A Narrative Inquiry alongside the Familial Curriculum Making Experiences of Urban Indigenous Children and Families

This narrative inquiry is shaped by my experiences as an Indigenous Cree-Métis early childhood educator and expands upon my master’s autobiographical narrative inquiry thesis in which I make visible the importance of remaining attentive to familial curriculum-making worlds. My doctoral research inquires into the early experiences of three children and families of Indigenous ancestry as they compose their lives within their familial curriculum-making worlds. Using narrative inquiry as the methodology, the focus of the study is to understand how familial curriculum making is lived out narratively, over time, and within various contexts and how their familial curriculum making is shaped by their school curriculum making experiences. Narrative inquiry is a relational research methodology that studies experience as storied phenomena. Narrative methods for this inquiry included co-composing field texts (data) and research texts. Field texts include transcribed conversations, field notes, and artifacts, such as photographs and artwork. I co-composed three narrative accounts (interim research texts) with each child and her family. These narrative accounts were negotiated with the families. Subsequently the three storied narrative accounts were metaphorically laid side by side, taking a step away from the closeness of the experiences to ascertain what became visible and audible in the resonances. Three resonant threads across the familial curriculum-making ‘worlds’ (Lugones, 1987) were discerned: familial curriculum making grounded in community; invitations into children’s ‘worlds’ of ease and comfort; and school curriculum making as shaping familial curriculum making. In the third thread there were glimmers into how each child’s school curriculum-making world shaped her familial curriculum-making worlds. There are personal, practical and theoretical justifications for the study. In the personal justifications I show the ways that identities of myself as a researcher and teacher shift within familial and school landscapes. Engaging in the research shows that I have become more at ‘ease’ (Lugones, 1987) in living these multiple stories of who I am alongside children and families. Now as a teacher, I am open to understanding myself as a researcher interested in the familial curriculum-making experiences children and families embody as they enter my classroom. In the practical justifications, I show how I returned to teaching with new insights into how to listen to, and come alongside, children and families in ways that allow me to continue to wonder and think differently. I particularly attend to the importance of familial curriculum making with Indigenous children and families and show the importance of developing ways to resist deficit stories of children and families. The experiences of participants speak back against these deficit stories and offer stories of families and children co-composing their familial stories of resilience, community, creativity, imagination, hope, and possibilities. There are theoretical justifications for the study. I show the importance of composing relationships with parents first before developing inquiry relationships with children as the ways I entered relationships with the families greatly shaped the inquiry. How narrative inquirers enter into research relationships matter. It matters how we are storied as we begin with participants. The stories in the midst that shape the first meetings continue to shape the relationships until the final texts are negotiated. A second theoretical justification involves the importance of negotiating research conversations with children and families. I learned through listening to the children that I needed to slow down and attend to the children’s invitations. Negotiation is a continual process that shapes narrative inquiries from start to finish. The third theoretical justification is around the importance of understanding familial curriculum making as places of thinking narratively. The children showed how they resisted bringing school curriculum making into their familial curriculum-making worlds. Although the children did not distinctly recognize there were two worlds of curriculum making they were living in, there were ways in which the children showed me, and the families, that there was a separation of the two worlds they were experiencing daily as they traveled back and forth between home and school. The children were eager to invite me to their familial curriculum-making worlds but resisted inviting me to their school curriculum-making worlds. This research adds to what is known about the experiences of urban Indigenous children and their families and how their lives are shaped in both familial and school curriculum-making worlds.

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