사립 특수학교 교사로서의 삶에 대한 내러티브 탐구

Abstract

This study set out to understand the meaning of the lives and experiences of special educators working in private special school spaces. To this end, three special educators with close relationships to the researcher in the private special school space were selected as study participants. These three special educators had lived through different experiences with personal lived knowledge within the changes and culture of private special school employment. In order to explore the experiences and life stories of the participants in this study, the research was conducted as a narrative inquiry method that explored the three-dimensional space of the changes in teacher recruitment (temporality), the private special school, Hannam School (spatiality), and the sociocultural roles and perceptions of private special schools and the unique organizational culture of private special schools (sociality). The research process consisted of organizing field texts as life stories, and the researcher reconstructed them through retelling to understand how special education teachers who have lived in private special schools experience changes in self-esteem and self-perception. This exploratory process revealed that the experience of being a private special school teacher was shaped by multiple dimensions of time and space. This meant that the participants’ experiences as private special school teachers were shaped by the temporality of their past, resent, and future, as well as by their internal and external perceptions and cultural differences. The research participants used the metaphor of a “well” to represent these experiences, and they drew their own experiences from the “well” space. The construction of these experiences provides an understanding of the lives and experiences of teachers in private special schools and allows us to rethink the changes and developments in private special schools in the field of special education. In addition, it was an opportunity for special education teachers working in private special schools to consolidate their role of ownership in the field and gain momentum for new challenges.