Debbie Pushor – författare

The authors explore how individuals' identity and personal practical knowledge are being formed, shifted or interrupted through moments in teacher education which the authors have carefully and thoughtfully constructed. The particularity of the stories, expressed in this collection, provide us with multiple perspectives and multiple entry points into making deeper sense of the complexity of curriculum-making in teacher education. As the stories of experience resonate with our own or as they stand apart from them, they provoke us to re-imagine teacher education, and to retell and relive our own stories of teacher education with new possibility. Narrative inquiry offers teacher educators a way to move the telling of stories of curriculum-making in teacher education forward, to delve more deeply into stories in order to make sense of experience and to attend more closely to a curriculum of life that is educative for the self and others in teacher education.

The authors explore how individuals'' identity and personal practical knowledge are being formed, shifted or interrupted through moments in teacher education which the authors have carefully and thoughtfully constructed. The particularity of the stories, expressed in this collection, provide us with multiple perspectives and multiple entry points into making deeper sense of the complexity of curriculum-making in teacher education. As the stories of experience resonate with our own or as they stand apart from them, they provoke us to re-imagine teacher education, and to retell and relive our own stories of teacher education with new possibility. Narrative inquiry offers teacher educators a way to move the telling of stories of curriculum-making in teacher education forward, to delve more deeply into stories in order to make sense of experience and to attend more closely to a curriculum of life that is educative for the self and others in teacher education.

Working with parents is a significant aspect of educators’ roles, yet it is rare to find curriculum in teacher education programs designed to prepare individuals to consider, in philosophical, theoretical, and pedagogical ways, who they will be in relationship with parents and why. Schools, therefore, remain hierarchical structures in which parents are marginalized in relation to decisions affecting teaching and learning. This book begins with Pushor’s conceptualization of a “curriculum of parents,” a curriculum which explores beliefs and assumptions about parents, a vision for education in which educators work alongside parents and family members in the learning and care of children, and a desire for reform. She describes a curriculum of parents, in the form of three graduate teacher education courses, which she lived out in relationship with students. Graduate students then capture their experiences immersed in this curriculum – what they each took up, how it shaped their knowledge, attitudes, and practices, and how they lived it out as they returned to their classrooms, schools, and early learning centres. This book is a storied account of their intense immersion in a curriculum of parents and the resulting impact living that curriculum has had on who they are in relation to parents and families. It is an honest and vulnerable account of their shared and individual journeys. They puzzle over the complexities and the successes of their work and the resulting impact. This is not a book of best practice, but an invitation to other educators to consider, as they did, what they do and how it could be different.