Autobiography

Autobiographical method, as Grumet (1990, 2014b, 2014c) has argued, challenges researchers to shape the discourse of inquiry specifically in relation to the academic discipline that we are using it to address. Conversations around historical thinking versus memory or nationalism must be interrupted to ask teachers what the past means to them, how

40 _{I refer here to Peter Taubman’s (2009) chapter in Teaching By Numbers, “The Seduction of a Profession” in}

which he states, “because of the focus on students, teachers disappeared into an assemblage of so-called scientifically based ‘best practices’ … teachers’ subjectivity winds up being sacrificed on the alter of measureable use value.” (149).

their lived experiences relate to these meanings, and what questions their writing provokes— without imposing already constructed responses. Rather than as a tool of surveillance to monitor and evaluate the process and content of their thoughts, autobiographical accounts of lived experiences and everyday understandings of history present teachers’ stories from their own perspectives, in their own words: a “portrayal of the self from the point of view of the self” (Grumet, 2014b, p. 17).

In “’Whole, Bright, Deep with Understanding’: Issues in Qualitative Research and Autobiographical Method,” Bill Pinar (1981) describes the aim of autobiographic work in curriculum as “work which acknowledges the relation between the general, the abstract, and the specific and concrete, and sketches this relation dialectically, so that each element contributes to the transformation of the other to achieve a higher-order synthesis” (pg.175). The specificity of autobiographical writing and the analyses to which it leads build discursive bridges between self (here the autobiographical narrative), history, and the classroom. The languages of home, of childhood, of emotion, mingle with the discourses of time, narrative, representation, and the metaphors and structures of the complicated conversation that is curriculum-an escape from the linguistic chokehold of extant discourses.

3.3.2 Phenomenological Frames

Phenomenological research aims to bring to light individuals’ ways of experiencing, interpreting, and understanding the world they live in through an emphasis on the meanings of lived experiences for the individuals who describe and interpret them. It focuses on the particular descriptions of an experience as it is lived from moment to moment and is a repudiation of research that aims to find causal explanations, predict, or control. Van Manen (1990, 2014) indicates that phenomenological research, and all human science research, aims

to understand and not explain; phenomenological questions and teachers’ written reflections (which some researchers call Lived Experience Descriptions41) help to illuminate dimensions of human existence before they are categorized, named, thematized, and compared (Vagle, 2014; Van Manen, 2014). The type of reflection with which teachers engaged in this project does not lead to as Van Manen (1990) has pointed out, a “punch-line, the latest information, or big news” (p. 13). He compares the work of phenomenology to the creation and reading of a poem: the point is not to summarize or replicate the poem afterward—the poem is the result. In this study, the reflection is the result, the thing itself.

One of the aims of phenomenologically oriented research is to re-connect and re- engage with taken-for-granted ways of knowing and seeing, i.e. the “natural attitude” (Van Manen, 2014), the phenomenon under investigation (Vagle, 2014; Van Manen, 1990). In keeping with such an approach, I did not have particular things I was “looking” for in this study, but part of the project was to examine, with teachers, their ways of seeing and doing their work with history to see and understand what it might mean (or not mean) to them. I aimed to put aside42 the categories and representations of history as historical thinking, critical thinking, narratives of progress, and notions of developmental appropriateness and empathy, to include their own associations with and experiences of and with the past.

3.3.3 Psychoanalytic Frames

In Teaching By Numbers: Deconstructing the Discourse of Standards and Accountability in Education, Peter Taubman (2009) points out that contemporary

conversations about teaching, saturated with the language of standards and accountability,

41 _{See (Vagle, 2014; Van Manen, 1990, 2014)}

42 _{I realize that I am avoiding engagement with the nuances of the differences between the bracketing or}

bridling of assumptions; for the purposes of this study, which is not purely phenomenological, I use the general concept of questioning taken-for-granted understandings.

“exclude entire ways of talking about teaching. Teaching as an existential encounter, as an endeavor whose results are impossible to predict because they are subject to the vicissitudes of subjectivity and the unconscious, these ways of approaching teaching are excluded” (p. 124). Taubman brings concepts from psychoanalytic theory to the examination of education, a perspective that, while not a research method, is a frame that has provided the language to articulate some of the intuitions and suspicions I have had about what is left out of

discussions of teaching. Excluded subjectivity and knowledge that comes from the

unconscious, which Taubman (2012) also refers to as “disavowed knowledge,” were central to this project—the existential dimensions of engagement with fear, obsessions, dreams, anger, hope, and any of the emotional aspects of what it might mean to study the past43. These are dimensions that have just as much importance as the intellectual aspects of studying history and what it means to teach about the past to young people.

A specific aspect of psychoanalytic theory in education that is integral to this project is the recognition and acceptance of uncertainty. Deborah Britzman has explored how the unknown and unpredictable aspects of education, and of learning to teach in particular, are often avoided and neglected. In Practice Makes Practice: A Critical Study of Learning to Teach and later in The Very Thought of Education: Psychoanalysis and the Impossible Professions, she (2003b, 2009) argues that teaching disturbs us because of the uncertainty inherent in an endeavor that has as its object others who are subjects. We can’t “know” the end result of any of our efforts as teachers, and we inhabit an “intersubjective world …[that is] … unstable, unrepeatable, and capable of movement, transformation, fixation, and regression” (Britzman, 2009, p. 20). The “radical uncertainty of being with others” (p. 27) is

43 _{See for example Jim Garret and Avner Segall’s (2013) “(Re)Considerations of Ignorance and Resistance in}

Teacher Education” in which they explore the concept of ignorance in teachers’ avoidance of racism’s role in post-Katrina New Orleans as a form of resistance to difficult knowledge.

often masked by myths of the influence of teachers’ professional knowledge or expertise and avoidance of the constructed and vulnerable nature of knowledge as represented by the various disciplines (Britzman, 2003b) we teach. These myths, in addition to the promises offered by, as Peter Taubman (2012) has pointed out, the behavioral and managerial techniques of the learning sciences and studies of cognition, work to provide certainty and effectively eliminate the turmoil or unpredictability of teachers’ inner lives to make education seem “doable.”

I can think of many times where the uncertainty of a teaching situation scared me: having to put on a simulation of a slave ship crossing the Middle Passage, explaining the “appeal” of the “New” World, and many others. There are also the times student teachers invited in an Iraq war veteran or Rwandan genocide survivor to talk in their classrooms and the reception by students, parents, and other teachers was not what the teachers had planned or desired. The idea that having aims and objectives about the use of evidence to support a claim or make an argument assuaged such fears and anxieties, but these unresolved feelings remained, haunting and tormenting us. It is not just the feelings of anxiety caused by

uncertainty in teaching that I wanted to explore with teachers, but also their feelings about the idea of uncertainty and the uncertainty of history as a discipline and as a way of studying the past. This project itself rests on the hope that I could be comfortable with the uncertainty of this group’s responses and reactions to my queries: what if they resisted and really did connect to the past through historical thinking skills? What if they avoided the “difficult knowledge” (Britzman, 2009, 2013; Pitt & Britzman, 2003) I thought was so integral to the thinking about the past?

The uncertainty that is part of the content and form of my work in this project leads me to another helpful insight from psychoanalytic theory (and one that is also eschewed in education research and practice), and that is the idea that the work never ends (Britzman, 2003b); or at least that the work has no end. In writing about the psychoanalytic foundations of autobiographical method, Grumet (2014c) argues that while the latter “cannot claim to transform the relationship of self to self,” it “can adopt [from psychoanalysis] both its developmental goal and methodological assumption that by bringing the structures of experience to awareness, one enhances his ability to direct the process of his own

development” (pg. 148). The point is to deepen understanding without a specific, guaranteed positive change that comes out of the “analysis.” There is freedom, however, in the

acknowledging or recognizing what was once disavowed, denied, or simply ignored.

3.3.4 Pedagogical Frames

This project is also pedagogical in nature: I asked teachers to write, read, and think about various aspects of their encounters with the past, and we discussed these as a group. As such, I was in the position of a teacher as well: I read and commented on their narratives, assigned readings based on how I read these narratives, and curated our discussions.

Additionally, I intervened in moments of discursive trouble: at times teachers struggled to see the parallels between their own experiences and discussions and the themes and questions raised by the readings we addressed. Sometimes this was a result of unfamiliar concepts (e.g. shadow texts, epistemology, phenomenology) and others it was a result of needing more clarity in linking the particular language of experience to the generalizations of theory. I have not adopted a specific approach or method out of established ideas about how to teach, but

consider my approach to this project pedagogical because acts of teaching and learning took places over the course of my time with the teachers.

In the Foreword to Roger Simon’s (2014) A Pedagogy of Witnessing: Curatorial Practice and the Pursuit of Social Justice, Mario Di Paolantonio describes his work with Simon in the 1990s on assembling an archive on the lives and experiences of the Jewish inhabitants of Vilna during the German occupation from 1941-1943. It was a project that gathered graduate students and researchers into what they called The Study Group, and Di Paolantonio recalls how in addition to presenting to each other the materials they found (memoirs, poems, paintings, videos, etc.), they engaged in “remembrance learning.” They discussed, as Di Paolantonio described it “the signs of one’s study. The actual choices of the testimonial citations and their positions in relation to each other held the traces of how one learned: the questions, anxieties, and affective investments with the archival material encountered” (p. xi). He recounts the importance Simon placed upon the collective pedagogical endeavor of the group:

In contrast to believing that my remembrance and study begins and ends with my own, lone interpretation of archival texts, the collaborative study that we embarked upon necessitated a reckoning with how one’s learning from past remnants is at one stimulated by, and addressed and accountable to the dynamics of being-with-others in a common space of learning and caretaking (p. xi).

I borrow from this work as way of explaining my own: in place of the archival materials the Study Group put together, this group examined and interpreted their own and each other’s narratives and the readings in an ongoing conversation led to insights and understandings born out of their in-the-moment encounters. As I put together the materials and questions to begin and sustain our discussions I was most interested in these “traces of how one learned,” the reflections the teachers had as we worked through the narratives and

texts together, the breakdowns in communication, the frustrations and realizations about themselves and their work with young people.

3.4 The Study

3.4.1 Brief Overview

I think it is useful for the reader to have an overview of the general structure and steps before addressing the specifics components of this project. I began the study with an informal gathering at my house for the six teachers to get to know each other and me. This was not part of my “data gathering” and was meant to lay the foundations for the intimacy and trust I hoped to establish in the group, especially before they were to write autobiographical

narratives. Within the next few days, I emailed each a written prompt that asked them to describe a connection they feel to the past44 through three narratives of their experience. I gave the teachers a “deadline” of a week to email me their responses. I read them carefully several times and composed questions and comments for all of the responses.

I visited each teacher in their classes for a few hours to get a sense of their school and classroom lives. The teachers and I met at my home four times and discussed their narratives, the theoretical/philosophical history writings I had chosen for them, as well as any

connections they wished to establish to curriculum and to their work with young people.

3.4.2 Research Questions

The following questions guided and inspire this study: 1. How do teachers describe their connections to the past?

2. How are teachers’ conceptions of the past related to conceptions of the past within the discipline of history?

3. How do teachers’ questions and concerns about the past inform their interpretations and teaching of history?

3.4.3 Participant Selection45

As a social studies methods instructor, I had worked with preservice and experienced teachers who expressed interest in exploring the types of questions asked in this study. I began to search for participants by reaching out to these teachers, as well as the colleagues they recommended. I also made a small presentation about the topic of this project at a UNC program that works with teachers in the beginning three years of their careers.

In choosing participants, scholars of phenomenological research do not favor particular approaches to the selection of participants over others; the point, rather, is that participants have experienced the phenomenon (Vagle, 2014; Van Manen, 1984, 1990, 2014). What was important for the purposes of this study was that these social studies teachers expressed interest in engaging with this work in a thoughtful manner. Six teachers who taught at the middle school or high school level committed to email communications with me and one another, writing three autobiographical narratives, allowing me to visit their classrooms for a few hours, as well as to meeting at least three times once the school year began (Fall 2016).

Participants in this study included six teachers recruited through various professional networks affiliated with UNC. Two teachers, Laura46 and Beverly, were former students in my middle grades social studies methods class (but were in the course during different semesters) who at the time of the study worked in local middle schools. Alex was a middle school teacher who had worked with UNC as a cooperating teacher over several years, as

45 _{See Table 1 for details about teachers’ backgrounds.} 46 _{All names are pseudonyms.}

well as with my own students (but not the teachers in this project). Three teachers, Harriet, George, and Leonard, were graduates of the University’s teacher preparation program I met through a presentation I did at a UNC program that works with teachers in the beginning three years of their careers. I had made arrangements with the supervisor of the program to present about this study to any teachers who were interested in working on a study that engaged with what it means to understand the past.

The small number of participants ensured that the data gathered together over the course of the study painted a rich picture of how each participant makes meaning of the past and the potential connection of these understandings to pedagogical practice as well as to the discipline of history. I did not focus on a “type” of teacher in the sense of selecting people at a specific stage of their career development. The aim was not to compare dispositions at different career stages but to broaden the field’s understanding of teaching history from the point of view of the teacher (Grumet, 2014b) and to acknowledge that experience and understandings of the past and of history do not only emerge from the school context, but from life in the world (Grumet, 2014a).

Other types of research, such as ethnography, place importance on describing what a phenomenon is like from a very specific perspective (Van Manen, 1984, 1990).

Phenomenological research, however, remains oriented to the phenomenon as a human experience, particular in its manifestations but not belonging to any one particular group. Because diversity in personal experience is intertwined with all aspects of identity47, however, I sought out research participants who represented diverse racial, ethnic, and

47 _{I do not aim to explore identity as it is used in identity politics of race, class, gender, etc. I use Bracher’s}

(2006) explanation of identity as “those configurations of self that provide us with vitality, agency, and meaning and give us a sense of ourselves as a force that matters in the world” (xi).

sex/gender backgrounds and perspectives. In this study, there were teachers with varied years of teaching experience, ages, race, sexual orientation, school type and setting, and life

experiences. In Chapter 4 I provide more detailed introductions to each of the teachers who participated in this study.

Table 1. Teacher Participants48

Teacher School/Grades Self-Description Years of Experience George Memory High School

Rural, public Grades 9-12

White, male, gay 3

Beverly Seal Middle School Urban, public 6th grade

Black, female 2

Alex Andrews Middle School Urban, public

6th _grade

Harvard Academy Urban, private 6th grade

White, male 18 years public school, currently in private school

Laura Jones Middle School Urban/suburban public 6th & 7th grades

Maplewood Day School Rural, private special education

Ages 10-13

White, female 3 (2 in public middle school, 1 private school)

Harriet Southern Early College High School

Urban, public 9th & 10th grades

White, female 1

Leonard Stoneville Early College High School,

Rural, public Grades 9-12

White, male 3

48 _{The information included in this table was self-reported by research participants. The names of participants}

The anonymity of research participants was protected throughout all stages of this study. I included the details, as well as all recruitment materials, and the content of written