Knowledge, Narrative And Self-Study

Abstract

In this chapter we explore the ideas of knowledge and narrative in selfstudies. Questions of how narrative self-studies allow insight into participant knowledge are addressed. Two sets of assumptions guide the exploration: first, a distinction between teacher knowledge and knowledge for teachers; and, second, a notion of narrative inquiry. We first distinguish between a view of knowledge as something teachers possess and a view of knowledge as coming from experience and as learned and expressed in practice. We then distinguish between knowledge as a state of mind and knowledge as a narrative, historical, phenomenon embedded in a teacher’s actions in classroom studies. Working with these distinctions, we review self-studies of the living of teacher knowledge in practice. We conceptualize a range of self-studies of teacher knowledge as narrative by imagining studies positioned along a continuum between the personal and the social. We position studies along a personal-social continuum with studies emphasizing the personal to studies emphasizing the social. For each study we show why it is a self-study of narrative teacher knowledge. In the next section we link each of the self-studies to professional knowledge. Finally we outline what we see as the potential and risks of self-study in narrative teacher knowledge. We argue that self-knowledge is, in the end, not important but stress that as means it is all important. Self-study is important not for what it shows about the self but because of its potential to reveal knowledge of the educational landscape.