Educational Narratives

The narrative, an important tool for constructing meaning

In their article Narratives in Teacher Education, Dolk and den Hertog (2008) describe how important and challenging using a multimedia learning environment is. A multimedia interactive learning environment (MILE) encourages teachers and students not only to create narratives about events or episodes within the classroom, but also to discuss, analyse, interpret and reflect on them.  This is reflected in a subject class.

Dolk and den Hertog (2008) stated that “in the multimedia interactive environment, student teachers are asked to observe and discuss many different educational events” (p. 220) and this observation makes them tell personal stories, that later will help them to construct meaning and reflect on those events.

One of the teachers’ stories “concerns a math lesson in a second grade class room” (Dolk and den Hertong, 2008, p. 222). In this class, the teacher and the students played a number game in which some of them were given a number card between 1 and 99. The children had to indicate where the card should be placed on a number line. One of the students had the number 68 but instead she read 89. Suddenly, her teacher and classmates helped her to realize which the mistake was.

After this episode, teachers were asked to watch the video and create their own narrative; all of them with different interpretations. Students were also asked to reflect on a specific story; they had to compare their stories and then, create a common narrative.

According to Dolk and den Hertong (2008), there is a six step framework to develop their narrative in a more detailed way. The steps are: observing; sharing and discussing observations; analysing; reflecting; developing narrative knowledge; expanding the personal repertoire and generalizing the situation into a didactic for teacher education.

In sum, multimedia interactive learning environment (MILE) is a highly effective approach that brings experience and learning into the teacher education world and encourages students to construct guesswork taking into account their observations and interpretations.

References

Dolk, M., & den Hertog, J. (2008). Narratives in Teacher Education. Interactive Learning Environments, 16(3), 215-229. doi: 10.1080/10494820802113970