DISPOSICIÓN ADICIONAL NOVENA
A) DE CARÁCTER INTERDEPARTAMENTAL
One of the unexpected outcomes of this research project was the development of a narrative method that addressed challenges that arose during the course of study and aimed towards a more collaborative, meaningful exchange between participating teachers and myself. Reported in the fourth article of this dissertation (appendix 4), the crafting of factional stories may be understood as introducing an element of uncertainty, of troubling taken-for-granted assumptions, and questioning teachers’ and my own tacit knowledge. In this section, I discuss the methodological developments of the research project,
addressing the final research question, what can be learnt about the teaching of music,
if story is viewed as both the source and representation of knowledge and experience?
I began the process of data collection with an element of certainty with regards to what I was going to ask, and what it was that I wanted to investigate. With an interview guide at the ready I asked teachers to describe themselves, their daily work, and to recount particular moments that they had found challenging, and essentially I got the information I asked for. It was only after the first two rounds of interviews that I realized that the focus had been on what, whereas what I was really interested in was why.
As described in the fourth article and chapter 4 of this dissertation, the crafting of factional stories to address the challenges I felt, and to dig deeper into teacher’s understandings and beliefs of their teaching practice, was an experiment. The changes in methodological approach and the uncertainty with which I implemented these changes were perhaps a luxury afforded by a system of doctoral education that does not require prior approval of methods, allowing for considerable flexibility during the course of study. Indeed, I did not know if sharing these stories would be productive, well received or understood, and I did so with considerable trepidation.
The consequences of sharing these four, short, factional stories were surprising to me in a number of ways. The first was the extent to which teachers
engaged with the texts. Shared approximately two weeks before our final
interviews, most of the teachers claimed that they had spent significant time thinking about the issues these stories raised, and three had written notes that they wanted to discuss. The only teacher who did not have an opportunity to spend a significant amount of time engaging with the texts was Risto, as he was in the middle of coordinating performances for an upcoming school event. Perhaps as a result, his final interview was the shortest of the five, though still allowed for a longer, and deeper, discussion than in earlier interviews. Outi noted that the language of the factional stories was at times challenging for her as a
Finnish speaker, but having the texts for some time before our meeting allowed her to translate sections, and think about what they meant, both semantically and relating the ideas to her own work. The sharing of factional stories afforded teachers access to other teachers’ thoughts and experiences, and the time to
consider not only words but also meanings that was not afforded in the immediate, face-to-face interview situations. In addition, I was surprised that in following the teachers’ leads, the discussions that took place in the third interviews extended far beyond the four factional stories.
Another surprise for me were the truly polyphonic narratives that the factional stories not only embodied but produced. Sharing the stories I had some concerns that certain factional stories were too heavily based on particular teachers’ accounts, or that I had not attended to each teacher’s experiences or thoughts evenly. However, as a result of including teachers and my own doubts, questions and uncertainties, the factional stories opened the doors for considerable reflection and deliberation with regards to the meanings and values of teachers’ everyday classroom experiences. Each teacher approached the factional stories from their own unique context and personal history. Accordingly, the final transcripts read as a complex fugue, or variation upon a theme, with each teacher in conversation with the same voices in different ways.
Up to the final interviews, teachers had mostly shared descriptive narratives of what ‘Finnish teachers’ do, and what ‘Finnish teachers’ think. In going beyond this, to the level of personal reflection and deliberation, I was also surprised by the dissenting voices, and how each teacher focused on different aspects of each story as they related it to their own work and experiences. These moments of disagreement or uncertainty presented opportunities for deep discussion and collaborative inquiry between teachers and myself.
One voice in particular stood out in the transcripts. I noticed an inconsistency in Maria’s interview transcripts, where she seemed to contradict or at least take a very different stance towards popular repertoire (rap music in particular) in the third interview, to what she had told me in the earlier interviews. The second factional story (real rap, see appendix 7b) was largely constructed on a story she shared with me during the first and second interviews,
Maria: There’s one very talented boy who can make his own rap music, and also the background, and he had some difficulties writing down the words because he also wanted to improvise for some of the time. So I could never really see the words beforehand. That was my mistake… I learnt that you never do this like that!
Alexis: What happened?
Maria: There were some words that should not have been said in front of an audience of pupils. But then it is many times in rap that you have this ‘uh, motherfucker, yeah yeah’ and all of that. They imitate it… we had a teachers meeting after [the performances] where we have to grade these performances… I think this boy would have gotten ‘excellent’ if there hadn’t been the swear words, because he did a fine job with the musical background, these loops he did on the computer. And the lyrics he came up with them himself. (First interview, October 31, 2011).
Alexis: What did the other teachers say?
Maria: They said that because of these swear words it was not ‘excellent’. We have only three levels: ‘excellent’, ‘ok’ and ‘fail’. So his was just ‘ok’… it was a little bit difficult for me to say, because I know it’s part of the culture, the rap culture that you use such words. (Second interview, November 7, 2011). However, after I shared the factional stories with Maria, in the third interview, when asked to discuss the second factional story, she was quick to judge the anonymous teacher,
Maria: Hmmm (shaking her head), the teacher should have said something beforehand. This is the teacher’s fault.
Alexis: What would you have said beforehand? Maria: That you cannot have swear words. Alexis: So you would have anticipated this?
Maria: Yes! She should have said. Every teacher knows that swear words are part of the rap culture. We have had similar cases here. (Third interview, May 11, 2012).
This inconsistency in Maria’s transcripts may be the result of a number of factors. The first may be a methodological limitation, either as a result of design or a misunderstanding with regards to how the factional stories were to be interpreted. For instance, Maria may have read the factional stories as models of teaching to praise or critique. This suggests a failure on my own behalf, to adequately explain that the factional stories were grounded in the five teachers’ own experiences, and a failure on Maria’s behalf to recognize them as such. Secondly, this contradiction may point to the difficulty that has often been noted in educational research, of distinguishing experiences from values; distinguishing what teachers do, from what they say. However, through the narrative inquiry approach adopted in this research project, this is not problematic in itself. Rather, Maria’s reaction to her own experiences may be seen as one instance where the normative judgements of the school censorship frame are reinforced, with the social censure of certain popular musics rooted in particular understandings of schooling, students, and teachers. This may be seen as a tension or conflict between Maria’s individual narrative and the social narratives of the school censorship frame, taking on the form of a ‘cover story’ (Olson & Craig, 2005). Narrative education researchers Olson and Craig (2005) applied Crites’ (1979) notion of cover stories to educational research, as a lens to understand the ‘intersections where teachers’ personal knowledge – constructed and reconstructed from experience – meets knowledge constructed by others’ (Olson & Craig, 2005, p. 163). Cover stories are understood as ‘socially authorized’ stories (Olson & Craig, 2005, p. 163). The later discussions with Maria may illustrate such a cover story, more reliant on the dominant narratives of the school censorship frame than her own experiences. The school censorship frame is here seen at work, telling a ‘canonical version of ¨how things should be¨’ (Olson & Craig, 2005, p. 164), constructing and constraining not only what is considered legitimate classroom content, but legitimate teacher roles and stories as well.