Co-Composing Knowledge Communities and Curricula: A Narrative Inquiry into Student Teachers’ and a Teacher Educator’s Experiences

What is knowledge? Whose knowledge matters? How can we build connections with people, share knowledge, and promote one another’s growth? These and many other wonders were embedded in my tension-filled stories about knowledge, curricula, and communities, both as a university teacher of English in China and as an international graduate student in Canada. As my doctoral study unfolded, I gradually realized that a pervasive practice of received knowledge shaped my tension-filled stories where I, students, and teachers were viewed or viewed ourselves as received knowers. Knowledge seemed to be delivered to teachers and later to students. The practice of received knowledge stripped away students’ and teachers’ identities as knowledge holders and curriculum makers. I also grew to see that teacher educators and student teachers were co-composing knowledge communities while co-composing curricula, where individuals’ identities as knowledge holders and makers were acknowledged. I wondered how their experiences of co-composing knowledge communities and curricula might shape student teachers’ future experiences of co-composing curricula with children. In this study, I came alongside Sam, Lara, and Maryam, two student teachers and one teacher educator, to co-inquire into our experiences of co-composing knowledge communities and curricula, building relational, reciprocal, and ethical learning spaces. We co-inquired into: How did we attend to one another’s ways of knowing in this process? How did we promote one another’s growth and development through curriculum making? How did our intercultural perspectives and experiences direct us to tell and retell our stories of these experiences, and how might doing so shape the professional knowledge landscapes of teacher education? This study was grounded in the conceptualizations of knowledge communities (Craig, 1995, 2001a, 2007, 2013) and curriculum making (Connelly & Clandinin, 1988; Huber et al., 2011) that value teachers’ and children’s identities as knowledge holders and curriculum makers. I resonated with the understanding underlying these conceptualizations, that is, knowledge is the sum total of the knower’s experience (Connelly & Clandinin, 1988; Dewey, 1938; Huber et al., 2011) and individuals hold personal practical knowledge (Clandinin, 1985; Connelly & Clandinin, 1988). I engaged in a relational narrative inquiry with Maryam, Lara, and Sam for one and a half years. I came alongside the three co-researchers in multiple places, such as in their in-person classroom, online classroom, online meetings, on campus, and at Maryam’s home. I participated in their course weekly and wrote field notes of my experience. We had one-on-one research conversations. I kept a research journal, our email messages, and copies of documents, photos, and artifacts they shared with me. Thinking narratively with the stories they lived, told, and retold in our relational three-dimensional narrative inquiry spaces attentive to temporality, sociality, and place, I composed their narrative accounts to foreground their knowledge and voices. Three resonant threads became visible across their narrative accounts, which deepened and made more complex the personal, practical, social, and theoretical justifications of this study. I invited Maryam, Lara, and Sam to read their narrative accounts, the resonant threads chapter, and the chapter on returning to the study justifications and imagining forward, to ensure they felt resonance. Making visible the resonant threads alongside the study justifications, I invited readers to rethink and reimagine practices in the landscapes of teacher education, curriculum making, and intercultural communities. The three resonant threads across Sam’s, Lara’s, and Maryam’s narrative accounts are: “Building Ethical, Reciprocal, and Relational Learning Spaces,” “Inquiring into Tensions and Differing Ways of Knowing,” and “Becoming The Best-Loved Self.” Two study justifications for future inquiry that emerged from our inquiry are: “Shaping Pre-Service Teacher Education and Curriculum Making With Children” and “Co-Composing Intercultural Knowledge Communities for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Decolonization (EDID).” Through this narrative inquiry, I participated in conversations about pre-service teacher education, curriculum making, and intercultural knowledge communities. I joined conversations about legitimizing personal knowledge and nurturing children’s and our identities as knowledge holders, creators, contributors, and change makers. Keywords: knowledge communities, curriculum making, student teachers, teacher educators, narrative inquiry

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