Reflective Narration with E-mail

Bregje de Vries

University of Twente, the NetherlandsNLE Workshop, Lisbon - June 9, 2005

Narration & Reflection

• Reflection-on-action(Schön, 1983)

• Transformative function of narration(Jackson, 1995)

• Transformative function of writing(Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987)

Written Narration with E-mail

• Writing for a real audience(e.g., Tichenor & Jewell, 2001)

• Time to reflect(e.g., Russell & Cohen, 1997)

• Writing and Talking(e.g., Baron, 1998)

Embedding E-mail

• Pairing up schools and teachers

• Two e-mail moments

• Individual freewriting

• Paper worksheet

Investigating classroom practices

• Design-Based Research(e.g.,Barab & Squire, 2004)- chain of design experiments- practical and theoretical outcomes

• Three perspectives on narration(Conle, 2003; Genette, 1980)- the act of narrating- rhetorical moves- story

Learning by designing

Learning by designing

The act of narrating I

Teachers’ implementation:

“I have done the freewriting exercise. The children were very enthusiastic and eager, maybe because it was new. What was especially nice was that grammar and misspellings didn’t matter. The most important thing now was the content of their writings, putting their observations into words.”

The act of narrating II

Children’s motivation:

“Writing this down, we still have no idea who you are and what your names are. We are anxious to know”

“Well, bye-bye, take care, sob, sob, sob, we liked working together and e-mailing with you.”

Rhetorical moves

• Average length: 148.4 words

• Letter structure or block structure

• Extended greetings

• Meta-tags

• Repetitive structures

• Enumerations

• Spoken language items

Stories IChronological descriptions

“This afternoon we had another kidnet lesson. We talked a little about last week. Next the teacher read the e-mail from Professor Nature. It was about Biotopia that there are too many animals and too little food. Then we looked at some e-mails from this week and last week. Then we could do our own ecological community on a large piece of paper. That took us about half an hour and then we had to clean up and finally as usual the freewriting last of all. It was a quarter to three and school was over”

Stories IIPersonal Interpretations

“I don’t like fish for it just swims about like that in circles and you can’t do anything with it. It doesn’t make any sound and only says blub, blub sometimes fish just die like that”

“I have learned from this afternoon’s lesson something. that we have to discuss things in the group and not keep them to ourselves”

“An adder is a beautiful and dangerous animal. When you come across it on the moor I’d better take care if I were you. For it has fangs and once it has hold of you I think you have little chance to stay alive for poison is very dangerous”

Conclusions

• Written narration personalizes learning and hence relates to constructivistic approaches towards learning. E-mail provides good opportunity for written narration.

• Conducting design experiments allows one to pay attention to all three perspectives on narration.