Composing Diverse Identities - Narrative Inquiries into the Interwoven Lives of Children and Teachers (Hardcover)

How interwoven are the lives of children, families, teachers and school leaders?
In this important new book seven authors bring together stories and questions about the lives of children, families, teachers and administrators. Lives are seen up close, in all their particularity, and explored in terms of the contexts that shape the experiences of students and staff. These stories provide an alternative view of what counts in schools, with a shift away from viewing the school as a business model towards an idea of schools as places to engage citizenship.
Building upon Jean Clandinin's 20 years of narrative inquiry where she worked and learned alongside school practitioners for extended periods of time, this book uses a narratively-constructed theoretical background of personal practical knowledge, professional knowledge landscapes, and stories to live by to provide both a language and a storied framework for understanding lives in school. In two urban multicultural schools in western Canada, the co-authors of this book engaged in narrative inquiries alongside children, teachers, families and principals. As these narrative inquiries were negotiated at each site the co-authors lived in the school, for the most part in particular classrooms alongside a teacher where, as relationships developed, children as well as some family members were invited to participate in the inquiry. Articulating the complex ethical dilemmas and issues that face people in schools every day, this fascinating study of school life and lives in school raises new questions about who and what education is for and provokes the re-imagining of schools as places to attend to the wholeness of people's lives.
Thecomplexities and possibilities of the meeting of diverse teachers', children's, families' and school leaders' lives in schools shape new insights about the interwoven lives of children and teachers, and raise important, lingering questions about the impact of these relationships on the unfolding lives ofchildren.