the center of the room served as an eating area during lunch time. Sixteen folding chairs surrounded this table and during the lunch rotation most of the chairs were filled with teachers, their voices carrying, on certain days the formidable weight of their profession in form of talk about tough kids, tough parents, a failed operating levy, lack of funds, scarce teaching resources and personal family pressures. During the day teachers filtered in and out of the lounge, some taking the time to talk with one another, some making an appearance and quickly leaving, none staying for long periods of time. I spent most of my days in this lounge talking with thirteen teachers and four staff members including the secretary, the building principal, the custodian and, on occasion, chatting with the school librarian. The lounge actually turned out to be a very private meeting place. It was seldom used during the days I was present in the school.

It was not a gathering place where stories were told and anecdotes shared. In fact, later on in the study when I made several inquiries about where I could find teachers "hanging out" and talking shop, since I personally couldn't find much clear evidence of this phenomena occurring anywhere in the building, I was told by several different teachers on as many 385

different occasions that, "We just don't seem to do that much socializing here" (FN). Participants and the researcher in the study, therefore, were interrupted only occasionally as other teachers and staff quickly came and went from the lounge area buying soda and candy from three vending machines located next to an ancient and none too clean microwave oven. Clearly, little has been done over the years to upgrade the lounge. In many ways it would be a waste of scarce resources.

No one spends time there together. It seems one more physical sign that teachers in the building simply keep to themselves. In this research, I had hoped to find naturally occurring narratives, those whose genesis would spontaneously grow from the interactions of teachers just talking and relating on a casual basis. I was not able to hear the first one. Because of my own scheduling problems and teaching load I was unable to be in the school until well after 9:00 A.M. and but was in the building during most every dismissal. Therefore, the stories shared in this study were collected in one on one conversations, in the lounge, with those teachers who wished to share their stories. All of these conversations were audio recorded and transcribed in their entirety. Each story was given to each teacher immediately after transcription for review and corrections. I observed only three classes during my fieldwork. The intent of the investigation was to capture talk, not the 386 strategies used to translate this talk into action in the classroom, although I suspect my future research may take such a comparative turn.

The stories shared in this investigation were solicited. I take responsibility for the method of solicitation, the questions asked in the course of wondering about the teaching lived experience and the interpretations made of those experiences. The storied best accounts of teaching practice shared at the end of chapters I-IV are presented exactly as they were told. The "uhs" and "urns" have been deleted as well as my voice as researcher. I want readers of these accounts to hear the teachers as I heard them and to understand the accounts as they choose. The four stories presented in this dissertation provide a broad sweep of both age and teaching experience. Joyce is a first year teacher and just twenty-four years old. Abby has had three years of teaching and Craig and Carolyn each have over twenty years of teaching experience. Craig has been at Lila Belle for over eighteen years (FN). The selection of these teachers was purposive, not random, based on the time each has spent in the building, the age of each teacher and the total accumulated years of classroom teaching experience. The grade levels represented by these four teachers includes second through fourth grade. What follows below is what I make of their stories. 387

There is no common story about teaching practice. As I continued to collect, listen to, transcribe and re-listen to teachers' stories what, in fact, dramatically emerges is the polyphony of the events shared. No two personal narratives are the same. During the interpretive phase of this research I kept looking for the common themes which could be found in each of these diverse stories. They are there and will be discussed later in this chapter. But in that search I had to constantly remind iryself not to lose the particular stories, the intimate details of a life, of a personal and cultural tradition and history which often influenced these teachers in the daily discharge of their teaching duties. In understanding the themes presented in these stories I did not want to compromise the richness and the diversity of experiences which make them what they are, points of view of the truth of lived experience that is first and foremost an experience that is made of multiple, diverse and complex experiences. A world of difference must be celebrated within and between these stories. Although understanding in this study is framed through standing in wonderment to lived experience through questioning in a "spiral" of interpretation which is never finished it must also be framed as a recognition of the multiplicity of the points of view, of the backgrounds, traditions, and histories which are presented by this group of teachers. 388

The interpretations and understandings made in this study are based solely on the four stories presented within it. I want the reader to see how I arrived at my conclusions and invite them to their own. What follows is a highlighting of how these teachers came to their practice, the inclinations involved in that decision and the impact traditions and early history had in directing those decisions. Throughout the remainder of Chapter IV into Chapter V I will be attempting to answer the following guiding questions developed prior to and during the study and collection of data, namely: • How is the notion of a good teacher framed through story? • What is the nature of experiences shared in story which somehow make teachers better teachers? What practical knowledge is located in these professional success stories? • How do teachers learn about themselves and their practice from the experiences they tell about in story? • What do these stories say about the fundamental thinking and practical knowledge which teachers hold about their practice? • Are there core sets of fundamental practical knowledge which teachers share in common? What are the emergent themes by which the nature of these core beliefs as practical knowledge are constructed and understood in story. • Can an argument be made that storytelling is an educational form of life? • Can an argument be made for the existence of untenable stories (Shuman, 1995) ? 389

• Is storytelling a suitable means by which to investigate the primary research question?

DRIFTING IN STORIES TOWARD THE THEMES Virtually all of the stories collected from the thirteen teachers interviewed revealed some sort of "calling into the field". I want to make it clear that is not a calling in the religious sense, but more a recognition of service, a commitment to a public good. There is a missionary sense in many of these teacher stories to provide a better educational experience, a volition to engage in meaningful pedagogy, to provide a better reasoned and compassionate cognitive experience than they received in their early formative years. What these teachers personally experienced and tell as evidence of poor teaching in their own schooling strongly influenced their desire to make things better for the next generation of students and was the primary motivating factor which coaxed them into the teaching arena in the first place. This calling is expressed in different ways, in different stories.

Abby Mayfield understands, "That I spoke what I remembered, a lot about my childhood school experiences. I see that most of my stories were about what I remembered about school, and different things, that now when I look back on it would have taught me. You know, things to do, things not to do". 390

Abby relates as a student she felt "positioned" and "compared" by teachers which she recalls seemed based on her ability and performance in school rather than on her humanity or dignity or out of respect for her as a person, as a unique child. She always struggled to move into a better group of readers but remembers that, "No matter what I did I was always pushed down and, you know, compared." During elementary school Abby was placed in a higher reading group, she suspects at the request of her parents, but can remember being dropped back to another group. She remembers asking, "Why?" "I was trying, really trying you know", and "I said. Just tell me what I need to do, to do better." She was devastated. Later in her middle and high school years she "just went through the motions", going to classes, taking notes, memorizing facts and always following the rules, doing what teachers, in their "very structured way of doing things" (FN) expected of her. Abby has little positive regard for the public school education she received. "I see too many negative teachers, too many negative things", Abby recalls, "And I kept thinking, Boy, I can do a better job and that's why, you know, I went into teaching". Craig Hastings, by his own admission, after reading and studying his personal experience narratives conceded to a lot of venting. "I was upset by this class of students, it was the class from hell", he recalls later during our dinner at 391

"Barclay's" in early November. Talking about the researcher's reaction to many of his personal experience stories, he notes, "When I began telling you those war stories I just couldn't stop because you were just like...I enjoyed where your mouth went open. I always thought you lived a sheltered life and I was just letting you know what another life was like. But I didn't bring much of that personal stuff. I just brought my teaching experience." Without question Craig's life provided a provocative, and vitriolic, and fascinating story about the strength of character and strength of will necessary to overcome abject poverty and personal family dysfunction. Craig admits that reading his stories was difficult. He recalls thinking about the time he first read through a rough draft transcription of his story and gained a deeper personal sense of what he had overcome: You talk about these, you know, things and you read about it and later on you think, well, I guess it was terrible but I'm glad it's over. I survived it. I'm a survivor, you know. I'm real happy my sister's beginning to open up and she's beginning to talk about things she's repressed too, about her childhood. About being so poor and the terrible things that happened. So I'm amazed that she's doing that, so I probably will give her this to read because she's blocked most of it out. Some things I won't give her but a lot I will. See what she says, because she too has blocked it out. She saw the rats come out of the field behind the house and she about jumped on top of the car, and she remembered the rats climbing up the walls and she just started...she shocked her husband with what she said. And it's true, it's...I said "Jennifer, we survived. We don't live there any more. We beat it." I mean that's important. 392

and I think that's one of the things I got out of here is the fact that I lived it but I don't have to live it any more. I survived. I got out of it. Although the schools Craig attended in Boardman were "fantastic" he was placed into the technical track in high school and all he could do when he got out was draft. He admits, "I couldn't even write a complete sentence". Teachers in Boardman, by his own estimation were "prima donnas." Clearly, many of his teachers were unsympathetic to his personal and family situation and were asking of him more than he was cognitively and most certainly psychologically able to produce at such a young age. In Craig's mind the "nicest" teachers were the ones who understood his home situation and tried to make adjustments in assignments, grading, and class participation. The others, however, were understandably, "Just prima donnas." Craig's call to teaching was in every metaphysical and religious sense, an epiphany. As the Boardman school system began to crumble both figuratively and literally many classes, according to Craig were held in the basement of local churches since the school buildings surrounding his neighborhood were being condemned. Craig recalls that, "I got down there (in the church basement) and I thought, I felt that, I would really like to be a teacher. I was kind of in that room and I saw that church stuff and I thought, you know, I had such a crappy time in school, and I thought if I 393 could be a teacher maybe I could meet the needs of some of these kids." Craig Hastings does not preach the saving graces of a public school education, but he makes a special place in his heart for the needy students at Lila Belle school. He understands his role and he talked about it briefly. His role is caretaker for the needy. He relates to the social and emotional needs of his students. Craig notes, "These little children come in and I look at them and I think, I know where you've been. Instead of yelling at you for not getting your work done, I think what you need is for someone to hold you for about twenty minutes". Talking at dinner Craig further elaborated on the metaphor of caring, "Once a teacher always a teacher. Once you get your babies to your room, no matter what happens, they'll always be your babies. You have these children six hours a day. . .you work with them and you can teach them to read and talk to them, you interact with them for a year. And no matter what happens, they are always your babies, this is always there. The caring never goes away." Joyce Conners reviewed her personal experience stories and made the follow observations, "I really noticed that I spoke of some of the things that were really, really important to me, you know, like iry European experience. It was so important to me. And the things I shared with you (the researcher) were things that I like sharing with other 394 people. And you know when I looked through this, I was kind of...I was like, you know, I still believe in this. I talked a lot about...my experiences overseas and how that affected my philosophies about just being rry own person, iryself, and this type of thing, and I've always known that my travels and stuff are what make me, how I believe". Joyce's call to teaching is not framed in the same negative images of public schooling which seems so much a part of Abby's and Craig's stories. It is rather a reaffirmation of a hidden or tacit love for the profession which emerged during her college years. She recalls, "I changed my major three or four times in college because...I went for the wrong reasons. I was going to be a big business type, but I hated being in business school and I almost dropped out twice. My parents are both teachers... they did everything possible to keep me away from teaching...but finally I just said this is something I enjoy doing, something I want to do. I got into the education program and fell in love with it.

Joyce Conners also believes in fate as a metaphysical notion, a feeling, an intuitive spiritness, part of both the inner (subjective) and the outer (objective) world which steers our lives, which recognizes the difference between good and evil and on some days can even be controlled. She recollects that, "For me everything is fate, is controlled by 395

fate. Because I would like to believe I can determine my own fate, I do good things and good things will happen to me. That is one way of controlling iry fate is through good things...but there are some things that you can't change. Bad things just sometimes happen." In some ways her call to teaching, her European student teaching experience, her year and a half of substitute teaching, and her recent employment at Lila Belle, all shared in her story were, "Just acts of fate and just things that happened because they happened." Of the four teachers, Carolyn White's calling was the simplest and least dramatically storied but it painted with the broadest stroke a picture of an era where the career opportunities for women were clearly limited. She notes, "I think I'm close to the same age category where women, at that time, it was kind of...if you were going to college at that time it was nursing or teaching. I didn't like blood, so I wanted to be a teacher and I never regretted that decision. I stayed in the classroom. I've not really wanted to get into the supervisory capacity." Carolyn's calling through simple and pragmatic occurred at an early age and she has never swerved from that career goal. Due more, perhaps, to a socialized perception of her lived experience, ingrained at an early age, that women were simply not expected to achieve. She early on recognized a very low "glass ceiling" effect for women in administration and their limited access to 396

supervisory and administrative positions. Therefore, Carolyn, "Never had much desire to go into supervision," She had one class several years which proved to be a challenge. So much so, that she had considered leaving the profession. Although several years older than many of the teachers I interviewed in some respects Carolyn is a "fresh" teacher who takes the time, the thought, the effort and the actions to renew herself and her pedagogy. She recalled a time two years ago in her own practice when, "I remember thinking that the idea of not doing, always doing things the same way was not reaching out for improvements, reaching out for new methods and keeping iryself enthused about teaching. You know at this point I'm, I don't even want to think about retirement. I don't think of iryself as having been around as long as I have or, it's not something I'm real excited about like some people are." Carolyn loves the profession, loves her children and is emotionally committed to both the school and her children. Throughout her story this care and love for the children is expressed in a iryriad of thought and story. Carolyn understands that her teaching practice is who she is and it is located, "I guess, in iryself. It tends to be emotional, you know, because I care about the kids and so it's, I want to, I want to meet them on the level that they're learning and yet they are enjoying it and that's not 397

everyday, either. There are some days that are up, some that are down,..but I look at these kids as my own kids." Each story presented in this study, taken individually, is different. Each "call to teaching" is different, a narrative presentation constructing personal and subjective life experiences in storied events which are told in different ways. Stories told by each of the thirteen teachers interviewed for this study can be categorized under certain phenomenological and commonsense understandings of what it means to be a teacher. These stocks of knowledge (Schütz & Luckman, 1989) or stores of experience simply allow these teachers to construct meaning from their conscious and reasoned action taken in the lived experience of teaching. Teachers experience these actions in much the same way and understand them in the same way. These actions as teacherful events told in story refer to particular types or classes of teaching phenomenon or reasoned action known as typifications (Schütz & Luckman, 1973) . These typifications occur when the intersubjective social life of teachers, the stocks of knowledge which comprise their experiences within the context of teaching, are taken up and frozen in snapshots of understandings that teachers have about it. Thus, the social structure of a teaching practice is the sum total of typifications plus the reasoned action as stocks of knowledge 398 which is constructed by means of them and understood as what is reasonably done within the context of a teaching lived experience. Each of the four teacher stories presented in this dissertation are done so within the typifications of a teaching practice. Such typifications include, parents, curriculum, administration, isolation, call to teaching and others under which the stories are categorized and by which the reader may make sense of them In keeping with the narrative theme of this dissertation I wish to re-name these phenomenological typifications as "topic-centered narratives" (Riessman, 1993 p. 18) as patches or snapshots of teachers' past lived experiences, which they tacitly chose to tell about. When I speak about topic- centered narrative I also refer to Schütz's phenomenological typifications. These are different names for the same socially constructed phenomenon of the lived experience. Within these topic-centered narratives there exist commonalties in the stories told but the structures as themes which hold these stories together are each different and uniquely individual to the teachers who tell them. The personal spin in each of these stories is provided by the tacit themes by which they are constructed. I wish to argue that "call to teaching" narratives preface each of the stories presented in this study as well as each story collected through out the entire study. The 399

call to teaching personal experience stories carry through and form one of several working themes for the telling of the rest of the topic-centered stories of each teacher. I wish to argue neither the teachers nor I understood this to be the case until I systematically removed by own voice from the data and found not just topic-centered narratives which were in many cases structured by ity own questioning of their world, but a coherent narrative which carried the essences, the major themes of how these teachers lived their lives and conducted their practices as well. These themes lay within and between the tellable topic- centered narratives presented in this study. In other words, the topic-centered narratives which at first became the center of my interpretive focus soon receded to the background as the subsidiary or tacit themes which held these stories together, front to back, up and down suddenly came to the awareness of this researcher as a result of taking the whole story into account. What I wish to argue below is the reasoned action taken in the telling of these stories, the subjective meaning each story holds for each teacher cannot be understood solely by subsuming topic-centered personal experience stories under phenomenological categories established and named by the researcher and left at that. Understanding cannot solely be achieved by tirelessly analyzing or coding single text passages lifted out of the 400

text and independently interpreted apart from the entire narrative. Working only on what comes to focal awareness, to the immediate attention of the researcher, analyzing only those apparent and specific passages of personal tellable experience without awareness of a deeper framework which also tacitly structures the telling, without the subsidiary or tacit awareness of personal experience themes which always inform the focal awareness of what is told, reasoned, and meaningful interpretation is, in the estimation of this researcher simply less than adequate interpretive hermeneutic phenomenological research.

JUSTIFYING A DUAL INTERPRETIVE STANCE TO THE LIVED

EXPERIENCE I argue below for a methodology of hermeneutic phenomenological "dual" interpretation requiring that the entire story be taken into consideration. Each topic-centered narrative must be identified and located within the themes as framework of the teller's overall construction of the story created in taking action in the world, narrated and told on the currents of a tacit "thematic flow" which, out of awareness of the tellers ear, reflexively, interpretably, and in reasoned judgment directs the action of the telling of the story and organizes the very topics about which it speaks. I have chosen to use the term "theme" as the organizational framework for telling about events in the lived experience 401 instead of "plot" in order to further embed this study and iry interpretive methodology in the hermeneutic phenomenological paradigm outlined in chapters II and III.

Plot seems to be a heavy and hard-edged metaphor to describe the underlying structure or foundation which weaves experiences as events into whole stories, which stands resolute and stoic in spite of the different topics which is its content. It puts me in mind of carrying a heavy load in terrible heat along a simmering one-way cobblestone street, just "plotting along" to get to the end of situation one can't find a way out of. I understand theme to be lighter, softer and fluid, always in motion and above all amenable to changes in direction, responsive to the topics which it structures and frames. Although van Manen argues that themes are, stars that make up the universes of meaning we live through (van Manen, 1990), this metaphor carries with it the notion of theme as some stationary object and again a rather "hard" metaphor which never actually moves and only illuminates. But theme for this researcher is more motion and action, "a moving current", and interpreting it, trying to capture it within the flow of a dialogue or text through phenomenological thick description and hermeneutic interpretation seems to stick more to the actual fluid structure of themes and the active and reasoned interpretive process by which this researcher rendered them available for 402 discussion, interpretation and understanding. I created an additional metaphor of theme as "moving currents" for several reasons.

Reflecting on rny dual interpretive process of this data would indicate I actually engaged the data at three distinct levels of reasoned and interpretive action. The first turn of the interpretive spiral was the actually collection of the data on audio tape and the subsequent transcription. This first exposure to the voices as well as the text they produced created the ocean of data whose currents of dialogue would eventually carry me to the interpretive conclusions reached in this study. At this initial stage of data interpretation I resisted any attempts to map the currents as themes. This first turn at data interpretation I named a "mind" or "data" drift interpretation, a bald face experience of a mass of raw text, my sole purpose to encounter the data on its own terms as it presented itself to me in taped voice and written text. Within this transcription experience the transcribed tapes read differently than the audio tape sounded. Seeing a completed text for the first time is a much different experience than the hearing of it from the teller in person and on tape. I had the same initial experience reading my voice in the transcribed stories as Joyce Conners had when she first read her transcribed story. Joyce notes, "I don't 403 have very good sentences here. Every once in awhile I'd look at this and I'd laugh, because I don't, I don't speak very well." Personally transcribing all the tapes allowed me the experience of sensing a quality that was greater in the relationship of hearing and writing than just listening to the tapes or just reading the text as transcribed by a third party. I struggle to find the language to describe that quality or difference. At best, it was experiencing a higher active consciousness of both text and tape; not just a jingle of voice in rty ear and sparkle of text in my eye, but an ephemeral understanding of a surface level of discourse, rough and raw, within the drift whose waves of meaning began literally splashing against the windows of my mind in the dual action of a hearing and writing engagement within the flow, the surging currents, of the lived experience of an other.

The second turn of the interpretive spiral involved removing my voice from each of the stories presented in the study. Totally engaged in this process, wondering what the stories would reveal once I had eliminated my limited and open ended questions and my contributory dialogue, I made an astonishing discovery. The stories were coherent and could be read, so it seemed to me, as one continuing dialogue, one continuing story in motion and flow from beginning to end 404 whose currents seemed directed, at least on the surface, by phenomenological typifications and what Riessman (1993) called "topic-centered stories." I don't deny that these topics were created as part of my wonderment and questioning about the lived experiences of each of the teachers presented in this study. But the topic- centered narratives are important to discuss because they are in constant interaction with the themes, even though they are just "still pictures" of past events. As I removed my voice from the stories what I at first referred to as "themes" early in the interpretive process began to emerge. Talk of curriculum activities, isolation, stress, parents, and time issues received attention as the teachers talked about their practice. These categories of talk which emerged easily from the data have been highlighted in bold print in each of the personal experience stories located at the end of chapters one through four. These categories as topic-centered narratives simply emerged from the data as teacher talk which seemed to literally localize itself in a personal standpoint which coalesced in these particular topic-centered narratives. I later referred to this organization of teacher talk as "topic-centered", not as actual themes of the stories because themes as currents which actually direct the flow of the dialogue are often tacit and operate at greater depth within the lived experience. They 405 simply could not be seen or heard or understood until I conducted what Lawless (1993) considered to be an over­ reading of the text, finding the meta-narratives (topic- centered narratives) which establishes what it was that teachers learn, think and understand about their practice (p. 203), It took another penetrating turn of the interpretive spiral to map the actual themes which bring the most understanding to the flow or motion of the stories. They are told from the understanding of the teller as a map to guide the listener to the deeper meaning of the stories and the tellers reasons for the telling. I have discovered in this interpretive activity, which has taken almost a year and a half of writing and re-writing, tested my patience and tolerance and lowered my frustration level, narrative is always in motion, on moving currents which present the possibility of capture only within an interpretive dual mapping of both topics and themes. There is the linear mapping of the flow of the currents of the story through time which, in many cases, present nothing more than topic-centered stories as currents of past experiences swirling together waiting to be mapped and categorized. There is also the plumbing of the depth of these linear flowing currents which is a mapping of the themes themselves. These are the themes which carry through the stories and determines their flow and direction, acts 406 subsidiary and at a lower level than the immediate topic- centered stories which emerged so easily through the second interpretive turn.

Mapping the currents of motion as themes is hard work. It is working the edges of the differences presented between the categories as topics, how the stories present themselves at a surface level of interpretation, and sensing and mapping the underlying structures as themes which determine the topics themselves. Working these differences requires the dual action of mapping not only the linear flow of topics as stories of events in motion through time, (a beginning, a middle and an end) but simultaneously penetrating, through the interpretive spiral or turn, to the depth of meaning, understanding, tacit structure themes hold for both teller and listener. The researcher is simultaneously engaged in both interpretive actions; engaging the stories at the surface in what is topically presented while penetrating to the depth of the story to map what are subsidiary and phenomenological essential themes which frame the very topics that in turn talk about it. Interpretation is always taking action on moving data, riding the surface currents of what presents itself as topic-centered narrative while at the same time plumbing its depths for a deeper, thematic meaning and understanding which tacitly structures the topics presented by the teller for the listener. Interpretation in qualitative 407 research, as I now personally understand it, is activity that is not disengaged, but action oriented and engaged (Taylor, 1995) in reasoned reflection and interpretation on a world of lived experience; finding themes that simply are the essence, the touchstone of the truth of the stories as lived experience expressed in this study which, in turn, reflects the truth about the value of the qualitative research methodology used to study and interpret such an experience.

Allow the fact that interpretation is an engagement of the lived experience, you then arrive at the truth of qualitative methodology. The third turn of the interpretive spiral involved the interpretation of the stories as they emerged and were set in text without the researchers voice. These are the stories presented in this study and from which the themes discussed below have been mapped and located. Penetrating these stories to the core themes around which these teachers framed their practice could only have been completed by creating a sense of the interviews as a "whole story." unencumbered by the noise of the researchers voice. I have come to realize there is within any coherent story something the teller wishes the listener to know, to learn, or to understand about which rests within the telling of the story (Lawless, 1993). This understanding, meaning, and strategy for presentation are all 408 influenced by the tacit presence of essential phenomenological themes. Phenomenological themes are available to researchers for mapping but only if the data is engaged by a strong and deep reading (gaining access to the topics and themes as meta­ narratives) which entails a simultaneous mapping of the surface and linear flow of the story as well as the mapping of the depths of the stories as represented in themes. This was done, at least for this researcher, at the same interpretive moment. Mapping the themes required a "dual" reading, one at the focal level of awareness and one at the subsidiary level. I turn, once again, to the work of Michael Polanyi (1958; 1969a; 1969b; 1983; 1975) to describe how I engaged in what I have personally defined as a "dual" reading of these stories, which Bloom (1975) describes as a strong reading and Lawless (1993) understands as an over reading of personal experience stories. Narrative dual interpretation combines the two narrative research presuppositions developed above; namely paying attention to and mapping the surface flow or "drift" of the topic-centered data in stories, while plumbing their depths for the themes which determine the stories' course and direction. Interpretation as a comprehensive concept is understood as "dual" interpretive action of a simultaneous 409

"drift and plumb" of the stories and is based on the tacit knowledge paradigm of Michael Polanyi (1969b). In this epistemological construction of knowledge Polanyi distinguishes between two kinds of seeing, a focal awareness and subsidiary awareness. Polanyi uses the metaphor of stereoscopic photographs as illustration for the development of tacit knowing as a composite of focal and subsidiary awareness. By looking at one picture with one eye, and another picture with the other eye using the proper equipment, the result is a quality, an integration of the images as an engagement (Taylor, 1995) of information as knowledge from both pictures which is different than the two pictures taken separately. Polyani argues that this "fusion of difference" brings about a focal quality of depth and perspective not present in the flat appearances of the pictures seen separately. It is a quality which holds in the binocular relationship information as a way of knowing which is different than the monocular information presented by either picture alone. Difference between two objects always reveals new differences as "news of difference" (Bateson, 1979) The topic-centered narratives which emerged after I removed my voice from the data were the result of a "surface drift" of the data. It was an almost instant recognition of the topics once the story was configured as a whole voice, a 410 whole text of each teacher's voice. The topics literally jumped out in my focal awareness of the stories and into rry lap. I had initially thought these topics to be themes, the underlying structure of the stories themselves. I mapped these currents of data and created categories under which most stories fit, and subsequently gave them names. But these categories seemed shallow, flat and would have been focally obvious to other researchers who had found and made their own categories of storied events from teacher stories (Ashton- Warner, 1965; Ben-Peretz et al., 1986; Brittion & Pellergrini, 1990; Brown & McIntyre, 1986; Calderhead, 1987; 1988; 1994; Clandinin, 1985; Clark & Peterson, 1986; Cochran- Smith & Lytle, 1993; Connelly & Clandinin, 1990; 1994; Eisner, 1985; Elbaz, 1981; 1983; 1990; 1991; Goodson, 1992; Grumet, 1988; Jackson, 1986; McAninch, 1993; Munby, 1987; Noddings & Shore, 1984; Sarason, 1982; Schon, 1991; Witherell & Noddings, 1991; Yonemura, 1982) As I reviewed these categories and read and re-read the stories, some topics consistently emerged across them. As I wondered about this phenomenon I began taking the topic- centered categories and comparing them to the initial "call to teaching stories." since this topic-centered narrative appeared in all the stories. I began to work, not across (inter-interpretive motion) the stories, but within each story (intra-interpretive motion) from the categories as 411

topics to the whole story and back again. This focal awareness, paying conscious attention to the topics and then relating them to ity faint but developing sense of each story

as a whole, resulted in what I later came to understand as the relationship between a subsidiary awareness and a focal awareness, between paying direct attention to the visible foliage of the topic narratives which kept pointing to the yet unidentified roots of the subsidiary themes which

functioned as clues to that which it nourished and also pointed. I assumed from my review of the literature that themes were available in stories, but it was necessary to remove my voice from the data to reduce the noise and allow the teachers voices to speak so I could see those themes. Only then, was it possible to see and hear the themes among the reduced noise of only one spoken and written dialogue which are the personal experience stories shared in chapters I through IV. Within this dual interpretive paradigm there was a spiral or circular motion of emerging themes as ny interpretive attention moved from being focally aware of the topics and subsidiarily aware of the themes that informed and structured them. In each movement, of focal awareness from one perspective topic to another, although hardly noticeable, new information, new awareness on which to focus emerged 412 which changed the relationships between the levels of understanding and interpretation. I continuously stood with both feet in different interpretive relationships, different parts of the story, always stepping between topics and themes aswirl in motion, one informing the other within the flow and currents of a hermeneutic phenomenological "dual" interpretive process. The reasoned action of dual interpretation in which deliberation, and reflection, and judgments about the knowledge of teaching practices moves the researcher between the topic and themes of narrative structure, much as one's location on a map always points in one direction but stands in relationship to may other points, the interpretation expands knowledge in a linear form ( a larger map) while spiraling to greater depths (more detail about the territory the map portraits). By studying and becoming fully and focally aware and consciously attentive to the quickly emerging topic-centered narratives, I began to engage the stories in a broader and deeper and more fulfilling way; understanding the story as a whole. Although I sensed this dual interpretive motion between the topics and the themes which increased my understanding and knowledge of the story as a whole, I was at a loss about how I was arriving at, slowly but surely, to feel, to intuit, an impending catch of the cohesiveness of these stories and 413 the importance theme played in the development of, in tying these stories together in a sense of wholeness. By surrendering my voice within the text my focus and attention was immediately brought to the topic-centered narrative structure of the stories. By continuing to focus on the topics and relating them to the stories as wholes, themes began to emerge which ran much deeper than the topic-centered narratives would admit to, if analyzed only on their own. As I continued iry reflection on the stories I became aware of a quality in these stories which was different than just the parts as topics would suggest. I finally determined that my unsettled feelings about these stories was a creative tension which was occurring between iryself as interpreter, the topic-centered personal experience stories and the story presented as a whole. Within that tension I began to find, to struggle with, to pull out, with aggressive and often frustrated intent, the themes of these stories which direct their flow and motion and direct the speaker to tell the listener of certain events and certain topics in certain ways. It is important to understand that I am arguing for the existence of at least two narrative structures, themes and topics (typifications) which always work together in the construction of personal experience stories. Their interactions one upon the other, focal awareness informing 414

subsidiary awareness and vice-versa, would stand in different relationships to one another and sound and yield different information if only their parts, their topics as linear events were coded and analyzed separate from the deeper themes which influence their production. But within the conjoint interaction in which both theme and topic are fused, in a "dual" interpretive methodology, there emerges the phenomenological essences, a quality of and certainty about the coherence and interconnectedness of stories. This interconnectedness of traditions and histories, as themes, of those who tell stories, seems lost in only the focal awareness of generating topics as events by which experiences in the life world can be rendered reasonable and understandable. If researchers limit their analysis to only topic-centered narratives they run the risk of interpreting only what the voices of their subjects talk about, what their voices refer to within the context in which they work and live, a disengagement of the self and voice which merely points to the lived experience, rather than the voice as neither self nor voice but, as in tacit knowing, an utterance as phenomenon of the currents or flow in which the voice lays as images of traditions and histories which are more than that of self or voice alone but binocular meaning, a different way of knowing that reflects reasoned actions taken in the lived experience which are one with the word, an 415 engagement of action and voice together as the lived experience. Themes and topics inform one another and are present in these narratives as relationships which are in motion, one motion the result of another which is more powerful than the motion of the two apart. Topics and themes are not mapped as distinct parallel flows within narrative, but are intertwined, changing the direction of meaning and understanding as they cross one another. Storytelling is putting into active and powerful motion the lived experience where the linear flow as topic always has a thematic depth to it. Both must be taken into consideration in a "dual" interpretive methodology where one begins to emerge in its very listening, writing and speaking two levels of phenomenon which, I dare to say, based upon this research, interact between each another in all narratives. Based on this researcher's interpretive experience topic-centered narratives and the themes they represent form the phenomenological and hermeneutic essence of story and each is essential to what counts for the teller as story which makes sense of the lived experience for the listener. Coherent story must have both topic and theme but these are different. They are located at different conscious levels, I suspect within the teller and listener. They are certainly 416

located in different conscious levels in the interpreter; one at the focal awareness level and one at the subsidiary level of consciousness of which we can become focally aware only

through attention to that to which it points. We use the topics to map the themes as currents which are always deeper and more elusive. Within the paradigm of interpretation as noted above, the researcher confronts not only the subjective meaning of the other, but confronts the meaning of herself as well. And in that confrontation the understanding, meaning and reasoned action of each is a different understanding, a different way of standing to one another and the lived experience. When combined, a comprehensive story of integrated knowing and understanding, some focal as topic, some tacit as themes emerges which reminds all of us of our humanity, our respect for persons, therefore the deeper qualities as currents of themes that stand as essential essences and notions that are our common lived experience. In all, interpreted stories of teaching practice stand as something always larger and deeper than the topic presentations, the typifications of the lived experience which are obvious. What comes to mind in reflecting on the actions taken in the dual interpretation of these stories is the development of a compelling case for teacher thinking and practical knowledge whose themes focus upon and recognize the qualities 417

embedded in these pedagogic concepts, qualities which emerge from the inherent focus on the literal explanations and reflections on past experiences which these stories represent.

INTERPRETATION OF TWO PERSONAL EXPERIENCE STORIES In this section I have chosen to interpret two personal experience stories in detail from the four presented in this dissertation; those of Joyce Conners and Craig Hastings. I propose a dual interpretation of the stories which will expose the role of topic-centered narrative as it relates to the themes located in the stories, themes which see and speak of deeper currents of meaning as sustaining personal and professional qualities which seem unchanging, in spite of a changing world, changing topics and ways of understanding.

JOYCE CONNERS-STANDING IN A WORLD VIEW Joyce Conners is young. She is twenty-five years old and at the time of this writing she has completed her first year of teaching at Lila Belle. She is athletic, strong willed, and loves to travel. She creates, by her own admission, a Life List and calls it a "cheesy" thing to do but having a vision for her life is a need and she encounters herself and her visions for living in the life list which she notes, "Is all of the things I want to do before I die." There is a wonderful honesty, sincerity and wholesomeness in Joyce which 418

exudes from her stories, her mind and her spirit. She is passionately in love with the teaching profession. Teaching runs in her family. Both Joyce's mother and

father are teachers. Joyce went to university to major in' business, make a lot of money and find a man, in that order. By her own admission, "Nothing happened." After almost quitting three times in as many years, Joyce decided that everything her parents had done to keep her out of the teaching profession she would, in turn, embrace and decided to become a teacher. She finally admitted to herself that, "This was just something I wanted to do and enjoyed doing, so I just went into it". Joyce loves to travel. This does not run in her family but it is in her veins. This love for adventure and travel proved to be a powerful and pivotal point of view in her "call to teaching" and her professional development as a teacher. Joyce had decided to take a trip to Europe during her Senior year. She had planned to take the semester off and just travel. She subsequently discover, however, that the university offered a program of student teaching abroad at certain Department of Defense (DOD) American Army Bases in Europe. Joyce applied and was accepted for the program. She chose the DOD schools because: These DOD schools had American kids whose parents were stationed overseas. I opted for the Department of Defense schools because I didn't know how people would 419

...they might say if I took the international school, "Oh that's nice, but those are kids...they are all different, I want something you can apply to my classroom. So I opted for the DOD school because they were American kids, just like the kids I have here. I had American kids and so that would be kind of like a help, I guess.

One of Joyce's notion of a good teacher is a good match with the culture in which you teach. The fact of this "goodness of fit" of teacher with the situation is not lost on her. There is something inherently important, culturally right and certainly ethnocentric about her intuitive feel for American education. She had the choice of attending and teaching in one of several culturally diverse schools, "International Schools" as she called them which, "Were huge and it meant that you would be working with students that were bilingual...large and different ethnic groups that fed into theses international schools, mostly by affluent parents. Joyce traded diversity for ethnocentricity because she felt American schools would not be as accepting of a multicultural or multilinguistic teaching experience. American schools still represented for this young person a cultural monolith, a natural way of education which functions throughout the world, a pedagogy caught in the blinders of its Americanism, not open to a world view which is polyphonic, of multiple voices, diverse and in constant change. As Joyce notes, "The other nice thing was that I had some privileges of the army base so when I got home sick it 420 was kind of like being in 'Little America'." Ironically, this very issue of diversity versus ethnocentricity became problematic for Joyce during the Christmas Holiday Season at Lila Belle. Although she thinks "American" she argues she holds a strong, diverse and multicultural world view. Joyce places a lot of emphasis on how she feels about her experiences. I believe she trusts her instincts about situations and people, but she knows these instincts exist not only subjectively within herself, but they are, in some sense, controlled from the outside. These inner, "inside" instincts cannot overcome, raise up against the "outside" metaphysical forces (Pratte, 1992) of something not of the real empirical world called fate. There is no reason to worry about things, pragmatically things will always work out if you do good things and believe that fate will reward you for your good deeds. Joyce admits that : My life is all fate. Everything is controlled by fate. You know sometimes though I can determine my own fate. Because I'd like to think that because I do good things, good things will come my way and good things will happen to me. That is one way of controlling my fate is that good things...but there are some things you just can't change. Bad things sometimes happen. And, I accept those things. Fate played a large part in her employment at Lila Belle School. Joyce searched a year for a job while subbing in a large city school system adjoining the Claremont district. 421

This was clearly the most depressing time in Joyce's young life. She worked with difficult kids during her substitute teaching experience and she considered this year her year from hell. She completed two long term substitute positions in Severe Behavior Disordered classes and learned a lot about the emotional needs of children even though the kids were physically beating her up on some days. She knew the kids did not hate her; that they were actually angry at the situations they were in at school and the home lives they came from and taking all of that anger out on someone else. But the whole idea of being paid by the day and having no identity in the buildings was personally distressing. Joyce became the, "Who are you today?" person as permanent staff greeted her each morning at the buildings. She wanted to fire back, "I'm Joyce Conners and I've always been that person!". Joyce remembers her Dad, she was living at home at the time, saying, "I just don't know how you do it." That year of subbing extended into the following year. For the entire time she struggled with establishing an identity. She finally realized she never had one. She was, by her own admission, "Just the sub." Joyce recalls the kind of emotional and personal upheaval she experienced during this 422 time and how that experience made her sensitive toward her own preparation for substitutes who now take over her class : I was so bent out of shape because of subbing for so long, not having an identity, having no respect, although in my long term substitute situations I did have some respect. I still didn't have an identity and, you know, most of the teachers in this very building have never been subs. And like...I respect...like when I have a sub come in I have everything ready. There is no room for error. I make sure I have everything ready for them.

Joyce believes that things happen because they happen. When she interviewed with Ralph Mertz for her current fourth grade teaching position she knew she would get the job. She had put so much time into her subbing, put up with difficult children that someone was going to realize that, know that she was good teacher. And as soon as she walked into Ralph's office, she knew she would get the job. Joyce recalls, "I was like, I knew it was going to be between me and this other person, and I was like, I know I am going to get it." Joyce understands and tells the story that it was, indeed, all fate: I walked into that interview and it was the first interview out of all of them that I felt comfortable, like completely comfortable in. There was one other I was really comfortable in, but bad things happened. Anyway, I got the job and I think it was an act of fate. I think fate was just not giving me those subbing jobs because it said, 'Joyce, you put in a lot of grunt work, you deserve to be in a nice school with some nice kids.' You know fate just said, 'Your grunt work is up, you've been humbled. It is time that you enjoyed life a little bit. ' 423

Joyce's love for teaching and concern for her kids is delightfully expressed within the metaphor of "teacher person" which she used to describe the personal relationship she establishes with her students over the course of a school year. She notes that, "I share everything with my kids; I tell them I am going skiing on the weekend, that my car broke down, that I'm in a bad mood today so, 'watch out', that...I just want to let them know, to keep them...to have them think of me as person." One parent pointed out to her this year,

"One thing that makes you really different...why my kid, I think, likes you so much because you are a person to him. You're not a teacher, you're a person. She has a high regard and respect for her children as persons who can teach her something too. Learning, for Joyce, is not a linear process with the teacher standing in front of the room lecturing and the students reciting in parrot fashion what they have just learned. Rather learning is a two-way street where Joyce notes, "I learn from my kids and I kind of feed off my kids." Joyce establishes a close relationship with her students which she believes stems from the fact that :

I have no kids of my own. This is like how I view my kids. • I try to meet every single need of theirs and I'm very sensitive to their needs and to what is going on with them. That, to me in this building, the only people in this building are me and my kids. But...I'm very, very, like overly protective of these kids. Overly 424

protective. And, sometimes I feel like I'm a little bit too attached to them. Joyce's personal reaction to all of her hard work as substitute teacher, her love for her students and her wonderful student teaching experiences abroad is summed up in her story about her first year of teaching: This has been, with the exception of the first six months over in Germany, this has just been the best year of my life. I have gotten out of home. I have gotten out of the house at my parents. I was able to buy some things of ny own. And, I just feel like I've made a lot of progress with this group of kids. I don't know if it is them or it was partly me or how it happened, but they learned so well this year. I think I've had probably the most positive first year of teaching experience a person could have. And for a change this was ity room instead of somebody else's room. It took me two months to get over the fact that no one was going to call me in the morning to say you're going to this school. Even the first few months, if someone did call me in the morning, I thought it was Dena, the woman calling for me to sub. It took me that long to get out of that mode that someone is going to call me to substitute for them. But I guess that, this is what it was, I had an identity this year. That is what was most important to me. I had an identity, I was the teacher, this was ity classroom, these were rry kids. And, I think that was why this year meant so much to me and why it was going to be rry best year. I finally had an identity. Whereas before, I make sure I never say this, I hated when people were like, "Who are you today?" I am always, "I'm subbing for this person." I hated it when I would be subbing at a building and someone goes "So who are you today?" I just hated that. So I guess having an identity was really important this year. That is what made it extra nice. And, really watching my kids grow was very important, but that's with every teacher, they all say that. So that's why this year was really good. I was able to do the things that I had waited for so long to do. You know, put things into practice. And, not do it for just a week or a few days, to be able to do it for months. Or have a project that lasted longer than two weeks. I could never do that before. 425

The magic of the first year of teaching for Joyce is the reality of finally "Being able to put things into practice." The first year found Joyce moving closer to establishing a firm professional teaching identity, an identity that could be shared with other full time teachers everywhere who would understand the importance of professional identity, "Watching my kids grow. . .but that is with every teacher, they all say that. Substitutes can't." There is a process which emerges in Joyce's thinking and how she comes to know about and talk about her professional identity through the stories as events of experiences she already knows about and tells about in topic-centered narratives. For example, I have highlighted some topic- centered stories which most of the teachers spoke to as they told stories about their practice. These topics are highlighted in bold type within each of the four personal experience stories presented in this study. These topics are simply how the stories organized themselves without the researcher's voice, each different in theme, but speaking within the same topics. For Joyce talk about the topic of substitute teaching frames the topic-centered stories of overcoming a difficult period in her life, her student teaching experience abroad as a topic which frames and reflects her "call to teaching" story and her arrival at the profession; her metaphysical 426 discussions of fate frame the topic-centered story concerning how she personally survived her first year and a half of substitute teaching by emotionally separating herself from it, making it the responsibility of an "outside fate" over which she had little control and not an "inside personal failure" which might carry much larger consequences for her own developing and emerging personal and professional identity. Joyce's stories about her developing classroom curriculum stem from her student teaching experience in Europe. During her student teaching experience abroad Joyce experienced a tremendous amount of freedom in her teaching and was exposed to many unique teaching styles. By her own admission she brought a lot of those unique ideas back to her own classroom: One woman didn't use any textbook at all. I brought that back to this classroom. My kids have one textbook that we use in their desk. I put another in their because a parent complained that iry kids had no textbooks. Every once in a while, we've maybe used our math book five times this year. You know we stay away from textbooks as much as possible. Getting hands on reality stuff...and having a lot of freedom, that's what I learned in the DOD school.

This sense of freedom and getting one's hands on the "reality stuff" is carried over into Joyce's reading program. During her student teaching in Europe Joyce had the chance to observe a class of students engaged in thirty to forty minute blocks of reading time called Sustained Silent Reading (SSR). 427

She was so impressed with the children's intense interest in reading and their self-discipline and the amount of time they were spending in their reading groups that she decided to try in her own class. Her cooperating teacher, however, was very traditional and she did not have the freedom to involve the children in SSR for more that thirty minutes a day. With her current class, Joyce has extended the SSR reading time with her kids to over forty minutes a day and is delighted with the results:

So I started it day one with this group, ten minutes of reading, and it took them even to get to the bookshelf and just pick out a book. I was like they are never, never going to sit down and just read. So what I started doing was for their birthdays they all get a book, they all know that. A few of them I'm not going to give them books. I'm going to give them diaries because they are wonderful writers. They all know they're going to get a book for their birthday and they are so excited about it now. At the beginning of the year it was like, "A book?" So ny library started very small and now I always have three shelves of just trade books for the kids. I just like, buy them. Like ny first Scholastic, and I always have a Scholastic monthly book order. I always send it out on the month. What was happening was like groups of kids would...like the parents who really want their kids to read, would buy like ten dollars worth of books. I had parents paying ten dollars a pop to buy their kids books now. And, I have had parents come in that are like, "You know ny kids are really turned on to books !", and I think it is from this SSR that, you know, started ten minutes a day, just making the kids sit down and read. My reluctant readers, I still have one reluctant reader, when they came in I probably had about six or seven reluctant readers, now I only have one and he enjoys these kind of books, so you know I give him those to read. But you know I feel that that is ny big thing that I've done this year. I've accomplished, is that these kids enjoy reading. 428

What I found out at first glance through Joyce's personal experience stories is what Joyce frames about herself and her teaching experiences within topic-centered narratives which are the portraits of her past experiences storied as events for the listener to understand and make reasonable sense of. These topic-centered stories reflect the context of the teaching lived experience, they are stories of students, of other teachers and herself, of curriculum and instruction and stories of the milieu of the school and her isolation from others teachers as well as the problem of finding time within her teaching schedule to visit other classrooms. She talks of parents and administrators and other teachers who have more experience than she does, who don't work as hard and yet receive greater monetary rewards and better kids and "Have the principal's ear." These topic centered stories clearly follow the commonplaces of education as developed by Joe Schwab and discussed early on in this study. Schwab was right. Given free reign to talk about their practices and tell stories about it teachers frame those stories within his commonplaces of education; teacher, learner, subject matter and milieu as the school community inside as well as the community which exits outside the school. I wish to argue that Joyce tells these stories within these topic-centered categories as stories which frame the 429 experiences within the context of the practice, the local and situated knowledge which is her teaching. I also wish to argue that these topic-centered narratives as phenomenological typifications emerging around Schwab's commonplaces of education, whose stories all the teachers in this study shared in common, is only part of what provides a coherent and tellable story. These portraits of a teaching practice are tied together by the themes, the currents which operate at a subsidiary awareness, which must be pulled and coaxed from the texts as they are told. These are the meta-narratives which Lawless (1993) speaks of, that in her words, "Makes what a person knows and how they know it, a knowing in process" (p. 205). Lawless (Lawless, 1993) argues, and I am in agreement, that those who tell stories seldom present the stories in a straightforward manner without some sort of interpretation. Although the topic-centered narratives cleanly organized themselves into categories which in most cases were related to the teaching practice, this clearly is not the whole story. There is motion, action, doing and power in these teaching stories and it does not come from the categories of which they are a part, of which they speak, but of the themes as moving currents in interaction with the topics, that swirl of cross currents of the lived experience which generates the power that is the story behind the story. The larger story is 430 how these teachers know what they know, when they knew it and the nature of that knowledge. And I argue below what Taylor (1985a) has argued for and been soundly criticized, what we have are only interpretations of interpretations.

I have located, by using what I have developed and called a dual interpretation process, the underlying themes of these stories. They are located within the tellers own interpretations of their topic-centered stories they shared in those quite and trusting moments with this investigator; shared as a focal awareness of and conscious attention to making their teaching practice understandable as reasoned action in the context of an educational environment. These interpretive turns ironically occur in the telling by the teller. But in the interpretation lay the themes as they have been discussed above which are the deeper currents of meaning which make each story unique, give each story is individual power to express in different ways the topic- centered narratives which seem common to each of these thirteen stories. The commonness of each story is ironically a different gift with different wrapping, yet each falls under the category of gift. What makes each gift unique is the intent of giving behind it. The themes allow one to examine the intent and interpretation of the giver about the giving, to reach out to catch the intent which stands within 431 the act of giving as opposed to just reaching out and opening the gift. What then is to be said about the essence of achieving a teaching practice as it is told through personal experience stories? I would suggest that essence, the hermeneutic interpretive themes which stand as interpretive marks of an ongoing achievement of a teaching practice exists for Joyce, as it does for each of the teachers included in this study, in the interpretations of their own topic-centered narratives. These interpretive turns completed by the tellers of personal experience stories are hard to find and they must be deftly extracted from the ongoing text. But they are there. One theme which Joyce presents at the very beginning of her story is the interpretive turn taken around her student teaching experience abroad. Her experiences there which comprise her "call to teaching story" are topic-centered concentrating on the value of having diverse teaching styles available in the DOD schools which she ultimately carried and implemented in her own classroom and this diversity greatly influenced her reading program. But the theme within this story and its impact on other personal experience stories which she shared later in the interview process was created, in her Interpretation of that experience. I also suspect, but have not talked with her about this issue, that the 432

interpretation was done outside of her focal awareness, she was not aware that, indeed, she had made an interpretive turn, subsidiary of course, and created a theme which would tie other of her stories together. I refer to her interpretation of her European experience noted below: You know, I spent that last semester overseas. I was over there for almost eight months. I went there early and I traveled and everything...I backpacked all by myself up through Northern Germany, all of Scandinavia and I did it all by myself. That three weeks I just learned so much about myself and my place in the world. And I did a lot of growing up there and I take a more worldly approach towards things, instead of...some people are kind of offended by this, but instead of thinking that the United States is number one or we're the leader and everything, I kind of think I try to think more worldly than just the U.S. This domain assumption, this stance to the teaching profession, is literally a world view constructed from her personal experience stories. And it is a theme which answers the first guiding question of this study, "How is the notion of a good teacher framed through story?" Such notions are interpretations and they are actually not framed, the topic- centered narratives frame the teaching practice as noted above, but are constructed themes from personal experience stories told about past experiences. And this "world view" theme is carried on through Joyce's story and is problematic for her in at least one of the stories shared. 433

We find this world view theme in several other locations in her story. This theme created some stress for Joyce over the Christmas Holidays at Lila Belle. She was concerned that: The holiday of Christmas, Christianity, that's the only thing that we're learning here, that's the only thing that we're celebrating here. And, I was really not happy with that. I have more of a world view. And, all we did was saying Christianity, Christmas carols here when we did stuff. And, everything was this is Christmas, this is Christmas. And, there ...and this was...it's not a High Holy Day for Jews, but it is a holiday for them and we've got to look at other holidays too and talk about why people have different religions and be more tolerant. So I was kind of upset with that and...I guess at the time...I don't know so many things were going on at that time that I just kind of let it blow over...when they said these kids they are all white, they are all from the same...I don't know, I don't even think we have any Jewish kids in this school to be honest with you. And, they're like, this is the way it is in this school, might as well keep it this way in this school. And, I was like if I was teaching in another school district, like say Binghamton or Wellsworth, this would not have happened. I mean parents would be coming in screaming at the top of their lungs, "My child's Jewish, you need to recognize their religion just as much as Christianity." I was kind of told that this is the way it is. Well, I said something and I can't even remember who I said it to. I was really kind of upset...! was just like why are we always singing just Christian songs and stuff like that and someone snapped at me and they were like well, "What's your problem with Christian's?" And I'm like, "Nothing, I was raised a Christian", and those type of things. But I was just like these kids need other exposure. And, I was told that these kids don't need it. Someone said that. So, I just kind of was like I don't need to make this into a mess. But I've decided next year that I'm going to really push...I'm going to make a recommendation at curriculum, at the beginning of the year, that we not say it's Christmas, make it more like a Holiday, like this is Holiday Season and we should really focus on sharing and giving. That is everyone. To me that includes every religion that wants to have a positive affect. And, that is what I'm going to hope to do next year. 434

Joyce considers herself a liberal person and she would like to think that her approach to teaching is liberal. And this notion of being liberal in her teaching seems to adroitly turn to the world view theme for its construction and support. When she works with her students she tries to expand their view points by discussing other ways of looking at things. She recalls that: I don't ever want to say "you're wrong" because not only am I stepping on...I don't want to form kids beliefs, because beliefs are, I feel, a personal thing. They need to form those beliefs, but I think that instead of being exposed to one side they need to have another side too. And, my kids are very good about discussing and very...if we are talking about black or white crime they, you know, they are very open they tell how they feel and those type of things. It's good. I'd like to spend more time on cultural awareness and stuff that...as things come up we deal with them. That is how I kind of deal with it in the classroom. And, I don’t think I would have that approach if I didn't go overseas. I really don't think I would have. Joyce also considers her children as "A liberal group of kids, and I try to tell them that the way they think is okay, and that you need to respect the way other people think and to kind of figure out why they say the things they do." The world view theme stands as the background against which this respect for persons metaphor is considered because by her own admission, "The area around here is very conservative and I do a lot of discussion with, bring up things in class which deal with different cultures and when we discuss these things, I don't tell them what they think is wrong, we just 435 discuss that there are other ways to look at this." The world view theme is evident throughout her story. It is fascinating to understand how firmly this world view theme is developed in her stories she shares about her practice. Joyce speaks to the development of her curriculum in reading and math by sharing stories about her reading program and her math program. When it comes to teaching division she feels compelled to teach her kids the traditional way of "doing division." This entails by her rather frustrated admission having first to say, "You divide, then you multiply the numbers, then subtract them and bring down the numbers." She notes that she, "Feels compelled that I have to teach the kids this way, but are they really getting the concept of division? I don't think they are. So I have decided to go with my own approach to division, they are going to understand the concept of division. And everyone keeps saying don't worry that they don't get it. And, I'm like well, I worry. I think that what I am going to do is get the aspect that division is a big number chopped up into as many equal parts and whatever is left over is called a remainder." Joyce did not elaborate on what her own concept of "chopped up" might look like but I believe it has everything to do with the interpretation she gave to the stories she told about her curriculum development, how it occurs and what she admits is one of her battles as first 436 year teacher. Tacitly referencing her world view theme once again she admits : I went to this school and I was very traditional, but I'd like to think of myself now as a very liberal person and I would try to think that my approach to teaching is very literal, but at the same time I have this conservative pull on me. In trying to understand how Joyce learns what she knows as a teacher from what she "knew" and when she knew about it, I am confronted with a sense of her knowing which is in a state of becoming, growing and emerging within a world view theme which needs, wants to expand in every widening planes of developing professional identity yet constrained and often starved from lack of attention, held in check by a stifling traditional curriculum, and a traditional building culture where the collective wisdom and stories of many of the teachers seems obviously overcommitted to the ideal that kids don't need exposure to other things and shouldn't worry if children just, "don't get it." The school is by her own estimation, "A unicultural school, one culture. I've had one black child and that is the only cultural diversity I've had in my classroom, one black child." It is my hope that this theme and her stories of liberal concern for diversity for her students are not, like the traditional way of teaching division "chopped up" and can survive against a culture which is certainly otherwise and will not, cannot sustain the telling of those stories. As Joyce notes, "I think this 437 building is a very professional building and has excellent teachers, but, really, you know, we don't have cohesiveness." The odds against sustaining her liberal and world view themes in the tideë of conservatism which exist around it are low, but certainly that is another story, another study of how stories can be construed as untenable in a context which renders them unsafe to tell. After the long discussion about her Sustained Silent Reading program highlighted earlier in this chapter she makes another interpretive turn and constructs another theme which is also found throughout her story. This theme deals with her hard work at establishing a liberal, cooperative teaching process so her children will enjoying the pursuit of learning.

I refer the reader to Joyce's personal experience story at the end of this chapter and in particular to her stories about her reading program under the topic-centered narrative (typification) labeled "Curriculum." At the end of this story Joyce makes a second interpretive turn. She knows and learned that what is important to her now, at this stage in her professional career and in further development of her professional teacher identity is that her kids enjoy learning. She notes, "But you know I feel that that is my big thing that I've done this year. What I've accomplished this year is that these kids 438 really enjoy learning. What is most interesting however is the appearance of her world view theme as justification for her own interest and enjoyment in reading which she tries to give as a gift of interest learning and reading to her kids. She relates : Now they are picking out books from the ERC (library) to read in the classroom. Before they wouldn't do that. So I think it is like...I want them to enjoy reading, because I was never a reader until I moved to Germany and then I was starving for anything that was written in English. So that is what I am trying for...for them it needs to be enj oyment. A third interpretive turn talks about the importance of the relationship she establishes with her kids and the relationships they establish with each other as a matter of giving to one another: Its important. We just spend a lot of time working to get them to be able to work with each other. And, I think it has worked, but I started out at the beginning of the year and things worked out pretty good. I would like to say a lot of my teaching strategies and those kinds of things are kind of how I deal with rry class as a group and how well they can handle something...with these kids I usually only have to explain things once but with Jerald's kids, you know, I have to go through the directions three time because of the way they interact with each other. So I guess, yeah, I guess (ity teaching practice) is with the relationships with the kids and how well you know the kids and their needs, their needs and what you can give. As I noted earlier Joyce lives by that relationship theme. In her respect for children she literally shares everything with her kids, particularly her world views from 439

Europe. She is aware that her relationships may be too strong: But...I'm very, very like overly protective of these kids. Overly protective. And sometimes I feel like I'm a little bit too attached to them too. Yeah, too attached to them. Like...some kids have come and told me things I wished they'd never tell. And then that makes...I've become involved. But...I don't mind that though. There is a vision and power of what can be accomplished with a class that can work together and a teacher who has established a good working relationship with the kids. Because of the relationships she can push these kids. By her own admission she already has, "Like plans on how...w e 're going to do different things next year. We're not going to do anything the same and we're going to do more challenging things because I know that they can work as cooperative groups. So we are just going to try harder, harder things and I'm going to raise higher expectations, because I think this group likes almost unreachable goals because the try, try, try." This is a powerful interpretation of the essence of teaching and gives Joyce's stories such a sense of hope and dramatic flair concerning the successes evident in her first year of teaching and the visions of achievement and continued success she has and knows will come through hard work and positive relationships. There is a final theme which is brought to bear on and helps map the tacit currents which give direction to these 440

topic-centered narratives. Although one can be successful, and bright and motivated and above all a terrific teacher who loves what she is doing, there is a need, when you are good at what you do, to keep things in perspective, to be humble in your success. This theme arises, yet again, out of her student teaching experience abroad and emerges from her "good story" about climbing a mountain for the first time. This experience had a profound effect on her perspective toward what constitutes a professional teaching life, one,that would eventually become a theme which would play heavily in how she understood not only her successes as a first year teacher but the difficulty she encountered in gaining her first teaching job. She talks about her epiphany at the mountain top: And we just got all our gear we just climbed that mountain for two days. And we got to the top and you could overlook the city and it was just like...I felt very insignificant in a way. That I'm just one person and that no one person can change the world. That's how I felt at that moment, like no one person can move the world and no one person can have control of the world, but groups of people can do it. And, it takes one person to affect a group. I felt insignificant, but at the same time empowered. And, it puts you in your place. You're not big time stuff, remember that. But at the same time it empowered you in the same way. I don't know I guess it kind of made me more realistic. This experience as it is interpreted creates the third theme, another notion of teaching which has become a part of Joyce's professional life. The relationships she holds with her students and the relationships they hold with each other. 441

One person can't change the world, but people working together can. And it only takes one person to affect a group. She speaks within this interpretive turn of the importance she places on cooperative learning and her role as a teacher leading, pushing, and pulling her students toward more and difficult learning activities. She has created an interpretive turn as theme, which however tacit it may remain, greatly influences the location of her teaching practice, in the relationships she establishes with her kids and how cooperative that relation must be for learning to occur and leading as teaching to be achieved. Being humble in your greatest successes is the mark of mature personhood and responsibility; a hallmark of an identity of professional teacher. There should be a sense of vulnerability and humanness in a leader, no matter how great, or small the success. The liberal path Joyce has, for the time being, chosen to take in her professional development will present hardships in a conservative building. But she believes strongly in her own heart the truth about her profession and the importance her own personal experiences have played in her development as a teacher. She speaks her convictions, her aims, her beliefs and her passions about her work in a spirit of missionary zeal, with and within interpretive expression of innermost themes which come from the outside experiences 442 of her life. And in the combination of the innermost and the outermost, in that swirl of motion that is the focal and subsidiary action taken in a teaching lived experience we locate her mind within her stories, not in what is spoken of by others or by this researcher, but in what is thought and told by one who stands at the mountain top at dusk and understands the gleam of light found not in what it illuminates in the village below, but for what it flashes across and finds lustrous and illuminating in the mind. Both are found and rendered back to us in story.

CRAIG HASTINGS-STANDING FOR HUMAN DIGNITY There simply is nothing humble about Craig Hastings. He has been teaching for twenty-five years and most of those years having been spent at Lila Belle. By his own admission he was a problem child, was into stealing auto parts and lived in a ghetto. Craig admits he came from a family, "That lived in the depression and never got rid of it." His family was dysfunctional, blue-collar and not one of them went to college. His father resented him at birth and his mother took care of him because Dad made it her responsibility. He inherited two drunk grandfathers who, for a short time lived with the family. When they got drunk they would argue and fight in French. 443

Craig talks about knowing what it is like not to have a stable home life: I know what it's like to walk up and open the door and look in the kitchen and go, "Oh God look what's here today." And my mother's red in the face, just as hot as can be, because actually one was a great-grandfather and one was a grandfather. The two of them were there and she did not want them and she knew she was stuck with them. And my father comes home and he's very mad at my mother because this is her family, and he's mad because they're there, so you've got two drunken grandfathers and you have a mother and father who are on a rampage and you walk through the door and...no matter what happens you get it. You're an innocent bystander, but they are so hot and hostile over the situation...And they were both drunks and my great-grandfather was French Canadian and he only spoke French and my mother spoke French and they would speak. And my grandfather, he refused to speak French, and these horrible arguments would start in two languages. It was like living in hell.

The stories of Craig's childhood are stories of viciousness, poverty and living on the edge, one slip and he becomes a criminal rather than a teacher. But Craig has beaten the odds. He fought poor academic preparation in high school, negative role models and the cruel negative opinions of family and "prima donna" teachers who laughed when he decided to become a teacher. He recalls, "So that's when I decided to become a teacher and everybody heard it and they all laughed. You know, what a joke, me become a teacher. And then I did. And then I got my first paycheck and I got another job. The district paid me $5,900 in 1969." I refer the reader to Craig's story at the end of chapter I for a review of this "recovered life." 444

Craig never mentions those who might have given him a break over the years as he recovered from his frightful childhood other than his cousin's mother who kept him out of jail during his adolescent stint at the midnight auto parts business. But giving someone a break is one of the primary themes by which Craig has developed his notion of teaching and one of the several ways he interprets his teaching stories.

All of the teachers I interviewed at Belle school are concerned about their children's welfare, and their academic and social growth. But none of them talk about giving their kids a break. Craig does and frames the concept of break within his personal history and lived experience. He understands how a chaotic home life can affect the learning process and will go to great lengths to give a kid a "break". Craig's story about Marty is one example of giving kids a break: Marty can't do any work at home. He's got seven brothers and sisters and they were living in two rooms. Can you imagine homework surviving in that mess. Well I couldn't. So I never like...I don't give Marty homework. I let him start on it after school and when he comes in the morning to finish it, and I know that he'll do it. But if I would say, "Now Marty, you have to take this home and work on it," you might as well throw it in the trash can. Now that's not giving that kid a break. He needs a break. And I try to tell the other teacher...you know, you should do this, and she just can't see it. She just can't...see, she's had such a good, stable home and such a good environment that she can ' t imagine what a zoo that house would b e . She can't comprehend that when she would come home...she has no idea, first of all, who 445

will be in the home and what will happen when they arrive. I know what that kid went through. Probably last night he got to see his dad try and put his mother's head through a wall for entertainment.

Throughout Craig's story this theme of giving someone a break plays out. One finds it obviously in the "Marty Story" shared above and several other stories. But there are few stories of anyone helping Craig throughout his struggle to raise himself above his early childhood situation. By his own admission Craig has reconstructed his life and overcome a lot by making goals and figuring out what he wanted and then going out and making it happen. Yet there are no stories about "others" who, out of the goodness of their hearts helped him along the way. I believe, in a way, Craig has adopted the role of helper, of one who willingly gives others a break and frames such help within the teaching profession to provide a role model for others like himself, a role model that he never had. Craig notes; I'm real easy-going. I tell the kids what we're going to learn, what I want them to learn. I test them, I show them what they don't know, we practice it, and then I work with them and I give them a test. If they do real well on the test they get a very good grade. I have some children that will never do well. I was telling one of the teachers, I tested this child and this child got 2 0% on the test. After we worked on the project about four weeks the child got 55%. Well that's a 35% increase. I gave that child a C. I thought that was what that child deserved. They wouldn't. They'd give that child an F. That happens here all the time. I mean that's just not fair when you're practicing something to be graded on it. I mean they should do it and if they don't turn it in then perhaps it's too hard and they can't do it. But that's not what they do. They say, "Well they don't 446

try." Well perhaps they do try. Perhaps it's too damn hard for them.

Craig makes two key interpretive turns toward the beginning of his story, one after his "call to teaching" story and the other after his story about the "drunken grandparents" which help interpret many of the other stories he tells about his students and his life. The first turn occurs after the initial story of his life. It is the epiphany, the initial call into a life of service to others. It is an interpretation, making sense out of the chaotic story of his early life where no one helped him meet his own needs of security and self-worth. He notes, "I had such a crappy time in school, and I thought if I could be a teacher maybe I could meet the needs of some of these kids." In this interpretation of his life, one finds a theme of caring, of giving a break, of helping and a call to service which in the end reflects a commitment to acts of compassion and care. This spirit of caring, shrouded in a bravado and tough outer shell developed during his youth which is intimidating to some of the teachers he works with (Abby heard, as a first year teacher in the building, he would literally chew her up) is the passion he is able to bring to his teaching and is the igniting spark found in the stunningly embroiled and emotion laden, yet engaging stories he tells about it. Craig's teaching demands a personal involvement with the kids. He 447

understands that teaching at its core, "Is personal involvement and personal relationships with the kids. If you're not involved with your class...you're very cold with you class usually you really don't produce anything. I'm closer to these children than their parents are. I see them more than their parents do, you know." The second interpretive turn comes after the grandparent story. Craig realizes that he can't take these children out

their homes simply because they are exposed to the same family dysfunction he experienced years earlier. Craig knows,

"That I can't take these kids out of their home environments. I can't change their life for them. I can only give them and outlet. I've had children that really I'd tell them, you know, 'I can't change where your home's at but this is different, here.' I mean you are treated different (at school) and things are different so you have to make an adjustment. It usually works." Craig thinks of his classroom as a safe haven for his kids, a refuge from the chaos of a home life he understands to the core of his soul. The prima donna teachers did not provide this sanctuary for a small child living in Boardman. Craig needs to make sure that he is not a prima donna and no child he teaches is left in the clutches of professional neglect. Craig has a high respect for the human dignity of his students. 448

We may define human dignity of the individual in how they are treated. For Craig it means treating everyone equally unless there is good reason that to treat them unequally. One simply does not treat an unusual child in the same way everyone else is treated. As a case in point Craig counseled with the mother of child who would not work up his potential. Instead of letting the child slide, Craig respected the ability of the child and made some necessary, but difficult classroom adjustments much to the dismay of the parent, who later on would understand the wisdom of Craig's decision. Craig recalls this story with a slight sense of personal satisfaction: I had one parent just hideous to me because I wouldn't give her child straight A's, and I said, "Yeah, your child compared to the rest of the room should get straight A's but compared to what your child can do, your child is not working up to his ability." I said, "You don't understand when your child gets to middle school they're going to begin to separate him and when he goes to junior high, I mean high school he's going to take courses for college." She said, "Of course." And I said, "Yes and there he's going to be with everybody of his own ability and if he doesn't know how to apply it now how is he going to apply it then." She hated me. She just went on and on and on and on. She...anyway years later she came and told me that I was right. But your right, if a parent came in and saw what I was doing and said, "I really don't understand," well you know I'd sit down and talk to them Craig's call to teaching story which comprises his early childhood experiences can be found as theme which emerges in several of the topic-centered narratives he tells about his practice. Craig speaks of trust, sincerity and security 449 within his classroom as he talks about his notions of the importance of having and keeping a schedule in class. Not only do these routines correspond to his lesson planning these schedules are his planning, his map of a teaching day which, by its description, is more tacit and "in his head" than written out in detail (Sanders & McCutcheon, 1986) . And his planning is structured, followed with the social and emotional needs of his children in mind: I go from spelling, and then to language, then go to reading, and by doing that then they feel comfortable with the day they know what's going to happen and that helps a lot. These children come from such unstable homes that if you have a routine and they know the routine is going to take place and they trust the routine, they settle down and they feel secure, and it's good for them because they have no routine or security at home...and if you get a routine and then they can become more stable they can produce and they get more trust, they feel more secure. So that's what I do follow a schedule... I really... it's the same, start with spelling, then go to language, then go to reading, and by doing that then they feel comfortable with the day and they know what's going to happen and that helps a lot....so they really quite know what's going to happen and when it is going to happen. One understands the schedule serves an important purpose; to establish trust, a routine and a sense of security for those children who have none of it at home. I literally felt, from deep within the core of his voice, this concern to establish a safe and nurturing environment for his children, no matter the cost. The topic-centered narrative entitled "Extracting Jessica" is a delightful and entertaining story about a young 450

girl who suffers from school phobia. School phobic youngsters simply will not attend school. It is not uncommon for school authorities to commit acts of extractions in order to get the child into the school. Once there, the children seem to achieve a level of adjustment and participate in normal school routines and activities. As a former Director of Special Education Programs and School Principal I have had extensive practical experience with the problems presented by Jessica, As I read over this narrative I tried to find the significant interpretive turn by which Craig made sense of this topic-centered narrative, I could not initially find it. It is embedded within the overall theme which I believe ties the majority of these stories together. It is the theme of teacher as caretaker. Craig sat across the lounge table during our last interview looking haggard and exhausted. It was a brutally hot day and the huge windows surrounding the lounge created a humid greenhouse effect through a more active than passive solar heating process. Sweating and feeling somewhat ill from the heat (FN) he talked about what I believe becomes the theme within which his professional life is embedded and from 451 which he draws significant meaning for his continued interest in the field of teaching:

I wrote a friend of mine a letter a long time ago telling him I'd really come to the conclusion that I'm a caretaker. That's my role in life I've adopted and that's what I can handle. Craig understands himself to be a caretaker, looking out for the needs of others, providing a safe and secure and trusting home away from home, a home he never had. Establishing a high level of interpersonal involvement, respecting the human dignity of each of his students and becoming a caretaker to the needs of others establishes the primary themes by which Craig makes sense of the stories he tells about his teaching practice. Good stories and bad stories are juxtaposed against these themes. Those topic- centered stories which reduce the human dignity of both teachers and students, which fail to show respect for the personhood of each and stand as events which separate the lives of teachers from the lives of their students and each other are told as bad stories. The curriculum topic-centered narrative is a shining example of a bad story.

Craig recalls: This district has dropped every single program they've had since I've been here. I have been through Taba, Outcome-Based Education, Mastery, which was a form of questioning. Oh God, what was the other one? The other one was called Dictator School, where everything was structured so much you'd almost throw up. We went through a period of time when in your lesson plan if it was 9:15 AM and it said you were teaching a subject. 452

then by God, at 9:15 AM you had better have been teaching that subject. We went to work stations, we went to free-base stations, we went from discussion groups, we went from structured reading to informal reading, we have done it all. And every time we'd start a program...one time they took all the textbooks that we had, and a lot of them were new, and trashed them. Every textbook. Because we were going on ____ and they didn't want any of the teachers cheating and using the old textbooks, so they trashed them all and gave us all and we were told that's the only program we were allowed to teach because it would cover any problems we ever had. And then we trashed _____ because we discovered it was crap, and we burned all that stuff and we got brand new books from _____ because it was going to cure everything. Now they're discovering, you know, _____, just is not cutting it. It's just so nuts. I mean it's just...they went from textbooks to experimenting in science and then to cut costs they got another company to give the supplies through lab kids. What they forgot was, you know, it was going to come in bulk and not be ready to go in the kits. So we had aides come in and these women would spend hours going through this stuff, trying to fill the kits with the right stuff. Nothing ever worked right. It has been a hands-on, but there's no money to buy the materials. I mean we've done so many crazy things over the years. The curriculum flavor of the month program.

Craig keeps folders now. And when parents come in and say I don't understand a grade or understand what a child is doing he is able to show them the child's work and in pride say, "This is your child's work compared to the rest and this is what you child really needs to work on. Folders help explain to parents what is happening in his class, what he is teaching and how his children are learning. The curriculum of the month simply cannot respect the dignity of a students learning or the importance of a parent's understanding of Craig's teaching process. 453

Establishing close relationships with children, placing their human dignity in high regard and taking a caretaker role in meeting their social, academic and emotional needs places a heavy burden on Craig's own emotional and psychological well being. By his own admission he suffers from depression at the end of each school year. Although he know that depression runs in his family, he also attributes it to the stress he undergoes in the classroom and which is part and parcel of the teaching profession.

During this year Craig has lived with the class from hell. They can't sit together, eat together or learn together without yelling at one another. Craig experiences symptoms of stress on a daily basis. He talks candidly about living in a "commando room":

I had to go see the doctor because I had all this burning in my stomach. It was like my stomach was being eaten alive. I've been living on Pepto Bismol for two months. So I went in to see him and he said that I had so much stress that I've aggravated by esophagus and the top of my stomach and so I have to take some kind of an anti-acid medication for a month. Craig's themes or interpretive turns by which he evaluates and interprets his own stories in order to make meaning from them, the process of how he comes to know what it is he knows, all involve, as Joyce's themes do, the affective relationships established with their children. And when things do not go well, one either changes the themes by which one constructs her personal experiences as stories or 454

suffers the consequences of constantly looking for or trying to fit the lived experiences to match the themes by which one interprets the very experiences of which they speak. When theme and the real world are out of balance, stress is the ultimate reward. Craig notes: As bad as things are when summer comes, I don't know, it's like it's a finality to the end of the year and I miss the children and I become very depressed because I'll never see them again. And I'm also depressed because I didn't get accomplished what I wanted to. But it is always depressing for me at the end of school... I don't know. I guess you're in really so much demand and you're needed so much. And when summertime comes I'm no longer a caretaker (emphasis mine) and I am at a loss for a time. It takes me time to funnel my energies at different things and I'm lonely. I mean I am constantly around people and children all day long and you go from that suddenly to not seeing anybody for long periods of time. In concluding this chapter I again refer to Charles Taylor (1995) and his notion of the engaged agent. Now that I have worked through and developed my own dual interpretive methodology for understanding personal experience narratives and the essence of what comprises them, topic-centered narratives and themes, I defer back to Taylor for further clarification of this notion of agency and the narrative construction of our lived experience. I want to argue that when teachers attend to stories about the teaching experience the stories are made intelligible by their being placed within the context in which the teachers are engaged, in the teaching profession. 455

The physical embodiment of the teachers in the school while telling these stories is the context which confers both the listeners and tellers intelligibility and understanding of the stories as stories about teaching. But at the same time, the topic-centered narratives which the teachers focally attend to in the action of engaged telling is the very vantage point, Schütz's stocks of knowledge, out of which the experience of teaching is to be understood, and this is different than what Taylor argues, which is the context is subsidiary to the topic-centered narrative. The context of the commonplaces of the school is subsidiary to the focal telling of the topic-narrative stories. I disagree with Taylor.

I believe that I have demonstrated that the background, the subsidiary awareness from which these stories arise, are based on deeper themes as currents which determine the flow of the stories and the manner in which they are constructed. Taylor argues that what is traded on is the context as background, in this case as argued previously Schwab's four commonplaces of teaching, which are in all thirteen stories collected for this study, being articulated. What I argue is the context is articulated in topic-centered narratives or stories at the focal awareness level and many of these cut across the narratives as a whole such as the topics of subject matter, or curriculum taught and the manner in which 456

it is taught, the deeply felt isolation of the teachers within the building, the enormous sense of stress that is associated with teaching, and the amazing story of Jessica who appeared in four out of the thirteen stories transcribed. Teachers are aware of the conditions, as typifications of a lived teaching experience, under which they work and talk of them at a surface level in topic-centered narratives. I believe that themes stand in subsidiary awareness and are the interpretations of interpretations of focal topic- centered stories from which teachers attend from as they attend to their experiences of teaching as storied events. I contend that the traditions and histories of past experiences are the backgrounds teachers are not explicitly or focally aware of because the status of the topic-centered narrative already occupies that focal position. But the themes as interpretations of these topic-centered stories are embedded in the topic-centered stories and therefore are capable, in fact are there and do act, as implicit story facilitators because the teachers already trade on their familiarity with their own traditions and histories as background. What these teachers bring out in story, then is what they tacitly already know from their horizons of traditions and prejudices (Gadamer, 1992), what they already knew or had a sense of, even if they didn't know it (Taylor, 1995 p. 69). The interpretation as theme, or interpretive turn, made within 457

the topic-centered story is made tacitly essentially for the listener and is what makes these narrated experiences intelligible to both the teller and the listener (Taylor, 1995 p. 70). The "call to teaching" stories contained for both Joyce and Craig information about their own histories and traditions which stand as pre-understandings of what it means to be a teacher and is used throughout their stories. The stories they told take those themes or tacitly held "pre­ understandings" (Taylor, 1995) and make them explicit as, and this is my term for them, the interpretive turns on their topic-centered narratives. The topic-centered narratives make explicit what is the tacit background of personal traditions and histories which are the themes which facilitate the stories in the first place. And these themes only arise by taking reasoned action in the world, by engagement of the person in the lived experience. There is a dynamic motion and action in the construction of personal experience stories, the play between the focally constructed topic-centered narratives and the themes which tacitly facilitate their construction and telling and make each of the stories about the same topic of education, different. It is the traditions and histories of the tellers which make these stories unique and different. Themes provide the spark which in the case of the these stories ignites what 458

Aristotle calls, the passions of the mind. Themes and topic- centered narratives stand as practical knowledge of the self and knowledge of a "call to teaching."

THE PERSONAL EXPERIENCE STORIES OF JOYCE CONNERS Joyce Conners relates a fascinating story. It is laced with the metaphysical and the practical events of an active, aggressive lived experience. Joyce has developed a "world view" of education and carries that assumption to the classroom. This view has been constructed by her participation in a student teaching experience abroad and through her many travels to a diverse number of countries which resulted from this experience. Her stories are fascinating and speak to the importance of the history and traditions of the personal lived experience and its impact on a teacher's professional work. Joyce has taught at Lila Belle for the past year after a grueling year and half of substitute teaching. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree from a well known institution in the mid-west. Joyce is the only teacher of the four presented here who actually lives in the Lila Belle attendance area. She is athletic and enjoys many outdoor sports. A Norwegian, Joyce loves winter sports, skiing, hiking, ice skating and "Broomball." Through our discussions I learned for the first time about this sport. On several occasions Joyce showed up at the interviews with bruises on her arms. When I inquired 459

the first time about her injuries, she explained the intricacies of "Broomball", her love for the sport and the bruises she takes in the name of love.

It's like all these wonderful things happened and then all of a sudden Broomball came along and I was even more happy. My life was made with this Broomball in mind. It is big in Canada. And, this Broomball, I mean it is huge in Norway. I mean. . .and I'm Norwegian so I knew about this game for a long time. When you cut off a broom stick, if you cut off a broom, all you'd have is this solid part, instead of the soft part and the upper part of the broom is really firm and very hard. And, what they do after years and years of people playing like this, well they've made a plastic piece in that shape instead of the broom. So I have a plastic paddle instead of the broom. The paddles are not that expensive about $15.00 dollars. And, then it depends on the level of play of people. Like, the recreational people just play with the brooms. Some of them they don't even bother cutting off the broom thing. They hit around a ball, a plastic ball about this big. It is on the ice. It is played just like hockey, but it's on a smaller rink. They usually play it, like, you know, how big an ice hockey rink is? Well, usually they'll have two games going on at either end. And you run around on shoes. They've made special Broomball shoes that have like a suction underneath it, almost like...they're not suction cups, but they're like a pad that has little tiny suction things that allow you to...like I wear a size 9 shoe, but the way they spread out makes me look like I have a size 12 shoe on. They kind of distribute your weight more so that there is less chance of falling on the ice and stuff like that. I don't fall that much any more, unless I hit a real, real slick spot. Or if someone checks me or something like that. Then I'll fall, but most of the time I don't fall. I'm that good. It's an exciting game and the thing is, like. I'm so competitive that I can't play anymore as recreation. It's no fun. So I play more competitive now. Like in all my sports. I've always been aggressive. I mean when I was in high school I ran state in track and cross country. I'm just aggressive in sports. That's where I vent I guess. That's where I vent. Like, "Oh gee", I had purple legs from my hips on down a few times, from just having my legs hit with the paddle, but 460

the thing is, it's a rush. And the thing is that the teams that I've played with, it is like a rush. But I'm not as aggressive any more. I played rty first game in three years about two months ago and I came home with the typical bloody knuckles, 'cause you do, your knuckles just scrape on the ice, it's an ice scrape and they bleed, and I just said, ""Nope", I'm not going to do this anymore. I'm not into the blood thing anymore. So I wear special gloves that they allow you to wear and I can play defense more and I don't play offense any more. But that has happened because they made me play goalie. I usually don't play goalie and it just happened that our goalie didn't show up so they asked me to play and I didn't have the goalie equipment. So I was like in a bad situation, but normally I don't get this bruised. But it is great. And, I've been really happy.

HOW JOYCE CONNERS CAME TO TEACHING I changed my major 3-4 times in college because I completely went to college for the wrong reasons. First of all rry mom and dad wanted to get me married, that is where they thought I was going to find "the man". Nothing happened. I was going to be the big business type, you know, big business type and make lots of money and Swassing was the best business school. That is why I went there. I went there and I hated it. I hated being in college. I almost dropped out twice. Came very close for dropping out. Finally, both of my parents are teachers, they did everything possible to keep me away from teaching...they don't enjoy teaching as much as I do. But finally I just said that this is something that I enjoy doing. I'd been a lifeguard, teaching swim lessons for 5 years. I loved doing it. I got into the education program. 461 fell in love with it, was enjoying school and then this student teaching European program, which they have. Student teachers go over only in the fall and it just fell right into place because I was not on the right track like everyone else was. Most people do their student teaching in the spring at Swassing, because we're on semesters. Most people finished up their methods class in the fall and then do student teaching in the spring. Well, I was all messed up because I had taken all these business classes and it turned out my student teaching was going to end up in the fall. And, this door opened up. I was also one of the few people who decided to take a science concentration, which very few people did in elementary ed. Most were reading/language arts. So I came to the point where I was going to go, myself,...I was going to go to Europe whether or not I got accepted into this program. If it meant I was going to take a semester off, that's what I was going to do. I thought that the competition for the program was going to be much more competitive than it was. But they were very impressed with me. They took me on to do the student teaching in Europe. We had a choice of doing student teaching in an international school, which means you would be working with students that were bilingual...huge different ethnic groups feedings into these international schools, mostly by very affluent parents. Then you had the opportunity to go to Department of Defense schools, which 462 were American kids whose parents were just stationed overseas. I opted for the Department of Defense school because I didn't know how people would ...they might say if I took the international school, "Oh that's nice, but those are kids...they are all different, I want something you can apply to my classroom." So I opted for the D.G.D. school because they were American kids, just like the kids I have here. That way I could say even though I was teaching overseas, I had American kids and so that would be kind of like a help, I guess. The approach in the D.G.D. schools is teaching ...at this school the teachers had a horrendous amount of freedom, so I got to see all these really unique teaching styles. A lot I brought back to this classroom. Gne woman doesn't use textbooks at all. My kids have one textbook that we use in their desk. I put another in their because a parent complained that rny kids had no textbooks. Every once in a while, we've maybe used our math book five times this year. We have reading tradebooks that we use, but my kids have ...you know we stay away from textbooks as much as possible. Getting hands on reality stuff, which I learned in the D.G.D. school. The other nice thing was that I had some privileges of the army base so when I got home sick it was kind of like being in "Little America". Those things were nice. But my housing situation was unbelievable. I got to live on the 463

Rhine River ...I lived out. I wanted that because I wanted to be challenged everyday. I wanted everyday to learn something. It was very enlightening for me because I traveled all by myself for two months. I backpacked all through Scandinavia and all through northern Germany before I started my student teaching. I did a lot of growing up there. You know, you kind of feel like when you're over there and you're backpacking and you're just like I'm so insignificant to the whole world, I'm just 1 person. And, that is kind of...I just did a lot of growing emotionally there. I had this wonderful door open to me, I took it, and I spent what I consider, at twenty-two you know, that was one of the best things I've ever done in ity life. You know, I spent that last semester overseas. I was over there for almost eight months. I went there early and I traveled and everything. But there I did like a lot of growing up and a lot of...I take more of a worldly approach towards things, instead of ...some people kind of offended with this, but instead of thinking the U.S. is number one or we're the leader and everything, I kind of think I try to think more worldly than just the U.S. Yeah, and I mean...I've backpacked, like when I got there I backpacked...I didn't know anything about Europe and I landed and the first thing I said to myself, I was like, what am I doing here? I was like why am I doing this and what 464 am I doing here? I'm all by myself. So I took my backpack and the first three days were just awful and I took off to Norway and I backpacked all by myself up through northern Germany, all of Scandinavia and I did it all by myself. That three weeks I just learned so much about myself and my place in the world. So, and like with me, it's like, I feel my life is all fate. Everything is controlled by fate. You know sometimes I can determine my own fate. Because I'd like to think that because I do good things, good things will happen to me. That is one way of controlling my fate is that good things...but there are somethings you just can't change. Bad things sometimes just happen. If I were to have someone in my family die, it wasn't because I did anything wrong, it just happened. And, I just accept those things. And, I've never, like with death or anything. I've never been a mourner at all. Like my grandmother died in December that was one of the...or no when did my grandmother die? She died in February...

RESPECTING CHILDREN And I share everything with my kids. One parent really pointed she goes "One thing that makes you really different...why my kid I think likes you so much (I have this kid who hangs on me, just really likes me a lot) because you are a person to them. You're not a teacher, you're a person." 465

Because I tell them if I'm going skiing on the weekends I tell them that. I tell them what happened to me this week. Why I'm in a bad mood today. Like I might tell them my car broke down or something and I'm in a really bad mood today, I just wanted to let you know. So I try to keep them I want them to think of me as a person, not always just as the teacher. Just a teacher person, I guess. So I've had a really good year and I bring in all sorts of my things from Germany and other places and I share them with them and I think they like them. Sometimes they go and tell their parents this and the parents are like, "What's ny kid talking about". So I try to explain. We were talking about foreign currency and how they don't call them dollars, they call them kroner in Denmark and kerners in Norway and the mark in Germany. They are going and telling their parents all this stuff and when...I'm Norwegian, about seventy-five percent, so I talk a lot about Norway and when the Olympics were going on I was just going to town on that. And see that's one thing that I think is so important is that it's got to be something that they do everyday. And so, many teachers just do it Wednesday or Friday or Wednesday and Friday. This is a set time of day that the kids know they are going to sit down and read a book they enjoy. And, they just...a few of them I kind of wonder if they are reading the entire thing, but I mean they've got to be reading the words. 466 because like Alfred's not a very good reader, but he has his book for about two to three weeks, so that gives me the impression that he is reading through it or trying to get some of the words. They are no pictures in his books, so I don't understand why he holds on to a book that long. So I figure he's getting something out of it. I feel kind of bad because I'm not measuring their reading skill, but I feel they've really improved as far as readers go. See I learn from my kids, and I kind of feed off my kids. See I have no kids of my own. These are like how I view as my kids. I try to meet every single need of theirs and I'm very sensitive or try to be very sensitive to what is going on with them. That, to me in this building, the only people in this building are me and my kids. And, during the school day...and I know it's kind of strange. And, like I notice myself like on the playground, and this is not good I don't think. I'm so overly protective with my kids. And, sometimes I'm like always looking and watching for them because to me they are the most important is my group. Whereas I should be watching all the fourth grades on recess and those type of things. But...I'm very, very like overly protective of these kids. Overly protective. And, sometimes I feel like I'm a little bit too attached to them too. Yeah. Too attached to them. Like...some kids have come and told me things I wished they'd never tell me. And, then 467 that makes...I 've become involved. Already I've become involved with a few kids families right now, one girl I take out once a month to do something because Mom and Dad just don't have enough money to do anything with her. So, but I'm not...I don't mind that though. And as far as not havinga lot of contact with other teachers, or not having like a team teaching intervention thing. I've never really thought of that really before. I do a lot of things with Jan. I have an open door policy. Anyone can come knock on my door, come in my classroom. If they want to pull a kid to do something in their room or something, I don't really care. I think its, I don't like keeping the kids always in the same classroom. I like them moving around and being outside, but I never really thought of it too often. I've just, me with the kids all the time. I try to interact with the other teachers a lot, as much as I can. But I already have like plans on how...we're going to different things next year. We're not going to do everything the same. And, they shouldn't be that way. You know. They shouldn't have the same thing for two years. And, I'm going to do more challenging things because I know that they can work as cooperative groups. So we are just going to try harder, harder things and I'm going to raise higher expectations, because I think this group likes almost unreachable goals. Because they just try and try and try. 468

Like rry computer hot shot thing. I didn't think that it was going to ever make it. We had the lowest computer scores in this building, our class did.

OVERCOMING

And it is hard to tell the parents your child is really reading well, but you can't give a grade on that. And, I think that that is one of my battles as a teacher, is that I went to this school and I was very traditional, but I'd like to think of myself....I'm a very liberal person and I would try to think that ny approach to teaching is very liberal, but at the same time I have that conservative pull on me saying 'give it a grade, got to have a grade', I had graduated, and I had to sub for a year and a half. It was like the most depressing thing in my life and...well the first six months I did my subbing, you know I was under the impression I'll sub for six months and I'll get a job. And, then I didn't get the job. And, then I did two long term subs the next year which covered the whole entire span of the school year. That was nice, but the whole time you know I never had an identity. I was just the sub. And, that like...and if I hadn't gotten a job this year I would have never ever had anything to do with education for the rest of my life. I was so bent out of shape because of subbing for so long, not having an identity, having no respect, although my long term sub positions, I did have that respect. I still 469 didn't have an identity. You know I hated it when people would say "So who are you today?" I wanted to say "I'm Joyce Conners and I've always been that person".

And, the thing is...people don't realize...most of the teachers in this building have never been subs. I've been the only person who has subbed. Most of the other people haven't because they were during that generation where they needed teachers. You know, hiring, hiring teachers. And, like I'm like...I respect...like when I have a sub come in. I have everything ready. There is like no room for error. I mean I make sure that they have everything ready for them that certain kids like Bill and Nadine are taken care of. That if there is a problem, they are gone. They have the freedom to teach in the classroom. But, you know like when people would ask me, "So who are you today?", "who are you" or those type of things it was just like the no identity thing. All I wanted to do was just teach kids. What's the big deal about it. Why can't I have that. And then...but during last year though I had two positions, two long term positions that I think made...I learned more in those two positions about how to manage a classroom and how to work discipline, effective, respectful discipline in a classroom and if I did not have those two classes. I do not think I would have had such a wonderful functioning group of kids as I do today. Because with my Severe Behavior Handicapped class, which I learned so 470 much in that class, I learned how to talk through and process problems and with middle schoolers. I've always had a fear of middle schoolers. I did a Learning Disabilities class for five months...and really their LD was like SBH. And, basically you know the kids hated me at the beginning, but by the time I left I had kids crying they missed me so much, because I learned how to relate with that age group a little bit, and also because I'm a little bit younger than most of the teachers in that building. I was able to relate with them really well. And, I came away with not being so fearful of that age group. But I know I don't want to teach middle school. I'm not a very religious person, but I believe that there is this fate and sometimes things just happen because they happen. Or things happen because something you've done in your past. And, I felt that I had just kept putting this time subbing, and I had kept working with these difficult children, that someone was just going to realize it and say I want you as a teacher because of the things that you've done or something like that. I mean Ralph, I think h e 's the most wonderful person in the world. But I knew right when I walked in to interview with him. Well, first of all I knew he hadn't prepicked someone, because I had heard that he had interviewed thirteen people and was not happy with any of the candidates. And that he had called Central Office for two 471 more people kind of tipped me off on this. I was like, I know it's between me and this other person and I was like, I'm going to get it. I knew I was going to get the job. I walked in that interview and it was the first interview I felt comfortable, like completely comfortable in. There was one other I was really comfortable in, but bad things happened. This was like the best position. And, I think...this is like an act of fate. I think fate was just not giving me those jobs because it said Joyce you put in a lot of grunt work, you deserve to be in a nice school with some nice kids. Because I interviewed out in East Scranton, those kids are just...they are really difficult children to work with. They come from really hard homes and you know you've got to deal with that. I think that's their first priority is being safe. And, you know, and you're dealing with that...and these kids are kind of ready to learn, that I'm getting in this classroom. You know fate just said, you know, your grunt work is up, you've been humbled. It is time that you enjoy life a little bit. That's my bad story. And, that's like...I hope...I think that in life you go through these points where you have to be humbled and I did a year and a half of being humbled and being put in my place. That is why I try iry best to take prospective into everything. I try to, sometimes I don't. Like this job thing. I didn't put anything into 472 perspective, I completely blew off the handle, but that's because like this job means so much to me. This has been, with the exception of the first six months over in Germany, this has just been the best year of my life. I have gotten out of home. I have gotten out of the house at my parents. I was able to buy some things of my own. And, I just feel like I've made a lot of progress with this group of kids. I don't know if it is them or it was partly me or how it happened, but they learned so well this year. I think I've had probably the most positive first year of teaching experience a person could have. It just ticks me off that a levy is going to ruin it. It is true, it's going to ruin it. But I would have to say that I don't think I'll ever have a better year than this year. Because this was the first year. This was ity first year of teaching. And for a change this was my room instead of somebody else's room. It took me two months to get over the fact that no one was going to call me in the morning to say you're going to this school. Even the first few months, if someone did call me in the morning, I thought it was Dena, the woman calling for me to sub. It took me that long to get out of that mode that someone is going to call me to substitute for them. But I guess that, this is what it was, I had an identity this year. That is what was most important to me. I had an identity, I was the teacher, this was my 473

classroom, these were my kids. And, I think that was why this year meant so much to me and why it was going to be my best year. I finally had an identity. Whereas before, I make sure I never say this, I hated when people were like, "Who are you today?" I am always. I'm subbing for this person. I hated it when I would be subbing at a building and someone goes "so who are you today?" I just hated that. So I guess having an identity was really important this year. That is what made it extra nice. And, really watching my kids grow was very important, but that's with every teacher, they all say that. So that's why this year was really good. I was able to do the things that I had waited for so long to do. You know, put things into practice. And, not do it for just a week or a few days, to be able to do it for months. Or have a project that lasted longer than two weeks. I could never do that before. When something didn't work, we'll do something different. Or how do I fix it? Whereas when you're subbing you can't do that. First of all you don't know if it is the kids why it didn't work, if it was you, or just that you didn't have time to fix it. This year I could try those things. I could try to fix it or try something different to get it through their heads. It was nice to see that I could do things like that and get it through their heads. 474

A GOOD STORY

I had gotten into Bergen, Norway and too many weird things happened there. First of all I met this woman, she was about ten years older than me who sold everything, she was an American, sold everything in her life and was just traveling through Europe and backpacking. And, I don't know what it was, but I...me and this woman just bonded for some reason. We could like...and this sounds really freaky, but like we could tell what the other person was thinking almost. We could just change topics and we would know exactly what the other person was going to talk about and all this stuff. It was really kind of strange and even, I think, that's kind of freaky and all that stuff. But I bonded with this woman and we really got along together.

And, then there was this guy, and I don't even know his name anymore, we...this woman goes, "You know what? I want you to go talk to this guy." And I'm like, "Okay." So we just kind of sat around talking. It was very surfacy talk and all of a sudden he goes "Do you want to climb that mountain?" And there was like a mountain about a mile away and it was big. I was like, "Yeah". And, we just got all our gear and we just climbed that mountain for two days. And, we got to the top and you could overlook Bergen and it was just like...I just felt like no matter what I do I'm so....I felt very insignificant in a way. That I'm just one person and that no 475

one person can change the world. That's how I felt at that moment, like no one person can move the world and no one person can have control of the world, but groups of people can do it. And, it takes one person to affect a group. And, that's just...it was like a realization on the mountain. And, so this guy and I we climbed and I don't even think we talked to each other the whole way up the mountain, but I felt like he was just kind of my guide, because he was the only one. . .he knew how to get up the mountain, somehow. And, we came back down and it was just like...I just felt... insignificant, but at the same time more empowered I don't know it was just like when you get to the top you're like, I climbed this mountain. Many people have, but I did. But it was just...you looked down and you were just like gosh everything is so small. And, it kind of puts you in your place, but at the same time it makes you deflate yourself. You're not so big and you remember that. You know, you're not big time stuff, remember that. But at the same time it empowered you in the same way. I don't know I guess it kind of made me more realistic.

STRESS To me that was just like we were just looking at Christmas. That was it. The holiday of Christmas, Christianity, that's the only thing that we're learning here, that's the only thing that we're celebrating here. And, I was really not 476 happy with that. I have more of a world view. And, I think in this day and age we have to be more that way because all our friction is from religion. If you look anywhere in the world, people killing each other, it is all over religion. It's in Bosnia, it's in the Middle East, all those areas, Lebanon, all those areas, it's all religion. That's why people are out killing each other. In South Africa it is a color thing, but it's also a culture thing. And, you know the Danes when they moved into South Africa were like imposing onto these black people their religious views and that's were all the hate came in. It didn't start out as a color thing, it was a religious thing. And, then it came into a color thing, because you know they were like, they felt that black people the Africans were devil like because they didn't worship the same way they did. And, that's when they said black people are heathenistic and that's where it all started. I just feel that we have to have more religious tolerance and we need to be showing that in elementary. And, all we did was saying Christianity, Christmas carols here when we did stuff. And, everything was this is Christmas, this is Christmas. And, there ...and this was...it's not a High Holy Day for Jews, but it is a holiday for them and we've got to look at other holidays too and talk about why people have different religions and be more tolerant. So I was kind of upset with that and...I guess at 477 the time...I don't know so many things were going on at that time that I just kind of let it blow over...when they said these kids they are all white, they are all from the same...I don't know, I don't even think we have any Jewish kids in this school to be honest with you. And, they're like this is the way it is in this school, might as well keep it this way in this school. And, I was like if I was teaching in another school district, like say Binghamton or Wellsworth, this would not have happened. I mean parents would be coming in screaming at the top of their lungs...my child's Jewish, you need to recognize their religion just as much as Christianity. I was kind of told that this is the way it is. Well, I said something and I can't even remember who I said it to. I was really kind of upset...! was just like why are we always singing just Christian songs and stuff like that and someone snapped at me and they were like well, "What's your problems with Christian's?" And I'm like, "Nothing, I was raised a Christian", and those type of things. But I was just like these kids need other exposure. And, I was told that these kids don't need it. Someone said that. This is a very unicultural school. One culture. I have two black children in here and I just got itty second one a few weeks ago. So I've had one black child and that is the only cultural diversity I've had in my classroom is one black child. And, I guess that person was right in a sense that 478 these kids are...they all are of the same type of sorts, as far as religion goes. So, I just kind of was like I don't need to make this into a mess. But I've decided next year that I'm going to really push...I'm going to make a recommendation at curriculum, at the beginning of the year, that we not say it's Christmas, make it more like a Holiday, like this is Holiday Season and we should really focus on sharing and giving. That is everyone. To me that includes every religion that wants to have a positive affect. And, that is what I'm going to hope to do next year. But I really can't remember. A lot was going on at that time. Because I was getting ready for a trip when it was said and I just decided not to pull any... to make anybody upset, but everybody was kind of...I mean I said it out loud and a lot of people were like, "What did she just say?" Heathen in the corner, heathen in the corner. But I was like... This is a very, very conservative area. And, I think though the reason why it stuck out so much in my mind was because it was the first time I really...I mean I was a new teacher and this is the first they really got to see my political view, my view on religion and stuff like that. And, I think they were a little bit shocked at first. But I think now they kind of know that I don't think any one religion is worse than the other, but I don't think ones any better. That's how I feel. 479

I find out that when I bring up things in this classroom that deal with different cultures, we do a lot of discussion about it and I think the kids...I think I have a really, I consider them kind of a liberal kind of group of kids, and I don't think I do this to them, but I try to tell them that the way they think is okay. I don't try to say what they say is bad. What they think is okay, but you've got to respect the way other people think. And you've got to kind of figure out why they say things.

Like even if I don't work in this building. I've got to keep it in perspective. I'm going to have a job next year. I might not have the greatest kids in the world, but I can handle that. Sometimes I have to bring myself back down to reality and try to keep myself in perspective, it is very difficult. Right now I'm trying to plan it a little bit, but it is very difficult because I don't know if I'm coming back. So it is really kind of hard to know what I'm going to be doing over the summer. I know the first month I'm just going to be traveling, relaxing and doing things I wanted to do since I graduated college. I haven't been able to travel too much since graduating. So I'm going to be doing that the first month and then if I need to be job hunting. I'm job hunting. And if it is preparing for fifth grade, then I'll be preparing for fifth grade after that. I mean, I don't 480 know....see that's another thing I just don't know what is going to happen in this district. I just don't know what's going to happen, so it is really kind of hard to plan for getting ready for school for next year. Kind of deciding, like tonight I'm taking home a fifth grade math text, just to kind of look over it and kind of get a feel for it. It is really going to be hard for me to plan for the beginning of next year. I really don't know what I'm going to do, because I don't know if I'm going to be here or not.

CURRICULUM When we discuss things, I don't tell them what they think is wrong, but we discuss are there other ways to look at this. You know, those type of things. I don't ever want to say "you're wrong" because not only am I stepping on...I don't want to form kids beliefs, because beliefs are, I feel, a personal thing. They need to form those beliefs, but I think that instead of being exposed to one side they need to have another side too. And, my kids are very good about discussing and very...if we are talking about black or white crime they, you know, they are very open they tell how they feel and those type of things. It's good. We have a Jehovah Witness in our classroom who cannot participate in a lot of the classroom activities like for Halloween or Valentine's Day, those type of things. So we try to come up with programs for those days where Zack can stay 481 in the classroom. So for like Valentine's day instead we had Valentine's day and student appreciation day. Where some kids gave out Valentine cards and others wrote notes to other students saying why they appreciate them being a student in the classroom. So for Zack, he was able to stay in because kids wrote notes why they appreciate him as a student or as friend, instead of a Valentine's day card. I think I could be better at teaching, but this year I'm like trying to get used to the curriculum and those type of things. I'd like to spend more time on cultural awareness and stuff that...as things come up we deal with them. That is how I kind of deal with it in the classroom. And, I don't think I would have that approach if I didn't go overseas. I really don't think I would have. I'm Science/Math and it is very evident in rry classroom, everything is very Science/Math oriented. First of all they can't divide and I think it's because I think I have to teach them in a traditional way because most of the teacher's with the exception of Terry Moberg, of teachers in fifth grade, expect the traditional way of doing division. So I tried doing a division problem today with the traditional steps with a very....one other way of doing division and the other way was trying to use estimation. Like 6 can kind of go into 122 about, well 6 can go into 12 about 2 times, so maybe 20. 482

So I'm trying to do that. That seemed to work out the best so that's what I'm doing with it. So I'm just guessing... And, you know everyone keeps saying don't worry that they don't get it. And, I'm like well, I worry. I think that what I'm going to do is get the aspect that division is a big number chopped up into as many equal parts and whatever is left over is called a remainder.

So I'm just going to really focus on what my kids are going to know how to multiply when they come out of here. They are going to really, really know how to multiply when they come out of my class. They are going to have the concept of division when they leave. And hopefully they'll float, they won't sink. And, a lot of people say division is a developmental thing. Some kids just aren't ready for it in fourth grade. Some of my kids can do it already. Because they get it on the computer and they know how to do it, but then there is poor little Thorn who still can't do 4x4. Now reading. The thing is, I got this reading idea from one of my observations. I just could not believe it, I was looking at these kids and they were sitting there reading in this class for forty minutes. I thought "How weird", I thought these kids were like something.... and the teacher was, like well, it doesn't start like this. It's got to start with ten minutes a day and I do it right after recess because it calms them down. I have tons of trade books and that 483

library keeps growing and growing and they're like....we do SSR-sustained silent reading. They started out at ten minutes at the beginning of the year and I was pulling teeth at that, but now w e 're up to forty minutes a day and they ask for more. It was really kind of a...the thing is...like I saw that one teacher with her group ...they would...and it got to a point where when they had nothing to do they picked up a book and read. And, I was like ..."That's unbelievable". Most kids, you know, they're running around, bugging other kids and stuff like that. I was like, if I could ever get a group of kids to do that that would be fantastic. When I started it with my student teaching, we only did it for thirty minutes a day and she kept a very traditional classroom and things were very, very structured. So I really don't know the extent of how much the kids enjoyed the reading. So I started it day one with this group, ten minutes of reading, and it took them even to just get over to the bookshelf and pick out a book. I was like they are never, never going to sit down and just read. So what I started doing was for their birthdays they all get a book, they all know that. A few of them I'm not going to give them books. I'm going to give them diaries because they are wonderful writers. They all know they're going to get a book for their birthday and they are so 484 excited about it now. At the beginning of the year it was like, "A book?"

So Itty library started very small and now I always have three shelves of just trade books for the kids. I just like, buy them. Like my first scholastic, and I always have a scholastic monthly book order. I always send it out on the month. What was happening was like groups of kids would...like the parents who really want their kids to read, would buy like ten dollars worth of books. I had parents paying ten dollars a pop to buy their kids books now. And, I have had parents come in that are like, "You know my kids are really turned on to books!", and I think it is from this SSR that, you know, started ten minutes a day, just making the kids sit down and read. My reluctant readers, I still have one reluctant reader, when they came in I probably had about six or seven reluctant readers, now I only have one and he enjoys these kind of books, so you know I give him those to read. I have had three kids read at certain periods "The Earth" the classic version, which is the adult not the fourth grade one. This took them two months to get through, but they understood everything. We had discussion on it and they read it. I had 2 boys who reads Michael Creighton, one boy who's read Congo. Jurassic Park and Terminal Man. His dad was like,

"He used to never read before." I just don't think the kids 485 were given the opportunity to pick up any book they wanted to and just read it. So after he read Congo he was like. "I'm really tired, do you mind if I read a real dumb book?" I was like, "Be my guest, that's what they're for." So he read two really simple books and now he's into the Chronicles of Narnia and he's like into the third book now of that series.

So I mean I know they are pretty tough books for fourth graders and I have one child who is into the Wrinkle in Time which I think as an adult is difficult to read. So I've gone from kids who have never been readers who enjoy reading, to kids who are now looking for really serious books, classic books, who have read Tom Sawver and Huckleberry Finn and just think that that's the greatest thing in the world, you know. And I am like, "Wow". Sometimes I'm surprised at the books they decide to pick out. But you know I feel that that is my big thing that I've done this year. I've accomplished, is that these kids enjoy reading. That's what's important, I think. So...and that's why it seems true with reading, what is the purpose of reading if you can't enjoy it. So that is what that forty minutes is. Those kids pick out their own books. I never pick out their own books. When their done they say I'm done and I say, "Okay put it on the bookshelf, pick out another book." Now they are going to the library. Before they wouldn't go pick out...that was really strange. They would only pick out books from my 486 library, but they wouldn't pick out books from the ERC down there. Now they are doing that. They are picking out their books from ERC to read in the classroom. So I think it is like...I want them to enjoy reading, because I was never a reader until I moved to Germany and then I was starving for anything that was written in English. So that is what I'm trying...for them it needs to be enjoyment. Also I went through that period where everything had a grade and everything was step by step and I was one of the new math kids, which means I never really grasped the concept of math. I mean I understood that 4 and 3, you add them together, you get 7. But the thing is, I just remembered 4,5,6,7 you count up, that's your answer. Or like multiplication, it is like grouping. I never really understood that stuff until I went to college and I took a methods class in math, elementary math. It was like this makes so much sense and it all came together. I was always, like everything had a system of doing a problem, that's what new math was. Actually it should be called bad math, but for some people it works and it got me through high school. The thing is though the whole concept of math and the whole concept of numbers didn't click until I was in college. And, I'm like thinking what if I was one of those people who never went to college, would it have every clicked? And, like now I have an appreciation for math, I used to hate math. I love 487 math now. I think it is just wonderful and I really math and science are my big things. And, like I don't know....but like I said before, you know, its like with that division thing, you know, I feel like I have to say first you divide, then you multiply the numbers, then you subtract and bring down the number. I feel kind of compelled that I have to teach those kids that way, but are they really getting the concept of division, I don't think they are. So I've decided to go with the approach to division, whether or not these kids come out with formal division, they are going to understand the concept of division. I really focus a lot on problem solving in the classroom. And, we focus in on the problems that their doing. They are going on with them. Some kids just cannot interact well with other kids in the classroom and we just spend so much time working to get them to be able to work with each other. The whole classroom does. Everyone is like a support for each other. And, I think it's worked, but I started out at the beginning of the year and things worked out pretty good. Yeah, I would say like a lot of my teaching strategies and those things are kinds of how I deal with my class as a group, can handle something, like I was looking at a worksheet that Wilma's kids were doing. I was like my kids couldn't do that, they just don't think that way. They would have a real hard time...and I knew if I took this worksheet 488 and brought it to the classroom I know they would all be...they wouldn't even try it. It would be the kind of worksheet they would look at it and they just wouldn't try it. And, I tried to...because they don't like paper and pencil. And, that is kind of also my fault again because we do very little paper and pencil work. And, they would like at this and like first of all, they would go too many problems. Not gonna' do it. I don’t know if that's good or bad, because I honestly feel there is no need for me to give a kid more than ten problems. There's no need for it. That ten problems can measure what a kid knows and doesn ' t know in math. Why give them fifty. Unless it's like drill instilled practice, which I don't really agree to. But that works with this group. And, so I kind of I guess the way ny kids need. I kind of structure my lesson plans and my discipline and everything around this group and how they interact with each other. I know if I had like Craig's kids I'd have to be a completely...this year...the way I would run ny classroom would be completely different. And, I also teach Jerald's kids, who are very undisciplined group. They have really low skills for fourth grade, but I run...when I go to his classroom I have to do things differently than I would with this group of kids. I have to...be different...like different groupings that I would never do with this group or I could do with this group. 489 but there would be no need for this group. But I have to be really careful with grouping in his classroom and you know we go through directions three times, whereas with these kids I can do it usually once. So I guess...yeah, I guess it's with the relationship with the kids and how well you know the kids and I guess their needs. Their needs and what you can give. There comes a time where you just can't give any more I feel. They are a wonderful group. I love my group of kids. Next year it will be interesting.

ISOLATION I think that there has got to be times when we've got to really change our day, but the way we teach kids and all this stuff, and we've got to do it kind of together. There...like even in this building, I think this building is a very professional building. It has excellent teachers, but really, you know, we don't have a cohesiveness. Somebody told me that this week, and I wish I could remember exactly what she said, but something like the fact that they all push each other professionally and no one lags behind. No one is the "good old teacher" or anything like that in her building. It was a principal, I was talking to in Wellston. It is like they all push themselves to be better teachers and better professionals. That is hard to do with a building this big. Or a district this big. I mean it is mammoth, it is huge. There is going to be a time when the United States has got to 490 fess up and stop putting band aids on education and fix it, I think.

ADMINISTRATION Or cause you know for doing things in the building or doing things in the district. It's seniority and I don't like that. You know we talk about how affirmative action is bad, about how some people feel affirmative action isn't good because you get hired because either you're a woman or you're a minority or this and this and this. Which I don't think was the actual basis for that, but I kind of feel that that happens in this district, it's kind of like works...you can do whatever you want if you're a twenty year teacher, it doesn't matter if you're good or bad. But like here I'm trying to do all these really neat things and I just run into brick walls. Just because I like have two years of experience. I don't think that's fair. Because I think I'm a halfway decent teacher. Kids...I wanted to hold onto my kids for the next year, because I'm going into fifth grade and you know I've got twenty kids already whose parents want me. I don't think I was like awful-awful. I'm just running into brick walls. And people who I feel are probably not as professional as I am are getting better things than I am, just because they have twenty to thirty years in the district. I don't know....I'm mean. I don't think that's right, I think you should be judged on...you know we try to 491 professionalize education more and more and how can you professionalize education when you allow what I think are,..you know even like in other buildings, because I went to school here and I can remember the bad teachers, they are still teaching. You know, and the good teachers that I remember that I had in middle school they're not even in the district any more. And, if we like want to keep education professional, I mean. I've known of teachers who had really difficult times, but they decided to do something about it, like either take in-services or go back to school, brush up on new things that are working with kids and turned themselves around. And, you know, had become better teachers. But, you know, for example I know a teacher in the high school and all I can remember is like gosh, I cannot believe this guy is a teacher. I walked into boxing the other day and he's still there. And, I'm sure he hasn't changed. Because I have a friend that just graduated last year and she had him and she couldn't stand him and she said she never learned anything. And, how do you professionalize a profession, which is so important, if you hang on just because you have put in years. That bothers m e . 492

TIME I wish that at the same time everyday that maybe I could just go talk to other teachers, bounce off ideas, you know...but I would probably have recess duty at those times. It would just be nice to have 45 minutes during the day where, middle of the day, there were no kids and you could just be professionals, just working. You know, in the rooms, or working with each other or something. And, that is probably the only thing, time wise, I really wish I had. It is really hard for me on Thursdays, when I have no planning period. I have to go eat lunch and then I have to take time out and then in the afternoon I have no break at all. I have to do recess duty, and that is very frustrating. Because I am with kids all day, except for that one-half hour of eating lunch. I just wish that there was more of a break, just a forty-five minute break where I could just...the kids are outside and I'm doing what I need to do inside and maybe, like I said earlier, working with somebody else. But, I know there is going to be a time when I'm not going to have all this time to work. Right now I don't have a problem with time. I have plenty of time to give right now. This is all I want right now, is to have, and next year, a teaching job. Just trying to get these first three years under my belt and make them as successful as I can. I often tell ny kids about when I was in Germany about how they had the German system. I 493 think that is more ideal, and also the Japanese system is more ideal too, I think, because it allows the teacher planning period time. I mean that is part of their day. The planning period time in Germany is from one to three o'clock; the teacher's need to be in the building from one to three o'clock, but there are no kids in the building. That is the end of their day. They have a six day school week, in the region we were in, Monday through Saturday. It was like seven-thirty to three-thirty or something like that, somewhere around that time. And, that is the only...that really strikes me is that once those kids are done they don't have things like art and music and this type of things always in the public school. Those are things you do when you get out of school. It is up to you and your family to find you those and buy those things for you and for you to experience those things on your own. I think that that is what we should do. Have the parents, you know, help the kids grow and develop. They are always asking the school to do it. Then the teachers have that time during the day, that is built into their day, for planning and...I guess some of them, I don't know how they do in-service or I don't know how that goes. I never really was in touch with that, but they do go to school six days... I kind of set a time frame for myself, like I try to be here at least forty-five minutes before school starts and try 494 to hang around for about an hour afterwards. So in that case that time is structured. But I'm one of these people who...I like to when I'm not working I really want to be playing. I do. If I have free time, I do the things that I enjoy. When that time comes up, even though this takes priority - this is priority number one, when priority number one is done I do the things that I enjoy. I play hard, I do. And, I'll spend big money for it too. This year I think, gee, I probably spent...well I figure I spent a lot of money on rty classroom so I can spend a lot of money on ityself. But this year we went out to Vale to ski and we went all over the place to ski, but that is what I enjoy.

SURVIVING THE YEAR I learned a lot from that year of subbing. But that year and half of that subbing was just...and you know it's like with the Severe Behavior Handicapped kids, even though the kids are like beating up on me and stuff like that. Well, one child was to a point where he should not have been in an SBH unit, he probably should have been...well, he's in an institution now. Matter of fact, he is right now. But he was just starting to act out like that. But I knew the kids didn't hate me. They just were angry at the situation and they just didn't know how to control themselves. They were angry at something else and they were just taking it out on another thing. But I learned a lot from those two classes. 495

But, the whole idea of still just being paid by the day and having no identity was so depressing. My dad even said to me, because I was living at home, "I do not know how you do it". You know I just don't like it. It doesn't...to me it's just...and I think also what I'm finding out along the road, you know, it doesn't matter if you're a good teacher or bad teacher, well...it doesn't really matter if you're a good teacher, but it just matters how many years you have in the service. You know...and I'm finding that out too, I found that out last week. And, we were talking about Ohioans raising these standards about, for teacher certification. And, I didn't read enough about it, so what I'm saying some of it might be wrong, but a lot of it said you had to have a certain amount of college credit hours in a certain amount of time or something like that and people were complaining about that. I was like, how can you complain about something like that. It is just trying to get a way for you to stay on top of things. People were like furious when they were talking about that. I'm like, gosh, I wish I could go back to school and get more and more and more...

LIFE LIST

I know that. I know that. And the thing is like every once in a while I do these things called the "Life List." 496

It's really cheesy. It's a Life List and on my Life List I have all these things I want to do before I die. CHAPTER V

DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS OF NARRATIVE RESEARCH

All this you can see, it so intensely surrounds and takes meaning from a certain center which we shall be unable to keep steadily before your eyes, that should be written, should be listed, calculated, analyzed, conjectured upon, as if all in one sentence and spread suspension and flight or fugue of music: and that I shall not be able so to sustain it, so to sustain its intensity toward this center human life, so to yield it out that it all strikes inward upon this center at once and in all its intersections and in the meanings of its interrelations and interenhancements : it is this which so paralyzes me: yet one can write only one word at a time, and if these seem lists and inventories merely, things dead unto themselves, devoid of mutual magnetisms, and if they sink, lose impetus, meter, intention, then bear in mind at least my wish, and perceive in them and restore them what strength you can of yourself: for I must say to you, this is not a work of art or of entertainment...but is a human effort which must require human co-operation (Agee & Evans, 1941) . This dissertation has been carried out in both love of labor and love of word. It has tried to bring to language the essence of that "certain center" in a teaching practice which is not steadily kept before one's eyes. Within the writing and in the silent spaces of doubt and troubles not brought to language that talk as loudly as any one of these sentences, there is formed within this wording of the world of teaching experience a spirit of lives pointed toward the good. These teacherful stories are of the self and from the souls of teachers whose personal and professional experiences are real and the topics about which they talk concrete.

497 498

These stories deal with not only the events of their daily lives as they are told in topic-centered narratives, but they are of the mind and spirit. These stories are the thoughts, the orientation of the mind and spirit of teachers rising above the accidents of birth or circumstance, of privilege or poverty, isolation and hateful students, disrespectful parents and pompous administrators and deals with the soulful (Bolman & Deal, 1995) orientations of active and engaged and reasoned imaginations which are the passions of the mind (Dadds, 1995). It is within these passions of the mind that practical knowledge is defined for teachers as more than hammer and nail, wrench and bolt, the tools of a teaching practice, but rather as talk embedded in essential themes of human action which, like concentric rings growing out from the experiences of a centered life, surround the core, the essence of a teaching practice which is Aristotle's universal notion of the good (Nussbaum, 1986). This is the essence of a teaching practice, the certain center or core around which the rings as topic-centered narratives form as circles of the self, layered selves as evidence of time moving from a past into a present forming a future of new growth, new potential, new forms; no one circle of growth exactly like the one before it yet all rest, one upon the other, to form a whole larger than its parts. So it is with story. Stories of lived experience are layered one upon the 499 other as events which have a past, a present and a future, each circle of experience told as event in story affecting the configuration and growth of the next. I am not arguing for the construction of a universal truth about teaching practice. Nor am I in defense of the critique of modernity as a sterile technology. Quite the contrary. The essential themes noted in the stories presented in this dissertation are of the mind and of the personal traditions and histories which make up the minds of the teachers who shared them in story. It is the very difference in the traditions and histories of each of these teachers which makes each story presented as typifications of the lived experiences of teaching unique and different. Each story has a different core and layers of a narrated self which subsequently grows in girth and depth, one upon the other. The forest is not made of any one identical tree; lived lives not made of identical stories. These stories are polyphonic, reveal multiple dimensions as concentric rings of the teaching environment and are constitutive of a particular point of view, of a particular reality, of a particular background or core self which represents meaning and creates a way of standing both in and to a teaching lived experience. I wish to argue that the topic-centered narratives collected for this study reveal some similarities across stories and holds implications for the cultural study of 500 schools as constructed in story. However, it is within the themes, the interpretations that each teacher subsidiarily or tacitly invokes about the topic-centered narratives they tell that reveals the "certain center," the core notions, which surround and form the unique and personal foundations of the teaching experience for each of the teachers whose stories were interpreted in chapter IV. Themes are clearly the notions which I argue seem, for these teachers, to embed themselves in a core orientation toward the good from which their practice, in interpretive circles of understanding and meaning of the stories they tell about it, grow one upon the other. Throughout this dissertation I have argued that the practical knowledge teachers hold in their minds about their practice is worth studying. Most of the current literature base on teacher practical knowledge has been developed by researchers who compare actual observations of teachers at work to their stories and accounts shared about their practice (Altrichter, Posch & Bridget, 1993; Blakey et al., 1993; Butt, 1984; Calderhead, 1988; Carter, 1993; Clandinin & Connelly, 1988; Clark & Peterson, 1986; Cohan & Shires, 1988; Connelly & Clandinin, 1985; 1990; 1994; 1993; Day, Pope & Denicolo, 1990; Elbaz, 1983; 1990; 1991; Gudmundsdottir, 1991; Halkes & Olson, 1984; Leitch, 1986; Lortie, 1975; Nelson, 1993; Pope, 1993; Ross et al., 1992; Schrag, 1992; 501

Shavelson & Stern, 1981). The data used to write these articles has traditionally been a combination of both observation, interviews, analysis as coding resulting in some grounded theory and treated as an interpretation of the data. The methodology I followed is different. I merely asked teachers to talk to me about their practices, to teach me about their own practice through the stories they tell about it. I then initiated a "dual" interpretation of their stories; surfacing in an initial drift through the currents of the data, topics or categories under which their stories as practical knowledge of their teaching and the contexts in which they worked were organized as topic-centered narratives (phenomenological interpretations) and then hermeneutically, interpretitively, looking deeper at the themes which seemed to personally and uniquely structure the ordering, the use, the implementation of that contextual, topical and practical knowledge. In one sense, the study and interpretation of these stories was actual data which was not only on their minds, but in them as well. To know one's talk is to know one's thoughts. To know one's story is to know one's mind. What now can be said about practical knowledge of teaching as told in story? It is clear in some research (Brophy & Good, 1986; Buchmann, 1990; Elbaz, 1983; 1990; 1991; Gudmundsdottir, 1991; Halkes & Olson, 1984; Leitch, 1986; Lortie, 1975; Nelson, 1993; Pope, 1993; Ross et al.. 502

1992; Schrag, 1992; Shavelson & Stern, 1981) that practical knowledge is conceived as a means to an end. And certainly this means-ends linearity is talked about in these stories. It is described as nail and hammer. Craig comes to know and experience his student's lives through a war metaphor or war image. Setting up the "commando room" was a necessary means for his own emotional survival and sense of well being as a necessary end. Craig also established routines in his classroom. From the reactions and behaviors of his students, he understands that routines are important for the academic and social success of his students, but organizing the commando room is also an essential component for personal survival. Joyce teaches traditional division in a series of steps as rules of an analytic language her children have yet to grasp. However, she is determined to teach the concept of division rather than the rules. Both are engaged in means- ends behavior. In this sense practical knowledge as expressed in many of the topic-centered narratives by which the data organized itself once my voice as researcher was removed, stands as wood to saw, hammer to nail, student to learning as a practical means of constructing a table and a practical means of teaching. Such instrumental reasoning, or action taken to achieve a particular end, is consistent with what Schôn calls the means-end construal of positivist science 503

(Schon, 1983) . In many respects this is the direction I thought the data would lead, stories told as thick description of the actual minute by minute details of teaching in the classroom. Instead I received something entirely different. I was given a gift of the self. What is abundantly clear in these stories is the teacher's role in applying theory in practice and how this theory as what to teach and how to teach it is embedded in a body of practical knowledge and personal experience which is created from context and biography (Butt et al., 1988) and available to them as a coherent flow of both personal and practical knowledge. Reid (1975) argues for the existence of a stable body of knowledge of ideas that teachers possess about how and what to teach. I argue such a body of teacherful personal practical knowledge is achieved by the blending of personal traditions and histories as a lived life with actions taken within the context of the school. I argue now, based on a dual interpretation of the stories teachers tell about their practice for a personal experience knowledge which stands as themes which tie together topic-centered narratives that include not only stories about how and what to teach but the very manner by which the how's and what's come to carry meaning both for the teachers who tell their stories and for those who listen to them. 504

Themes are interpretive turns taken within the story or within the telling which interpret and provide meaning to the topic-centered narratives as a body of practical knowledge. Themes provide for each teacher a "connection" within stories between the practical knowledge held about the context of the school and students and the teacher's personal knowledge of past traditions and histories each bring to that experience. Themes frame the way teachers talk about and take reasoned action within the teaching experience. Topic-centered narratives and the deeper personal, and historical themes which provide meaning to them loop together in concentric circles of understanding and meaning which lay one upon the other, personal knowledge informing practical knowledge and vice versa in participatory concentric growth of meaning and understanding.

Located within narrative, themes are the essences of meaning which answers for both the teller and the listener, "What does all of this mean" (Richardson, 1990 p. 19)? These interpretive turns provide a showing of how the topic- centered narratives as a body of practical knowledge contributes to the overall point of view which rests in the individual personal interpretations of the stories as themes. In Richardson's (1990) terms, themes, as I have constructed them here, are the interpretive conclusions to the application of a body of practical knowledge to the teaching 505 experience understood in the topic-centered narratives. The meaning of and for telling the story is wrapped up in the interpretive turns taken within them. Interpretative turns are the intrinsic reasons applied to and given for taking the action, telling the story in the first place. Teachers possess a body of knowledge and use that knowledge in the construction of teaching experience that takes account of the actual work that is done in the classroom and is told in story as personal "best accounts" (Taylor, 1989) of the meaning and understanding of a teaching experience. Practical knowledge also speaks about the context in which teachers work. The context cannot be separated from the professional world in which they live. Practical knowledge is not a grid that is applied from the outside to the context of the classroom, but is constructed within a context and in the reasoned action taken within it. I have also argued from an Aristotelian point of view for a definition of practical knowledge, as praxis, which is the traditions and actions taken in the moral and ethical life of persons, of persons doing and living well (Bernstein,

1971 p. X ) . Practical knowledge must have this orientation to it, for I have argued earlier that taking action in the world of lived experience is taking reasoned action, action which is deliberated upon, reflected upon, interpreted and from which judgments and choices are made. Practical knowledge 505 then is all about making choices within a body of knowledge based on instrumental reasoned judgments about what to do and intrinsic reasoned judgments on how to live. It is concerned with both hammer and nail and with moral choices and values. Practical knowledge always carries with it a valuation component, does one use the hammer for carpentry or murder? Practical knowledge always is a part of taking reasonable action in the world. Taking a reasonable stance to the lived experience using one's practical knowledge is different than taking a rational stance. I am defining rational as sterile of what it is that comprises the reasoned action of human experience; respect for persons and human dignity. Technical rationality, or technical reason in the absence of deliberation, interpretation, reflection, and judgment based on respect for persons and human dignity, instrumental reasoning alone, cannot be considered practical or rational in any sense of the word (Argyris, Putnam & Smith, 1990). I make this broad statement and defend it by stipulating that taking reasoned action in the world as defined above comes from the interaction of person and context in which the person takes the action. To characterize personal knowledge is to make known how one comes to know, to make sense of reasoned action taken in context. To ask this question is to frame personal knowledge within the orientation to the good. The teacher is indeed in touch with herself and with the 507

layered traditions and histories as they are presented in herself and as they present themselves to herself as backgrounds or forms of subsidiary awareness by which action taken in the world makes reasonable sense. Each teacher interviewed for this study has one foot in two stories, one which is given as personal experiences created by the past relationships and form the traditions and histories which are personal and of the cultural traditions in which she rests (Gadamer, 1992) and one given as the practical best accounts of the relationships formed in the social lived experience of the school. Each story informs the other and each is part of the other, but what is also important to note is how the personal stories form the point of view, the background, for the practical stories which frame the talk as reasoned action taken in the lived experience. Personal practical stories teachers tell about their lived experiences are the knowing ways; how they stand to the world and its experiences, the way action is understood as an engagement with the world in reasoned, deliberative, and interpretive ways.

ATTENDING TO THE GUIDING QUESTIONS

HOW IS THE NOTION OF A GOOD TEACHER FRAMED THROUGH

STORY? Joyce's notion of a good teacher is framed within a metaphor of teacher person. Relationships are the fundamental building blocks of her practice. It is her intention and aim 508 to share with her children something of herself. She tells them about her skiing, her travels abroad and her moods. She attempts in every regard to fight the legitimate institutional authority vested to her by the school. She understands this authority as disengaging her from her children. She makes every attempt to become engaged with them. She strives to be nothing less than a person to her kids, to reveal a personal side of her teaching self, a side which reinforces an in loco parentis feeling for both her children and herself. She notes, "See I have no kids of my own. These are like how I would view my own kids. I learn from them, and I try to meet every single need of theirs. I'm sensitive, very sensitive or try to be with what is going on with them." She admits becoming, at times, too attached to them. Sometimes they share what is, in her opinion, too much information with her and then by her own admission, "Gets involved with the families." She is currently taking one of her girls out for some "fun time" once a month because the parents just don't have enough money to do anything with her. She doesn't resent this intrusion into her private life, she must just guard against too much it.

Joyce's topic-centered narratives speak of meeting the academic and social needs of her children and practicing stewardship (Block, 1993), a commitment to human caring over a commitment to career, choosing service over self-interest. 509

She is not establishing a career which will provide promotions or any semblance of a career ladder. She is teaching inorder to provide a caring, and nurturing, and learning service to a community of children. Teaching as steward means meeting the social and academic needs of her children.

Joyce talks about the importance of being flexible and meeting the demands of a changing classroom environment. Her comments reflect the situated and local context in which she and students work and exist together, and problematizes it so that she can reorient her teaching actions, her practical knowledge, to meet the changing demands of a diverse student body. She notes:

And, I also teach Gerald's kids, who are very undisciplined group. The have really low skills for fourth grade, but I run...when I go to his classroom I have to do things differently than I would with this group of kids. I have to...be different...like different groupings that I would never do with this group or I could do with this group, but...there would...so I guess it's in the relationships with the kids and how well you know the kids and I guess meet their needs; their needs and what you can give. Teachers, according to Joyce, must be intentionally flexible and adapt to the diverse flows of students academic and social needs within the changing contexts of teaching situations. There is an ongoing "goodness of fit" between the context of teaching and the relationships that are necessary to meet the needs of students. 510

The good stories told about a good fit between the themes which run deep within the topic-centered stories. Good stories often reflect those experiences where both children and teacher shared in experiences that were surprising yet resulted in student learning while at the same time affirming the core interpretations the teacher held about her practice. For instance Abby believes teachers must be flexible in their approach to teaching, a core theme by she which makes interpretive turns in many of her stories. She tells a good story: And teaching is an art in that way where the teacher is flexible enough to, you know, switch her ideas or switch her way or his way of thinking with the way the children are going. You know, I mean if you're the type of teacher who's going to sit up and say, "No, we're going to follow the goal of looking at these insects in the water today and that's all we're going to look at," and that's your goal and you're not going to be flexible enough to move from that and the kids find something else and you don't go with them on, let's say looking at, you know, the rocks in the water, the different colors that they're seeing, and they're off on something else and you're still trying to talk about the insects, then are you really teaching? Are you really getting anything across to them? I mean, you need to go with their interest, you know, which is sometimes... it 's not something that you can write down, you know. Let's see Tuesday or Wednesday we had an example like that where we were doing something with the plants...with planting our pumpkin seeds and all of a sudden one of the kids had an idea. We were comparing and contrasting the sunflower seeds and the pumpkin seeds and all of a sudden the kids were like --well, "Let's eat them", you know, and I was just talking about their senses and all of a sudden, yeah, but we can eat them? And I said, "Yeah, can you?" And originally in my idea in my sequence in my lesson plans I had planned on them eating them. Now I hadn't planned on them maybe doing that until later, but that was the first thing one 511

of the kids wanted to do. So of course I'm like, "Yeah, okay, let's taste them." This narrative expresses the ways in which action is taken within the teaching process as this teacher understand it and tell about it in the stories of teaching as taking reasoned action in the lived experience. But, how practical knowledge is held and understood as meaningful by the teacher is different than how it is expressed and used to solve problems presented in the actual teaching context of the school. Joyce expresses in her interpretive turns a personal knowledge based on past experiences, traditions and histories which presents a deeper notion of what makes a good teacher and tacitly influences her actions, intentions and aims taken in the context of reasoned teaching action. These themes tie her stories together and create frameworks which allow for the incorporation of both personal and practical knowledge to come to bear on the problems to be solved in her classroom teaching. The practical ways in which Joyce talks about her teaching and actions is framed against the themes that structure those very stories which speak about it. There are three core themes which structure and shape the topic-centered narratives told about her practice and the school in which she teachers. Her three core notions of a good teacher are; holding a world view, enjoying learning for 512 the sake of learning, estahlishing positive relationships with her students where everyone works collaboratively together. These themes are deep and they spring from the depths of her personal history and cultural traditions told in her stories about her student teaching and travel experiences abroad. These interpretations develop from her personal and private ways of knowing and while not made explicit in the topic-centered narratives are born of the interpretations she makes of the topic-centered stories she has told. Incredibly, Joyce incorporates these major themes in one story she related during our first interview (FN). At that initial interview we talked about what a good story might mean to her. This is her good story:

First of all I met this woman, she was about ten years older than me who sold everything, she was an American, sold everything in her life and was just traveling through Europe and backpacking. And, I don't know what it was, but I...me and this woman just bonded for some reason. And, then there was this guy, and I don't even know his name anymore, we...this woman goes, "You know what? I want you to go talk to this guy." And I'm like, "Okay." So we just kind of sat around talking. It was very surfacy talk and all of a sudden he goes "Do you want to climb that mountain?" And there was like a mountain about a mile away and it was big. I was like, "Yeah". And, we just got all our gear and we just climbed that mountain for two days. And, we got to the top and you could overlook Bergen and it was just like...I just felt like no matter what I do I'm so...I felt very insignificant in a way. That I'm just one person and that no one person can change the world. That's how I felt at that moment, like no one person can move the world and no one person can have control of the world, but groups of people can do it. And, it takes one person to affect a group. And, that's just...it was like a 513

realization on the mountain. And, so this guy and I we climbed and I don't even think we talked to each other the whole way up the mountain, but I felt like he was just kind of rny guide, because he was the only one...he knew how to get up the mountain, somehow. And, we came back down and it was just like...I just felt... insignificant, but at the same time more empowered I don't know it was just like when you get to the top you're like, I climbed this mountain. Many people have, but I did. But it was just...you looked down and you were just like gosh everything is so small. And, it kind of puts you in your place, but at the same time it makes you deflate yourself. You're not so big and you remember that. You know, you're not big time stuff, remember that. But at the same time it empowered you in the same way. I don't know I guess it kind of made me more realistic.

Joyce talks about all of the major themes in this initial story shared with me early in our first interview. These themes subsequently appeared and reappeared in later stories. One can find the themes errfoedded within her personal experiences by which she makes the tacit interpretive turns on her topic-centered narratives. They are all here including: her notion of fate (I felt like he was just my guide), her notion of a world view (met this woman just traveling around Europe and we bonded), her notion of learning as enjoyment (the fact that this was an emotional learning experience, an epiphany of sorts, and was shared as her "Good story") and the importance of relationships as stewardship in the teaching profession (no one person can 514 change the world, but groups can and it takes just one person to affect the group). I believe it is clear that the manner in which practical knowledge is held, the meaning and understanding of it as it is implemented in the social context of the school is embedded in and highly influenced by the personal history and traditions and experiences brought to it in personal and unique interpretive turns. Themes as interpretations of practical actions taken in the world is a merging as Butt notes (Butt, 1984) of the personal, the social and the professional world in which the teacher finds herself.

WHAT IS THE NATURE OF EXPERIENCES SHARED IN STORY

WHICH SOMEHOW MAKE TEACHERS BETTER TEACHERS? WHAT

PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE IS LOCATED IN THESE PROFESSIONAL

SUCCESS STORIES? Practical knowledge is experiential knowledge (Argyris, 1993; Argyris, et. al.,1990; Argyris & Schon, 1974; Dewey, 1910; 1958; Kolb, 1984; Schon, 1983; 1987; 1991). Experiences are implicit in the personal and practical reasoned actions teachers take in the classroom. Teachers as evidenced above are active holders of personal knowledge which influences how they construct and talk about their practice. However, teachers also hold a practical knowledge born of the very actions of which they talk about in story. A teacher's practical knowledge and ways of thinking grow out of their 515 experiences in the classroom (Butt, et, al., 1988; Butt,

1984; Calderhead, 1988; 1988; 1994; Clandinin, 1985; Connelly & Clandinin, 1985; 1990; 1994; Day et al., 1990). During the data collection for this study Craig talked about his daily work. He talks about having the class from Hell and the personal stress he has suffered as a result. His orientation to the experience of this class structures the way he goes about taking action in it. Craig recalls: It's just like, all right, we'll sit together in a group and go over this calendar. This is supposed to be really good. After beating each other for two minutes, oh, we'll skip that for this year and put it away. I found out what works and what doesn't. So I made a commando room. I put them in two rows and I worked in the middle. So they had a commando room. I had a commando room once before years ago and I remember how I set it up -- two rows. You take everything that... everything and put it away. There's nothing in the room. It's like a bare skeleton and you put them in two rows, they're both facing forward, you sit in the middle at the table so you have a clear view of the room and you go from there. And you never turn your back, never. And it works. Craig did not look to outside research or experts on classroom discipline. Rather he has figured this one tactic out on his own. He references another class several years back and draws on his knowledge and experiences from that class in order to deal with this one. His choice of a war metaphor to describe his current situation with this class is appropriate. They are a tough group and stand ready for a good battle if the occasion presents itself. Craig does not want to be responsible of creating those situations so he 516 protects himself and his children by creating a commando room. He just wants to get through the day; to survive this year.

But in the same breath he understands the need for this control. It is the only way for this class to learn and grow. By his own admission Craig realizes that, "I just try to, you know, just get through. I just try to be more positive. They are growing, they are learning, I try to think, well they did learn, they are growing, they are learning." This extreme need for control is difficult for him because it runs counter to an interpretive theme which carries through his work, giving kids a break. Teachers tell bad stories. As opposed to good stories, bad ones frame a forced disengagement of the actual practice from the intrinsic reasoned actions as themes that inform it. Whereas good stories reflect activities and actions which fit teachers personal and interpretive themes of their practice and encourage engagement with the practical activities of the class, bad stories require action which counters the interpretive turns as themes of their practice and forces a disengagement from the personal themes and a retreat from the usual manner of engaging children in reasoned action. Craig knows that, "I'm real easy going. I tell the kids what we're going to learn, what I want them to learn." But the action he takes with this class must counter this core interpretive and 517 personal theme and forces Craig to initiate practical action which is disengaged from the personal. I suggest that teachers do this on a regular basis. Such action is also the genesis for bad stories. And it is the genesis for how themes change, how teachers re-interpret their practice in negative terms. The concept of "burn out" may be located in story. The process of how it is linguistically constructed in story may rest in the notion of personal theme standing in disengagement from the practical which causes enormous stress. Disengagement of the personal from the practical means the loss of a once recognized and storied self. As Argyris (Argyris et al., 1990) notes, "No amount of technical knowledge, in the absence of moral ends, is "practical." (p. 46) . All practical knowledge carries with it a moral component. The nature of a good teacher shared in Craig's story revolves around one theme of giving kids a break. The mark of a good teacher is one who understands how kids learn and fits the structure of the class, when possible to the meet the needs of the child. Craig notes: I have some children that will never do well. I was telling one of the teachers, I tested this child and this child got 20% on the test. After we worked on the project about four weeks the child got 55%. Well that's a 35% increase. I gave that child a C. I thought that was what that child deserved. They wouldn't. They'd give that child an F. That happens here all the time. I mean that's just not fair when you're practicing something to be graded on it. I mean they should do it and if they 518

don't turn it in then perhaps it's too hard and they can't do it. But that's not what they do. They say, "Well they don't try." Well perhaps they do try. Perhaps it's too damn hard for them. And I think a lot of times this is it. And some of these kids have terrible home lives and then they expect them to do this work at home. I have chosen Craig's story to represent the many stories teachers tell about the strong responsibility they hold for meeting the individual needs of their children. There is practical knowledge of the institution and of children which teachers incorporate into their actions taken in the classroom. There is a fierce pride in and I believe a sense of personal power when one can exercise and execute decisions and choices which run against the grain of an established organizational culture; against the rules established in the organization for "the way things are done around here" (Deal & Kennedy, 1982) in order to help a student while meeting ones own personal theme of acting and committing responsibly to what is in the best interests of students; particularly students from dysfunctional home situations. Craig just thinks differently about the kids he teachers, even though he has had a terrible year. He compares his personal experiences to that of another in establishing his point of view: Now that's not giving that kid a break. He needs a break. And I try to tell the other teacher...you know, you should do this, and she just can't see it. She just can't...see, she's had such a good, stable home and such a good environment that she can't imagine what a zoo that house would be. She can't comprehend that when she 519

would come home...she has no idea, first of all, who will be in the home and what will happen when they arrive, and she can't understand why everybody's not like her. Well they have a life, she has no life. She was so afraid to take a chance, so afraid that it wouldn't be the perfect world that she wants to have, you know, she's got a perfect controlled room in her, you know, classroom. But she doesn't. She has nothing, she has absolutely nothing, and all she does is school, school, school, school, and if that's what they think that a teacher should be, I'm wrong. How can you possibly work with children when you live in a vacuum? Craig gains the intuitive feeling that he has used his own dysfunctional background to the fullest. He has not been sheltered, not been spared the difficulties of a hard life and as his interpretive turn shows at the end of this story does not live and never has lived, "in a vacuum." When he speaks about giving kids a break, of understanding their "vicious little behaviors" and making needed adjustments in classroom assignments he speaks from personal experiential background and practical knowledge of the context in which he teaches and comprises the nature of his practice, empowers him to speak in a knowing voice about the needs of special students. To call this knowledge into question, is to call Craig, his mind and his life into question. He is a better teacher because of his personal experiences which inform the practical knowledge he possesses about his children and his teaching. Both inform and modify the other. 520

HOW DO TEACHERS LEARN ABOUT THEMSELVES AND THEIR

PRACTICE FROM THE EXPERIENCES THEY TELL ABOUT IN

STORY? This has been one of the most difficult guiding questions to answer and yet one of the most intriguing. The four teachers whose stories are shared in this dissertation all met for dinner one evening on November 2, 1994. I wanted them to share selected parts oftheir stories. They were to choose their sections carefully, present them to the group and talk about them. Prior to the sharing session, the teachers informally talked about their experiences in the project. Joyce recalled reading her transcript for the first time :

I really noticed that I spoke of some of the things that were really, really important to me, you know. Like my European experience was so important to me and I noticed more and more...I talked a lot about this, but I don't know, sharing that with other people, I felt like I could share it with you (the researcher), I guess...Like I have a lot to learn about the way I'm speaking and I'm really conscious about it right now. I'm thinking about every single word I'm saying. Craig talks about his first experience with the transcript : I was just venting. I was very upset, I was venting. I just brought my teaching experiences. You talk about things and you read it later on and you think, well I guess it was terrible but I'm glad it's over. I survived it. I'm a survivor. 521

Abby had much to say about her initial experience with her story:

I think probably because I spoke what I remembered, especially a lot like about rny childhood. Most of mine was like about what I remembered about school and different things that now when I look back on it would have taught me. You know, I mean, things to do and things not to do. And I can't believe I talk like that... Carolyn White was reflective and notes: You kind of learn about your teaching practices, you, it's kind of like something that you do all the time but you really don't spend a lot of time thinking about. It's kind of like writing your philosophy of teaching, you know, until somebody asks you to do that, it's...or maybe it's because I talked so long. Teachers interviewed for this study, a total of thirteen in all, had virtually the same reactions to their interviews. They were stunned by the manner in which they talked. Many commented on the disjointed nature of their stories and the way, at times, they talked so much but didn't seem to say anything (FN). Abby commented at dinner on her transcribed "talk":

I definitely don't write the way I talk, which is certainly good! But, I feel I use certain words way too often. Like, like, I talk like a ... repeating words way too much. It's like I want to explain everything... and that's probably something five years ago I would have said______okay because I remember when I was in high school I would be okay, okay, okay, and now I'm like you know what I mean, you know, you know. It's like I just switched rny vocabulary from high school. Abby has difficulty finding the words, the language to express how she feels about her talk. I want to argue the 522 struggle is caused by her disengagement from her own practical knowledge as language and her own voice, herself, as the expert on her own teaching practice. I suspect that

Abby, like Joyce and in some lesser regard Craig and Carolyn were taught in their undergraduate teacher education programs that there were correct ways of teaching children and managing classrooms; ways embedded in rational technology, rational thinking. Their own practical knowledge and personal thinking constructed in personal theories of practice

(Sanders & McCutcheon, 1986) which all teachers carry into their careers from their past histories and cultural traditions, as evidenced by Joyce's world view brought to her first year of teaching, were not, I suspect, opened for reflection or consideration. The authority of disengagement of the self from practice was also inherently present in their pre-service education program where the answers to problems in education were to be found outside of themselves in appeal to experts who at least published in their fields. I certainly have no argument that experts are needed in the field of education. But always looking to the outside in teacher education programs and as ready and handy and efficient relief from the taxing and enormous problems of teaching, disengages teachers from the practical knowledge which they carry with them about the very problems they face. 523 but fail to recognize this in a rational and disengaged stance to the self. Teachers are educated to take that stance. Such a stance results in Craig making the follow the statement which seems at all odds to the enormous amount of personal and practical knowledge he carries about children with special needs : They don't test...these children don't test. I gave them a test with math problems on it and they've all failed it. But when I gave them a practice -- if I isolate the problems and give them a practice, every day I give them a practice with the problems isolated -- they do it quickly and perfect. But if I take the different problems and put it on a test and mix them up, they fail it. I don't know what to do. Carolyn doesn't either. It's just unbelievable. Now you tell me what I'm supposed to do. I don't know. I could send a child to the board and they got an F on the test. He could identify every part of speech -- adjectives, adverbs, tell you what type of sentence it is, perfect. But if I would give him a test on it, reading the test to him, he'd still get an F. I don't know what to do, I just don't know. I've never had a class like this.

I suspect Craig's appeal was for outside help. Perhaps he has just run out of ideas. There was, however, never clear and present discussion or talk about the necessity of reflecting on the story he told and using that "saying" as spring board for additional brainstorming and strategy making. Craig simply does not carry an image of himself as one who can create and have autonony over his own practice, to find his own personal and practical knowledge and perhaps some solutions to the problems he places directly in front of 524 himself in the very stories he tells about these frustrating experiences. Abby, however, realizes the potential of reflecting on her stories as a possible way of gaining new ideas concerning her teaching and finding a new way of looking at her building, one which does not disengage her from her environment or herself but one which makes her part of the building scene as it is presented to her in story. She shared this thought at dinner, making herself part of her own story: To me though that's what some of this was, A learning experience just in reflecting on some of those things that have happened in the past or the questions that (the researcher) raised. And you can look at it...look at the building, look at the way we teach and learn something from that. I mean, take back what I learned and use it. You, know, I realize that, gosh, I don't go into other people's rooms as much as some others. You know I'm just comfortable with some people versus other people and it's nothing that they've done, it's something that I need to initiate, you know, that's like the thing.

After Abby finished her comments I asked if anyone else had learned anything from the experience. Between bites of a turkey club sandwich Craig cracked his wry smile and said, "It was so good. I'm want to have another." He was not talking about the turkey sandwich. These teachers learned about themselves through the stories they told and the personal interpretations they brought to them. It is in this interpretive turn that the stories told are rendered meaningful for both teller and listener. 525

Continuing with dinner the teachers talked about as well as told stories which support my contention that they are distanced and disengaged from their knowledge and clearly not taught how to access the personal and practical knowledge they use daily in their teaching. Their own education has been a reflection of how teachers have been removed through the rational technology of efficiency from their practical and personal knowledge learned in relationships with their children and their practice. This knowledge is simply not considered usable. Teachers are always in "zones of tension" between structure and flexibility, caught up in the binaries of good rational and effective teaching techniques while trying to meet the unique needs of living, breathing, and not always cooperative children. The story telling begins with Abby: But it's interesting I know what I feel is teaching, and not what's on that lesson plan every week. What I did with teaching today was working with A.J. one-on-one, feeling that accomplishment when he got something done, working with three other girls that just out of the blue wanted to do a play, held auditions and that kind of thing. That's not on the lesson plan, and that's what to me ity teaching was today. You'know, my lesson plan today, we probably didn't do half of it. I mean, and that would be so hard. Carolyn recalls a similar story about her class and applies her practical knowledge to handle what she considered a difficult problem. The reader will notice how her care and respect for the human dignity of her children as well as her 526 own regard for how she perceives herself as a caring professional is embedded as theme in this story. Her interpretive turn at the end of the story is also a theme which folds back on the topic-centered narrative as reasoned action and in its telling as interpretation makes the story both understandable and meaningful to the listener:

I did that yesterday because I was really structured. I tried different book groups and I was really planned. I was very frustrated by the way it was working or wasn't working. It wasn't working the way I wanted it to, because there were like two kids in each group and they weren't doing what I thought they should be. And the kids that were at their seats writing, some of them were writing and some weren't. So I let them complete it and then we just stopped and then I wanted to yell at them, I mean I was at that point, but I thought this won't work, so I had them pull journals out. "Start the pens", I said, you know not having them do anything else but for them to reflect back upon the experience, whether...how the group works and so forth. And then I wrote too on the board their experiences and then shared mine and they shared theirs and it ended up being, I thought, a good experience because they got some things out and we came up with some guidelines for the groups and so forth. Carolyn looked inside herself for a way to solve this problem. Her structure, her lesson planning didn't work and so she drew on her past experiences with children and the particular knowledge about this group of children. Her inner personal definition of the situation emerged from both her personal and professional experience. Her interpretation and the theme which runs through it is at the end, coming up with a solution, having the children learn something from the experience and doing it together as a community. Carolyn was 527 not disengaged from the situation, quite the opposite. She was totally engaged in reasoned action. She made a moral choice about what to do based on deliberation, reflection and judgment which was, in turn, a choice interpreted as a good learning experience, an orientation toward the good, a valuable learning experience. Craig interprets this story in his own humorous style, "That sounds wonderful and I hope to God they never bring accountability back to the classroom because both of you will get your fingers smacked." Craig reflects the current state of affairs in most classrooms in this country, being accountable in the classroom is standing in a state of dis engagement from personal and practical knowledge. The authority of testing and empiricism, the scientific method extols the virtue of accountable teaching and accountable learning. Using good common teaching sense will get your hand slapped...every time.

WHAT DO THESE STORIES SAY ABOUT THE FUNDAMENTAL

THINKING AND PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE WHICH TEACHERS HOLD

ABOUT THEIR PRACTICE? Clearly if one examines the stories presented in this dissertation they are stories about living in a classroom and living in life. They are not stories expounding the virtues of lesson planning, or sharing the step by step process of how one teaches reading to a particular child. These are stories about communities of learners and how the priority of 528 teaching and learning is often overshadowed by the demands and even physical space of the institution. However, teachers find ways to learn from these experiences, use them as teaching examples within their classrooms and certainly tell stories about them. They become part of their personal practical knowledge, part of who they are as teacher and person, part of their minds and hearts and spirits. Other than the "Extracting Jessica" story which appeared in five out of the thirteen stories recorded for this study, only the story of isolation from one another in the building appeared with greater frequency. This topic-centered narrative appeared in nine out of thirteen stories. Carolyn talks about in metaphor. She calls it the "closed door syndrome." It is also a metaphor for disengagement, where the scientific approach to teaching with all of its emphasis on objectives, planning and measurable outcomes as objectives reduces the credibility of personal practical knowledge, "closes the door on it" as a credible body of knowledge available to teachers in their practice. Carolyn brings to language best what other teachers were struggling to say in terms of this "zone of tension" between understanding the importance of involving students in an education process which stresses learning as a community while teaching in a building whose physical structure as well as cultural traditions generates a feeling of isolation from one another. 529

I present Carolyn's story in its entirety and then discuss its implications. This story begins as reflection on a story Carolyn previously told about a difficult class she had six years ago. I encourage the reader to review Carolyns' "bad story" topic-centered narrative at the end of chapter III before continuing on.

I think so many times though we probably make the mistake of trying to deal with those situations in our own way. I almost feel like it's a reflection upon us, if you try and get some support from your peers. I suppose that is one of the feelings that I remember most is that there is something wrong with me or my teaching. I guess I was glad I taught as many years as I had, and had successful experiences. I had to keep being reminded that, "Yes, you are a good teacher" and "Yes, you can." This is not all your fault. I'm thinking, one of the reasons I had gone into the PAL mentoring program was my cousin's daughter went into education and had the type year that I did. And over, in Connorsville, or someplace, some small school district like that, came in maybe a month after school started. I'm thinking it was an area where, probably, a very small town type area. I think she was "dumped on." The type kids that she got in her class...people picked their worst kids out to give her and then the rest of the staff had been there a long time did not support her and she ended up with a mental breakdown and left teaching. And I kept thinking, you know, had there been somebody there to help her through that I really think she probably would have been a very fine teacher. So, we don't always want to reach out or to help if it's always there. We mentor a first year teacher and we encourage that we are in each others' rooms and Brenda and I are both professional assistant leaders so we have done some, like what I was doing, models of teaching and she came in and watched me and critiqued me and watched me and I have done some of the same with her. We've done some work on peer coaching through that program. But again, she and I both see, we see it as valuable, but we're not sure we can convince other people again 530

because of this fear, and maybe it goes back to the old time of what evaluation was like, it was not constructive criticism that was, it was destructive or looking for evidence of not doing your job. So whether that's it or not, I don't know. I think it's a lot of personality involved. And teaching, elementary teaching, tends to be a very "go to your room and close the door" ' type thing. People aren't open to having people watch someone. Teaching can many times be kind of an independent type of thing, you know, we say, "Oh, we close our doors and we act like we are being judged." It can be competitive. Sometimes I feel that competitiveness. Sometimes I think it is when we are working so hard. I think we have been very, in this building maybe, been very closed door type teaching. I think I have mentioned this a little bit before, that it's almost, somewhat of a competitive type thing, which has made people feel perhaps that their teaching isn't up to par with some other people. We just do not realize that there are different styles and maybe your style is OK, not maybe, but your style is OK, because that is your individual style, I think teaching is a very, you can't go with every model or style because your personality doesn't fit that, so you've got to go with what you are comfortable with. And how you can present material the best. We work so hard teaching kids to work cooperatively and work together and we isolate ourselves. Elementary probably much more so than the middle and the high schools because they tend to work in teams and in departments. Carolyn makes an interpretive turn about her difficult class and establishes a theme which carries through not only the bad story topic centered narrative related in chapter

III, but the story she tells here. That theme reflects the image of teachers who have little professional control or autonorry over their own work and whose embedded experience in the classroom as practical knowledge is not credible knowledge which can be used to solve problems. Rather, it is 531 an albatross around their necks. Carolyn struggles to find the language to establish some professional identity, some outside source of expertise or comfort which would make the meaning of this bad situation understandable. The distinct sense of her identity during this crisis was one of inadequacy, she just kept thinking there must be something wrong with her. That interpretation, I believe, stems from not having a clear sense of how much the service rendered to this group of dysfunctional children was costing her, the large emotional debits she was creating in the process of her own giving and caring. It also stems from her disengagement from self, from the human resources as practical and personal knowledge she brought to her work each day, inside her, and how that knowledge could be used to improve her situation. Carolyn blames herself for the disruptive class. Her position to the class is one of disengagement. She has, in her own in mind, created her role as diagnostician and if she could only find the right prescription then she could gain control of this class. Teachers are taught to look outside of themselves for the answers to these kinds of emotional and managerial problems while at the same time keeping their troubles and classroom problems disengaged from others. For all of talk of schools being a community of learners, Carolyn personally learned that troubles are private and not to be shared since it reflects on a teachers' professional 532 abilities and reflects a teaching "technique" which is, "not up to par." I suspect that every teacher I talked with alluded to what I might call the intimacy factor in their stories. They spoke of intimacy as relationships they established with their children and these relationships were extremely important. It determined whether you had a good academic year or bad year. Carolyn notes, "If kids don't like the person they are with then academically they are not going to do as well. You know, my first couple of weeks of school is really just building rapport with the kids and getting to know them and getting them comfortable and then we can move into the academics. " There are no intimacy stories about relationships with other staff members. There are no stories of shared common success stories or good stories where one staff member helps another with their practice and by committing these acts of compassion reap the rewards of good feeling as a by-product of that action. Although faculty understand the importance of establishing intimate and positive relationships with their students, they do not do so with each other. Rather than being engaged in taking action which could be for the common good, in friendship and for the good of the common order as Aristotle saw (Nussbaum, 1986), these teachers recognize and actively participate in disengaging their practice from each 533 other. They keep the actions of their practice to themselves. Craig notes : I think everybody in this building feels that they're on their own in their room, once the door's...you know, it's like they're very...like...down there... she's an excellent teacher but she's another one that thinks everybody's watching her teach and criticizing her and she's got her whole room covered with paper. You can't even see what's going on in that room. I know she's a good teacher. You cannot see in that room, ever. She's always been that way. I don't know why she feels that way 'cause she's a good teacher. She's very good but she's another one that's just so afraid of criticism. I mean when I first started teaching most of the teachers were open...I mean when I first started teaching... What I wish to argue through answering this question is the prevalence of disengagement of the self from one another in this building. This issue of individuality versus community could become another dissertation, but I will only touch briefly on the issue here. Although the point of education in schools is communal and the action within schools is framed as a collective endeavor between teachers and students the point of it remains individual. A good year or bad year can all hinge on the individual behavior of one student or one teacher or one principal or one parent, as many of these stories concede. Charles Taylor (1995) may be of help in understanding how disengagement creates the traditions of a "closed door" syndrome in this school. Taylor argues that what matters are the sharing of stories as conversation which is a matter for 534 us as opposed to a matter for you and me. Engaging in conversation and telling stories is a common action. It is an engagement of two persons concerned about things that are for us and in that concern lays the issue of intimacy. Clearly teaching children in a classroom is an intimate endeavor. It is engagement in the action of teaching and there is clear institutional permission in the authority of schooling to engage in the process of learning. In this sense the classroom is a community of learning. However, there is no community of teaching in this building, except at certain grade levels where the teachers get along and have volunteered to try a team teaching approach. Within the disengagement notion of teaching when things do not go well in an individual classroom, at least within the institutional structure between grade levels and teachers, these stories are not shared because clearly there must something technically wrong with the teaching. Once these stories become public within the building, once they are "out there", a significant line is crossed and it has everything to do with the number of people who know about it and in turn, own the story of that classroom. Instead of a story for you and me as intimates it becomes a story for us now open in a public space (Taylor, 1995 p. 191). It is the thoughts of a private hell made public and with that the embarrassment and threat of a failed teaching experience. The 535 sharing and being of these stories in the public arena constitutes their value. And the value most talked about is what Carolyn expresses, "And teaching, elementary teaching, tends to be a very "go to your room and close the door" type thing. People aren't open to having people watch someone. We work so hard teaching kids to work cooperatively and work together and we isolate ourselves". These stories as a matter of how they would be valued and constructed publicly at Lila Belle keeps teacher and her teaching uniquely isolated. There simply is little intimacy between the faculty where thesebad stories could be shared as us stories in an atmosphere of trust and collegial support for one another. This intimacy is provided for the children, but the teachers have not found a way to construct it among themselves. These teachers are engaged in one level of the system and disengaged at another. They always talk about being in this "zone of tension," of being isolated. This concern as a topic-centered narrative cuts across nine of the thirteen stories collected for this study. What is valued is keeping personal and practical teaching knowledge private, out of the zone of public scrutiny and clearly out of the collective action of engagement with one another in creation of a sense of shared immediate and intimate common good (Taylor, 1995) . The fundamental thinking and practical knowledge shared in these stories reflects an inherent tension between 536 community and individualism, engagement and disengagement. One of the problems inherent in this tension is the image that teachers do not have a body of professional knowledge (Ben-Peretz et al., 1986; 1988; Butt, 1984; 1988; Clandinin, 1985; Connelly & Clandinin, 1985; 1994; Elbaz, 1991) on which to draw and therefore they feel that their own solutions to problems they face is not a contribution to the creation of the technical knowledge they actually use since they have been taught in their undergraduate programs that this is the role of experts, generally located at universities (Butt et al., 1988) . Problem classrooms are to be hidden within the talk of the building in disengagement, rather than problematized and made a matter of concern and engagement of all a community of problem solvers. It remains as a matter of grave concern that schools fail to recognize the personal and practical knowledge teachers carry about their practice as a potent body of knowledge which should be shared and punctuated as a common and valuable resource for solving educational problems. It will necessitate that educators address this issue, individuality versus community, as standing in relationships within a building which stresses a community of we-identities as opposed to the merely I-identities and the importance of sharing practical knowledge as a tellable common knowledge embedded in a public base as opposed to keeping it private 537 knowledge, unsellable and embedded in seclusion and privacy. Carolyn comments about her cousin's daughter seems appropriate here, "And I kept thinking, you know, had there been somebody there to help her through that I really think she probably would have been a very fine teacher," At Lila Belle these stories accentuate the privacy of personal and practical knowledge and its exclusion, its disengagement from the course of daily teacher talk. As I noted earlier in this study, I simply was unable of find teachers sharing "tales of the field" (Van Maanen, 1988).

CAN AN ARGUMENT BE MADE THAT STORY TELLING IS AN

EDUCATIONAL FORM OF LIFE?

I wish to argue that story telling is an educational form of life. I want to use a portion of Craig's and Joyce's interpreted stories to make the point. I am arguing that topic-centered narratives organize and categorize a persons world. They are the typifications as stocks of knowledge which story weaves into a tapestry of meaning and understanding as events of the lived experience. Such narratives are driven by the context in which they are told. Teachers tell teaching stories because one simply cannot teach and not know these topic-centered narratives which revolve squarely around Schwab's commonplaces of the educational experience, subject matter, the learner, the teacher and the milieu as school. How seriously can one doubt 538 the validity that the stories these teachers tell are stories one cannot help but know are teacher stories? These topic- centered narratives, once the researcher's voice was removed, became the very clues which help both the listener and the teller map the meaning of the stories by the interpretations the teller gives of the very reasoned actions and judgments of which she tells. These themes, as interpretive turns, punctuate the understanding and meaning the teller gives to these stories. Stories are composed of topic-centered narratives and the themes which tie them together and give them meaning and fortify the actions and reasons given for the telling. They simply have the teller as a self at the center of them, telling of past experiences as storied events, experiences which can't be changed; a terrible home life, a seasoned and liberal traveler, but whose storied events can be changed and often are through the interpretive turns taken within the telling of the story. Themes can change in the interpretation of the events told. Therefore, the telling of one's life can change and often does with the shifting of contexts, the shifting of a theme or how one understands and frames past life experiences as events embedded in themes. The repeated telling of bad stories can change themes and may, as I argued earlier, have something to do with the way teacher burn out is constructed through story. 539

Teachers told me stories about themselves. In those tellings they gave straight forward best accounts of actual lived past experiences which I call topic-centered narratives which, indeed, seem to fall in place like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle within certain categories or topics. These are storied events teachers chose to tell another and in this telling is not only the professional self embedded in the topic-centered narrative but a deeper personal self located in the interpretive turn which gives the story its valid and unique lived coherence, a tellability or authority of ownership which is adequate and authentic to the personal traditions and histories from which it emerged. As Polkinghorne notes: We achieve our personal identities and self-concepts through the use of narrative configuration, and make our existence into a whole by understanding it as an expression of a single unfolding and developing story. We are in the middle of our stories and cannot be sure how they will end; we are constantly having to revise the plot (I argue themes) as new events are added to our lives. Self, then, is not a static thing or a substance, but a configuring of personal events into an historical unity which includes not only what one has been but also anticipations of what one will be. Both Joyce and Craig tell professional stories about their teaching practice. The topic-centered narratives concern the context of the teaching lived experience in which they work. But there are recognizable points of view, personal backgrounds as themes against which these stories are framed and by which the tellers interpret the events told to make this point of view recognizable in the telling and to 540 the listener. And this point of view for both of these teachers as carried through their stories is the call to teaching shared at beginning of their stories. Craig and Joyce interpret their teaching experiences as narrated events which produce topic-centered narratives as events which can be and are told again. I am stipulativly defining experiences as those occurrences in the life-world which present themselves as spontaneous instances of lived qualities which are unrepeatable and will never happen in the same way or manner over time (Polanyi, 1989 p. 16). These experiences are not of the same quality as events which are the stories told of experiences which can be repeated, are iterative, can be told over and over again for a duration of time and are held open for interpretation through which, as teller and listener, one gains understanding and meaning from its telling. Through this definition I argue what we have as a linguistic form of life, a way of intersub]actively constructing meaning and understanding in our lives, is in the telling of our stories. And this telling as a way of understanding one another leaves us with Taylor's notion of interpretations of interpretations as a form of life whose past experiences are not meaningful in themselves but are given meaning by their configuration in events as stories which are interpreted and whose themes as they emerge from the interpretation are therefore open for change. Not only do 541

these teachers interpret their teaching experiences in stories of events which can be retold, but they interpret the events as stories as well. The "Extracting Jessica" story, first related by Craig is a case in point of story as event being iterative, but the experience happened only once, Craig told this humorous story to me during our meeting time at school and he also shared the same story at our group dinner meeting on November 2 but with a different interpretation. His interpretive turn while telling the story to me fit his theme of having high respect for the human dignity of persons and especially for children from dysfunctional homes. No one cared about Jessica; he did. His actions by which he extracted her from the car spoke louder than his words. He cared that she attend school. When Craig told the story the second time at dinner his interpretive turn which came at the end of the story was different : And when the police tried to get her out of the car, he (the policeman) was asking Theresa, "Who is this kid?" And Theresa is saying "Well Craig gets her out of the car every day." And I said I should go down there and show those cops how to get people out of cars. I know how to do it, you know. Craig speaks about what he has learned from his acts of compassion with Jessica and what he has learned about getting large school phobic girls out of automobiles. This interpretation does not seem to establish a theme which forms 542 an attitude or belief or is embedded in a moral obligation to children or in orientation to a moral good, an example of intrinsic reasoning. Rather, it speaks to the issue of making public a practical knowledge which could have been of use by the police department, an example of instrumental reasoning. It is interesting to note that this interpretation led to other stories about dysfunctional children and the conversation continued on about this type of child for several minutes (FN). Even though this story was repeated practically verbatim the interpretive turn taken by the teller was different. Therefore, I am led to believe that even though stories can be reiterated the context in which they are told may change how they are interpreted and therefore change the meaning for both the listener and the teller. Story and context are tightly intertwined. I have picked out a story Joyce shared at our dinner meeting. I share this story to once again draw the reader's attention to the interpretive turn that is taken at the end of the story to aid the listener in understanding the point the teller is trying to make. This story is about the death of her grandmother, the first woman detective in the history of the Benton City Police Department: And then iry other grandfather died when I was so young, I really...I do remember him but, I mean, it was nothing that really tore me apart. But this is the first real relative that I had that I really cared about that passed away, and the thing is I mean none of us were 543

upset about it, and it made me so mad because this woman was nothing for five years. She was just a vegetable and we were just like, like she was like what Craig read was like she was the first Benton police detective, you know, woman ever, you know, and this is a powerful woman who was reduced to nothing the last five years and it just tore my mother apart because mom just hated seeing her that way, but, you know, after we'd talked about it and after she did pass away it was just like really a lot of good came out of it because there was a big age gap between my mother and the brother and we just got really, really close with that side of the family. I have become aware of the importance of narrative as a form of linguistic life which gives structure to the experiences of one's life. There is a structure to story and I have tried to argue that it is comprised of at least topic- centered narratives (typifications) and themes. It is a structure of the lived experience, a form of life, and in this study by virtue of the educational context in which the stories are told, I argue them as an educational forms of life which organizes experiences of teachers into tellable events as repositories of personal and practical knowledge by which the reader of this study can come to recognize as coherent stories which configure an educator's existence into a whole of personal histories and traditions and practical pedagogic knowledge (Polkinghorne, 1988 p. 183).

CAN AN ARGUMENT BE MADE FOR THE EXISTENCE OF

UNTELLABLE STORIES? I am embedding a few implications for further study within the answers framed for this question and the following 544 one. I suspect, however, by answering these two remaining questions I will present to the reader more questions than answers.

There is evidence in this data, slim as it is, that leads me to believe there are untenable stories. Each of the stories presented in this study is a story of an individual who chose to construct a sequence of lived experiences as storied events, assembling the fragments of their lives into a coherent whole which was by their estimation the stories they needed and wanted to tell to teach me about their practice. But clearly there were choices to made about the experiences to be included. There were the stories of their traditions and histories as personal and sequential events which led to their "call to teaching"; stories I would name their "heritage of teaching" stories. I name it so because these stories were told first and many of them established interpretive themes which were found in subsequent stories told much later in the research. These stories are temporal in nature and both the topic- centered narratives and deeper themes spoke to this temporal nature of the story (Carr, 1986; Kerby, 1991; Ricoeur, 1984; 1992) . There were stories about their individual coming to a profession (call to teaching stories), their individual experiences within the profession (the present topic-centered narratives) and stories which spoke to an orientation toward 545 the good, the respect for the human dignity of students (the interpretive turns). Abby tells at dinner about what she has learned from the project and about who she will be talking to next year, "So when I come back to the building, its like I'm not going to be a sore thumb sticking out. So I'm going to remember to make a conscious effort, going in Jim's room and even up to you and try to talk to you. And I feel like you will know who I am. " Her story clearly highlights that the stories presented here are stories of individuals but as discussed earlier are embedded in a community with its own sense of histories and traditions which are reinforced by stories of isolation and "closed door" metaphors which Abby will try to change. But the stories shared within this study as personal experience stories establish a relationship between the individual teacher and the community of which she is a part. In a sense the topic-centered narratives told as a part of a professional construction of the self always includes an interpretive turn which only that individual teacher owns. Although each story is completed and whole and understood when presented, it is based on unique personal traditions and histories carried along with it. But these stories must also carry with them the cultural traditions of the community of which the teller is a part so that those who hear the story 546 may understand it, bring their meaning to it and judge its coherence as being worth the telling (Shuman, 1995) . Many of the topic-centered stories are collectively owned. These are the stories most often told in the interviews; the story of Jessica's extraction and the stories of isolation of teachers in the building, the stories of parents and administrators which were not addressed in this study. Although each teacher owns their interpretations of

their stories which makes each unique in light of their personal histories, these stories were told within a larger arena, a point of view although subsidiary in the topic- centered telling was included in the interpretation so that the content of the story would be interpreted by others as making sense. The interpretive turn must be considered a reasoned turn for the listener to accept the topic-centered as credible. And so there are untellable stories. And their untellability is determined not only by the context of the situation but by the backgrounds and points of view of those who will listen to the stories. I was told stories about teaching practices because that is what I stood in wonderment to. But these stories noted here are also stories which point to and are understood in a larger way, carry a larger meaning, and these meanings I have argued are carried by themes as interpretive turns which speak of personal 547 histories and traditions which are, in these stories, oriented toward the good. But the interpretive turns may also be understood by others as making sense because interpretations stand in orientation to the good and represent a much larger horizon which is embedded in the traditions and histories of the culture. There were no stories shared of murdered children, of severe punishments, of law suits, of incest or sexual abuse of children, how each teacher played the stock market, or the affairs of the town politicians. The stories shared with me at Lila Belle were events as experiences shared in the context of school, about the affairs of school, what is known about school from a pedagogical point of view. They are stories of education.

But I was surprised at the amount of personal experiences that were shared as part of these stories. Clearly, I had some expectation these educational stories carried within them the deep themes that would provide a meaning to these experiences as events narrated as educational stories, as stories which told of both a personal and practical knowledge of teaching. But I was surprised at the way these themes were presented at the very beginning of the interviews in the call to teaching topic-centered narratives. 548

At this point I want to expand on the notion of theme. Interpreting theme as a deeper current, an interpretive turn which represents how the topic-centered narrative stands to the personal histories and traditions of the teller, incorporates the topic-centered narrative as it stands, and interprets it so others may judge its worthiness as a story (Polanyi, 1989). Unlike Polyani however, who argues that the meaning of a story is negotiated between teller and listener, I wish to argue that interpretive turns or how the teller interprets her own story were made without this researcher's input. Interpretative turns also represent a much larger playing field which could include other stories not told. Topic-centered narratives are the descriptions of experiences as events when storied within a context. The topic-centered narratives as Polyani (1989) argues have to satisfy certain criteria to be counted as story: they must illustrate the point of these teachers practice, dealing with such cross story categories (categories which appear in more than one story) as subject matter, administrators, parents, students and other staff members, the experiences must be narratable as events which make sense-show some coherence to the context of the telling-and it should be of interest to other members of the community who hear the story (p.107) . The topic-centered narrative is embedded in the local and 549 situated knowledge of the teller and the context in which the telling is done and satisfies the criteria noted above. These teacher narratives seem always tied together by the very themes which are spoken of and constructed by the teller early in the story; for instance, Craig's themes were told early in the first interview and continued through many of the other topic-centered narratives constructed during his interviews. The interpretive turns as themes frame the topic- centered narratives as events which are snapshots of experiences in a unique moment in time and place in space. Although the Topic-centered narratives are situation specific the themes in which they are interpreted are global and speak of a broader world of the tellers histories and traditions and the culture in which these traditions are developed and histories in which they are embellished. Therefore, I argue for untellable stories, stories that could have been presented and spoken but were not. The issue here is that themes are encompassing, speak of a larger world (Shuman, 1986; 1990; 1994) and seem to frame more than could be told. These teachers simply can not tell as much as can be inferred through the interpretations they provide. Therefore, the themes, by the very way they are constructed, in their use of terms which point to such concepts as sharing, caring, respect for persons and respect for the human dignity of children, highlight the importance, the groundedness of 550 practical knowledge in the person as teacher and how that person comes to know and see and talk about it and understand it. Teachers simply seem to know and understand more than they can actually talk about, therefore they expand the meaning of the story in their interpretations bringing broad and encompassing meanings to very particular events. So story is always embedded in a larger meaning and understanding of teachers' own personal and cultural history and traditions as interpretations of it. Within this broader interpretive playing field there remains a much larger chance for the teller of the story to gain acceptance, to establish that the actions taken were reasoned deliberative action and made sense in the context of the topic-centered narrative. Themes seem deeper and broader than topic narratives, if the listener has a broad cultural background with which to play within the interpretation. Judging the importance of having a story validated by others as understandable when it is made public may be one of the reasons why tellers appeal to wider categories of cultural meaning and traditional understanding in the interpretive turn. It is beyond the scope of this study to deal with this negotiation of meaning and understanding between teller and listener although it is implied throughout the study. Dealing with the processes of how stories are collaborative developed is not the intent of this study. 551

Trying to understand how teachers achieve an understanding of their practice through story is.

IS STORYTELLING A SUITABLE MEANS BY WHICH ONE MAY

INVESTIGATE THE PRIMARY RESEARCH QUESTION? The general research question stands in wonderment to teachers' lived experience and asks the question: What is to be learned about, in an interpretive hermeneutic phenomenological sense, the nature of and essence of the achievement of a teaching practice as it is told through stories as a reflection on and understanding about the role of teacher practical knowledge and thinking in the gestation, growth and maturation of a teaching practice? Story matters in the professional lives of teachers. Story is an inevitable matter of personal and professional life itself. I want to argue that there is something valid in this presupposition, but it is not without its problems and its very construction requires a rather substantial investment in the notion that the essence of a teacher's life rests in the connections made between the personal (subjective) and the professional lived experiences (objective) of a teaching life. Teachers connect themselves to their practice, actually construct their practices by these connections through language. The lived experience is constructed through story in the situated best accounts which reflect the fusion of horizons between the personal histories and traditions of the teachers and the particulars of the context in which teachers work, in other words, between the professional topic-centered 552 narratives and the personal broader themes as principles, values, and beliefs through which they are interpreted for themselves and those who listen. Teachers appeal to both instrumental and intrinsic reason when taking action in the lived experience. Stories orient these teachers to the good and to their lives that are framed in and connected to a notion of equal worth for their students and ultimately, though individually, for themselves. These stories talk of worth in the sense that the activities and relationships which are established between these teachers and their children also establishes the worth of their work and that worth is reflected in the personal interpretive turns by which they evaluate their professional stories by referencing care, human dignity and respect for their children as they initially receive them in their classrooms and subsequently in their release to the outside world. These stories as the best accounts of what teaching is like, at least for the four teachers presented in this dissertation. They represent a subjective or emic understanding of a teaching practice. They are authentic because these stories are the voices of these teachers and their voices are powerful, valid, and speak to the essences of teaching within and through their own subjective experiences. These teachers are engaged in relationships with 553 their children which construct a particular knowledge and way of knowing which is based on a clear self in a professional life as achieved in the process of narrative and active story telling rather than a fixed theory of pedagogy which attempts to justify their knowledge within some universal truth as referent to be discovered. Practical knowledge is not something to be discovered as "thing" but it is an achievement of a professional and personal self. It is achieved through an engagement, connection, relationship of the teacher with all the commonplaces that is her practice in an understanding of a world that is grounded in those relationships. These relationships are not based on some external rational and technical representation of how they should be enacted, but conceived in the personal connections, the interpretive turns as orientation toward the good, a conception that cannot be separated and labeled, disengaged or torn apart from the teacher and the teaching process itself. Practical knowledge never stands apart, never operates without the very process of engagement in the lived experience of which its genesis is always a part. This engagement does not stand in isolation but in relationship because student and teacher connect themselves to one another through language. And teachers' understanding of these relationships are managed by the situated accounts as stories of reasoned action taken which 554 embeds the practical as particulars and the personal as values and principles in that action. And reason is best represented in the interpretive turns constructed in these stories which is a transition in the thinking of teachers which frames the particulars in the larger personal histories and cultural traditions by which such stories are understood as educational stories. The link between practical knowledge and the understanding of it in the transitions of the interpretive turns embeds story in an achievement of both an internal coherence, how it makes sense to the teller and how they understand the story, and external coherence, how it makes sense to the listener and how both connect this coherence not to some hidden understanding which is to be discovered, but to an understanding as a reasoned and engaged linguistic achievement of an educational form of life which remains open to the probability that teller and listener can reliable affect the understandings of the other. As Taylor (1995) notes, "We are led to recognize a human constant; a mode of understanding which consists in making our way about and affecting our purposes in doing so...making sense of the connections which underlie our ability to deal with the world as we do" (p. 189). Dealing with the daily chores of human caring, teaching presented in its highest form of life, is the making or achievement of a teaching practice. Extending reasoned 555 judgment in solving the murky problems of teaching and learning, sharing and just getting along extends the practical knowing and expands the reasoned action of the teaching experience. The stories teachers tell about engagement with their children, in providing care and respect and safe haven for them as well as the beliefs and reasons for doing so are as real to them as the disengagement and isolation they feel from one another, that thwarts the image of collaboration and a shared sense of professionalism. They have constructed this sense of isolation as well as the caring and respect for children as a practical meaning, a meaning and understanding distributed in action and understood as a reality shaped not only by the historical and personal, an educational form of life shaped from the inside out, but by the flow of the present contextual conditions of dealing with institutional time constraints, parents, administrators and each other as an educational form of life shaped from the outside in which also carries with it cultural and historical realities (Bruner, 1990). Teachers find their way within their own practices and grow and mature and become wise in the interpretations of their lives because they are able to take the inside out and the outside in as binaries of their lived experience and connect them in story. It is a linguistic form of life which situates the lived experience in the best accounts of the 556 particular as outside framed within their values and beliefs as principles gleaned from the inside out. Story matters in this connection.

It is a matter of life in that story creates the connections within the interpretive turn by which a larger set of particulars of teaching (Schwab's four commonplaces of a teaching lived experience) is embedded in particular interpretations which attend to the personal histories of the individual. Within the connection there is a transformation, an achievement of the understanding of the connection between the inside and the outside which is the most common and most practical reasoned achievement of a professional life. One presents to others this connection of the binaries of a lived experience, the inside and outside as mediated by the interpretive turns which reveals the particulars as something embedded in praxis, in practical action taken in light of a reasoned consideration, a background, a personal point of view whose significance and meaning is to be understood as something always larger and more complex than just topic- centered narratives or beliefs. What is at stake here is the larger issue that teachers bring their personal histories and traditions to bear on the meaning and understanding of what they do. And such meaning and understanding grows out the doing and the trying and the storying of their lived experience as a teaching practice. This meaning and 557 understanding as reasoned action taken in the world is important and powerful because it is expressed in story as the voice of connection between the inside and outside ,reasoned action as both instrumental and intrinsic, which always, within the interpretive turn, reveals more than just either one taken separately. Story is the bringing together, making connections of the personal and practical, the intrinsic and instrumental in the making of a whole and reasoned life.

Storytelling is a most suitable means for investigating the achievement of a teaching practice. For within the connections of the personal and practical we find the construction of personal practical knowledge and thinking which is basic to the world and basic to the stories told by the teachers at Lila Belle; a basic human reaction which

Taylor (1995) notes, "Seems to be present in some form everywhere: that humans are especially important and demand special treatment" (p.56). I conclude this discussion section by arguing that teachers know what they know based on the events of their lives as they are personally and professionally experienced and shared as events in story. Story is the very stuff of teaching, the landscape within which we live as teachers and researchers (Elbaz, 1990). These stories are stories of connections, not in the sense of hierarchy or a model of 558 organizational or organizing form, but of achieving a practical knowledge of who teachers are and what they do by connecting the relationships and practicalities of their lived experience as events with their personal beliefs and attitudes as principles by which these experiences are interpreted and made sense of in storied events. But it must also be said that these stories as connections of the inside and outside are always stories of the whole person. The connections made between particulars and the personal inform one another. Topic-centered narratives and themes swirl within a flow of motion and reasoned action taken in the world which cannot be made sense of by disengaging one from the other. We are all connected and engaged, inside and outside.

Modernity and Western science have stressed a culture of disengagement of the practical reasoned action and knowledge of teachers which can be credited as a way of solving educational problems. Teachers are not encouraged to depend on and reflect on the stories which construct their lives. Instead they are encouraged to appeal to a body of knowledge which is developed by experts and stands apart from the personal beliefs and values by which teachers interpret their work. Curriculum is offered as Craig puts it, "In the flavor of the month" where the instructional program is like a grid overlaying their practice and disengaging them from their 559 knowledge. The grids are replaced with alarming frequency. Craig notes the explicit curriculum is, "Like a merry-go- round here. You start here. Five years later you're back with the same; you've gone through everything in the meantime, every ridiculous thing, every program. An administrator would go out to California, make a program, think it's the gift from God, come back, get people to believe in it and the next thing you know everybody'll be told they have to do it. I've seen that some many times. So many times."

Rational action taken in the classroom is to be understood as action based on knowledge gained elsewhere, not from the actual practice in which teachers are engaged. Rational technology as teaching should be as disengaged as possible from the implicit commitments and understandings of the lived experience, as it is in natural science (Taylor,

1995 p. 58). It must be in order to protect the community of teaching from all of the misperceptions and unreliable notions of truth embedded in a practical knowledge with its warts and imperfections, values and humanness, its subjectivity. But without the personal, I argue, teachers and all the rest of us lose the connectedness, the wholeness of an articulated and storied life which provides the practical reason which grows out of, is achieved within purposeful action taken toward the good in the lived experience. 560

I wish to argue that these teacher stories are stories of hope, Hope as Havel (Havel, 1991) notes is not of endeavors headed for early success, but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good. Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns it out. That notion of making sense is found, I have argued, in language and the stories teachers tell of their connections of the particular with the personal. I wish to also argue that teachers and all of us search for such a language by which we can make sense of, bring understanding to our lives. We seek linguistic connections within our lives. And if we struggle to find the language, or do not have yet enough stories by which to construct our sense making then we leave it to fate to make the connections between the practical and the personal. I would refer the reader to Joyce's "fate stories" as just such an example of not yet having the language to make sense of, to connect her personal beliefs and principles, in story, to the practicalities of her lived experience. Her interpretive turns remain in the hands of fate. This is connection enough, for now. I conclude with the following thought. Havel (1991) notes that the deepest and most important form of hope, the only one that can keep our heads above water and urge us on to do 561 good works, and the only true source of the breathtaking dimensions of the human spirit and its efforts is something we get "elsewhere" (p. 181).

I am convinced the "elsewhere" is not disengaged from the individual or the community in which one lives and works. "Elsewhere" rather, is in the connections which are constructed between the particulars and the personal inside each of us as individuals and the connections between us all in community. Reason as practical knowledge cannot be disengaged from our values, beliefs and commitments to ourselves or to each other. Our stories are our gifts of commitment to each other, the renewal of our human spirit and its efforts which comes from our connections to one another in story. The realm of practical knowledge and reasoned judgment is the realm of meaning and understanding structured in linguistic forms, and one of the most important forms for creating meaning and understanding in human existence is the story (Polkinghorne, 1988). Story is the gift of life, a kindness represented in the sharing of a part of who we are as symbol of our connectedness to ourselves and to each other in the lived experience. Teaching is not only talk, but the way in which you can move amongst your children and talk to each one, so it is in talking. So, yes, real teaching is not one person standing up here doing university lecturing. That's not real teaching, but it's the interaction between the kids and the teacher. (Jill Porter, Interview, March 23) 562

IMPLICATIONS OF THIS RESEARCH Implications of this research rest within the claims made in this dissertation about the value of practical knowledge and thinking. Teachers need active and collaborative engagement with their own knowledge in solving problems and making plain and personal sense of the often muddled and chaotic events of the teaching experience. I argue that one of core characteristics of such engagement would be an opportunity for teachers to learn about their own practice and about the ways they come to live within it, interpret it and understand it. As Argyris (1990) notes when talking about changing organizations through change in human behavior : It is important for participants to come to know their practice as they have defined it and to experiment with the new moves and competencies characteristic of a new definition. This means that the aim is in part to make known what is known so well that we no longer know it- the uncovering of tacit knowledge so that it might be critiqued. I have argued for the necessary action of providing teachers the opportunity to use their practical knowledge, and use it comfortably, in their teaching practice. They do, and that use is cogently presented in the topic-centered narratives as phenomenological typifications of common stocks of practical knowledge available to them, but this is not sufficient action by which to improve practice. Practical knowledge used in individual classrooms which is kept private 563 and exclusive and not shared within a community of inquirers (Argyris, 1990 p, 78) fails to ground the action within the culture of the building and holds little promise for organizational change.

Storytelling hol^s the tacit information in the form of themes as individual interpretive turns which I argue, are ways of making sense of stories by the teller and presented to the listener as ways the teller expresses taking reasonable action in the lived experience. Story builds on the epistemology of verstehen or understanding concerned with how the lived experience is constructed by the interpretations that are made of it through warranted and justified claims of reasoned action taken in deliberating, interpreting, and making judgments about those actions taken and expressed as events in the storytelling process. The importance of surfacing the tacit themes teachers use to make sense of their teaching experiences rests within the essence of human change, the nature and excitement of wondering within the lived experience, coming to a reasoned sense about it and making personal discoveries about the self in the process. Technological rationality as mainstream science disengages the participant from this context of personal and professional discovery; from living within the experiences from which such discoveries emerge. The justification of what becomes true and right is made by 564 separating the context of wonderment and discovery from the context of warranted claims made about the lived experience. Storytelling blends the two. Public schools would be well advised to help teachers understand the importance of story in their own lives and with the life of the organization as community. Teachers make sense of their practice by telling stories about it, about the "things in themselves" which they attend to on a daily basis in the lived experience. And the tacit themes by which they make sense of their stories guide the very actions of which they speak and make known through story. And what is made known Argyris (1990) argues is:

What is unknown (in the lived experience, parenthesis mine)...the discovery of alternative reasoned actions so that they too might be critiqued and understood. The process of critical inquiry in action is a form of public reflection and experimentation that...can be used in action contexts in order to ensure the validity and usefulness of the inquiry. Organizations should allow their members to share in open trust their stories of their practice. Embedded in those stories are core themes by which teachers make sense of their worlds of work and serve as Argyris (1990) notes windows onto the logic of their own actions. Argyris asks the question, "What kind of action is it" (p. 239) . I have argued throughout that it is reasoned action taken in the lived experience which is grounded in tacit themes of practical knowledge which is moral and oriented toward the good. 565

Teachers need opportunities to think about and reflect upon these themes since they operate at a deep level as background information which is often tacit. Bolman and Deal (1995) argue that organizational change must come from a heavy investment in human relations. Reclaiming the hope of a quality education of a future generation of children rests in the teachers who will respect their personhood and their human dignity. Above all, that respect is expressed in the stories shared by the teachers whose voices speak from these pages. They are stories of angst and love, bewilderment and courage, heart and spirit and they are stories from the soul. These stories should be shared for in them rests the potential for significant individual and organizational change. This dissertation ends with the voices of Bolman and Deal and their vision for the hope of public organizations and in particular the public schools of this country: It does not matter how long your spirit lies dormant and unused. One day you hear a song, look at an object, or see a vision, and feel its presence. It can't be bought, traded, or annihilated, because its power comes from its story. No one can steal your spirit. You have to give it away. With each story teachers give to one another they give the gift of their spirits as the core of their practice and with it the wisdom of their knowledge and the wondering of their minds. REFERENCES Abrams, M. H. (1953). The mirror and the lamp. London: Oxford University Press, Agar, M. (1986), Speaking of ethnoaraohv. (Vol, 2), Newbury Park : Sage, Agee, J,, & Evans, W, (1941). Let us now praise famous men. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, Altrichter, H,, Posch, P,, & Bridget, S, (1993), Teachers investigate their work: An introduction to the methods of action research. New York: Routledge,

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