Stories of Schools/Teacher Stories: A Two-Part Invention on the Walls Theme

Abstract Patterned in the style of a musical invention, this work adopts Clandinin and Connelly’s metaphor of a professional knowledge landscape (1995), Olson’s conceptualization of the narrative authority (1993, 1995) of teacher knowledge, and my idea that teachers develop their knowledge in knowledge communities (Craig 1992, 1995a, 1995b, 1998). The first invention outlines the stories of school (Clandinin & Connelly 1996) that Riverview School and Evergreen School were given and the changes that take place over time. The second invention features beginning teacher, Benita Dalton, and her narratives of experience lived and told in the two school contexts. Relating the teacher’s stories to the narrative accounts of the two campuses illustrates the extent to which context shapes teachers’ practices and bounds their knowing. The work sheds much light on the subtle complexities of teachers’ professional knowledge landscapes and adds to the conceptual base of a line of inquiry that focuses on the shaping effect of context on teachers’ knowledge developments. An invention, loosely defined, involves the creation, through thought and/or action, of something that did not exist before. Written in the style of a musical invention, this piece is composed of two parts featuring the stories of two schools played against the evolving stories of a teacher who worked in both contexts. While the two parts of the invention both develop the walls theme, each unfolds in a different manner. The two variations which constitute the first part of the invention center on the stories of school (Clandinin & Connelly 1996) that Riverview School and Evergreen School were given and examines how these stories changed over time. The two variations that comprise the second part of the invention highlight beginning teacher, Benita Dalton, her stories of experience (Connelly & Clandinin 1990) lived and told at the two schools, and shifts that took place in her knowledge development. Connecting the fine-grained accounts of an individual with the coarse-grained accounts of schools reveals the extent to which stories of school influence teachers’ practices, set the horizons of what is available for teachers to come to know, and adds to the conceptual base of a line of research that examines the how teachers’ knowledge developments are influenced by context. The work begins with introductions to Benita Dalton and me, the teacher and the researcher in the study. Discussions of the research method and the theoretical framework appear next. These preliminary sketches prepare the reader for the two-part invention that follows. They lay the methodological groundwork as well as provide lenses with which to view, and a language with which to describe, contextual experiences. The next segment of the piece is Part I of the Invention comprised of Variation I: A Narrative Account of Riverview School, Variation II: A Narrative Account of Evergreen School, and a reflective coda on stories of schools. These passages bring the first part of the invention to closure. Next comes Invention II, the second movement of the piece, featuring Variation I: A Story of Benita’s Experience at Riverview and Variation II: A Story of Benita’s Experience at Evergreen. As with the first part of the invention, a reflective coda appears at the end of Benita’s stories of experience that concludes the second part of the invention. The article ends with a grand finale, where the parallel stories developed in the invention’s two parts are intentionally brought together for practical and theoretical purposes. These closing passages specifically address the principle question, the simple melody around which this two-part inquiry/invention has been constructed/composed: How does context affect teachers’ knowledge developments?