Practising life writing: teaching through vulnerability, discomfort, mindfulness, and compassion
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Date
2016
Authors
Watt, Jennifer
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Abstract
In this dissertation I engage in life writing and literary métissage (Chambers, Hasebe-Ludt, Leggo, & Sinner, 2012; Hasebe-Ludt, Chambers, & Leggo, 2009) to explore and exemplify mindful, aesthetic, and compassionate practices for working through moments of crisis (Kumashiro, 2010) in teaching and learning. The dissertation is designed as a four-strand braid and organized around the active verb “practising” to dig deep into the dynamic, and often difficult, processes of teaching and learning: (1) Practising Vulnerability; (2) Practising Discomfort; (3) Practising Mindfulness; and (4) Practising Compassion. Each strand is composed of different genres of life writing: theoretical and analytical introductions, letter writing, journal pieces, comics, photos, poetry, creative non-fiction, collages, scenes from a play, and an alphabet book. The multimodal life writing pieces are worked examples (Gee, 2010) of contemplative practices and pedagogical praxis.
Life writing offers concrete ways to practise mindfulness, reflection, and reflexivity, which, in turn, invite a more awakened, critical, and compassionate stance as an educator. If teachers want to move beyond simply promoting the importance of reflective practice, wellbeing, self-actualization, and compassion to their students then we need to show more teachers (and teacher educators) the messy process of doing so themselves. Reading life writing is a starting point for teachers at all stages in their careers to imagine how they could, or already do, engage in similar processes and invite them to cultivate compassion and self-compassion as a grounding stance for their life projects as teachers, learners, and human beings.
My autoethnographic teacher inquiry (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009) was prompted when I encountered “troubling” (Kumashiro, 2009) tensions when first teaching about homophobia and transphobia to teacher education students at a faculty of education on the Canadian prairies. I began to explore the vulnerability and discomfort of this teaching moment from an experimental (Davies, 2011), multimodal (Kress & Street, 2006; Pahl & Roswell, 2006), critical literacy stance (Janks, 2010; Vasquez, Tate, & Harste, 2013). My inquiry shifted after a diagnosis of breast cancer, which became an opportunity for me to awaken to more mindful, empathetic, and compassionate ways of being, living, teaching, and researching.
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Keywords
Life writing, Teacher education, Vulnerability, Discomfort, Mindfulness, Compassion, Currere, Cancer survivorship, LGBTQ*, Arts-based methodologies