A personal narrative inquiry into supportive teacher-learner relationships.

Abstract

I am a qualified teacher with just more than a year of teaching experience. While conducting this study, I was pursuing my Master of Education studies full-time. This research study examined my personal experiences concerning supportive teacher-learner relationships across my educational journey. In the process, I wanted to learn how the phenomenon explored has influenced the individual I am today, and how it can continue to do so. Furthermore, I wanted to understand how I might better my future practices regarding supportive teacher-learner relationships. Through a narrative inquiry research methodology, I learnt that in engaging with one’s self and one’s participants, a process of living, telling, and reliving and retelling stories gives rise to new thinking. A sociocultural theoretical perspective helped me learn that development is a process. I also understood that learning is socially and culturally constructed in a given context. Therefore, teachers need to pay special attention to learners’ personal, social and cultural backgrounds. In addition, the “pedagogy of reinvention” concept by Mitchell and Weber (1999, p. 8) helped me understand how working with my memories could contribute to my learning concerning supportive teacher-learner relationships to bring about change. Two research questions informed this study: (a) What can I learn from my personal lived experiences concerning supportive teacher-learner relationships? and (b) As a novice teacher, how can I build on this learning to develop supportive teacher-learner relationships? In answering these questions, I employed multiple data generation methods: memory drawing, artefact/object inquiry, journaling and informal conversations with selected family members, primary school and high school friends, and a university friend. I learnt three valuable lessons that I will take forward from this personal narrative inquiry: Lesson one: Supportive teacher-learner relationships mean responsibility for taking care of learners’ internal (academic) and external (non-academic) needs. Lesson two: At the heart of supportive teacher-learner relationships are teachers who prioritise self-awareness to be conscious of their learners’ various circumstances. Lesson three: Teachers who build and maintain supportive teacher-learner relationships value and involve parents/guardians, learner peers, other teachers, community members, and other relevant stakeholders in teaching and learning processes.