Narrative and portfolio approaches to teacher professional standards

This paper analyses various uses of narrative in the exploration of teacher identity. It highlights the way many contemporary education writers use terminology such as ‘storying lives’ and ‘storied landscapes’ to describe teacher processes of reflection on practice. In this paper the authors discuss some recent approaches to narrative that incorporate or suggest systematic uses of narrative theory (Conle 2003, Kamler, 2001, Richardson, 2003). Consideration is also given to the links between critical ethnography and narrative in order to critique the use of teacher portfolios, as in a recent Australian initiative for the appraisal of beginning teachers. The authors conclude with an argument for the rehabilitation and refinement of narrative theory in the ‘writing’ of teacher identity.

Place-related identities through texts : from interdisciplinary theory to research agenda

The implications of the transdisciplinary spatial turn are attract- ing growing interest in a broad range of areas related to education. This paper draws on a methodology for interdisciplinary thinking in order to articulate a new theoretical configuration of place-related identity, and its implications for a research agenda. The new configuration is created through an analy- sis of place-related identities in narrative theory, texts and literacy processes. The emerging research agenda focuses on the ways children perceive and rep- resent their place-related identities through reading and writing as inspired by and manifested in texts.

Viewing the leadership narrative through alternate lenses: an autoethnographic investigation

This conceptual-theoretical article revisits the work of Parry and Hansen on the nature of the organizational story as leadership. The present article is written in the autoethnographic style. The original narrative work is re-examined through the lenses of autoethnography, narrative theory, metaphor/discourse, critical realism and conventional quantitative research. The insights provided by this methodological triangulation are examined. The conclusion is that organizational stories will reflect leadership if they are plausible to the intended audience, give all organizational members an empowered part in the story, have a moral to the story, and have a happy ending. The overarching theme that is proposed is of leadership as the generation of individual hope for a better existence.

Intertextual turns in curriculum inquiry : fictions, diffractions and deconstructions

This thesis is based primarily on work published in academic refereed journals between 1994 and 2003. Taken as a whole, the thesis explores and enacts an evolving methodology for curriculum inquiry which foregrounds the generativity of fiction in reading, writing and representing curriculum problems and issues. This methodology is informed by the narrative and textual 'turns' in the humanities and social sciences - especially poststructuralist and deconstructive approaches to literary and cultural criticism - and is performed as a series of narrative experiments and 'intertextual turns'. Narrative theory suggests that we can think of all discourse as taking the form of a story, and poststructuralist theorising invites us to think of all discourse as taking the form of a text; this thesis argues that intertextual and deconstructive readings of the stories and texts that constitute curriculum work can produce new meanings and understandings. The thesis places particular emphasis on the uses of fiction and fictional modes of representation in curriculum inquiry and suggests that our purposes might sometimes be better served by (re)presenting the texts we produce as deliberate fictions rather than as 'factual' stories. The thesis also demonstrates that some modes and genres of fiction can help us to move our research efforts beyond 'reflection' (an optical metaphor for displacing an image) by producing texts that 'diffract' the normative storylines of curriculum inquiry (diffraction is an optical metaphor for transformation). The thesis begins with an introduction that situates (autobiographically and historically) the narrative experiments and intertextual turns performed in the thesis as both advancements in, and transgressions of, deliberative and critical reconceptualist curriculum theorising. Several of the chapters that follow examine textual continuities and discontinuities between the various objects and methods of curriculum inquiry and particular fictional genres (such as crime stories and science fiction) and/or particular fictional works (including Bram Stoker's Dracula, J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace, and Ursula Le Guin's The Telling). Other chapters demonstrate how intertextual and deconstructive reading strategies can inform inquiries focused on specific subject matters (with particular reference to environmental education) and illuminate contemporary issues and debates in curriculum (especially the internationalisation and globalisation of curriculum work). The thesis concludes with suggestions for further refinement of methodologies that privilege narrative and fiction in curriculum inquiry.

Career in writing : Judah Waten and the cultural politics of a literary career

This thesis examines the literary career of Judah Waten (1911-1985) in order to focus on a series of issues in Australian cultural history and theory. The concept of the career is theorised as a means of bringing together the textual and institutional dimensions of writing and being a writer in a specific cultural economy. The guiding question of the argument which re-emerges in different ways in each chapter is: in what ways was it possible to write and to be a writer in a given time and place? Waten's career as a Russian-born, Jewish, Australian nationalist, communist and realist writer across the middle years of this century is, for the purposes of the argument, at once usefully exemplary and usefully marginal in relation to the literary establishment. His texts provide the central focus for individual chapters; at the same time each chapter considers a specific historical moment and a specific set of issues for Australian cultural history, and is to this extent self-contained. Recent work in narrative theory, literary sociology and Australian literary and cultural studies is brought together to revise accepted readings of Waten's texts and career, and to address significant absences or problems in Australian cultural history. The sequence of issues shaping Waten's career in writing is argued in terms of the following conjunctions of theoretical and historical categories: proletarianism, modernity and theories of the avant-garde; the "e;migrant"e; writer and minority literatures; realism, political purpose and narrative self-situation; communism, nationalism and literary practice in the cold war; utopianism and the "e;literary witness"e; narrative of the Soviet Union; assimilationism, multicultural theory and the "e;non-Anglo-Celtic"e; writer; theories of autobiographical writing, and autobiography in Waten's career. The purpose of the thesis is not to discover a single key to Waten's writing across the oeuvre but rather to plot the specific occasions of this writing in the context of the structure of a career and the cultural institutions within which it was formed.

Researching education : visually - digitally - spatially

The book shows the possibilities, problems and researcher responses to working with image through complex theoretical territory such as Actor network theory, Deleuzian theory, feminist and poststructuralist methods, positioning theory and narrative theory ... The book moves across the stages of education from early childhood, middle years, secondary schooling to higher education.

Inclusive schooling : representation and textual practice

This paper reports on a larger study carried out in the island state of Tasmania, Australia, between 1996 and 1998. The research reviewed the impact of the Inclusion of Students with Disabilities Policy (ISDP) within the government school system. The qualitative study describes the interpretations of five key informants: a parent; two teachers—a support teacher and a class teacher—a policy-maker and a university academic, during the early period of the implementation of the ISDP. The visual and literary ‘data stories’ of the research are woven together to narrate inclusive schooling in the Tasmanian context as a ‘detective story’ of the special education knowledge tradition. Drawing from poststructuralist methodology and narrative theory the multi-voiced text is a deliberate attempt to enter into conversations with the reader rather than tell the story. Researching inclusive schooling policy through representation and textual practice, I question dominant research practices in the special education field and populist slogans of ‘inclusion’.

Being on the edge of a shipwreck in planning decision-making: design as an anchor and future maker

This paper investigates recent attempts to Masterplan tourism planning and landscape development of the town of Port Campbell based on the concept of community-driven tourism planning. The Masterplan process generally sought to upgrade tourism facilities and to re-plan a core part of the Great Ocean Road corridor the proposed scheme little engendered community confidence nor encouraged the use of local community public resources of the Masterplan proposed outcomes. While analyzing broad range of aspects of the township and the national park, this design thesis attempted to identify the possible initiatives and landscape development models and also applied landscape narrative theory to focus on tourism experience making and landscape with layers of content embedded such as local history, environmental stories that would enrich the experience. The need for this paper is to articulate an alternate and more robust approach to designing on the fragile coastal edge whilst engendering community engagement and ensuring their aspirations are addressed. It is main contribution is both offering an alternate process but also demonstrating the use of design as a vehicle to reach this outcome. The research gap addressed is to challenge a conventional planning practice that was very much constrained by upper-level Melbourne-based parochial and managerial imperatives than lower-level community aspirations and perspectives.

Generating repudiable, memorizable and privacy preserving security questions using the Propp Theory of Narrative

 Security questions are often based on personal information that is limited in variety, available in the public record and very difficult to change if compromised. A personalized folktale shared only by the communicating parties provides memorizable basis for individualized security questions that can be readily replaced in the event of a security breach. We utilize the Propp theory of narrative to provide a basis of abstraction for story generation systems. We develop a proof-of-concept system based on placeholder replacement to demonstrate the generation of repudiate and memorizable questions and answers suitable for online security questions. A 3-component protocol is presented that demonstrates the use of this process to derive a shared secret key through privacy amplification. This combination of story generation and communication security provides the basis for improvements in current security question practice.

Sport management: varying directions towards the narrative

Until now sport managers have had difficulties in identifying core issues that form the framework for successful sport management practice. The purpose of this study was to explore what sport managers believe are the core issues that can contribute to successful sport management practice. This was achieved through an examination of the narrative experiences of 7 sport managers (4 male and 3 female) that highlighted how narrative can be used to enhance a sport manager's understanding of their work environment through critical reflection. Through this examination the overriding issues that the participating sport managers believed provided a unique insight into their everyday lives centered on: (1) experience and power, (2) accountability; (3) demands of the job; (4) professional development; (5) ways of knowing; (6) collegiality; and (7) critical reflection. This narrative approach to understanding the lived experiences of sport managers allowed the researchers to connect theory with experience and to establish a relationship between daily practice and knowledge. Understanding the lived experiences of sport managers in this way can allow sport managers to establish new insights into how they interact with their sport organizations and the individuals and communities they serve in their daily operations. The following paper concludes by suggesting that through an increased interest in narrative as a way of knowing the stories disclosed may move other sport managers to share their own stories and experiences to assist in framing their own identity. Moreover, by prompting other sport managers to tell their stories, a deeper understanding of how professionals continue to grow and advance their sport management knowledge may be promoted. These narratives also taught us about deepening and extending our understanding of how sport managers construct meaning. In this way, new insights may be derived about the practice of sport management and how important it is to adding new knowledge for the discipline.

Environmental determinants of healthy eating : in need of theory and evidence

In order to promote healthful nutrition, insight is needed into the determinants of nutrition behaviours. Behavioural determinant research and behavioural nutrition interventions have focused mostly on individual-level motivational factors. It has been argued that the individual's socio-cultural and physical environments may be the main determinants of nutrition behaviours. However, the theoretical basis and empirical evidence for environmental determinants of nutrition behaviours are not strong. The present paper is a narrative review informed by a series of systematic reviews and recent original studies on associations between environmental factors and nutrition behaviours to provide an overview and discussion of the evidence for environmental correlates and predictors of nutrition behaviour. Although the number of studies on potential environmental determinants of nutrition behaviours has increased steeply over the last decades, they include only a few well-designed studies with validated measures and guided by sound theoretical frameworks. The preliminary evidence from the available systematic reviews indicates that socio-cultural environmental factors defining what is socially acceptable, desirable and appropriate to eat may be more important for healthful eating than physical environments that define the availability and accessibility of foods. It is concluded that there is a lack of well-designed studies on environmental determinants of healthful eating behaviours. Preliminary evidence indicates that social environmental factors may be more important than physical environmental factors for healthful eating. Better-designed studies are needed to further build evidence-based theory on environmental determinants to guide the development of interventions to promote healthful eating.

Living autobiographically : how we create identity in narrative / Paul John Eakin

Preview of the article : Ever since the publication of Fictions in Autobiography in 1985, Paul John Eakin has been a major presence in the field of autobiography studies. As with his other monographs, Eakin’s latest work, Living Autobiographically: How We Create Identity in Narrative, brings together elegance and range, as well as clarity and conceptual complexity. Like his other works, too, Living Autobiographically covers a wide range of theoretical and autobiographical texts. While not indifferent to literary theory per se, Eakin (as has been apparent for some time) is profoundly stimulated by theory that goes beyond not only the literary but also the humanities. Most notable in this monograph is Eakin’s use of recent research in neurobiology. With regard to his choice of autobiographical texts for discussion, most are American, though Eakin does discuss the Australian writer David Malouf (a long-time favorite of Eakin’s), as well as the Norwegian autobiographical narratives analyzed in Marianne Gullestad’s Everyday Life Philosophers: Modernity, Morality, and Autobiography in Norway (1996). Eakin’s interest in Gullestad’s work, which is based on a project that elicited autobiographical narratives from “ordinary” individuals, shows that he is not solely concerned with so-called “literary” texts, something also seen in his discussion of the “Portraits of Grief ” series that appeared in the New York Times in the wake of 9/11.

Bringing together such disparate texts, auto/biographical procedures, and theoretical concerns is an ambitious enterprise. Most ambitious of all is that Living Autobiographically brings “culturalist” and biological frameworks together as a way of answering the question

Studentship and oppositional behaviour within physical education teacher education : a case study ; and, Between the rings and under the gym mat : a narrative

This thesis represents a part of a program of study that is reaching a closure. The broadest brush that could be applied to my work is that it concerns Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE), that it focuses on aspects of professional socialisation, and that it involves various case studies utilising naturalistic inquiry. Whilst it would be impossible and naive to believe that the reading of these texts will produce the meanings that I encourage, or have internalised, nevertheless the order of reading is at least something that I can argue for. Read in the order I suggest throughout the thesis I am hopeful that my subjectivities, and the learning and understandings I have reached may become clear. The purpose of this two part thesis is an exploration of the interplay or dialectic that exists between PETE students, academic staff and the subject matter within PETE. I have had to come to understand the limitations and advantages of insider research as the work has been completed at my University in the School of Human Movement and Sports Science where I have worked for twenty years. This thesis examines the extent to which studentship and oppositional behaviour underlies the dialectic that exists between the students and the various discourses within the program. I have written the study in two very different formats, one, a collection of stories about PETE and the other, an interpretative case study conducted during 1993 and 1994. Within the case study, studentship and oppositional behaviour were viewed as a measure of the extent to which students react and push against the forces of socialisation within their PETE program that is seen to represent dominant discourses, The following broad research questions were considered to enable the above analysis. 1. What is the nature of studentship and oppositional behaviour in a high status subject within PETE compared to a subject that is seen by students to be of little relevance and of low status? 2. How are studentship and oppositional behaviour related to students subjective warrants? 3. How are the studentship and oppositional behaviours exhibited by students related to the pedagogy and discourses reflected in the knowledge, beliefs and practices within the two sites. The starting point for this research was a study conducted as a totally separate research task (Swan, 1992) that investigated the hierarchies of subject knowledge within a PETE site and investigated the influence of such hierarchies upon student intention. A great deal of meta analysis exists about the manner in which a technocratic rationality pervades PETE but very little case study material of what this means to students and academic staff within such institutions is available. The stories in Between The Rings And Under The Gym Mat, which is the second part of this thesis, represent ‘the data’ differently from the case study, but they speak their own truth. At times the nature of the story is indistinguishable from the reality of the case study. Wexler (1992) undertook an ethnographic study about identity formation in three very different high schools, and published the findings in a book entitled Becoming Somebody. His introductory words about the nature of the social story he tells, are significant to this study and story. Social history is recounted by creative intervention that can only be made from culturally accessible materials. Ethnography is neither an objective realist, nor subjective imaginist account. Rather, it is an historical artefact that is mediated by elaborated distancing of culturally embedded and internally contradictory (but seemingly independent and coherent) concepts that take on a life of their own as theory. So, this is not ‘news from nowhere,’ but a theoretically structured story where both the story and its structure are part of my times. (p.6) The case study before you is organised with an analysis of studentship and oppositional behaviour detailed in chapter one. The following chapter conceptualises studentship and oppositional behaviour in relation to particular themes of professional socialisation, resistance to oppression and youth culture. Chapter three locates the case study to the major paradigmatic debates about the value and nature of the subject matter content within PETE, Chapter four outlines the case site, the research process and the research dilemma’s confronted in this study. The remaining three chapters are the case record as I can best understand it. In Between the Rings and under the Gym Mat (part B) the story most directly concerned with studentship and oppositional behaviour, is called Tale of Two Classes’. It takes on a very different reality to the case study (part A) and much can be said about the reality of lived experience which can be portrayed in narrative form as opposed to a clinical case study. Many of the other stories pose similar images that are contradictory and never quite complete. I have written a separate methodological section for the narrative stories. It is my intention that the case study and the series of stories should be viewed as essentially complementary, but also a discrete representation of a part of PETE. As part of the Ed D program I have undertaken four discrete research tasks as the starting point for this research I have referred to the first one (Hierarchies of Subject knowledge within PETE). I also undertook an action research project about ‘Teaching Poorly by Choice.’ A further piece of research was a somewhat reflective effort to draw together what this has all meant to me from a subjective and reflexive perspective. Such efforts are often seen as being self indulgent, as subjectivity in the form of lived experience sits uneasily in academia. A final paper involved an evaluation of Between the Rings and Under the Gym Mat from a pedagogical perspective by PETE professionals around the world. And that's the way things turned out.