From Experience to Relationships

Reconstructing Ourselves in Education and Healthcare

Edited by:
Jasna K. Schwind, Ryerson University
Gail M. Lindsay, University of Ontario Institute of Technology

Published 2008

The six writers in this book explore the contribution and the transferability of narrative inquiry from curriculum studies to daily life in education and in healthcare. They examine the interconnectivity of reconstructed experience with the construction of disciplinary identity and knowledge. Thinking narratively, they write auto/biographically about relationships between teachers, students, nurses, colleagues, and/or people in their care. As narrative inquirers, they are curious how research moves forward professional situations in education and healthcare.

The narrative plotlines of knowledge construction, curriculum building and identity formation thread through the chapters. In education and healthcare, the reconstructed experience of a teacher is shown to be foundational to curriculum content and processes. In nursing education, we see congruence between narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 1995, 2000; Connelly & Clandinin, 1988, 1999) as a process that includes the teacher-researcher as co-participant; and, theorists, such as Watson (1999), include the nurse in the caring situation as shapers of the experience of people in their care. As practitioner-researchers, teachers in education and healthcare construct who they are and how they are in relationship in the context of social situations. Inquiry, not certainty (Dewey, 1929), is a life stance that is formative for education.

Practitioners in education and in healthcare will be interested in this book as a way to make meaning of their experience. Policymakers and administrators will be interested in this book as a way of conceptualizing teachers’ knowledge as a source of curriculum. Researchers will be interested in this book as a demonstration of how narrative inquiry illuminates ways of being that are educative and an innovative way to study curriculum.

CONTENTS
Forward, F. Michael Connelly. Introduction: Narrative inquiry: A way of thinking about experience. Crafting an Identity: Toward an Understanding of the Importance of Self-Definition in Educational Contexts, Carmen Maggisano. Who You are as a Person is Who You are as a Nurse: Construction of Identity and Knowledge, Gail M. Lindsay. An Inquiry into Mindful Caring: A Narrative Account of my Experience in Day Surgery, Rosalie Dwyer Kent. The Spiral: The Meaning of Caring in Practice, E. Angela Chan. Accessing Humanness: From Experience to Research, From Classroom to Praxis, Jasna K. Schwind. Teaching the Whole Child during the Times of Accountability, Franka P. Cautillo. Epilogue: How Does Thinking Narratively Matter? About the Authors.

References:
Clandinin, D. J. & Connelly, F. M. (1995). Teachers’ professional knowledge landscapes. New York: Teachers College Press.
Clandinin, D. J. & Connelly, F. M. (2000). Narrative inquiry: Experience and story in qualitative research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Connelly, F. M. & Clandinin, D. J. (1988). Teachers as curriculum planners: Narratives of experience. New York: Teachers College Press.
Connelly, F. M. & Clandinin, D. J. (Eds). (1999). Shaping a professional identity: Stories of educational practice. New York: Teachers College Press.
Dewey, J. (1929). The quest for certainty: A study of the relation of knowledge and action. New York: Minton, Balch & Co.
Watson, J. (1999). Postmodern nursing and beyond. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone.