Organic Collaboration: Sustaining Teachers and Teacher Educators in the Cottage Industry of Curriculum Making
Source: Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice, Vol. 16, No. 3, (June 2010), 373–387.
(Reviewed by the Portal Team)
This inquiry examines the collaborative relationship between Mary, a teacher at a junior high, and Stefinee, a teacher educator at a nearby university.
The purpose of this narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) is to explore the experiences the authors have had in their collaboration that have sustained both of the authors in their professional lives.
The authors use emblematic narratives that emerged through the process of reliving and retelling experiences from a shared professional knowledge landscape. The authors use these narratives to make assertions about their collaboration through the use of the metaphor of an informal roadside fruit stand while contrasting their work with larger collectives of school– university partnerships.
The sustaining quality of their collaboration emerges from their shared experiences involving both children and teacher candidates in educational experiences where their learning can be sustained. The authors also revel in the opportunity to be part of a collaborative effort that is voluntary and therefore driven by their own wonderings and hopes as teachers and teacher educators.
Reference
Clandinin, D.J., & Connelly, F.M. (2000). Narrative inquiry: Experience and story in qualitative research. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.