Narrative Pedagogy
Learning and Narrative Pedagogy
We put forward a framework of narrative pedagogy consisting in four key elements:
- teacher’s authentic engagement including sharing personal narratives,
- deep caring relationships,
- respect, and
- love.
Narrative pedagogy starts with teacher’s authentic engagement. Parker Palmer writes, ‘good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher’ (1998, p. 10). Palmer then goes on to articulate what he means by those two important notions.
By identity I mean an evolving nexus where all the forces that constitute my life converge in the mystery of self: my genetic makeup, the nature of the man and woman who gave me life, the culture in which I was raised, people who have sustained me and people who have done me harm, the good and ill I have done to others and to myself, the experience of love and suffering – and much, much more. In the midst of that complex field, identity is a moving intersection of the inner and outer forces that make me who I am, converging in the irreducible mystery of being human.
By integrity I mean whatever wholeness I am able to find within that nexus as its vectors form and re-form the pattern of my life. Integrity requires that I discern what is integral to my selfhood, what fits and what does not – and that I choose life-giving ways of relating to the forces that converge within me: Do I welcome them or fear them, embrace them or reject them, move with them or against them? By choosing integrity, I become more whole, but wholeness does not mean perfection. It means becoming more real by acknowledging the whole of who I am (ibid. p. 13).
