Narrative environments are spaces that foster storytelling activities. In this presentation, we will discuss turning learning environments into such spaces, where stories serve to instigate, facilitate and evaluate the learning process. We will look to narrative fiction as a vast storehouse of stories and metaphors that may be useful in such a narrative learning environment and we will discuss how literature, as an autonomous space for experiments with estimations and evaluations, with judgments of approval and condemnation, may serve as a powerful metaphor for education.
Education and training program in the hospital APR.pptx
Toward a Narrative Learning Environment. Narrative Fiction as a Model for Learning Processes
1. Narrative Fiction as a Model for the
Learning Process
TOWARDS A NARRATIVE LEARNING
ENVIRONMENT
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Narrative and Metaphor in Education 2017
2. o ‘Space’ where storytelling
takes place (Gubrium &
Holstein 2009)
• Physical, virtual, etc.
o The storied environment
offers its members models
and resources for
storytelling
• Big stories
• Little stories
NARRATIVE ENVIRONMENTS
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3. o ‘Space’ where learning
takes place
• Sphere of attention
• Learning is always a process
of becoming
o In narrative learning
environments
• Learning and teaching are
forms of storytelling
• dialogue, critical reflection
and knowledge generation
happen through storytelling
LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
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4. o Educating Language
Teachers: Dutch, English
o Student counselling:
obligatory assignments
are perceived as useless
and irrelevant; by
students ánd teachers.
(Moenandar and
Huisman, 2015)
CASE STUDY: TEACHER EDUCATION,
WINDESHEIM
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5. o Stories as a ‘giant laboratory’
for teacher education
• All around ánd available
• Embedded in all areas of language
teaching
• Dialogic teaching through stories
• Teacher educators are models of
creating and working in ‘a storied
environment’
A NARRATIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT
IN TEACHER EDUCATION
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6. o Critical reflection
(Moenandar and
Huisman 2015)
o Creative thinking (Fullan
and Langworthy 2014)
o Stimulating autonomy,
equality and empathy
GOALS OF NARRATIVE LEARNING
IN TEACHER EDUCATION
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7. How can stories be used to instigate critical reflection,
creative thinking, and facilitate ‘becoming’ in
Language Teacher Education?
RESEARCH QUESTION
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8. o Narrative assignments in
student counselling
o Dutch first year students in
Language teaching
o English (n=37)
o Dutch (n=38)
o Teacher educators Dutch
(n=3)
o Teacher educators English
(n=2)
o Four teachers have a focus on
literature education
INTERVENTION
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9. All TEs created assignments for narrative coaching, based on a
storytelling model inspired by Greimas (Moenandar and
Huisman 2015)
Examples:
o ‘Write a story about how you ended up a teacher Training
for English’
o ‘Write a story about your personal development during your
first studysemester; based on weekly diaries of your
experiences’
ASSIGNMENT
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10. o Narrative
questions/storytelling
teasers
o What kind of goals did/do
you have?
o Who helped you out on your
path? Why did they?
o Who obstructed you on your
path? Why did they?
o How did you deal with
adversity?
ASSIGNMENT STRUCTURE
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11. o In-depth Interviews with
8 students and 3 teacher
educators
• 2 English TEs, 3 English
students
• 1 Dutch TE, 5 Dutch
students
o Model for Narrative
Interview (Basten and
Moenandar,
unpublished)
RESEARCH DESIGN
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12. Deeper contact with teacher; adds quality of coaching
Peter: My teacher wanted me to be honest and he was open himself. I had some personal issues that effected my motivation
for my studies. I find it hard to talk about emotions, I’m not like that. By writing a story, I found a safe way to tell my teacher
what was bothering me. We talked about it and afterwards I felt very relieved. Right now, I feel confident again about my
ability to study. (contact / engagement / becoming)
Laura: ‘I would give these assignments to my own pupils aswell. Writing a story about your study-experiences works to get in
contact with your teacher. As a teacher, you get to know your students better through stories.’ (Teacher identity / contact)
Higher awareness of engagement, goals and successes in their studies
Anneke: ‘Through the story I wrote about my experiences in the first semester, I got an important insight: engagement in your
studies does not come from above; it is something you have to work for.’ (Engagement / becoming)
Loose instructions and focus on the process (instead of the product) seem to work.
Simon: ‘I think this is a real good way of learning. It makes you think in a different way, more intense. This is about yourself;
who you are. I expressed a lot of myself in the story. It helped that the assignment was very open and that we did not receive
a grade.’ (Assignment structure, teacher identity, becoming)
Anneke: ‘The assignment structure was too much constraining for me. Only when I heard that I was allowed to create my own
fairytale, in any form, I could start writing.’ (Assignment structure)
Students with high and low engagement and writing skills seem to profit from the assignments in processes of becoming.
STUDENT INTERVIEWS: QUOTES
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13. Teacher engagement in student coaching
Hans: ‘It was much more fun to work with stories in student coaching, than the way I used to work. De stories provoked
students to describe real experiences, instead of socially acceptable reflection diaries.’ (Engagement / critical reflection)
Modelling and developing a more complete teacher identity
Julia: ‘Ik heb zelf ook geschreven en mijn verhaal voorgelezen. Daardoor werd ik mij ervan bewust kwetsbaar te kunnen zijn
als docent en dat ik ook daarin een model ben.’
Deeper contact with students
Julia: ‘The stories changed my view on some students. It was surprising how open they could be!’
Critical thinking and reflection
Robert: ‘Stories help to make students think thoroughly, when they get emotionally involved in the story. When that happens,
I observe a sudden silence in class. It is not only the message, but also the melody and rhytm in the language that makes
stories powerful.’
TE feel insecure about their ability in narrative coaching. They have doubts about the quality of the stories and how to assess
them.
TEACHER INTERVIEWS: QUOTES
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14. Both students and teachers value the narrative assignments as meaningful, because
they
o raise awareness of goals, motivation and success
o Improve contact between teachers and students
o Provoke thinking and reflection
To take into account when designing a narrative learning environment:
o More writing support for students and training for teachers is needed
o Narrative coaching assignments also seem to work for students with low
self esteem in writing
o Instructions should be structured and free.
o Teachers and students would like more collaborative writing, technology
and formative assessment.
SIGNIFICANT OUTCOMES
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15. How can we elaborate the assignments to
stimulate processes of becoming, like
empathy, citizenship and teacher identity?
How can we improve the narrative learning
environment by integrating narrative
reflection in content courses: literature,
reading and writing skills and internships?
How can we integrate technology and
multimedia to stimulate collaborative writing,
student engagement and ICT-skills?
FURTHER QUESTIONS
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16. o Convey
• ‘Plant’ stories in the
learning environment
o Collect
• Collect stories through
narrative communication
o Curate
• Narrative learning
environment: collection of
stories.
• Teacher: curator of this
collection
ROLE TEACHER IN NARRATIVE LEARNING
ENVIRONMENT: 3 C’S
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17. o Main character
o A goal
o What did you want?
o A reason
o Why did you want that?
o Opponent(s)
o Who/what obstructed you?
o Helper(s)
o Who/what helped you?
o Someone who profits
o Who gains when you achieve
your goal?
o Who suffers when you don’t?
STRUCTURED FREE STORYTELLING
(INSPIRED BY GREIMAS)
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18. 1. Desire
• When did you know what
you wanted and why?
2. Ability
• How did you gather the
means to achieve your goal?
3. Action
• How did you achieve your
goal?
4. Results
• What are the consequences
of you achieving your goal?
STRUCTURED FREE STORYTELLING
(INSPIRED BY GREIMAS) CONT.
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Notes de l'éditeur
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: novels, short stories, poems
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Anneke wrote a story about a king and a queen and their love life. The king realised he had to work for is love to keep it. For Anneke, this was a metaphor for her own relation towards her studies: she had to keep working to stay engaged. Engagement is not something that comes from above!
Simon, Peter and Laura do not think of themselves as skilled writers. They come from vocational studies and have litte selfconfidence when it comes to writing skills and language skills in general. The open assignment structure and the fact that the stories were not evaluated on text quality, but only on personal reflection, gave hem enough courage to write in a personal reflective way. Anneke is a very skilled writer; she grew up with a lot of books and stories. She did not need any structure, because she created her own structure: a fairytale that served as a metaphor.