Uses of narrative production and reflection.  Oral and written narratives can be used to foster responses to literature.  By sharing stories evoked by and related to literature, PTs are using narrative techniques of setting the scene, dramatizing events, building suspense, and resolving conflict.  They are also learning to use literary language to create imagined worlds.  In one study, a teacher’s use of oral narratives in her classroom served to model stances associated with the literary uses of language in literature (Juzwik & Sherry, 2007). 

    PTs could devise teaching activities organized around different narrative genres: myths, short stories, novels, fables, jokes, monologues, biographies, memoirs, etc., activities that integrate reading and writing of narratives.  They can include analysis of how these forms have evolved over time, leading to an understanding of how writers are influenced by traditions and how they then break these traditions.

    PTs can also use narratives to reflect on their teaching (Alsup, 2006; Clandinin, 2006; Lyons & Laboskey, 2002; Schaafsma, Pagnucci, Wallace, & Stock, 2007).  By sharing their narratives about the challenges of teaching, they are learning to construct their identities as teachers.  They are using narratives to recapture the particular aspects of teaching, creating a record that can serve as the basis for your reflection on your teaching, leading to reflections on goal/plan relationships, expectations, previous experience, context/setting, and their teacher identities.  By then identifying the roles, beliefs, norms, and institutional forces portrayed in their narratives, they can then reflect on how their practices are shaped by these roles, beliefs, norms, and forces.

Further reading on narrative production and reflection:

Bruner, J.  (1990).  Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Bruner, J. (2002). Making stories: Law, literature, life.  New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

Cota Facundes, C. (2007).  Oral and written narratives and cultural identity: Interdisciplinary approaches.  New York: Peter

    Lang.

Craig, C. J.  (2007).  Story constellations: A narrative approach to contextualizing teachers' knowledge of school reform.

    Teaching and Teacher Education, 23(2), 173-188.

DeBlase, G. (2005). Negotiating points of divergence in the literacy classroom: The role of narrative and authorial readings

    in students’ talking and thinking about literature. English Education, 38(1), 9-22.

Florio-Ruane, S. (2001). Teacher education and the cultural imagination: Autobiography, conversation, and narrative.

    Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Hillocks, G.  (2007).  Narrative writing: Learning a new model for teaching.  Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Johnson, K. E., & Golombek, P. R. (Eds.),  (2002).  Teachers' narrative inquiry as professional development.  New York:

    Cambridge University Press.

Lyons, N., & Laboskey V. K. (Eds.)  (2002).  Narrative inquiry in practice: Advancing the knowledge of teaching. New York:

    Teachers College Press.

McMahon, R.  (2002).  Thinking about literature: New ideas for high school teachers.  Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. 

McAdams, D. P., Josselson, R., & Lieblich, A. (Eds.).  (2006).  Identity and story: Creating self in narrative.  Washington, DC:

    American Psychological Association.

Perl, S., Counihan, B., Mccormack, T., & Schnee, E.  (2007). Storytelling as scholarship. English Education, 39(4), 306-325.

Ritchie, J. S. & Wilson, D. E. (2002).  Teacher narrative as critical inquiry: Rewriting the script.  New York: Teachers College

    Press.

Schaafsma, D., Pagnucci, G., Wallace, R., & Stock, P. L. (2007). Composing storied ground. English Education, 39(4),

    282-305.