Modes of Being: Mobilizing Narrative Inquiry

Abstract

Narrative inquiry’s capacities to reveal relational complexities and nuances of individuals and settings in varied contexts purposefully shape the lived curriculum within a community middle school setting. The experiential narratives of students, teachers, administrators, parents, and mentors contributing to the curricular documentation of the makings of this community have not only provided a medium to access these relations but also become an educative catalyst, opening into ongoing deliberations concerning the nature of education, knowledge, and what it means to be a community, by all involved. Grounded in Dewey’s primary notion of experience, participatory practices position each community member to bring their narratives of experience into the makings and remakings of community, elucidating modes of being and associated habits. Representative voices illuminate the mobilizing potential of narrative inquiry as a vital medium for reframing education within all institutions, communities, and beyond.

Keywords

qualitative case studies community-based research participatory practices;narrative inquiry lived curriculum Dewey

Introduction

Narrative inquiries are characterized as revealing and connecting the experiential complexities and nuances of individuals and settings in varied contexts (Clandinin, Pushor, & Orr, 2007; Kim, 2015). In addition, many narrative inquirers are characterized as influencing policies and practices affecting change and reform efforts across multiple disciplines and contexts (Hollingsworth & Dybdahl, 2007). These characteristics shape the development of V Community School (VCS), an alternative middle school setting, with the experiential narratives of students, teachers, administrators, parents, and mentors very much contributing to the documentation of the makings of this community. Most significantly, these narratives have not only provided a medium to access these relations, but also become an educative catalyst, opening into ongoing deliberations concerning the nature of education, knowledge, and what it means to be a community by all involved.

Narrative inquiry’s primary concern with the study of experience (rooted in Dewey’s, 1938 discussion) assumes inquirers with room to enter into meaning-making, continually revealing and situating sensemaking within contexts. Clandinin and Rosiek (2007) articulate how Dewey’s conception of experience is ontological in nature and “nothing short of revolutionary” (p. 39). And, it is narrative inquiry’s capacities to concomitantly reveal and situate the inquirers/inquiries that we see forming its mobilizing strength within the community school setting. Clandinin and Rosiek note that though Dewey’s conception of experience orients toward revolutionary thinking, we are still awaiting the revolution that his philosophical stance suggests. Others concur, explaining how experience emptied of its physicality and materiality is a huge oversight that persists in education (O’Loughlin, 2006). At VCS, it is increasingly evident that mobilizing the strengths of community members manifests through participatory modes of being, insisting on all involved narrating the experiential physicality and materiality. These modes of being position participants to bring their narratives of experience into the makings and remakings of community giving “flesh and blood” to these key considerations (Dewey, 1934). The voices that emerge embody a language that mobilizes narrative inquiry as a vital medium for reframing education within all institutions, communities, and beyond toward individual and collective growth and well-being. This narrative inquiry follows the experiential narratives some of these voices have taken through their involvement with the community school, alongside attending to the implications of further mobilization through participatory modes of being.

Context and Approach

Drawing from ongoing collaborative narrative inquiry at VCS, this study specifically attends to its second year of operation as a public middle school. Conceived by two bold teachers as a place for each student to seek roots of their very being, VCS invests in cultivating learner/learning connections grounded in self-understandings gained through and with others. The notion of community is grounded in the varied ways multiple narratives, perspectives, strengths, and resources hold potential for reframing and reorienting curricular enactment (Cajete, 1999; Dewey, 1916/1944; Greene, 1995; Macintyre Latta, Schnellert, Ondrik, & Sasges, 2017; Meyer, 2010; Pinar, 2009, 2011). Deweyan (1938) experience assumes such a movement of thinking, connecting past, present, and future, occurring at the intersections of situation and interaction, and structuring what is encountered on a continual basis. Clandinin and Rosiek (2007) map out the kinship between narrative inquiry and Deweyan experience with the focus “not only on individuals’ experiences but also on the social, cultural, and institutional narratives within which individuals’ experiences are constituted, shaped, expressed, and enacted” (p. 43). And, we see this kinship embracing the lived nature of curricular enactment, when curriculum is experienced as adapting, changing, and building from self-understandings, with and through others on a continual basis. As evidenced throughout this article, VCS reflects this approach to curricular enactment, thus, personally and communally derived curriculum-making, narrating modes of being through inquiry.

VCS is concretely negotiating what such participatory curricular enactment entails for students, educators, parents, and the greater community. Operating as a middle school situated within a secondary school, two educators, two researchers, 60 students, parents, administrators, and community members are collaborating together to do so. VCS attracts students and parents looking for difference as it offers an opportunity for student, educator, parent, and community involvement to shape its development and directions. The two educators leveraged a shift in provincial curriculum toward 21st century, personalized learning to develop and offer an inquiry-based, social justice–oriented, interdisciplinary education for students in Grades 7 to 9. More than 100 parents and students seeking an alternate to a traditional secondary school education (i.e., eight-block timetable with expert teachers teaching subjects separately such as math, social studies, art, physical education, etc.) attended the first and only information meeting where the educators, one of the researchers, and students from one of the two teachers’ project-based elementary classroom described curriculum and education as co-constructed, inquiry-based, and connected to service learning with the community. Students included those from public schools throughout the region, those who were previously homeschooled, and those who were “unschooled.” This diverse collection of students and their families not only came from a range of programs and approaches to education, many had complex learning histories and special needs. All were welcomed as contributing members and invited to cocreate the VCS learning community and the curriculum that was “taken up.”

Globally, there are calls for collaborative communities of inquiry akin to VCS (see Biesta, 2007, 2014; Groundwater-Smith & Mockler, 2009; Kemmis & Smith, 2008; Korthagen, 2001; Loughran, 2006; Schnellert, Kozak, & Moore, 2015) where researchers and teachers-as-researchers collaboratively develop, study and document curricular enactment, derived from the resources of the community itself (see Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009; Erickson, Mitchell, Brandes, & Mitchell, 2005). It is our collective investment in such living inquiry that has prompted the conditions for community-based research that intertwines case study (Merriam, 2009; Stake, 2005) with practitioner inquiry (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009) and narrative inquiry (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006). The entwining manifests as theorizing (Bowers, 1974; Christou & Deluca, 2015; Miller, 2005; Phelan, 2015; Pinar, 1975; Schubert, 1986), drawing from and across fitting theories and methodologies, weaving imagery and language that give narrative expression to the physicality and materiality of the lived learner/learning significances experienced at VCS.

The narrative expression gained draws on Connelly and Clandinin’s (2006) understanding of “the study of experience as story” (p. 477) rooted in Dewey’s (1938) primary notion of experience. By situating individual stories of experience within the larger narrative of VCS, we trace the movement of individual/collective curriculum-making that ensues in relation to place, the temporality of experiences, and interactions with each other. It is individual/collective attention to the moving narratives that opens into the powers and possibilities for all involved at VCS. Honoring the varied accounts of curricular-making in action in relation to place, temporality, and interactions with others is at the heart of how narrative inquiry operates. Valuing collaboration, this inquiry involves all partners in the research process positioned to contribute their unique strengths and perspectives. Multiple means of data collection are incorporated to reveal participants’ accounts of curricular-making in action including focus groups, individual interviews, classroom artifacts, and extensive field notes. The iterative research process that unfolds foregrounds narratives of curriculum-making experiences that serve as representative mediums, inextricably linking theory with practice (Craig, 2013; Hendry, 2010). Such linking continually foregrounds the interfaces across the data collected, its interpretations, and the research literature, situating the varied curriculum-making narratives within the larger narrative of VCS. Locke, Feldman, and Golden-Biddle (2015) describe such interfaces as organic, shaping each other and thus interdependent and inseparable. The research process entails configuring these interfaces into patterns, seeking ideas that explain why these patterns are there in the first place (Bernard, 2011). In doing so, this theorizing account discloses a primary pattern: VCS is mobilizing all involved to continually rethink the nature and roles of knowledge. Attention now turns to the shared and varied accounts¹ of curricular-making in action, manifesting a mobilizing narrative reframing knowledge as understood by the VCS community as a whole.

Knowledge-Making’s Powers, Possibilities, and Modes of Being

As researchers chronicling the makings of VCS through following the various narratives of experience of students, educators, parents, and community mentors, we are struck by how the individual narratives increasingly shape a shared “self-constitution” (Carr, 1990, p. 11). Alicia, a VCS student, gives expression to this shared sense in her poem:

I am creating a place,

Creating a place to learn, creating a place to grow,

A place to be safe to express myself,

To show who I am, to be free to speak,

To explain myself, to show my passions,

Follow my dreams, and say my opinion.

I am one student creating a school called VCS.

(Reflective Journal, June 2015, p. 63)

Alicia’s poem conveys how VCS gives expression to a learning culture in which belongingness and identity are tangibly negotiated and sustained through contributions by each individual that weaves the past narratives and the projected future narratives of VCS. Within this narrative inquiry, a narrative reflexive form manifests within the present on a continual moment-by-moment basis, cohering VCS identities-in-the-making and forming and reforming community. And, though this by itself is probably not so surprising, what has surprised all involved is the authorizing agency empowering VCS, radically reframing the narrative constituting education. Student, educator, and in-turn parent and other narratives, relay an attitude that turns away from learning as acquisition and mastery of subject matter and instead value and grow individual strengths alongside developing interests and ways to live well in the community (and beyond) in relation with other(s). All involved are increasingly committed to pursuing the needed conditions to do so. In VCS’s second year of operation, this attitude is acknowledged as discovering, eliciting, authoring, and authorizing inquiry through individual/collective engagement. It is clear to all involved that the significances arising from this commitment deserve fuller attention.

In 1910, John Dewey drew attention to a needed attitude toward authorizing inquiry, explaining how subject matter taught “as an accumulation of ready-made material with which students are to be made familiar” betrays subject matter taught “as an attitude of mind, after the pattern of which mental habits are to be transformed” (p. 183). Dewey harkens back to Herbert Spencer’s (1860) query concerning the nature of knowledge as embracing a conundrum. Dewey explains how knowledge

never can be learned by itself; it is not information, but a mode of intelligent practice, a habitual disposition of mind. Only by taking a hand in the making of knowledge, by transferring guess and opinion into the belief authorized by inquiry, does one ever get a knowledge of the method of knowing. (p. 188)

Dewey goes on to portray the betrayal of knowledge through lack of participation in the makings of knowledge and overreliance on the efficacy of acquaintance with facts. Thus, knowledge understood solely as a noun—something to be transmitted to students—positions learners as receivers of knowledge. Knowledge understood as a verb—adapting, changing, and building meaning—positions learners as creators of knowledge.

The lived terms of knowledge as a noun or knowledge as a verb orient curricular enactment very differently. The lived terms of knowledge as a noun are concerned with compliance and uniformity, emphasizing covering/acquiring content and/or transferring knowledge. The lived terms of knowledge as a verb are concerned with what participants bring to every curricular situation, drawing on the varied connections and interpretations we each see and understand in all matters. Making these connections and interpretations visible and then adapting, changing, and building meaning (in)forms knowing. And, it is such “attitude of mind” and the ensuing “pattern” of individual/collective inquiry at the heart of what it means to educate that the narrative reflexive form constituting VCS is shaping.

So, within the workings of VCS, how is such inquiry being authorized and becoming a potent medium reframing the narrative constituting education? We observe how knowledge-making is at the crux of this reframing effort and takes a “practiced receptivity” (Davey, 2006, p. 66). As Dewey (1910/1997) identified, knowledge is a mode suggesting operative ways of being that instill habits, authorizing inquiry. Attending to the makings of knowledge orients the direction of thinking away from being imposed to agency coming from within the unfolding inquiry, with engaged students and teachers adapting, changing, and building meaning together. It is this receptive character of knowledge-making, with participants seeing and acting accordingly, that authorizes inquiry. And, it is a receptivity that is not instrumental or applied, but must be practiced to see and act within the interplay of internal and external conditions, authorizing the interactions and opportunities afforded through inquiry. Elucidating this receptive learning terrain is critical—to return to Dewey (1910/1997) again, it is the only way to gain “knowledge of the method of knowing” (p. 188). Such receptive practice, positioning VCS participants to concomitantly see and act to further learning, is continually attentive to the givens of context, the particulars of students, educators, others, subject matter involved, and the relational complexities that manifest. Concretely negotiating the physicality and materiality of such terrain foregrounds interrelated modes of being and associated habits at VCS. Representative research participants’ narratives of experience illuminate these modes and habits of being. These include the following:

Embracing the Elemental Human Capacity to Make Meaning

Silas, a VCS student, recalls that being allowed to really be himself is a gift that he now acknowledges VCS provides:

I like being able to be honest about what I am doing and thinking about without judgments all the time. I also see that I am taking up responsibility for these actions and beliefs, and others at VCS are too. I can honestly say I did not like how school made me feel prior to coming to VCS. And, to begin with at VCS, I thought more teacher control as to learning directions and ways to complete assignments were needed, but then I realized it was really about control for learning that I find for myself. (Reflective Journal, June 2015, p. 8)

Silas is a playwright (among other identities) and his script-writing very much values process. Unafraid of rewriting and revisiting his scripts on a continual basis, he directs and rehearses with participating students for the upcoming celebration of learning in ways that expect investment and collaboration on everyone’s part. And, despite conflicts, disagreements, and difficulties, Silas and other students are absorbed in the creation of the play. The commitments we hear and see in Silas are conveyed as liberating by him. In fact, the juxtaposition of previous schooling experiences with VCS experiences seems to have heightened Silas’s awareness of his need to explore and navigate his own identity, and the empowering significances to be gained for self and others.

The elemental human capacity to make meaning is a mode of being that fosters identities-in-the-making. And, at VCS, it is attention to identity-making that educators and students continually seek within the meaning-making processes themselves—creating meaning, creating self. Suggestions unfold and are negotiated as paths of inquiry open up. Dewey (1938) describes such paths as manifesting though attention to the “powers and purposes of those taught” (p. 45). The materials for knowledge-making forms and informs as VCS students share their histories, beliefs, strengths, and desires. Respecting these given contributions is a habit that is key. As Dewey (1938) points out, not to do so would be “to neglect the place of intelligence in the development and control of a living and moving experience” (p. 88). Therefore, the necessary starting place toward authoring inquiry must be the given powers and purposes of individuals and situations as the materials for knowledge-making. In Silas’s case, he is authoring a stronger identity—one that he can confidently say he likes, one that does not feel constrained or continually self-conscious, and one that foregrounds strengths and capacities that distinguish who he is and who he is becoming.

Seeking Attunement, Generating Connections

Yrsa, a VCS student, explains how she has never been a part of so many heated discussions or arguments until VCS. She adds that community is something she has come to appreciate as a space to negotiate and come to understand differences of all kinds. “Community is what matters” (Interview, May 30, 2015). Seeking attunement, generating connections is a mode of being illustrated here. It is a willingness to enter and dwell within the matters present and already at play that the generative process of knowledge-making invites. It is within the apprehension of these matters that all involved can create and find meanings.

VCS educators, alongside students, attending to the historical, social, political, personal, and cultural experiences, traditions, and contexts that influence and interact within every situation, foreground these as the relational complexities human beings bring to all knowledge-making. Dewey’s (1910/1997) caution that “. . . one can teach others to think only in the sense of appealing to and fostering powers already active in them” (p. 30) turns attention toward the internal roles of curiosity, suggestion, and order-making. It seems that these are elemental human resources that access powers, drawing all involved into interactions with given relational complexities, and revealing the potentialities these elemental resources hold for varied directions inquiries may take.

Authorizing individual and collective inquiries attunes knowledge-making to “following up” and “linking together” connections, manifesting its generative nature. The powers and possibilities harbored within such generativity take life in Yrsa’s learning journey at VCS. Initially unable to share much about herself with others at VCS, Yrsa transformed from an anxious and timid student into a strong and vocal VCS member. Yrsa describes how she always had an inner confidence but that previous schooling experiences had made her feel “stupid” (Interview, January 15, 2015). At VCS, she gradually revealed her varied interests in fairytales, in science—particularly the workings of the human brain, and in drawing and other art forms. Building upon her curiosities, learning connections and linkages were prompted and Yrsa’s agency for her own learning became evident in her initiative to take on new VCS tasks, address needs, and assume responsibility for advocating and educating others about VCS. She articulates how she is preparing a presentation that she hopes to share with educators at her previous school about the generative nature of learners and learning (Field notes, December 3, 2015). Authority coupled with responsibility is a habit emanating from Yrsa that is especially remarkable when we reflect on our initial meetings with her over a year ago.

Including the Narratives and Reflections of Other(s)

Attending to the ways in which other(s) calls personal understandings into question is a mode of being that values interactions, debates, and deliberations as always in need of other ideas, experiences, perspectives, and understandings. The knowledge-making ground encountered as Dewey (1934) maps out begins with impulsion, acknowledging interdependency of self with surroundings, learning though resistance and obstacles, and unfolding at the junctures of old and new experiences. Ella, a VCS student, explains,

VCS is not just a school; it is a place of fun, growth, learning, and friendship. When I used to hear the word school I thought of the words icky, boring, and rude. There may be some rough times at VCS but there is always forgiveness. Everyone is different, nobody is the same, we all like different things, learn differently, and grow differently. I hang out with lots of different people and I notice we are all different…We are allowed to have a voice, we communicate with each other and the people in the community. At VCS everybody’s voice is important. We listen to each others’ thoughts and opinions. We agree and disagree about what we like and dislike and it makes us stronger and helps us to become more confident human beings. Some of us suck in reading, writing, or math but we are always eager and excited to learn and grow stronger. And, we do. I am willing to try and take risks, except art, to date anyway. Nobody gets judged by what we like or dislike or our appearance. We care about each other. We help each other out. I chose to go to VCS because I heard that the students get appreciated by their strengths and talents and are not judged by their weaknesses. And, that is exactly what I have experienced. Since I attended VCS I enjoy learning and going to school like never before in my school life. The teachers at my school listen to me and take my thoughts and problems seriously. They always treat me like a very important person and give me the feeling that my opinion matters. (Reflective Journal, June 2015, p. 46)

Ella’s insight and agency as a person and learner is introspective, but fueled through her encounters with peers that she recognizes as different from herself. Her emerging identity has been catalyzed through habits of listening to others’ thoughts and opinions and finding and expressing her own voice. VCS’s welcoming attitude toward difference and ongoing self-study has increased her confidence, engagement, and, most importantly, willingness to stretch and grow.

Students’ personal needs and interests initially direct efforts at VCS. These efforts are then furthered as individuals convey and begin to attend to the relations each meet and negotiate, as thinking with and through others is made more accessible. Understandings are reached and extended at the conjunctures of the old and the new. The evolving authorized inquiry extends far beyond the workings of an individual’s interiority, purposefully inclusive of the narratives and reflections of others. As Dewey (1934) carefully explicates, this is the developmental, unfolding process of self-formation and discovery that ought to characterize education.

Needing Both Space and Time, Bringing the Present’s Potential to Immediate Attention

Nicole, a VCS parent, relays her desperation as she recalls her search for a school for her son, Yannick. Over 5 years, Yannick was in and out of multiple settings and despite much persistence, Nicole conveys little-to-no supports or resources allocated by the school district. She states,

He was always seen as a disruption and lacking in skills, needed behaviors, and without any strengths. At VCS, educators acknowledge his strengths—and so I put trust and hope in these teachers and what is happening there. (Field notes, January 28, 2016)

And, a year and a half later, Yannick has found a long-term educative setting at VCS that has allowed him to reveal his strengths to others and develop learning interests that are fostering an identity as a scientist. His expertise is recognized by VCS students, educators, and others, with Yannick becoming a respected contributor to the learning community, identified by other students as “science expert,” “science guy,” and “knowing more about Science than the teachers” (Field notes, December 2, 2016).

Attentive care must be given to learners and learning. It is care that sees and acts with awareness of the temporality; this mode of being is a past–present–future interplay within every situation. But, this had not been Yannick’s schooling story. Dewey (1938) explains that growth’s organization is dynamic, needing both space and time, structured to bring the present’s potential to immediate attention. Dewey (1938) explains that such attention occasions the kind of present that “has a favourable effect upon the future” (p. 50). Yannick and his family have found much more individual and collective hope and confidence now, and for the future, the habit of attending to the present’s potential is an investment in individual/collective growth.

Illuminating Understandings, Fostering Internalization

Nick, a local filmmaker and VCS mentor, shares his film depicting his passion for protecting freshwater with VCS. It incites VCS students, Mac, Nevin, Nanson, Alice, Nisha, Naryn, Lyle, and Eric, to work with the filmmaker to educate others about the alarming concern regarding the invasion of zebra and quagga mussels in lakes. As VCS is located within a lake community, the freshwater is their drinking water and is significant to the economic and recreational identity of the region. These students imagine the consequences for their lives and commit to learning more about the mussel invasion and make plans for action. One of their efforts is a collective letter written to their local Member of the Legislative Assembly:

Dear [Sir]:

We are a group of concerned students from [V] Community School. We’ve been thinking a lot lately about the threat of zebra and quagga mussels invading our lakes. We love our lakes. They are the best part about [V]. We have learned that if zebra and quagga mussels got into our lakes, life here would change drastically. Property values would plummet, beaches would be disgusting and un-walkable, most of our fish would die, and life in the North Okanagan would be permanently damaged. Are you concerned about this? We’re excited to know what you are doing personally to protect our lakes and community.

Sincerely,

Mac, Nevin, Nanson, Alice, Nisha, Naryn, Lyle, and Eric

(Artifact, February 2016)

Students engaging community mentors, in this case a filmmaker, extends and internalizes students’ understandings of themselves in the world. By inquiring into relevant issues in their context, they became advocates for their community and environment productively extending their world.

It is this mode of being, this participatory knowledge-making through thinking, feeling, seeing, and acting that Dewey (1934) claims “illuminates” understandings and fosters internalization (p. 22). Embodied comprehension is instilled as VCS students image forth ideas via deliberations, intuitions, anticipations, and enlarged realizations. Their inquiry into preserving lakes is invigorated through educators’ and students’ attention to such habits as a gateway to knowledge-making, acting as a capacity to see with potential in situations, self, and other(s).

Reframing Education

At VCS, it is these interrelated modes of being and associated habits, embracing the elemental human capacity to make meaning, seeking ongoing attunement through purposeful connections, gaining understandings through others, attending to the temporality within the present, and fostering internalized realizations that invite sensemaking spaces that Dewey (1934) characterizes as having “roominess, a chance to be, live and move” for all involved (p. 209). VCS educators purposefully seek such opportunities, and in-turn, students and others do too. Roominess is created for deliberation, intuition, anticipation, new ideas, and enlarged thinking. The ongoing reciprocal nature of such roominess actively assumes individual/collective openness alongside commitment to attend to ensuing interactions. Roominess for deliberation is revealed as flexibility is embraced, instilling new possibilities. Roominess for intuition is revealed as thinking elicits and accepts felt understandings, calling participants to surface what is familiar, yet newly encountered. Roominess for anticipation is revealed as the parts-to-whole movement of knowledge-making is envisioned and reenvisioned throughout, “tak[ing] up something from those which have gone before and modify[ing] in some way the quality of those which come after” (Dewey, 1938, p. 35). Roominess to appreciate cumulative understandings fosters embodied impacts. And, such embodied understandings foster more and more roominess for new ideas, which are continually negotiated as “the old, the stored material” is “literally revived, given new life and soul through having to meet a new situation” (Dewey, 1934, p. 60). Seeking such life and soul assumes roominess for enlarging and deepening understandings that participants experience and embrace as always in the making. Thus, it is through receptive engagement within deliberation, intuition, anticipation, new ideas, and enlarged understandings that interactions open and compel participants’ investment and ongoing attention, suggesting a direction or way forward. And, in doing so, at VCS, an attitude of mind, characterized by a confidence in process, is manifesting on an individual and collective basis that which was not present when the school got underway. Dewey’s (1933/1986) description of an attitude of mind resulting in a “positive power” through the “elimination of fear, of embarrassment, of constraint, of self-consciousness,” eliminating “the conditions which created the feeling of failure and incapacity” is very fitting (p. 140). As Dewey (1933/1986) envisioned, VCS is an educative setting invested in the “development of a confidence, of readiness to tackle difficulties, of actual eagerness to seek problems instead of dreading them and running away from them” (p. 140). In its second year of operation, VCS’s “ardent faith in human capacity” and “faith in the capacity of the environment” (Dewey, 1933/1986, p. 140) to support learners and learning permeates all curricular aspects with an undeniable strength and conviction, reframing how education is understood by all involved.

Reframing education toward individual and collective growth gains momentum as the modes of being access and authorize more and more inquiry. VCS participants enter into these inquiries as creators, as meaning makers. In doing so, they gain cognizance and appreciation of the given particulars of context, valuing others, attending to and moving within the space/time of situation, and eliciting possibilities that instill embodied understandings. Traversing this knowledge-making terrain manifests through a rhythmic movement of thinking. It is a rhythmic movement that finds its own form and direction from within the individual and collective narratives. Dewey (1929) describes how this found rhythm is a “great force,” “preserving and propagating a creative attitude.” He relays how creativity is “a normal accompaniment of all successfully coordinated action.” The “release(ing)” of creativity as an attitude within meaning-making of all kinds authorizes inquiry, through positioning all involved to enter into knowledge-making as creators, makers of meaning (p. 132).

VCS’s bold embodiment of the creative force within knowledge-making, suggests worthwhile possibilities as the individual/collective narrative constituting place is shaped. It is only within traversing the fertile terrain exposed, providing access to, and practice with matters reframing education that we envision the kinds of knowledge-making happening in classrooms that release creative attitudes through meaning-making that matters. Indeed, this is the case as VCS students clearly articulate to themselves and others how and why education needs to be reframed to welcome and learn through. Samuel shares, “I do not want to tell my story because it hurts me too much to tell it. School sucked in the past. I only went to hang out with friends” (Reflective Journal, June, 2015, p. 14). Mac states, “. . . what I like . . . is taking control of my own learning. I get to choose how, why, and what I am getting involved with” (Reflective Journal, June 2015, p. 11). Shane enjoys “the long and interesting conversations” (Reflective Journal, June 2015, p. 21). Nicky reflects,

I found it interesting how quickly we all grew to be comfortable with each other in so little time. At the beginning of the year I had a hard time being myself because of previous school experiences, so adjusting took a little while for me. Once I got used to it, I was ready to do what I came to do—fulfill my passion! (Reflective Journal, June 2015, p. 12)

VCS educators clearly articulate to themselves and others how and why education needs to be reframed. Murray states,

When I dreamed of the community school I envisioned a place where all kids would belong, where all kids would feel safe and where all kids would feel free to learn and grow as needed. I believe VCS is becoming that place. But, more than that, it has become a place where I feel safe, where I feel free to learn and grow, and where I belong . . . (Reflective Journal, June 2015, p. 48)

Kim states,

As we gathered together, all 60 of us on Sept. 22, 2014, we entered into mystery: Who is each one? How is it that we shall be together? What is the ecology that these unique personalities will require in order to best grow, learn, and thrive? These questions have become a daily practice . . . as we reflect upon our work—full of joy and challenge, understanding and confusion, answers and questions—always in the making and remaking—always open to change. (Reflective Journal, June 2015, p. 39)

Associated parents clearly articulate how and why education needs to be reframed. A representative parent voice, Anna explains, “I see gifts of creative leadership in my child, but these gifts have been stalled, discouraged from exploration in previous schooling” (Interview, November 6, 2014). The community mentors purposefully involved within the curriculum of VCS clearly articulate how and why education needs to be reframed. A representative mentor voice, Ellen explains,

VCS support their students’ inner drives . . . bringing in people from our community specializing in a variety of fields to mentor an interested student. With all these ideas, goals, and plans floating around the room, the students also have the chance to try new things. The simple act of trying a new activity can help kids leap out of their comfort zone. Growth is a strong component in the roots of VCS. (Reflective Journal, June 2015, p. 42)

This reframing of education invests long-term in human well-being within the shared world of VCS and productively extends into the world beyond through participatory modes of being.

Narrative Inquiry Inspirits Learners/Learning/Living

VCS narratives of experience weave together knowledge-making’s modes of being, habitually intertwining an “organic connection between education and personal experience” (Dewey, 1938, p. 25). This narrative entwining powerfully articulates and informs their community-makings—the organic connections, the physicality and materiality of the lived curriculum at VCS. Aoki (1991) terms this an “inspirited curriculum” that reclaims the “fullness of body and soul” (p. 18) and unmasks the “texture” of the “lived meanings of teachers and students” (p. ii). It is this reclaiming and unmasking which VCS educators, students, parents, mentors, and others increasingly relay as education reframed away from acquiring and mastery of information and skills, displaced by personal inner necessities that incite and guide inquiry from within the inquiries themselves. Given room to take hold through modes of being at VCS, the inner necessities foster Dewey’s (1910/1997) needed attitude of mind, authorizing genuine inquiry. Members of VCS have daily and weekly opportunities to share their narratives of experience; thus, a language is developing and gaining an embodied strength that is acknowledged by participants. Similarly, Dewey (1933/1986) found that

[community members] started to find out what each individual person had in him/her from the beginning, and then devoted themselves to finding out the conditions of the environment and the kinds of activity in which the positive capacities of each young person could operate most effectively. (p. 139)

“The idea of personal acquisition and possession” as controlling “the whole educational system” (Dewey, 1933/1986, p. 139) has been displaced at VCS by a growing trust in process where learning purpose and direction are found within sharing personal narratives of learning that “resid[e] in the shared work being done” (Dewey, 1938, p. 55). Educators committed to this pursuit from the onset of VCS, but concretely negotiating the narrative terrain has further invigorated their efforts as knowledge-making’s powers and possibilities manifest through the participatory modes of being. Dewey (1938) conveys the tremendous responsibility of the educator:

For a knowledge of individuals and for a knowledge of subject matter that will enable activities to be selected which lend themselves to social organization, an organization in which all individuals have an opportunity to contribute something, and in which the activities in which all participate are the chief carrier of control. (p. 56)

VCS educators have invested accordingly, and through much persistence and patience, students are invited to narratively negotiate learning for learning’s sake. Students, positioned to be advocates for themselves as learners, have fostered a positive communal power in which they insist on seeing and hearing their thinking in relation to others concerning all matters at VCS. And, learning assessment, oriented away from grades and comparisons, and instead understood as an ongoing accompaniment of all learning processes, has enabled students to experience and articulate growth and take pride in personal efforts alongside appreciating diverse peer efforts. And, it is students’ growth and pride that parents and mentors respond to as they marvel at the changed “attitude of mind” in their child and others. No longer struggling to get their child out of bed and to school each day, no longer overwhelmed by homework that was relayed as a burden by families, no longer fearful of how their child would find some success, and no longer viewing themselves and their child as failures, parents and others let go of grades and competition. Now, some let go more than others, but there is no doubt that the narrative reflexive form cohering identities-in-the-making and forming and reforming the school community is a potent agent for reframing and transforming education. The modes of being have fostered a language that is lived and shared, and holds individual/collective significance with all in the community and reaching beyond. A school board meeting, February 2016, draws over 40 VCS parents, students, educators, and others to ensure the school continues to be supported with increased capacity for students to complete their high school education there. In the narratives shared at this meeting, is a shared investment that permeates the room. VCS’s communal attitude of mind illustrates and invites with deep care for ensuring continuance. An energy and excitement exudes the inspirited nature of just how revolutionary knowledge-making can be, holding the powers and possibilities authorizing inquiry, orienting toward learner/learning growth, greater self-understandings, enhanced well-being, and opportunities to continually situate self in the world alongside learning to live in the world well with others. Educators are affirmed and invigorated by the “attitude of mind” taking shape and extending into the community at large.

VCS is mobilizing knowledge-making as a vital narrative medium, embodying and strengthening the roles of education within all institutions, communities, and beyond. Narrative inquiry serves as a vehicle that empowers all members of VCS to reframe the narrative of education. Through the intersections of narrative inquiry, case study and practitioner inquiry, the voices of all members of the VCS community—students, teachers, parents, mentors, researchers—are reorienting education and curriculum as generative, responsive, and receptive knowledge-making, with participants seeing and acting accordingly. Engaging in narrative inquiry authorizes pedagogical inquiry. But, again and again, these courageous efforts tend to get shortchanged through lack of time to invest long term in educators’, students’, and communities’ knowledge-making capacities. The needed supports, the entrusting of learning to educators and their students, the cultivation of shared language to articulate the significances for all involved, and research documenting, disseminating, and mobilizing the long-term significances for all involved are undermined as outside pressures for evidencing increased student knowledge is assessed through measures and tests that betray the makings of knowledge as experienced in these settings. As VCS’s second year came to an end, such pressures confronted them. But, VCS now has a lived understanding of how these beliefs and habits stand in the way of the future. Instead, envisioning VCS’s future by embracing its present potential brings much hope and delight to all involved.

In 1990, Connelly and Clandinin mapped out a two-part agenda for narrative inquiry that entailed telling and living mutually constructed accounts of teaching and learning. They articulated how such mutuality fosters new stories for educators and researchers as curriculum-makers, holding new possibilities and rethinking theory/practice relations, challenging assumptions about the nature of education. VCS is evidencing the fruits of such mutuality, and the research literature since 1990 offers varied related examples (e.g., Clandinin & Rosiek, 2007; Craig, 2013; Kim, 2015). But, at VCS, what particularly drew our attention were the possibilities arising from not only educators’ and researchers’ accounts but also students, parents, and more and more concrete community involvement within the learning context. The ensuing possibilities are extending outside of the context to mentors, the school district, connections with the provincial ministries of education and higher education institutions, and beyond. Thus, VCS offers a case study where narrative inquiry is mobilizing locally derived knowledge challenging social issues and conceptions of education, continually situated within local, national, and international discourses. It is these suggested possibilities that prompt us to add a third part to Connelly and Clandinin’s agenda—the importance of mobilizing narrative inquiry as an educative medium that instills long-term change that reframes the nature of education, knowledge, and the relations within, through community. At VCS, an inspirited attitude has taken hold that speaks to ongoing needed practice through participatory modes and habits, and indicates the needed collective investment by educators and the wider community to affect and sustain long-term change. Through attending to polyvocality in narrative inquiry, we can thicken our understandings of living in community and energize narrative inquiry as both phenomena and method that combined, resist the smoothing over of diverse voices and perspectives, decentering normative practices.

Why Does Inspirited Learning/Living Matter?

The mobilizing movement of narrative inquiry forming VCS is a medium for all involved to experience learning as an opportunity to express individuality in ways that enrich others and the community-in-the-making. Dewey (1916/1944) envisioned schools as such sites of practice, where each member sees their own future as entwined with that of the community’s. The felt responsibility in relation to others needs to be concretely experienced and articulated to gain confidence in the short- and long-term significances for learners and learning.

The questioning, scrutinizing, analyzing, discerning, reflecting, speculating, adapting, changing, and building of VCS narratives through participatory modes of being suggest the inspirited discourse awakening within curriculum-making that must be enacted to gain the needed “practiced receptivity” (Davey, 2006). VCS is reframing education through orienting what counts as knowledge away from uniformity, less concerned with predetermined outcomes and evaluative measures and investing long term in educators’, students’, and communities’ knowledge-making capacities. VCS gives expression to such knowledge-making to elucidate a vital narrative medium for embodying and strengthening the roles of education within all institutions, communities, and beyond. Ongoing practice for educators and their students is a necessity and this project elicits and accentuates capacities to mobilize educator and student confidence to keep investing accordingly. In doing so, it reorients how all involved understand education, reframed toward “more humane experience in which all share and to which all contribute” holding long-term significances (Dewey, 1939, p. 230). We wonder and hope that readers wonder too, about the world that inhabits this narrative inquiry and how it can mobilize attention to these significances.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biographies

Margaret Macintyre Latta (corresponding author) is Professor and Director of Graduate Programs in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna, B.C., Canada. Her scholarship is concerned with the aesthetics of human understanding within curricular enactment across all disciplines, interests, and educational contexts. Macintyre Latta’s scholarship regularly appears in well-known journals and books in the field of education. Leyton Schnellert is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education at The University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna, B.C., Canada. His research attends to how teachers and teaching and learners and learning can mindfully embrace student diversity, and pedagogical practices that draw from students’ and teachers’ funds of knowledge to build participatory, collaborative, and culturally responsive learning communities. Schnellert is the Pedagogy and Participation research cluster lead in UBCO’s Institute for Community Engaged Research and co-chair of British Columbia’s Rural Education Advisory. Kim Ondrik recently received her Master of Arts degree at the University of British Columbia Okanagan and is a career teacher and co-founder of a community school in Vernon, B.C. Canada. She is currently the Head Learner at Mill Bay Nature School in Cowichan Valley, BC. Canada. Her leadership within these schools reflects her passionate commitments to learners and learning for a better world. Murray Sasges is a teacher who is putting his Master degree in collaborative leadership into practice as co-founder of a community school in Vernon, B.C. Canada. The initiation of this school represents his passionate commitments to social justice, inclusion, and democracy in education, alongside his ongoing investment in building and strengthening community.

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