Authors: Anne Gartner, Gloria Latham, Susan Merritt

Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University

Keywords: Education, nursing, urban studies, social science, narrative, autobiography

Article style and source: Peer reviewed. Original ultiBASE publication.

Contents

• Introduction
• Urban studies
• Education
• Nursing
• Conclusion
• References

Introduction

For the purposes of this article we are using narrative in Beattie's sense,

. . . to describe and represent the human relations and interactions inherent in the complex acts of teaching and learning, and to validate their multiple realities and many dimensions. It allows us to acknowledge that educators know their situations in general, social and shared ways and also in unique and personal ways, thus validating the interconnectedness of the past, the present, the future, the personal, and the professional . . . (Beattie, 1995)

Intertwined in their knowledge base, disciplines contain a complex, historically developed set of narratives that demonstrate concerns, knowing and practices that preserve those disciplines' uniqueness. These stories are part of a rich tradition of socio-cultural knowledge and practical 'know-how' and are instructive for communities of scholars and practitioners who study them. They reflect the situated understandings and actions that are context specific for that discipline and they respect the storyteller as an embodied knower within the cultural dialogue of that discipline.

The applications for narrative in an academic context are as varied as the stories themselves. Narrative enquiry gives permission to learners to tap into the tacit knowledge embedded in their experience as well as to learn from each other in the process. It also serves as a springboard for dialogue about the deeper issues of their professional discipline that may not be easily illuminated through other methods. Because narratives rely strongly on communication and relationships, they can facilitate connections between people and create a sense of 'shared history'. Thus the environmental context for learning becomes one that supports the strengthening of collegiality and collaboration, and builds self esteem (Lindesmith, 1994 ).

Overall, narrative approaches to teaching and learning provide the basis for both entering practical worlds and understanding socially embedded knowledge. This diverges from the traditional model where there has been a tendency to devalue the information that students bring to the learning situation. Consequently, a central theme of the article is that validation of knowledge by peers can provide a heightened sense of awareness and a new basis for reflective practice. Examples from the fields of urban studies, education and nursing are analysed to demonstrate how narrative has been employed to successfully draw out, organise and communicate knowledge that is central to those disciplines.

Urban studies

One of the significant places I recalled was a beach, a long walk from my house in the bayside suburb in which I grew up. Since I had become an inner city resident I had not visited this beach for many years. When I started to draw, to my surprise, I found that I could easily map the nooks and crannies of the beach, the sea life, the rocks, the changes in texture of the sand, the nearby houses and life saving club and the impact of the changing tides (when part of the sand became impassable). I was very surprised by the detail I could recall of several kilometres of beach; forgotten layers of memory emerged effortlessly.

The biographies were later compared in class, providing an excellent basis for cross cultural comparison. A great deal of the material contrasted with my Australian experience. For example, Tom from Tanzania drew the men's and women's communal houses in the village he came from. The male children lived with the women until they turned seven. Tom described in detail his emotional and physical memories of having to move to the men's house on his seventh birthday. He described how long the journey felt, how he knew he would never return to his mother's closeness, the texture of the dirt under each step, what he saw on the ground, where the sun and shadows were and how this transition was a significant life event.

When I returned to my work at RMIT an adaptation of Clare Cooper Marcus' autobiography was used in the Faculty of Environmental Design and Construction with first year students in a cross disciplinary subject, Environmental Context (Gartner, 1993). The lecturers found that this was a very useful introductory exercise for students in built environment courses such as architecture, planning and building. It achieved a number of valuable educational outcomes which researchers in the USA had previously documented. The Australian autobiographies revealed the importance of outdoor places and spaces for children, the need for hiding-places away from the adult world and the way in which settings from the past affected current environmental preferences (Cooper Marcus, 1975; Childhood City Newsletter, 1978). We usually displayed the autobiographies in class, giving students and staff time to appreciate the range of significant places identified and the methods used to convey the information (a form of spatial problem solving in itself). Excerpts from a biography of a well travelled student with strong environmental values are shown below.

From a student point of view the autobiographies revealed similarities and differences in upbringing and spatial experience, life journeys, scale of perception of environmental detail and presentation styles. Some students expressed some initial hesitation about their drawing ability, which they generally overcame. International students were concerned about including built environment features which were very different to Australia, and the strangeness of such a task at tertiary level. However the viewing of the finished work heightened students' awareness of their own, and others, environmental histories, and conveyed a lot of information which did not necessarily emerge from more traditional orientation activities.

From a lecturer's point of view many facets of student background became clear through the autobiographies. Regardless of whether students came from Melbourne, other parts of Australia or overseas, the autobiographies provided a range of cultural references and comparisons which could be drawn upon in later classes. Much raw data about landscape, different house types, recreation spaces, city layout etc. pointed to the richness of environmental experience in each class, from lives firmly anchored in archetypal suburbia to traumatic experiences of war-torn cities. The autobiographies also revealed gaps in understanding of the built environment, common themes of environmental perception as well as students' ability to reflect on their own material.

Marcus and other researchers have noted the value of this kind of environmental exercise (Cooper Marcus, 1975; Childhood City Newsletter, 1978). The autobiographies:

• provide a way to review the past with a specialised focus,
• externalise the individual experience and allow it to be shared,
• enable personal and theoretical materials to be integrated in the process of research and reflection,
• reveal the incredible repertoire of personal experiences which can be understood, tapped and communicated,
• increase both an awareness of self and a connectedness to larger communities and culture, and
• have an interdisciplinary core which can be shared between teachers and students.

There are many extensions and adaptations of this type of exercise which I have incorporated into urban studies teaching and research - the most successful being a housing history which traces generations of family choices and constraints about shelter and housing. Part of an individual family housing history from a Social Science elective, The Great Australian Dream - Housing Issues and Policy is shown below. The biography incorporates an understanding of core concepts about housing (tenure, demographic change, residential choice factors) and demonstrates an ability to synthesise, structure and organise ideas linking an individual's experience to the housing market.

Factors influencing my family's housing situations have varied, but mostly revolve around the need to be close to work. The first example of this is the house my paternal grandfather was born in, in Lord St. Botany, NSW. My great grandfather had moved his family there from France a few years prior to my grandfather's birth. He had been asked to manage a wool-scouring mill, and the house was provided by the company. "Sorrento", at the other end of Lord St, was also provided by the mill, and was bigger and better than the first house.

My interest in the type of learning encouraged through exercises with a biographical focus has led me to clarify my values in relation to teaching. Reflecting on my work in Australia since I returned from Denmark, after the experience of being in a 'foreign students' department, has made me aware of the potential contribution of drawing and image based narratives in the Social Sciences.

Education

In pursuit of this wondering, my students and I began documenting classroom narratives and working with journals as a means towards bettering teaching and learning. If classrooms are laboratories, lecturers and students become researchers observing, recording and reflecting upon the nature of their study. I believe that the use of narrative is a powerful tool in the laboratory as it provides a basic metaphor for understanding human experience. There is immense value in making classroom events explicit and narrative provides us with a sound means of accomplishing this. As Bruner (1986) suggests, one constructs oneself autobiographically because there is no other way of describing experience. In the centre of the word biography is the word 'bios' or life (Brady,1990). It is the course of one's life.

As my students and I record in some detail our life stories as learners, 'Maybe it was Mum's influence that developed my reluctance to write . . .' and our classroom stories as teachers, 'The sea of faces before me both terrified and excited me at the same moment . . .', themes emerge, chapters are formed as complete entities or as incomplete fragments needing additional work. 'I'd like to revise my entry on the 22nd. I now believe . . . '. With these fragments we try and write actions which we will undertake in the future, 'I will work on questionning techniques and learn to break through the wall of silence'. The strategies employed in teaching take on relevance because they have been removed from the normal flow of events and heightened with attention paid to the purposes for undertaking the practices. The tacit decisions made in the classroom are scrutinised and reflected upon. Narrative has the power to clarify as well as to raise important epistemological and theoretical issues which need our constant attention. Clarification often occurs when students reread and make comments upon sections in their journal:

My own ideas are growing. After re-reading former entries I feel I have increased my skills in critical and lateral thinking. Some of my prior ideas were so naive. It's sad because I've written a lot of unimportant ideas focussing on what I thought you wanted rather than what I needed to write. The students I teach must do this as well.

Issues were raised through class discussions, shared journal responses and through personal experiences. Often the issues were unearthed as powerful metaphoric images such as likening teaching to a dream catcher (illustrated and described below):

The net is the content, a jumble of unrelated ideas. The stronger threads are the connections between ideas. The hole in the middle is the information we let slip through as we have to be selective ....

As well as documenting classroom narratives my students and I have made use of journals as a place to collect and store information and ideas, to expand issues, synthesise understandings and to ask questions in order to one day move toward the answers. It is this exploration of life around us and the manipulation of ideas that I believe is at the heart of learning.

One subject in particular, Reflective Learning and Teaching, has a strong journal component. The subject served to answer criticism often levelled at teachers and indeed many professionals that much of their practice is uncritically and unreflectively routine. Greg Burchall who was instrumental in introducing the component favoured Boud's (1985, p.15) definition of reflection as 'an important human activity in which people capture their experience, think about it, mull it over and evaluate it'. Donald Schon (1983) gives credence to the need for reflection, a meta-cognitive skill in professional practice by examining the way problems are solved in engineering, architecture, management, psychotherapy and town planning. Schon advocates 'Reflection in Action': acting spontaneously in situations which confront us allowing and valuing the personal as it acts along side the professional knowledge and skills. My students often come to reflection and professional journal writing with many preconceptions and biases. Many have not been taught to value their own ideas. In the past, teachers have been critical of them using the 'I believe' position claiming that their thoughts and feelings were of little relevance. I had to begin by giving these students permission to express their beliefs and then in time lead them towards critical reflection. In recent years I have come to value the social nature of the journal and its ability to heighten understanding between learners.

Collecting and documenting teaching and learning enables educators to:

• critically question basic assumptions
• revisit past ideas and expand them
• analyse their own classroom incidents
• reflect on themselves as learners

Nursing

Within the postgraduate Certificate in Critical Care Nursing, students undertake a subject, Caring Inquiry and Reflective Practice, which values experiential knowledge. In this subject students research their professional self and nursing practice by using journalling as a tool for data collection. Students contract to journal about their experiences in practice for one hour per week throughout the semester. Their engagement in practice on a regular, weekly basis means that they have a rich source of continuous data to explore and subsequently to examine in class with their peers. In self selected groups of three or four, each member in turn, reads a practice scenario from their journal entry and leads the group in a critical analysis of it. Throughout discussions 'critical peers' play a vital role in providing the necessary feedback that enables group members to work towards becoming critical, reflective practitioners.

To facilitate the development of this role so that new understandings and practice knowledge can be discovered from their narratives, students engage in four structured processes : description, informing, confronting and reconstruction (Schon 1987; Street 1993). All members are charged with the responsibility of developing the skills for each stage in order to critically analyse their narrative accounts.

The first and often most difficult stage is learning to write descriptively. Clear descriptive accounts are essential to provide the necessary data for reflection. The learners immediate task is to provide enough detail to facilitate standing back at a later stage to critically examining their practice. Students have found a series of basic questions helpful in expanding their perceptions of nursing encounters:

• Setting : Where was I? What could I see, smell, hear and feel?
• Personnel : Who was I involved with and who else was in the range of interaction?
• Content of activity : What was I doing and why?
• Account of the interaction : What did I do/ say first and why?
• What was I thinking and feeling? What happened next?

This second stage of writing, informing, invites the student to reach a deeper level of understanding by asking questions about personal beliefs and assumptions that are implicit in their narratives. What are the theories that inform my practice and does the evidence support my theory? Once theories are identified, students are more open to question the origin of their values and beliefs and to examine their stories for inconsistencies. By 'confronting' themselves in action, this third process enables them to 'reconstruct' their practice. This final process is one of change, change in understanding and/or action.

Armed with the skills of describing, informing, confronting and reconstructing, critical peers use these snapshots from practice not only to give meaning to their nursing situations but also to challenge and transform habitual theories and practices The effective functioning of critical peers in work groups is fundamental to successful outcomes in this subject. They provide the affirmation and social support needed for novices who are being socialized into the professional culture of their nursing speciality and they provide critical feedback to each other on the skill development required to be a reflective practitioner.

The following scenario journalled by a student illustrates the use of critical processes as she captures the uniqueness of perioperative nursing, a world behind masks:

The surgeon stared at me with eyes that could have pierced glaciers, no warmth and no smile in them ... maybe he was concentrating. Standing there scrubbed, my eyes shifted quickly to seek out another pair ... the next set were just as bad, they were serious and cold ... I felt their tension. I stood motionless, my eyes darted around. I was shopping for silent conversation from eyes that were affirming, eyes that could tell me that 'it's OK'. Where are those bloody eyes? Then I looked down at the patient. She was pale and tiny. Her eyes weren't sparkling ... they were moist,cloudy and grey ... full of fear ... The surgery begins. I look at the surgeon, the scout, my trolley I need confirmation. I watch the surgeons eyes watching me, I stare back, he raises his eyebrows, not in a puzzled manner but in a comforting way ... Ah ... I'm relieved ... I must be performing OK ... then I remembered the patients eyes.

The student shared this journal entry in class with peers who were also students working in the operating theatre. The challenges, questions and probing that their discussion generated led to the student's subsequent journal reflection:

In thinking about the meaning of my story ... The eyes of theatre are powerful. They communicate emotion and hide no truths. I thought about how many times eyes, without verbal communication have been instructive for me. For example, eyes have told me that I've assembled the finichietto retractor back to front ... Eyes have said that your trolley and Mayo stand are the best set up in town ... Eyes have also told me that my 8 questions about the surgical procedure are just about enough! ... I thought about all the cues that I get from my patients' eyes. They tell me about their fears, their strengths, their apprehensions, their vulnerability ... How does my gaze communicate messages to my patient? Are my gazes caring? Do I say with my eyes, 'it will be OK?'... 'You're in safe hands' ... 'I care about what happens to you'. Do they convey a sense of security, empathy, comfort, hope ... Perioperative nurses should never underestimate the power of their gaze , especially in a world behind masks.

Obviously the use of narrative in this subject serves a number of purposes. Firstly, there is a certain moral force that evolves from critically reflecting on nursing stories. For example, through the close examination of nursing situations, nurses can better understand humanistic, caring traditions and what it means to be responsive or connected as they try to articulate an ethic of care. Secondly, narratives in nursing offer a framework for understanding people because they expose how experiences are endowed with meaning. To this end they are helpful in learning about thinking. Thirdly, stories value the student as narrator, recognising observation, knowing and expertise. In brief, narratives provide an important link between nursing practice, ontology and epistemology. The final comment is best made by another student in the course:

... writing about stories from everyday nursing situations gave me the chance to study, understand and learn from my practice. Sharing stories also opened my eyes to the incredible resourcefulness of my peers ... we helped each other see the possibilities for influencing our clinical world ... for me that's pretty powerful.

In working with students, I have continued to explore the potential of narrative for stimulating creativity. For example, as part of an assessment for this subject, students use their narratives to identify a dominant theme around which they develop a metaphor for practice. A panel of silk scarves (illustrated below) delicately painted by a nursing student, shows how she has extended her journal explorations of critical care by powerfully communicating detail of patient fragility and fear.

In this way multimedia metaphors can become legitimate extensions of conventional teaching approaches in exploring how teachers and students can think differently. The analysis of metaphor and narrative can reveal what is valued by nurses in their practice and encourage working through problems more laterally. These examples from the subject Caring Enquiry and Reflective Practice illustrate the ongoing process and potential of narrative, which taps into the emotion and imagination of learning.

Conclusion

Current budgetary constraints in the higher education sector may well lead away from such humanistic teaching and learning approaches. There is also much current debate whether more flexible delivery modes, facilitated by the internet, email and other computer based technologies, will necessarily lead to less personalised teaching and learning relationships. What ever restructuring takes place it is vital to retain and extend teaching and learning strategies which value experiential learning and 'engagement'.

The authors are continuing to work on these themes and welcome any comment from readers who are keen to further explore the power of narrative.

References

Boud, D.; Keogh and R. Walker, D.eds. 1988, Ch. 1 'Promoting Reflection in Learning : A Model' in Reflection : Turning Experience into Learning. London: Kogan Page.

Brady, M. 1990, 'Redeemed From Time: Learning Through Autobiography', Adult Education Quarterly, Vol. 41, Fall.

Bruner, J. 1986, Actual Minds Possible Worlds. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Cooper Marcus, C. 1975, 'Remembrance of Landscapes Past', Landscape, Vol. 22, No. 3.

Cooper Marcus, C. 1979, Environmental Autobiography. Working Paper, Institute of Urban and Regional Development. Berkeley: University of California.

'Environmental Autobiography' (1978), Childhood City Newsletter, No. 14, December. Centre for Human Environments, Graduate School of the City University of New York.

Gardner, H.1993, The Unschooled Mind. London: Harper Collins.

Gartner, A. 1993, 'Environmental Context as a journey', ACSA/EAAE Conference: Beginnings in Architectural Education. Prague, May 11-15.

Lindesmith, K. 1994, 'The Power of Storytelling', Journal of Continuing Education, Vol. 25, No. 4.

Polkinghorne, D. 1988, Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences. New York: State University of New York Press.

Ramsden, P. 1992, Learning to Teach in Higher Education. London: Routledge.

Schon, D. A. 1983, The Reflective Practitioner. New York: Basic Books.

Street, A.1991, From Image To Action: Reflection in Nursing Practice. Geelong: Deakin University Press.

About the authors