Linda Shadiow on Stories as Faculty Learning (Part 1)

Linda Shadiow's book What Our Stories Teach Us is an exploration of the role of story and narrative in faculty development. She provides a thorough program for analyzing teaching stories in order to learn from them and improve our educational practices.

Early in the book Shadiow establishes a three-part pattern for working with stories in a professional development context: identify, then analyze, then interpret and use stories. In this post I describe the first of these steps and part of the second step; a later blog post will pick up where this post leaves off.

Shadiow begins by explaining why faculty should want to use stories as a part of their professional learning. In short, stories are an integral part of our teaching identities (our identities as educators). Professional development means we improve our use of skills, but more directly, professional development means we understand and change our teaching identities and our persona.

Analysis of stories helps us uncover and understand the assumptions we make that structure our teaching practice. Put another way, stories help us get at the autobiographical roots of our educational practice. In this way I can't help but think of stories as like anthropological artifacts of our educational ideologies.

Analysis of our teaching stories leads to what Shadiow calls "double-loop learning" which is hunting and questioning our pedagogical assumptions (as opposed to "single-loop learning" which is increasing our teaching efficiency via new teaching techniques).

Once we are convinced that collecting and using stories is an important part of our professional learning, we then need to collect and code those stories for their content. As part of this process, good questions to ask are: Why did you choose this particular story to tell? Why has this story stayed with you? Of all the stories you could tell, why did you choose to tell this particular story in this particular context?

Once you have selected a story to analyze, you move on to identifying patterns within the stories. Stories are made up of settings, plot events, and characters. The characters of our stories can be especially interesting; we should keep in mind there are multiple versions of us in and around the stories we tell. There is the individual who is telling the story and there is the individual who the story is about. There is us the protagonist; us the narrator; us the learning and us the teacher; us the self as we were back then and us the self as we are today.

In a later blog post, I'll continue this summary of Shadiow's book by describing more about story analysis and how to locate the assumptions that structure the educator's ideology.

citation: Linda K. Shadiow. What Our Stories Teach Us: A Guide to Critical Reflection for College Faculty. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2013.

Jean Connelly & Michael Clandinin on Stories within Narrative Inquiry

While this article mostly deals with narrative inquiry (which is largely tangential to my project on professional community), the authors do make four claims about story that can illuminate the nature and use of narrative in faculty development.

First, humans are storytellers who lead storied lives. I get two ideas--both related but still different--out of this sentence. One, humans as storytellers means we "naturally" tell stories or find it easy to do so, perhaps because we are so conditioned to it. Two, story is a way we make sense out of, or give meaning to, the seemingly random chronology of events that make up our lives. Insofar as being educators is part of our lives, stories give meaning to our work as educators.

Second, narratives add causality to the flow of life events. Again, here's my take: one of the ways we give meaning to our lives--as well as to our work as educators--is to construct cause-and-effect chains that help us understand influence and how things happen. We not only want to know what happened, but more importantly we want to know why. Causality helps explain why.

Third, the meaning of story is not in the events themselves but in the change from start to end. I've said twice above that stories are part of the meaning-making process we use to reflect upon our lives and our work. The events themselves are the individual plot moments within a story; the but the change from beginning to end shows the larger and longer arc of influence that runs through our work as educators. What events in a story are not as important as what those events mean.

And fourth, stories address general problems, but within specific instances. The things that are important to us are likely to be the things that happen to us over and over--the patterns of events we don't understand or that create problems. But solving problems or answering questions can't be done well on such a large and abstract scale because every situation and every person is different. Stories allow us to explore the "big questions" but in a way that doesn't get lost in abstractions and generalities. Stories are always about a specific instance of something happening; we generalize the specifics and the moral of the story to the general patterns of our lives.

citation: Micheal Connelly & D. Jean Clandinin. "Stories of Experience and Narrative Inquiry." Educational Researcher 19.5 (Jun.-Jul. 1990): 2-14.

Maxine Greene & the Rising Importance of Narrative in 1991

In a Foreword to Carol Witherell & Nel Noddings’ 1991 book Stories Lives Tell, educational philosopher Maxine Greene says the rising importance of narrative coincides with the rising importance of “voice,” of heteroglossia, of dialogue, and of inviting participation.

So, a question to explore: What is the connection between story and acts of inclusive communication? Is narrative a form of non-hierarchical and inviting communication (or, at least, closely affiliated with it)? Or, are inclusive forms of communication types of narrative?

citation:  Maxine Greene. Foreword. Stories Lives Tell: Narrative and Dialogue in Education. Eds. Carol Witherell & Nel Noddings. New York: Teachers College Press, 1991. ix-xi.

Complex Social Relations: Harriet Katz on Stories

Harriet Katz writes about story as an element of law student professional development. In that context, she argues that effective communication—for her that means communication with law students; to us that means communication between educators—requires an ability to truly listen to and not pre-judge others; we need to see things from other people’s perspective. Stories are particularly good at helping us see and hear things from another’s point of view.

As part of her discussion, she points out that stories contain many people: not just characters but also the narrators and audiences. The narrators, in turn, make choices about which stories to tell and which details within those stories to reveal to the audience.

This got me thinking about a difference between stories (i.e., narrative discourse) and arguments (i.e., rhetorical discourse).

In the study of rhetoric, the communication event is said to contain three elements: the speaker (the rhetor), the message, and the audience. Of the three components, the first (the speaker) and the last (the audience) are people and, hence, they comprise the social relations within the communication event.

In a narrative there is the narrator (corresponding to the speaker), the story (corresponding to the message), and the audience. Here too, like rhetorical discourse, the narrator and the audience are people who comprise a social relationship within the event. But there are other people involved, too: specifically the characters within the story. Therefore, there are additional social relations between the narrator and the story characters, as well as between the audience and the story characters.

Although I have yet to spin out the implications of the different social relations between rhetorical and narrative discourse, I suspect they will have some impact on using story in educational professional development.

citation: Harriet N. Katz. “Stories and Students: Mentoring Professional Development.” Journal of Legal Education 60.4 (May 2011): 675-686.

Jennifer Moon on Using Story in Education

Jennifer Moon's book Using Story shows how story is a complex social and communicative phenomenon with multiple conditions, purposes, and effects. While explaining the use of story in higher education, she touches on the characteristics of story that I believe are useful when considering it as a professional development tool. I’ll highlight six of those characteristics and add some of my own thoughts.

One, stories are an implicit and connotative form of communication. Certain elements of the story are difficult to put into language; they are contextual and deal with ideas manifest in specific and concrete situation. As a result, important elements of the story are conveyed symbolically. Description in a story exists to make the story work, not to inform or persuade the audience.

Two, stories happen within a frame that separates them from reality. The frame is part of what gives meaning to the events within the story; the frame is the setting and it’s also the underlying principles that determine which events and which characters are relevant to the story and relevant to the lessons the story conveys.

Three, stories present representative norms and behavioral expectations just as much as (or maybe even more than) they convey factual information. We like to say that stories (esp. myths and folktales) tell us what and why nature is the way it is (e.g., a story that explains the origins of a particular mountain in the shape of a bear). But really, many stories actually help us navigate the complexities of living in nature by showing us the moral and behavioral alternatives we face in day-to-day living.

Four, stories are good for studying underlying assumptions as well as alternative actions and implications. Assumptions, implications, and actions are not always explicit to us in the same way as clear explanation or explicit argumentation. Because stories trade in the currency of implicit and symbolic ideas, they anthropologically reveal our underlying beliefs about and what we expect will result from our actions in the world here and now.

Five, stories tend to express the exceptional as opposed to theory which expresses the commonplace. Stories are about change: unexpected change in the status quo or needed change in the face of stagnation. Stories reveal and give meaning to the exceptional events that interrupt the stasis of the commonplace.

And six, stories are correlated with identity; hence, changing a story might be correlated with changing personal and institutional identity. Obviously stories chronicle events, but those events happen to the characters of the story, to people. The events aren’t as important as what the events mean to the characters; the characters’ identities are in play as a result of the events that happen.

citation: Jennifer A. Moon. Using Story: In Higher Education and Professional Development. New York: Routledge, 2010.

Patrick Lowenthal on Online Storytelling as Professional Development

Patrick Lowenthal opens with the claim that current professional development activities don't actually change faculty behavior. As a result, he advocates storytelling (and specifically online storytelling) as a potential solution to this problem. Storytelling, he goes on to say, is not discussed much in the professional development literature, but it is discussed in the educational literature, and that's where he borrows many of his ideas from.

Stories, according to Lowenthal, have four characteristics that make them worthwhile professional development tools and that also separate them from other types of explanatory discourse. First, stories deal with concrete examples (rather than vague abstractions).

My commentary: Stories deal with common (or even universal) issues and conflicts that people experience and that audiences relate to. Likewise, stories also involve specific characters, acting in specific settings, with specific plot events. Insomuch as stories address larger themes, those themes are manifest within concrete and detailed situations.

Second, stories provide frameworks and contexts that situate meaning (rather than meaning embedded in the message itself, independent of any context).

My commentary: The situatedness of a story shows us how the story's meaning is bound to that context and makes sense mainly within that context. Explanatory messages, on the other hand, are meant to convey ideas that exist and make sense separate from the situation and without much of a context.

Third, stories build personal experiences that facilitate meaning making and memory (rather than merely transfer information).

My commentary: The audience of any communication event will experience that communication event personally and socially. If that communication is explanatory, on the one hand, our experience of the discourse will be information-rich, literal, and we will feel disconnected from the sources of that information. If that communication event is a story, on the other hand, our experience of the discourse is more likely to be eventful, symbolic, we are more likely to feel like we're participating in the events themselves.

And fourth, stories are embedded with the social context in which meaning is created socially (rather than other forms of discourse which create meaning in the language of the message itself).

My commentary: Because stories reveal specific and concrete instances, and because stories are embedded within contexts and frameworks, and because stories build experiences, the social quality of storytelling means the relational aspects of the communication are as important (or more important) than the content aspects. Stories are understood through relationships and social interaction more than explanations (which are understood largely through clear and effective expression).

Lowenthal makes one more point which I'm mostly glossing over here. He claims that moving professional development storytelling online means that digital storytelling applications become a viable option for professional development.

citation: Patrick R. Lowenthal. “Online Faculty Development and Storytelling: An Unlikely Solution to Improving Teacher Quality.” Journal of Online Learning and Teaching. 4.3 (Sept. 2008): 349-356. http://jolt.merlot.org/vol4no3/lowenthal_0908.pdf

Storytelling Retreat at the Center for Teaching Quality

This past summer the Center for Teaching Quality (CTQ) facilitated a retreat for teachers from across the country to learn about telling their professional teacher leader stories.

At the retreat, the teachers worked to “…develop and share their stories of teacher leadership impact in the hopes of shifting the current cultural narrative surrounding teaching and learning” (para. 1). This statement explains what they did and why they did it; the statement also shows us some of the assumptions made by and motivations for the retreat.

First, the description tells us something they did: the retreat taught teachers how to develop their stories of teacher leadership. Teachers, one assumes, need to understand what a teacher leader story sounds like and how to draw those stories out of their experiences.

Second, the description tells us another thing they did: the retreat taught teachers how to share their stories to others. Teachers, one also assumes, need to convey their teacher leader stories in expressive and compelling ways.

Third, the description tells us a reason why they did it: individual personal narratives are being used to shape the larger cultural narrative. An assumption here is that the larger cultural narrative needs to be changed; there’s something harmful about that narrative that is keeping teachers from doing their best work.

Another assumption is that conveying individual (personal) narratives is a kind of first step toward building or influencing a larger (cultural) narrative. Pick your favorite metaphor here: personal narratives are bricks in a larger wall of cultural narrative; individual change is a catalyst toward cultural change, etc.

The rest of the retreat description identifies other, more specific storytelling skills participants learned: identifying your audience, refining your message, assessing the impact of your story, and the more relational goal of getting to know your colleagues who also have compelling stories to tell.

At the bottom of the webpage are links to three participants’ blogs about their experiences at the retreat. A couple of points are salient here.

Tricia Ebner explained how participants questioned their stories: whether their stories had value to others, whether their stories were well-told, and whether their stories would have impact. This shows that storytellers—especially those who are learning to tell their own stories—need to build confidence in their stories and their storytelling.

Noah Klein explained how our stories are tied to their failures, successes, strengths, and weaknesses. We learn from all kinds of stories: stories about what we’ve done well and stories about what we have done poorly.

This description of the CTQ storytelling retreat leaves a rough outline for developing storytelling as a form of professional development that also cultivates professional community.