Abstract
ABSTRACT In this article, the authors aim at presenting a lived experience and the meaning-making constructed by them as they participate in a simulation of the history of contact between Europeans and Indigenous peoples in the country now named Canada and inquire into their stories within the three-dimensional narrative inquiry space. Considering relational ethics, the teacher educators and researchers lived, told, retold, and relived the stories of their own experiences, co-composing stories of anti-racist teacher education, playfulness, inclusion, privilege, and responsibility, through the eyes of an Indigenous Cree, a Brazilian, and a Canadian woman, towards increasing understanding of decolonizing education.
Highlights
In this paper, we draw on our narratives – Edie, Viviane, and Janet, three female teacher educators – to give a sense of our lives that brought us to the moment of participation in the Blanket Exercise1 (KAIROS, 2017) and to inquire into our experiences during that simulation
To understand the teacher educators’ stories to live by working with languages and anti-racism education, and the spaces to learn about colonization and post-colonial perspectives, we considered Lugones’ (1987) concept of “playfulness”, which is explained in the following way: “Playfulness is, in part, an openness to being a fool, which is a combination of not worrying about competence, not being self-important, not taking norms as sacred and finding ambiguity and double edges a source of wisdom and delight” (1987, p. 17)
To deal with the fact that she felt unsettled, Janet decided to teach towards anti-oppression, to attempt to rectify the ills that her ancestors imposed upon the people who lived in Canada – the Indigenous peoples there had lived with one another in relative peace and in humility with the environment
Summary
We draw on our narratives – Edie, Viviane, and Janet, three female teacher educators – to give a sense of our lives that brought us to the moment of participation in the Blanket Exercise (KAIROS, 2017) and to inquire into our experiences during that simulation. Considering the metaphorical three-dimensional narrative inquiry space (CLANDININ; CONNELLY, 2000), and the three commonplaces of narrative inquiry – temporality, sociality, and place – which specify dimensions of narrative inquiry spaces (to be explained), we could identify some narrative threads which interwove the stories we live and tell about the professional knowledge landscapes in which we live and work in order to co-compose a relational research text. Attentive to the three-dimensional narrative inquiry space of sociality, temporality, and place, we wrote narrative accounts so as to represent who we are and are becoming as teacher educators, with a focus on the simulation (the Blanket Exercise) we lived in Canada Those narrative accounts allowed us to give a representation of the unfolding of our lives, “as they became visible in those times and places where our stories intersected and were shared” In the discussion (when we unpack the narratives of our lived experiences and retell the stories), we explore more deeply how playfulness, inclusion and belonging, and privilege and responsibility, shaped our stories to live by as post-secondary teachers and helped us to understand who we are and are becoming within the landscapes in which we live and work
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
