Once upon a time: Storying in a middle school classroom

Abstract

The purpose of this study was first and foremost to investigate the storying process used by six middle school students, their teacher, the school administrator and the researcher as they moved through their classroom/school lives. Second, I sought to incorporate the storying process within the larger context of a literate, learning centered classroom community in which storying is integrated with transaction, democracy, culture, and inquiry. Third, I wanted to examine the process of storying from a critical perspective in order to suggest ways to transform educational practices from a reproductionist to a social reconstructionist approach. This interpretive ethnography included the data collection strategies of individual and group interviews and field notes. A theoretical framework for storying was developed using a modified analytic induction method. The categories were constructed and coded using a constant comparative method. The major finding of this study was that storying is a distinct participatory/dialogic process which makes use of narrative elements. This process incorporates the speech mechanisms of mini-monologue, dialogue, and multilogue. Stories are initiated when someone starts to share spontaneously or when invited by a listener. The responses of listener(s) and/or speaker(s) fall into the categories of intermittent responses, ignoring a story starter, listener's tangential comments, popcorn stories, and sustaining a story through extraneous interruptions. The four major purposes for storying are to reflect on and understand experience, to negotiate and evaluate experience, to develop and sustain relationships, and to construct and reinforce knowledge. Storying is a powerful resource which can be employed in curriculum planning and practice to build community, engage in critical thinking, and construct knowledge. Storying is also a research tool for university and teacher researchers to both gather and analyze data through examining current theory and practice so that these can be imagined and structured in new ways.