Seeing Student/Teacher Relationships as Hidden Dramas of Personal Development

Abstract

We suggest that a narrative structure is inherent in student/teacher relationships, and that teachers' artful shaping of relational stories between themselves and each of their students, most often unbeknownst to the students themselves, is key to the important personal development that takes place through schooling. From a detailed study of one such story, as it was consciously shaped over the course of an entire school year, we argue that the increased prevalence of a relational “narrative paradigm” of the teaching process would help both teachers and those who support their work attain a more authentically educative open-mindedness toward students, enabling them to see their roles somewhat less as general purveyors of intellectual instruction or psychological diagnosis, and more as unique facilitators of personal development.