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

07 Jan 2023

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

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.

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