PREPARING URBAN STUDENTS FOR COLLEGE-LEVEL WRITING: A NARRATIVE INQUIRY AND SPATIAL ANALYSIS OF TWO HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH TEACHERS' PROFESSIONAL KNOWLEDGE

Abstract

This qualitative study was a narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2006) into the storied landscapes of high school teachers' experiences and knowledge as they prepared their urban high school students for college level writing. The study took place during the last three months of the school year in a Midwestern urban high school and followed two English teachers as they taught junior and senior level classes focused on preparing students for college-level writing. Methodology included researcher-participant collaborative writing of classroom stories based upon interviews, classroom observation, teacher journals and classroom artifacts. These narratives were organized as meganarratives and small stories (Olson & Craig, 2009), illustrated through the use of story constellations (Craig, 2007) and analyzed through the use of theories of spatiality (Lefebvre, 1991). Five meganarratives were found: the narrative of transformation, the narrative of poverty, the narrative of relationship building, the narrative of testing and the narrative of teacher autonomy. Within these meganarratives were charted and analyzed four small stories of teachers' daily classroom work. Through the small stories it became clear that in the teaching of writing, there were constraining or "frozen" meganarratives such as those stories of testing and poverty. Other meganarratives allowed for movement, authorship and appropriation, such as those of relationship building, transformation and teacher autonomy.