I’m Back! Grappling with Epistemology and Thinking about Language in my Research

Last night while driving home and engaging in a family discussion on dreams, my children asked me: “Imma, in which language do you dream?” I answered immediately that I have no idea. I explained that I really can’t remember my dreams but that I do know that there are areas in which I think entirely in Hebrew (shopping, home life, pedagogy, literacy, school-life…) and areas in which I think exclusively in English (everything connected to research, methodology, theory, technical instructions…).

After 25 or so years living in Israel, my life takes place in two languages which are now fairly equal in terms of my competence. My PhD study is an interesting mix of the two, demonstrating that my hasty answer to my children, describing clear boundaries between the languages wasn’t exact.

In a discussion with Brenton Doecke at the beginning of my PhD journey, he urged me to emphasize the bilingual nature of my inquiry and not to leave language as a back drop in my research (as I did in my MEd thesis). At that time I did not fully understand this request and could only relate to having sections of text or even specific terms left in the Hebrew original alongside translation. Today I can see how language is a central element in my professional context, permeating all my actions and understandings. My language is heavily soaked with cultural significance.

Yesterday, in a Skype meeting with Graham Parr, my supervisor, we talked about the transcription and the translation of my interview tapes. We agreed that while translating sections of the conversations, I will have a wonderful opportunity to zoom in on the responses from my participants (and my own) and should be able to reach rich understandings of both content and context. We spoke about the importance of being sensitive to the place of my two languages in this study – how I translate my data, how I tell my own narratives of my practice and how important cultural or institutional concepts (whether they are translatable or not) are presented in my writing.

There are many cultural messages playing in my ears as I make decisions about which references to read and their status in the academic world. One of the questions I will need to explore is the place of Israeli researchers in my work.

This morning, I decided to try to clarify my thoughts on the epistemology of my research by rereading a book written in Hebrew:

Tuval-Mashiach, R., & Spector-Mersel, G. (Eds.). (2010). Narrative research: Theory, creation and interpretation. Jerusalem: Mofet and Magnes Press.

I decided to start with this reference as I have heard Gabriella Spector-Mersel explain the theories in many different forums and found them to be clear and accessible.  I must be honest in saying that although I have no trouble reading academic texts in Hebrew, I usually do it only when I have to. I read in Hebrew as a member of my doctoral writing group and read articles and book chapters as preparation for the sessions of the Qualitative research interest group meetings at the Mofet institute. Other than those occasions, I will usually choose English references. I am now becoming aware that this is not only because reading academic texts is still easier and quicker, it is also because of the cultural messages prominent in the academic world (and indeed in Israel as well), that Hebrew references are less important and influential than those written in English.

Embarking on the task, I was hoping that reading what I have heard Gabriella explain and translating the material slowly from Hebrew into English would help me understand more. I expected this exercise would give me ideas for entry points into writing about my own understandings of epistemology. As a result of this reading I found translation to be an interesting way of approaching a text. It slows down my reading and forces me to grapple with the dense carpet of terms involved. I cannot write a sentence until I reach some degree of understanding. Hearing things said (as familiar as they may be) in a different language, does indeed shed light on the ideas expressed. I remember I wrote about this here when I heard a lecture about the ideas of Dorothy Smith on Institutional Ethnography at Bar Ilan University and here after I first joined the interest groups on Action research and Narrative Inquiry at the Mofet Institute.  

Maybe I haven’t dealt much with epistemology but I have spent the morning thinking about language… and then again, much of what I have written is indeed connected to the nature of knowledge and its expression.

Changing directions in methodology

This morning I read chapter 7 in the book I mentioned yesterday:

Kouritzin, S. G., Piquemal, N. A., & Norman, R. (Eds.). (2008). Qualitative research challenging the orthodoxies in standard academic discourse(s). New York: Routledge.

The author, Suhanthie Motha, describes her research journey. Originally intending to base her study of beginning teachers on classroom observations and teacher interviews, Motha was encouraged to change her methodology when her participants felt the need for some kind of group interaction.

I was particularly interested in the way the author describes her role as “connected” researcher and deals with the dilemmas which arose when the way she saw classroom incidents differed from the way  teachers related them in her story.

The author  relates to her teacher partners (as she calls them and not participants) in a respectful and open relational manner. They really are partners in the generation of knowledge in this study. Motha describes her methodology as disturbing the traditional researcher heirarchy. She quotes Motha and Wong (2005) explaining that this blurring of roles enables  “inquiry that is truly dialogic, in which learning is a two-way street”. Sensitivity to issues connected to power and the nature of knowledge are central to this chapter.

In this chapter I was introduced to the work of Michelle Fine (1992) who presents three different stances that researchers can adopt in their writing: ventriloquy, voice, and activism. This is indeed an interesting way of analysing how the researcher is relating to the participant and his or her story. Motha is attempting to follow an approach of activism which she explains with a quote from Fine (p. 41): as a “deep responsibility to assess critically and continually our own, as well as informants’, changing opinions” .

I will certainly return to these definitions when I try to describe my methodology.

I admire Motha’s honesty when she admits:

“What I’m learning to accept is that this work is still me telling someone else’s story” (p. 116).

Despite the dialogic nature of this study, despite the concious effort to present the stories she heard around her kitchen table as they were intended and told, and despite the significant disturbance of the traditional researcher-teacher heirarchy, the author acknowledges the limitations in her study as it is written.

Motha, S. (2008). Afternoon tea at Su’s: Participant voice and community in critical feminist ethnography In S. G. Kouritzin, N. A. Piquemal & R. Norman (Eds.), Qualitative research: Challenging the orthodoxies in standard academic discourse(s). New York: Routledge.

Another Look at Teacher Stories and Autobiography

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This morning I read an interesting book chapter by William Ayers (1992) on teacher stories and autobiography. I found some important points that I want to store and explore here on the blog.

“… Our stories are never neutral or value-free, because they are always embedded in space and time and people, they are necessarily infused with values, forever political, ideological, and social. Our stories occur in cultural contexts, and we not only tell our stories, but in a powerful way our stories tell us. Interrogating our stories, then – questioning and probing our collective and personal myths – is an important pathway into exploring the meaning of teaching” (p. 35).

One of my roles as a researcher working with narrative is therefore to read and reread the stories placed before me in order to gradually unearth the political, ideological and the social connotations embedded in the text. What is told and left untold can reveal for example, priorities, beliefs, understandings and aspirations. In addition, I must learn to discover these elements in my own narratives, not an easy task.

Another challenge lying ahead of me is to explore the cultural context in which the stories are created and told. In my Masters thesis I often took this cultural element for granted and did not focus enough on the unique professional and personal setting in which each story was framed. Similarly, I often forget to explain frameworks and customs which are unknown to a reader unfamiliar with the Israeli education system.  

“Teaching is not a single story: the attempt to pursue the perfect study of teaching that will once and for all sum it up is a fool’s errand… teaching is more than the action of the teacher, because it is essentially interactive and c0-constructed, it is always expanding, always changing, and must always include students’ stories. Perhaps rather than trying to sup up teaching neatly, our goal should be to expand the natural history of what teaching is. Making our collective story richer, broader and more complex may also allow greater intentionality, reflexivity, and thoughtfulness in teaching choices” (p. 44).

This is a powerful reminder of the importance of studies of teaching and learning which portray these processes as a colorful kaleidoscope, ever moving and changing, not necessarily symmetrical or neat. Exploring the meaning in teaching means examining the unique, the complex, the dynamic and the messy.  Looking closely at the intricate details of teachers’ lives in different settings and stages allows us to grasp a better understanding of teaching. I am hoping that my research will add to this ever growing mosaic.

“Teachers have a special responsibility for self-awareness, for clarity and integrity, because teachers are in such a powerful position to witness, influence, and shepherd the choices of others” (p. 47).

This special responsibility is one that should be talked about explicitly in teacher communities. In the past, when encouraging teachers to tell teaching stories and write reflective texts, I did not make use of this important perspective. I will give thought to including this is future professional learning courses. 

“People are always in process, growing, understanding, changing, developing, disintegrating, reincarnating, choosing and refusing. There is a sense of incompleteness, of striving, of moving into the future. Autobiography is a useful piece in this movement, for autobiography creates the possibility for a dialogue grounded in different realities. telling lives and hearing lives can enrich our history and make possible our future. It is perhaps, particularly important in discussing something as complex, holistic, and immediate as teaching, something for which we lack an adequate, embracing language. Lacking language, many people are willing to reduce teaching to isolated behaviors, to fractions, to numbers. Autobiography is an antidote. It is unabashedly personal, connected, alive, struggling, and unfinished. It is the foundation upon which we can build what we will”  (p. 48-49).

I like the way Ayers connects “lacking language” and the reduction and teaching and learning to clean-cut statistical information.

I am constantly becoming more aware of this concept of “incompleteness” or “unfinalizability” as Bakhtin put it. The stories I told a year ago are different from those I am telling today and those I tell when my thesis draws to a close will be different again. My research project, like my teaching and my learning, is dynamic and ever changing.  I am curious to see where my professional experience and learning will lead me.

P.S.  I have chosen to ignore the politics in the life story of William / Bill Ayers and to concentrate on the ideas encompassed in one book chapter he wrote. Thanks to Yankel who invited me to rethink this issue.  William Ayers is not a person I identify with or wish to be identified with.

Reference:

Ayers, W. (1992). Teachers’ stories: Autobiography and inquiry. In E. W. Ross (Ed.), Teacher personal theorizing: Connecting curriculum, practice, theory and research (pp. 35-39). Albany: State University of New York Press.

Feedback!

thinking

Yesterday afternoon I presented a narrative I wrote over the recent holidays to the group of doctoral students I joined. First I must say that because of the meeting I was forced to sit down and write and the result was a 2500 word narrative about the teacher stories written by the teachers participating in my courses. I chose to write the narrative in a similar style to those I wrote for my MEd thesis and my article in English in Australia.

One of the things that interested me was the fact that I chose to write this narrative in Hebrew and not in English. I have been pondering over the reasons for this and have come up with three:

  1. I wanted to receive significant feedback from the group and thought it would be easier to achieve this if the text was in the members’ mother tongue
  2. The context of the narrative and the teacher-texts contained in it are Hebrew based
  3. I am thinking about my work more in Hebrew.

In my thesis examiners’ report, BD suggested I look into the bilingual aspect of my work more closely. He suggested I do far more than simply translating sections directly from one language to the other. I’m still not sure what this means…

I was surprised to receive compliments on the writing of the narrative, all three members commented on the readability and interest in the text. When I sent them the file, I was aware that I was feeling OK about sharing my writing and that I am definitely more confident about my writing skills than I was two years ago.

Most of our meeting was around the difficult “So what?” questions and the “What is this text?” “Do you consider this a research text?” “How does this fit in?” questions. I still find it very difficult to answer these questions and it was very important for me to sit and try and answer them intelligently and clearly. Many points arose and I have a lot of thinking to do to try to make things clearer.

I will write more about this soon, maybe then I will have some orderly thoughts (see image…). 

 

RF image: http://www.images.com/

The Fourth Israeli Interdisciplinary Conference of Qualitative Research – Inspiring

I’m back from a two day break at the 4th Israeli conference on qualitative research which was held at the Ben Gurion Uni in Be’er Sheva. I found the sessions extremely stimulating and motivating and I left inspired and enthusiastic to continue my research.

Plaza

I am gradually going to sift through my notes to find the points and the people I want to remember.

I arrived at the conference on time and immediately  bought the new book by Rivka Tuval-Mashiach and Gabriela Spector-Mersel: Narrative research: Theory, creation and interpretation. It won’t be easy reading but I must get acquainted with the Hebrew terms for my work.

The first session was about teacher education. A group from Levinsky Presented their work on metaphoric collages. Teacher educators created collages representing the way they understand the feedback sessions they hold with students. Narratives were then a means of describing the visual creation. This encounter of metaphor reminded me that I have been planning to examine metaphors which can help me describe my work. In this case, the most common metaphors were pregnancy and birth, journey and food.

I was disappointed that the main speakers, Prof Carolyn Ellis and Prof. Arthur Bochner couldn’t make it in person, but the videoed session they sent was informative and well presented.

According to Bochner, the goal of social science inquiry is the creation of meaning in social life. There are 3 different purposes: a. prediction and control, b. interpretation and understanding, c. criticism and social change.

An important point made was that there is a false dichotomy between theory and story. Story can be very theoretical (e.g Dickens).

Qualitative research, according to Bochner, is looking at how we should live and not only exploring what we can know.

Another important point was to let our work tell the story and to stop being defensive about doing qualitative research.

Regarding autoethnography, Ellis and Bochner are less interested in defining the term as they see the search for definitions mainly political. People try to categorize research for the politics of publishing, tenure etc.

In the beginning they began with writing in the first person . There was a space in academic work that needed opening. There has always been controversy surrounding the term – “vocabulary has consequences”.

The speakers were asked what is the role of other peoples’ stories in autoethnography and the answer was of course, that all good ethnography has some self in it and that this work should portray the connection between self and others. Self is never in isolation. The researcher must attempt to touch the role of others and bring them in.

Autoethnography directs attention to the reason you chose to study this community. What is the engagement? What do you owe those communities as a researcher? These connections should be explicit.

The speakers were asked: What kind of a researcher is needed to do autoethnography? The answer included:

  • in tune to self
  • able to step outside and see yourself in different roles
  • a good writer
  • willing to be vulnerable
  • able to present yourself in a vulnerable light

The answer to the question: How do you educate others to do autoethnography? was:

An autoethnographer is firstly a story teller. He or she must read a lot of literature, stories and write a lot. Audience awareness is very important. The writer need to attend to what the audience is doing with the story. In opening up the conversation, the reader is supposed to develop his or her own stories after reading the texts of others.

In autoethnography and personal narrative, the reader is seen as a collaborator in making meaning and not as the receiver of knowledge.

Ellis and Bochner were asked which issues are suitable for this research and it was explained that the theme does not have to be sadness and suffering. The researcher writes in order to “figure something out”. It was explained that it is more difficult to write about happiness, there is less tension in the writing, there is less “call to write”. Suffering is central to much autoethnographic work, as is social justice. The speakers stated that young researchers may not have the depth of experience required.

I want to look for Revision by Ellis when it comes out. It takes stories written in the past and looks critically at how they were written. Changes that have occurred since the writing was done and new interpretations are explored. The book reminds me of Fields of Play by Richardson.

When asked about contradiction, uncertainty and puzzles addressed by autoethnography, the answer given was that if  subjectivity is not displayed on the page, the work is problematic.

Regarding ethics questions, Bochner explained that the search for universal ethics guidelines , good for every situation isn’t very helpful. There are no easy answers.

Final messages were:

  • -we need to find the opportunities to present the best of this work in our institutions
  • -People are listening and are giving credibility to this research
  • -concentrate on who in the world can join your conversation
  • -Ask: Does this mean anything? Can it do something important?
  • -Don’t do research for research’s sake

I’m of to a Monash HDR seminar online, I’ll try to summarize more in the morning.

Incredible Teacher Narrative

The course at Z is going extremely well. I feel as though the 26 teachers participating are involved and eager to try to change things in their writing instruction and that many are thinking about their own learning and really taking ideas and thoughts back to their classrooms.

Last week we had a virtual session and the task I gave was to write a professional narrative connected to the teaching of writing and/or writing with students. Beforehand we discussed the rational of the task and I even brought an example from last year’s group. Many of the participants in this group are not too computer confident and I was worried that they wouldn’t manage finding the virtual campus, posting their stories and responding to others. All in all my worries were unwarranted and most of the teachers wrote and posted narratives. At the moment they are reading and responding to other stories.

The night before this week’s session, I was busy collecting the stories (for future use…) and responding. I respond to each and every narrative and try to be involved in the responses too. Many of my responses at this stage are questions which will help in the revision process to come.

One story made my heart race and brought tears to my eyes. I read it again and again before I wrote a detailed response. Immediately I wrote an email to the teacher author and asked her permission to bring her narrative to the group session. She readily agreed.

O wrote that at our last session she wasn’t able to concentrate – not in my lecture, not on the PowerPoint presentation that went with it and not on the workshop we did together. She said that concentrating on the writing process wasn’t possible for her. O told that that morning she had been on a hike with her class and that at one stage an eight year old boy fell off a cliff. He was extremely lucky that he wasn’t killed and that he was only injured fairly lightly. She told of her experience, of the phone call from the principal telling her that the incident was already reported on the Internet, of the terror, the helplessness and the frustration of not being able to protect her student.

O went home after our session and didn’t sleep all night. She was terrified of walking into the classroom the next morning and facing this reality. The injured child was in hospital and she had a whole classroom of traumatized children to deal with. After hours of deliberation, O remembered what we had been talking about in the course session and decided, at 4 am when she finally got out of bed, to devote the day to writing with her pupils. She decided to spend the day writing with her students to different audiences with different goals.

Lacking confidence, O entered the classroom and after a brief discussion, explained to the pupils what they could do. Some wrote to their injured friend in hospital, some wrote to the people responsible for the hiking trail, some wrote thank you letters to the parents who helped on the hike and helped deal with the complex situation and some wrote rules for behavior on trips outside school. During the writing time, O was free to move between the pupils and talk privately to each and every one of them. She could hear how they were coping and how they were feeling.

The pupils wrote and wrote. O was surprised that even her weakest students, those that usually refrain from writing, were creating important texts. She wrote that she sensed that the act of writing was helping these children process the experience and regain confidence and control. She admitted that the classroom interactions, the writing and the activity helped her regain her self confidence as a teacher. The pupils were so involved in this process that they asked to continue the next day, they had discovered that they enjoyed writing for real purposes and for real audiences. They had experienced writing as a means of sincere self expression.

A few days later O decided to tell this story as her narrative about writing. She told her story bravely and as a result received a lot of positive and supportive feedback from the other teachers. This event has changed the way O sees writing instruction and has changed the way many of her pupils view writing tasks.

One of the questions I asked O was whether she had told her principal about the way she decided to cope in the classroom. She replied that she hadn’t . I suggested she show the principal (if not all the other staff) her narrative – they can all learn from it as we did in the group.

Since reading  O’s story she is with me all the time. I am thinking about her terrifying experience, about her coming to my course after such a traumatic event and not telling anyone and about how she used writing to help her students recover.

Apart from receiving a lot of satisfaction that the materials we discuss in the course are making a real difference in the professional lives of teachers and their pupils, I was excited to see the process of writing itself encouraging the creation of new texts. O described how the writing done by her pupils encouraged her and stimulated her to write and I told her that her narrative had stimulated me to write a narrative of my own. I have no doubt that the writing of many teachers in the course will be enriched by the sharing of O’s story.

In a reflective discussion in her classroom, O told her pupils that she too had written a story after the traumatic event. Her pupils were very curious to hear that their teacher enjoyed the benefits of  writing too.

I still have a lot of thinking to do about the links between O’s story and the learning in our course and about professional narratives being links in a chain, a chain which strengthens and supports both writers and readers.

I am waiting to read the responses on the online forum, to see O’s text revised and to see the influence of O’s story on other narratives being created by teachers in the group.

amud

The location of the hike.

Picture: http://tiyulim.blogspot.com/2007/10/blog-post_19.html

First Teacher Narratives are In!

I have been back at school for four months now and my writing is definitely suffering from lack of time. I always have the feeling that I am doing what is urgent instead of what is important.

Last week I had my fourth meeting of my course at N. There are still few participants but I think those who are with me are happy with their learning and their feedback is definitely positive.

 

Over the school holiday week, most of the participants of my two courses wrote their first narratives. Many expressed difficulty with the task and some called me on the phone and asked for some encouragement. One waited for the next meeting to discuss ideas with me face to face. I was happy with the results for a first try.  Last year it took a lot longer for the first participant to post her narrative and a large percentage didn’t post at all.

 

In the meeting at N. I was able to bring many of the narratives as examples in my recent lecture on the writing process. This was important as again I was connecting the two levels of the course – the level of the teachers and their professional writing and the classroom level.

 

The combination of face to face meetings and written conversations on the course web site is perfect. The teachers are expected to write throughout the course and as they write they reflect on their writing pedagogy and on what their pupils experience in the classroom.

 

I was fairly disappointed in the amount of discussion between the participants so I will allow time for that in the meeting. I was also surprised that few of the participants related to the reflection questions. We will discuss them in the next face to face meeting and then I will post a similar question to allow discussion in writing.

 

I was happy to read that several participants have increased the time they allow for writing in their classroom. Some have even chosen to give writing with their students “another go” after not daring to deal with it in recent years.

 

My experience in the past three weeks has proven, yet again, that writing is extremely hard work. To read narratives from 20 or so teachers and plan and write a response to each is tiring and draining. Despite being overloaded I am very happy that I gave the task so early on in the course. The narratives really do give me a good peek into the world of each of the teachers and show me where she is in terms of teaching writing. Now I have to connect each narrative with the face of the teacher who wrote it.

 

It is very satisfying to hear that questions raised in the course have already triggered changes in some of the classrooms and that many of the ideas I have presented are being experimented with in the field.  We have a long way to go yet but I am enjoying my interaction with both groups. 

The place of story / Kathy Carter

After reading the article I’m not sure I know where to start, there’s just so much relevant material contained in these few pages. It worries me that I didn’t come across this article in my searches, there are probably many more…

Carter deals with the political contexts of story telling and issues of gender, power, ownership and voice in particular.

She points out that narratives  have an implicit or explicit observer or witness who tells or recounts the events…” (p. 6).

 In my narratives,  I am telling my story, from my point of view. There is no doubt that other teachers would tell the same stories differently with different highlights and details.

“In constructing stories…authors attempt to convey their intentions by selecting incidents and details, arranging time and sequence, and employing a variety of codes and conventions that exist in a culture” (p. 6).

“…readers, in turn, seek coherence and causal connections among these incidents and conventions as they construct for themselves, often retrospectively, the meaning or theme of the story” (p. 6).

In 1986, Martin wrote:

“story represents a way of knowing and thinking that is particularly suited to explicating the issues with which we deal” (p. 6).

Carter explains that a story is “characterized by an intrinsic multiplicity of meanings” (p. 6).

The narratives I have written in the past few months are “coloured” by the intensive learning I have been doing.  As I learn new theories or gain new insights, I remember additional incidents and enrich my stories.

In teaching, knowledge is created through practice. “Teachers’ knowledge is, in other words, event structured (Carter & Doyle, 1987) and stories, therefore, would seem to provide special access to that knowledge” Carter (p. 7).

“teachers’ knowledge in its own terms is ordered by story and can best be understood in this way”(Elbaz, 1991, as cited by Carter, 1993, p. 7).

Olson contended that when teaching incidents are entered into narrative structure, they are made more understandable, lasting and presentable to others (1990, as cited in Carter, 1993).

Carter discusses using narrative to understand and develop thought. She quots Robinson and Hawpe (1986):

“Narrative thinking resembles other acts of comprehension and problem solving currently studied by cognitive psychologists” (p. 112, as cited in Carter, 1993, p. 7).

Carter uses the term “well remembered events” when describing significant teaching incidents.

Teachers store significant events as stories and through those narratives it is possible to recognize teacher knowledge and how it changes with additional experience. (Carter, 1993).

Most of the interest in teacher stories was in teachers telling their narratives to researchers or for research purposes. Carter (1993) cited Gudmundsdottir (1991) who encourages studying the stories told by teachers in everyday circumstances.

  • Blogging would probably be a good example of this.

The focus on teacher narratives is a focus on voices previously unheard – teachers, rather than academics or administrators, women, rather than men, speaking out on the issues which really concern them. (Carter, 1993).

  • Maybe again here, “somebody”  should be encouraging teachers to write these texts and in turn transform some of them to public texts (Parr, 2007).

Smith (19881, as cited in Carter, 1993) proposes that every story is created by a particular person in a distinctive context for a unique reason.

  • It follows that stories are different if they  are produced for reseacrh or other purposes. \

Carter asks

  • Do we tell our stories to support our theories or our research?
  • Do we tell our stories in ways that are suitable in a particular context?

Carter raises the problem of making generalizations from individual teacher stories. What we can do, she explains, is to search for patterns emerging from teacher stories and try to reach professional understandings from them.

Although teacher stories are always created in a particular context, highlighting the practice of a particular educator, they always have the capacity to spark new reflection and the creation of new stories.

Carter – If we believe in story analysis as a means of creating a knowledge base for educators, significant efforts must be made to present ourselves as valid researchers in order to be accepted by academia and policy makers.

 

Carter, K. (1993). The place of story in the study of teaching and teacher education.  Educational Researcher, 22(1), 5-12. Retrieved from http://links.jstor.org/

 

 

Getting Teachers to Write – narrative draft

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While writing this thesis I was running a professional development program for teachers of grades two to six. The name of the twenty eight hour course was “Improving Literacy in a Heterogeneous Class”. The teachers voluntarily signed up.  I began the course by asking the fourteen teachers participating to fill in a questionnaire about themselves, their teaching experience and their expectations of the course. I included a list of possible topics and asked them to mark those most relevant and important to them. I was not surprised to find that the most pressing topic for all of the participants was the teaching of writing and supporting struggling writers.  I opened the third meeting by asking the teachers to write for ten minutes in silence, the topic being an experience they have had teaching writing. I told them that we would be discussing those pieces after the writing period was over.  One teacher immediately left the room, a toilet or coffee break I assumed. Another took out her cell phone and began clicking furiously. Others doodled quietly in their notebooks, began listing points or began to fill lines with Hebrew script.  I sat and watched them, uncomfortable with the squirming that was going on in several of the seats. Each minute that went past was like five, my watch didn’t seem to move. I forced myself to wait ten minutes, resisting my urge to cut the time down to seven or eight minutes.  Silence was kept in the room for most of the time, although occasionally there were embarrassed giggles or a whisper.  When the time was up, some of the teachers were still busily writing their narratives and were sorry to stop. Others looked relieved and were waiting to get on with the seminar.  In the discussion that followed I was interested in hearing what had happened to the participants in those ten minutes, what they had felt and what they had experienced and done in that time.  Many of the teachers commented that they are unused to writing on demand and that they felt uncomfortable. Some confessed that they are not used to writing at all. Several remarked that the time limit and the expectation of sharing their writing pressured them. At least two of the teachers didn’t write at all in the ten minute period. Only two or three confided that they enjoyed the writing experience.  We looked in detail at what had been done in that time and saw how the writing process is different for different people. Afterwards we discussed the implications for these differences in our classrooms. One of the teachers who didn’t write anything, an experienced grade six teacher, explained to the group that she isn’t a writer. “People are either born writers or they aren’t, I’m not” she said. The group discussed this statement. Is it true? If it is, what does it mean for the teaching of writing? I added that this is one of the major misconceptions held by struggling writers in our classes.  I asked the teachers if anyone was willing to share their text with us. Two of the first volunteers started to tell their story without looking at the page. I stopped them and reassured them that it is clear to everyone that this is the roughest of rough draft but that we want to hear what is on the paper.  Two of the pieces we heard were well structured, interesting stories. We were amazed by the writers’ style and clarity. At the end of the session I explained that our next meeting would not be face to face, that we would be meeting on the virtual campus. Each teacher was required to do three things, firstly to revise her story about the teaching of writing (or write another story) and to post it on the assigned private discussion board. The second task was to reflect on the teaching story and on the experience of writing one, I supplied possible directions for this. The third task was to read stories from other group members and respond.  It took ages and lots of encouragement for the first teacher to post a story. She wrote about a poetry anthology she had successfully produced at her school. The poems were all connected to Israel’s sixtieth birthday. This teacher told how she had created a poetry unit suitable for each different age group, chosen appropriate poetry to teach, and encouraged the children to write. Every child in the school had writing published in the festive booklet. She told her story modestly but proudly and expressed her personal excitement and satisfaction with the project. A few days after this story appeared, comments began to appear, most of them congratulating the teacher on her success in the project but also on being the first to contribute a story. Questions also appeared. Gradually a few other stories appeared on the site and the discussion was lively.  Unfortunately only five of the participants took part in the discussion. At our next meeting, I devoted time to the oral reading of those stories posted on the campus and gave those teachers time to share their experiences with the group. I was sure that my enthusiasm, together with showing the participants that it is possible to complete the task, would motivate the others to write and share their stories. A few weeks later, I am still waiting… Although I know that time is a central factor in any work I do with teachers, here I know that the type of task assigned was significant in the low rate of participation.  I am continually aware that these teachers have not been asked to write anything of this nature for a very long time, some of them since they were at school. Another factor is that in a twenty eight hour course many of the teachers do not know each other and may feel vulnerable as a result.  I have tasted this kind of work with teachers and find it far more meaningful than choosing a topic, planning a lecture or a workshop, giving them my knowledge or experience and going home.  When I read the stories written, I was greatly aware of what I have been learning, that every teacher has something to say, that each teacher possesses professional knowledge which can be a wonderful starting point for collaborative learning. S, a second year teacher, had been very quiet and reserved in the first two sessions. We discussed writing in the third meeting and I brought examples of authors talking about the writing process and about how laborious composition is. Suddenly, S shyly told the group that she keeps a personal diary and that because she lives alone she comes home and pours her day into writing. She confessed that writing is an important part of her day. The narrative S wrote and posted was written in very simple language but told a very powerful story of her battle to get her second grade pupils to write. She told us how she used to spend each Sunday morning hearing stories from her class about what they had done on the weekend. She was frustrated that it was always the same children who related experiences and that many remained silent. She told that it was difficult for many to choose just one experience to share.  One day, S gave her pupils special notebooks and told them that they were going to write what they wanted to share from their weekend and that afterwards those that want to can tell their story. She was shocked by the result. Firstly, everybody wrote, including those who usually don’t share and her struggling writers. Secondly, many more children were willing to tell their stories. S, excited by this lesson, decided to continue.  In the weeks that followed, S asked her pupils to write every Sunday morning and was happy that the children wrote willingly and that the texts produced were more and more complex. More and more pupils asked to share their work. As a result of the reflection S did when writing her narrative for our group, she started asking the class to write on other occasions, after recess for example. Another addition was that she herself started writing while her class was busy with their heads down. She used the time for reflective writing on teaching issues. In the weeks that followed, writing became an accepted mode of communication in S’s class. When children were involved in an argument or had a problem, she asked them to first organize their thoughts by writing them in the notebook and that afterwards she would be happy to listen to them. It worked. When S got to school after her day off, she would find a pile of notes waiting for her on her desk. Subject teachers who taught the class were surprised when they began to receive written communication from the young children.  S received positive feedback on her work from the members of our group and also heard ideas for continuing and expanding her work. I found it very satisfying that through this activity she realized that she has something significant to share with a group of experienced teachers. Many of the veteran teachers certainly had something to learn from this shy and nervous early career teacher. I realized that S was similar to her shyer pupils, those that only dared to share a story when they had it firmly on paper.  There is no tradition of composing teacher narratives and collaborating on them in this part of Israel. There are presently no formal options for professional learning through dialogic writing and discussion. Despite the fact that this small scale experience was only partly successful, I am optimistic that significant learning frameworks can be established for Israeli teachers in this direction.  In order to succeed, I believe teachers need to know ahead of time that this will be the framework of the seminar and that they know they will be committed to experience the writing and discussing of teacher narratives. A mix of experienced and early career teachers is likely to be preferable – building on the enthusiasm and burning need for collaboration amongst newer teachers and the experience and knowledge of veteran educators.  I have already taken the first few steps. I have surprisingly managed to convince the coordinator of language and literacy in the northern area of Israel, that this is the way we should be going in our PD for next year. Most of the courses we will be offering will deal with the teaching of writing and they will all be structured around teacher collaboration and the writing and sharing of narratives.  If we begin with a respect for the knowledge the teachers bring with them and their honest desire to raise the achievement levels of their pupils in writing, I hope they will sign up and then be open, flexible and active participants.