Abstract:
This research is a self-study into my life as an athlete, elementary school teacher,
leamer, and as a teacher educator/academic. Throughout the inquiry, I explore how
my beliefs and values infused my lived experiences and ultimately influenced my
constructivist, humanist, and ultimately my holistic teaching and learning practice
which at times disrupted the status quo. I have written a collection of narratives
(data generation) which embodied my identity as an unintelligent student/leamer, a
teacher/learner, an experiential learner, a tenacious participant, and a change agent
to name a few. As I unpack my stories and hermeneutically reconstruct their intent,
I question their meaning as I explore how I can improve my teaching and learning
practice and potentially effect positive change when instructing beginning teacher
candidates at a Faculty of Education.
At the outset I situate my story and provide the necessary political, social,
and cultural background information to ground my research. I follow this with an
in depth look at the elements that interconnect the theoretical framework of this
self-study by presenting the notion of writing at the boundaries through
auto ethnography (Ellis, 2000; Ellis & Bochner, 2004) and writing as a method of
inquiry (Richardson, 2000).
The emergent themes of experiential learning, identity, and embodied
knowing surfaced during the data generation phase. I use the Probyn' s (1990) .. metaphor of locatedness to unpack these themes and ponder the question, Where is
experience located? I deepen the exploration by layering Drake's (2007)
KnowlDo/Be framework alongside locatedness and offer descriptions of learning
moments grounded in pedagogical theories.
In the final phase, I introduce thirdspace theory (Bhabha, 1994; Soja, 1996) as
a space that allowed me to puzzle educational dilemmas and begin to reconcile the
binaries that existed in my life both personally, and professionally. I end where I
began by revisiting the questions that drove this study. In addition, Ireflect upon
the writing process and the challenges that I encountered while immersed in this
approach and contemplate the relevance of conducting a self-study. I leave the
reader with what is waiting for me on the other side of the gate, for as Henry James
suggested, "Experience is never limited, and it is never complete."
