Following the Trace of Alive Pedagogy in Narrative Research

Author(s):

Clara Arbiol i Gonzalez(presenting / submitting)Maria Dolores Molina Galvan(presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2012

Network:

19. Ethnography

Format:

Paper

Session Information

19 SES 14, Parallel Paper Session

Parallel Paper Session

Time:

2012-09-21

15:30-17:00

Room:

ESI 2 - Aula 3

Chair:

Dennis Beach

Contribution

Our interest here is to deepen into the dimensions of narrative research beyond the technical aspects and procedural prescriptions. The text tries to develop what working with biographical stories, when the study focuses on experience as a sense axis in order to follow the trace of alive pedagogy, mean to us. By alive pedagogy (Piussi, 2006) we mean educational practices that make a fertile educational relationship possible. Educational practices that consider the school and the city as privileged spaces of relationship and exchange between generations; which make the pleasure of accompanying, teaching and learning possible by putting into practice ways of civilizing coexistence. Educational practices that recognize and assume the conflict as an inherent part of the educational relationship and as something that might lead to new educational experiences of self transformation.

Thinking of educational relationship as a experience of sense involves assuming that there is professional knowledge, or dimensions of this knowledge, that teachers and social educators put into play when carrying out their job, that we can’t easily capture or communicate with propositional statements. Statements that invite teachers and social educators to separate themselves from their own specific experience in order to learn more about it and that emphasize the process of appropriation of a savoir-faire based on theoretical models. (Contreras, 2010; Piussi, 2006; Rivera, 2009).

Taking the experience as an axis of sense means, first of all, to recover the link between what is alive and what is living. The experience as a relationship of openness to the world (Bárcena, 2005) allows things to happen to us. In this sense, experience is not what happens, but what happens to us (Larrosa, 2003). As a consequence, secondly, taking the experience as an axis of sense means exploring the educational relationship as an issue that involves us personally, which responds to the need for a knowledge that arises from the relationship between what is said and what is experienced; not between what is said and what happens. A Knowledge which has to do with what holds relationships, with the needed and always personally sustained substance guidding a modus operandi. A necessary Knowledge for educators facing the questions that an educational practice which is always subtle and elusive poses (Contreras, 2010; Van Manen, 1998)

Method

The narrative of the experience links what is alive and what is living because it is attached to the body and the voice of the subject (Sarlo, 2005). Experience becomes communicable through language, out of the immediacy or the oblivion. Narration is revealed as a method of inquiry that helps us to capture and draw the outlines, to describe the shape; avoids the claim of absolute objectivity and places the researchers in a non-dominant position, because we research to develop a knowledge that remains embodied in empirical reality Starting from the experience of teachers and social educators to describe the dynamics of a fertile educational relationship involves searching for the essence and the profound meaning that generates and sustains it, by interpreting the meanings generated around this experience. This way, the Hermeneuthic Conversations (Van Manen, 2006) allow us to open a space of dialogue where we can be close to the participants, where we can opened and listen carefully to them. In the field work we prefer to deepen in the interviews rather than looking for a large number of informants because our focus of study cannot be the metaphor of a great puzzle made of collected fragments (Zamboni, 1996).

Expected Outcomes

In this research we are commited to creating an understanding passage between the single experiences and the dynamics of a fertile educational relationship. This way, the story of the experience is weaved (being developed) based on interviews and conversations with teachers and social educators. We identify in them what we have called ‘the threads of meaning of the practice of the educational relationship’; those axes of sense that sustain knowledge, doing and being of these educators. We don’t look for a concept or a category to explain the educational practice, we look for the emergency of these threads of sense from the educators’ stories. This allows us to capture something about the educational relationship that is difficult to separate from the alive practice: the Knowledge of the experience. We find it in the stories of the experience. And we can use these stories with Initial teachers and with educators education. The search of meaning, however, is open, there are no formulas that one can enforce or play, this is a knowledge from experience that we can recognize and that we can learn.

References

BÁRCENA, Fernando (2005) La experiencia reflexiva en educación. Barcelona. Paidos. CLANDININ, D. Jean y CONNELLY, F. Michael (2000) Narrative Inquiry. Experience and Story in Qualitative Research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. CONLE, Carola (1999) “Why narrative? Which narrative? Struggling with Time and Place in Life and Research” a Curriculum Inquiry. 29:1. Pages 7-32. CONLE, Carola (2000) “Thesis as Narrative or ‘What Is the Inquiry in Narrative Inquiry?’”. Curriculum Inquiry. Vol. 30, Nº 2, pp. 189-216. CONTRERAS, José (2010) “Pedagogias de la experiencia” in CONTRERAS, José & PÉREZ DE LARA, Núria (comp) (2010) Invesigar la experiencia educativa. Madrid. Morata CONTRERAS, José & PÉREZ DE LARA, Núria (comp) (2010) Invesigar la experiencia educativa. Madrid. Morata LARROSA, Jorge (2003) La experiencia de la lectura. México. Fondo de Cultura Económica. PIUSSI, Anna Maria & MAÑERU, Ana (comp) (2006) Educación, nombre común femenino. Barcelona. Octaedro RIVERA, Maria Milagros (2009) “La gestación femenina del mundo” www.unapalabraotra.org (last view 28-01-12) SARLO, Beatriz (2005) Tiempo pasado. Cultura de la memoria y giro subjetivo. Buenos Aires. SXXI VAN MANEN, Max (1998) El tacto en la enseñanza. El significado de la sensibilidad pedagógica. Barcelona. Paidos. VAN MANEN, Max (2003) Investigación educativa y experiencia vivida. Ciencia humana para una pedagogía de la acción y de la sensibilidad. Barcelona Idea Books ZAMBONI, Chiara (1996) “Lo inaudito” in Diotima (2006) Traer al mundo el mundo. Barcelona Icària.

Author Information

Clara Arbiol i Gonzalez (presenting / submitting)

Universitat de València, Spain

Maria Dolores Molina Galvan (presenting)