Drama: A Comparative analysis of individual narratives

Abstract

In a narrative inquiry, five educators who taught college in prison share stories about working in this non-traditional learning environment that is often dangerous and frustrating. From the tension between the prison's emphasis on social control and the educators' concern for democratic classrooms, three broad themes emerged: working in borderlands, negotiating power relations, and making personal transformations. Large intact segments from transcripts of participant interviews form a dramatic text that illuminates how a selected group of educators made meaning of their experience teaching college courses to incarcerated students. A comparative analysis presented in a one act play brings together the individual participant voices to tell a collective story, which has meaning in the context of a shared emotional experience. © 2009: Susanna Belle Spaulding, James Banning, Clifford P. Harbour, Timothy Gray Davies, and Nova Southeastern University.