Influences on, and possibilities for, my English pedagogy: a narrative self-study.
Loading...
Date
2017
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
This thesis reports on a narrative self-study through which I explore the influences on and
possibilities for my pedagogy. Throughout the 32 years of my working life, I have been in the
field of English education and have always felt that the pedagogy which I enact is quite
ordinary. Over the years, I have taught English as a first language and as a second language in
secondary schools in South Africa. I have also been actively involved in other phases of
education and have taught in the field of Adult Basic Education and Training (ABET). I
lectured Communication at a University of Technology and am currently employed on a
permanent basis as an English teacher educator at a university in Kwa-Zulu Natal in South
Africa. I aspire to model purposeful pedagogy that will inspire my students. In an attempt to
make my enacted pedagogy congruent with that to which I aspire, my starting point was to
write my personal history narrative in an attempt to understand my current practice and to
identify possibilities for future practice. I was the main participant in the study and the other
participants were my sister, my critical friends, my pre-service undergraduate students who
volunteered, and my 2015 and 2016 honors students. My research text was my personal
narrative and my reflective diary, conversations with my sister, peers and students as well as
critical friend feedback served as my field texts. Additional field texts were student emails,
assignments and lecture reflections. In the analysis of my personal history narrative, I used my
disciplinary knowledge as I juxtaposed my personal narrative with literature and film. In the
first layer of the analysis, my personal history narrative was analysed in the same way as I
would analyse any other literary text and what was revealed was that more depth was required.
This led to a second layer of analysis wherein I juxtaposed my personal history narrative with
literature. The second layer of analysis revealed twenty-eight themes which I collapsed into
three major dimensions of my pedagogy. A third layer of analysis followed and in this, there
was juxtaposition of my personal narrative and film. My original methodological contribution
is that of two creative analytic practices. The first being my layered literary analysis. After the
layered analysis, I examined my undergraduate and post graduate pedagogy in an attempt to
use the influences that had been expose to identify possibilities for current and future pedagogy.
In doing so, I used a method of multi-layered pedagogic reflection which is my second creative
analytic contribution.
Description
Doctoral Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.