Weaving narrative nets to capture school science classrooms

Abstract

Qualitative research (Denzin & Lincoln, 1994) provides a variety of methods and approaches for the rich description of classroom events and educational practices, and their meanings for teachers and students. I have chosen to use a quasi-ethnographic methodology employing impressionistic tales of the field (van Maanen, 1988) to explore some of the constraints and successes my colleagues and I encountered while implementing a number of innovative teaching approaches in five middle school classrooms in an Australian city during 1996. I have also explored some of the issues of relationship, reflexivity (Steier, 1995) and mutual respect that arose in the course of the study. The three tales presented here explore issues relating to the nature of science and science education. As important as the specific educational foci of the research, however, is the potential of the chosen methodology---the writing of impressionistic tales--and of the tales themselves to act as occasions for pedagogically-focussed critical reflection. This paper constitutes an invitation to others who conduct research from a pedagogical stance (van Manen, 1990) to explore the possibilities offered by the use of impressionistic tales for researching lived experience.I had two purposes in be~nning this teaching/research project. Firstly, I wanted to continue the process, begun in an earlier action research study (Geelan, 1994(Geelan, , 1996, of exploring my own teaching practice, and my attempts to more fully embody my educational and ethical values in my practice. Because of the necessarily immersed and reflexive (Steier, 1995) nature of my knowing, and the team-teaching context of the research, this exploration came to include a broad interest in the teaching/learning/research practices of myself and my colleagues. Secondly, I hoped to communicate the understandings ~ I developed from this exploration in a way that was clear, relevant and accessible to classroom teachers and other researchers, so that their reading of my text might be ari occasion for reflection on their own values and practices.This research into my "lived experience" (van Manen, 1990) as a team teacher in Arcadia High School s grew out of my earlier critical action research study (Geelan, 1994(Geelan, , 1996 on my attempts to support my students in becoming "active learners." On that occasion I found that my teaching innovation was largely unsuccessful, and that students and teachers became frustrated by the challenges to their existing school roles and expectations. The pressures placed on students by expectations---their own and their parents'--placed a low value on greater quality of understanding and the development of transferable learning skills, and a high value on good grades. The students felt that by attempting to change their learning roles from passive to active (and my teaching role from "dispenser of information" to "facilitator of learning") I was abdicating from my key responsibility--helping them to memorise the information they would need for success ...

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