Using vignettes as self-reflexivity in narrative research of problematised history pedagogy

Abstract

This article focuses on the use of vignettes as an emergent dimension of narrative research writing. The author draws on doctoral research that problematised history curriculum and pedagogy with pre-service teachers in the context of secondary teacher education in New Zealand. Pedagogic crossings of history education sites, and negotiation of disciplinary boundaries were storied in the narrative research. A lived experience of curriculum continuity and change had shaped a critical pedagogy orientation in the author's theorising and practice. This featured a self-reflexivity of pedagogic identities including those of student, practitioner, and researcher. The narrative writing was conceptualised as a layered bricolage of academic socialisation, engagement with theory, and practitioner work. Accordingly, it proved unworkable to distance the author's lived experience and pedagogic identities from the narrative, for these lay at the heart of the research. Therefore, the styling of vignettes became a creative way to story self-reflexivity within academic writing. Vignettes were conceived as inside stories that recalled pedagogic voices and evoked themes of curriculum disturbance as transgression, and desire as re-imagined history curriculum.