self and other.
If reading the local papers and talking to parents is any indication, Education, it
seems, is asked to play a greater role in the upbringing of our students. The schools are
responsible for ensuring that the students are well fed and adequately supervised not just
during school hours, but before and after as well. Schools are expected to keep up with
the rigors of ensuring that the students are practiced in the almighty disciplines of
reading, writing, arithmetic and now, technology skills. This will somehow propel them
into the economic demands of the new millenium. But the impact of the culture and the
community from which the students come - the histories of their experiences as
individuals and as a group- are seldom explored. L
Intuitively, I am drawn to my own stories when trying to make sense of the stories
that swirl and swish amongst the myriad of moments that collectively comprise each
experience. The influence our narratives have on the way we understand and learn is
explored in this paper. Sandwiched in between the stories is a study of how using Drama
as an instructional technique can be used to explore our narratives and expand on our
ways of knowing and understanding, particularly how it is experienced by the English as
a Second Language (ESL) learner.
. Twenty-six grade five and six students from a multi-cultural, suburban
community were observed. The students participated in a two-month, tri-weekly unit on
basic drama methods, which culminated in a final class narrative performance. Four ways
of data collection were employed. A static camera (i.e. a video camera that remained in a
fixed position on a tripod in one of the classroom corners) was used throughout each
lesson to record the events and to supply another view to the multi-perspective data
collection. Student journals as well as a personal narrative from each participant (a video
portrait) were collected. The classroom teacher also kept a journal and made observations
about her students throughout the unit period.
This dissertation was not limited to the stories of the students in the classroom as
this journey precipitated a desire, indeed a need, to tell my own stories of daughter,
mother, sister, student, teacher and friend. Since our physical experiences, our stories and
our ways of understanding are integrally intertwined, this (re) search honored narrative as
a way of including these aspects in the dissertation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/11340 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Michals, Lisa |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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