Historicity, Narrative, and Metaphor: My Journey through Historical Research

Abstract

My field of interest chose itself. As a long-time participant in my State education system, initially as the child of teachers and later as a teacher myself, I became fascinated by the culture of my teaching community. I was especially enticed by the intersection of this culture with the complex processes of curriculum change. Over the years, my own conversations with colleagues and friends about schools and learning, increasingly mirrored those overheard in my youth between my parents and their friends. Despite multiple differences in context across the years and generations, these conversations created a recurring déjà vu. In research I have tried to link my cross-generation local cultural knowledge and understandings with my own interest in teasing out a coherent pattern to this reiterative process of change.