Storied ways of approaching diversity: Reconceptualizing a blended learning environment in a multicultural teacher education course

Abstract

Purpose – This narrative inquiry explores one teacher educator's curriculum making process (Connelly & Clandinin, 1992) to elicit teacher candidates' emotional and analytic engagement with multicultural education.

Approach – Three semesters of fieldnotes, from one teacher educator's planning and execution of a blended learning format multicultural teacher education course, with face-to-face classes and asynchronous instruction through technology, document her struggles to create a blended learning curriculum model that explicitly addresses ways to impact teacher candidates' dispositions toward multicultural issues.

Findings – The inquiry raises hopeful questions about the possibilities of using stories and technology in a multicultural teacher education blended learning delivery setting. Additionally, the inquiry highlights fruitful tensions involved in making space for the stories of teacher candidates from both nondominant and dominant culture to become part of the curriculum of the class.

Research implications – Narrative inquiry's application as an empirical research method in the field of multicultural education is demonstrated. Highlighted particularly is the capacity in narrative inquiry methods to document places of tension and inclusion in multicultural teacher education.

Value – Awareness of the potential of storied ways of approaching diversity and the benefits of negotiating the tensions involved are of value to teacher educators exploring curriculum making in a blended learning format. Blended learning is reconceptualized beyond the blending of face-to-face and technologically mediated class sessions to include a notion of blending planned and lived curriculum and public and private learning opportunities.

Citation

Maile Cutri, R. (2011), "Storied ways of approaching diversity: Reconceptualizing a blended learning environment in a multicultural teacher education course", Kitchen, J., Ciuffetelli Parker, D. and Pushor, D. (Ed.) Narrative Inquiries into Curriculum Making in Teacher Education (Advances in Research on Teaching, Vol. 13), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 195-216. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-3687(2011)00000130013