Beginning with your experience of disconnectedness, please locate yourself within an approach to Reflexive Inquiry (RI) to analyze that experience and explore how your understanding of self informs praxis. Your paper ought, also, to address how RI can mitigate personal bias to boost research rigor.
ABSTRACT. Using narrative and autoethnographic methods, the author relives a story of his traumatic experience with corporal punishment as a seven-year-old child. It includes a short history of corporal punishment, its use for disciplining behaviour in schools, and details this child’s journey to discover how reflexive exploration can help understand the self and how it informs praxis. This essay is based on a non-fiction narrative short story written by the author. He will argue that receiving a strapping in school has negatively impacted his early childhood education. This is an example of how the praxis of critical pedagogy can foster both understanding and agency in learners.
Introduction
The subject for this essay is the one you know best – yourself: your past and present, thoughts and emotions, memories and present-day interactions. It is probably the subject you try hardest to avoid but the easiest to write about because you lived and are living the story. I am 64 years young, and it appears I have discovered a liberating journey about how getting a strapping in school could help in understanding how self informs praxis.
In this essay, a third-person short story is used, combined with a first-person essay narrative. I permit myself to tell who I am using the physical act of writing, which is a powerful search mechanism. I write about myself with confidence and with pleasure. I see all the details – people, places, events, and emotions – moving my story steadily along. This non-fiction form goes deeply to the roots of a personal experience, to all the drama, pain, humour, and unexpectedness in life.
This is a personal experience of disconnectedness with dehumanizing pedagogy, which is locked in the memory of a seven-year-old child. The essay begins by introducing and discussing the narrative and autoethnographic research methods. Subsequently, the essay highlights the journey of discovering how reflexive exploration can help to understand the self and how it informs praxis. The essay continues to address how reflexive inquiry can mitigate personal bias to boost research rigour. Finally, this essay will conclude by answering the question, how did getting strapped at school form an understanding of self?
My experience of disconnectedness
The day began like any other day for a seven-year-old boy named Laurie on his way to Eugene Coste Elementary School in Calgary, Alberta. It was the third week of grade three. September 1963 was an exciting month with new teachers, books, pencils, and friends. Laurie always walked the back alley behind his house on his way to school, keeping busy throwing stones at garbage cans, fence posts, and the odd stray cat, which he purposefully never hit.
Arriving early to school, Laurie passed the time by throwing dirt lumps in the newly developed school parking lot. Striking trees, signs, and the school dumpster. Thinking nothing of his endeavour, Laurie threw a volley of dirt lumps that struck another boy entirely by accident. No harm, no foul, or so he thought.
Unbeknownst to him, Laurie was being watched by his grade three teacher acting as a monitor for before-class activities. Without warning whatsoever, Laurie was grabbed unceremoniously and escorted to the principal’s office. Realizing he was in trouble, he thought he would receive afternoon detention – how would he explain that to his parents? Too scared to acknowledge his predicament, he did not speak a word while being dragged to the office. To Laurie’s shock and dismay, throwing dirt lumps rated high on the principal’s naughtiness scale. It deserved the most severe of penalties – a strapping!
Laurie could say nothing to convince the principal to change his mind. Because Laurie was considered by many to be big for his age, as if that made any difference in the world’s scheme of things, he was lectured on knowing better and how he could make someone lose an eye. As the room suddenly went deadly quiet. Laurie crossed his hands, expecting the worst but hoping for the best, whatever that could entail. He pulled back his hand after the first hit and gasped. Damn, it hurt! The principal yelled at Laurie to put his hand back and keep it still. Three straps on each hand by a strip of leather the size of a surfboard. With both eyes squinted shut, the pain was like a hive of bees biting the palm of each hand at the same time. Without control, Laurie burst into tears and was crying and begging the principal to stop.
Once the punishment had been delivered, Laurie left the principal’s office and returned to his class after wiping his tears. The strapping seemed to be so over the top and violent for the infraction. In a short period, it appeared every student in the school knew what Laurie had done. That was part of the grand education plan for keeping other children towing the line.
As an adult, Laurie occasionally reflects on this incident and laughs at the cliché, “it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye.” However, the feelings can still haunt him- a mixture of shame, anger, guilt, fear, embarrassment, rejection, hate, and withdrawal from the school education system. Laurie learned the lesson of immediate compliance, but the trauma had caused irreparable damage to the school-child relationship.
After the incident, Laurie’s first report card reflected his lack of interest in school and his continued inappropriate behaviour – straight D’s and one C.
This event happened to me 56 years ago and is a true short story.
Narrative and Autoethnographic research methods
Through a mix of narrative inquiry and autoethnography, the various reflexivity’s, in other words, – the journeys of learning – that I underwent during a specific period of my early formal education are shared. As stated by Abbott (2008), “we cannot make sense of our experiences without the process of storying them; it is important, whether these stories are written or shared, they remain personal constructions inside our minds.” Without a reflexive process, experiences are meaningless. This essay takes me back to a corner of my past that was unusually intense as a child and framed in social tragedy.
Pitre, Kushner, Raine, and Hegadoren (2013) propose that all narrative writing comes from our personal experiences, histories, cultural influences, language, and knowledge. Narrative inquiry as a qualitative method provides a rich framework through which researchers can investigate the ways people experience the world depicted through their stories. Narrative researchers view stories as fundamental to the human experience. This essay’s narrative demonstrates the value and utility of employing narrative as a research tool and reveals how one story interpreted the experience, identity, and self.
Autoethnography, in part, refers to the narrative description of one’s own experiences, interactions, culture, and identity. My story included systematic introspection and emotional recall (Ellis & Bochner, 2000) about a painful experience. Anderson (2006, p. 30) posits that “autoethnography is characterized by complete membership, reflexivity, and narrative visibility of the self.” The subject of strapping in schools involved many evocative tales that encouraged dialogue, change, and social justice. My autoethnographic story, although personal, could provide sensemaking guides for others in similar spaces.
My location and approach to reflexive inquiry
“When you know yourself well – you understand your emotions, social identities, core values, and personality – you gain clarity on your purpose in life and work. Being anchored in purpose makes you able to deal with setbacks and challenges” (Aguilar, 2018, p. 21). Reflexivity generally refers to examining one’s own beliefs, judgments, and practices during the research process and how these may have influenced the research. If positionality refers to what we know and believe, then reflexivity is about what we do with this knowledge. Reflexivity involves questioning one’s taken-for-granted assumptions. Essentially, it consists of drawing attention to the researcher instead of ‘brushing her or him under the carpet’ and pretending that she or he did not have an impact or influence. It requires openness and an acceptance that the researcher is part of the research (Finlay 1998).
A reflexive examination should go beyond one’s conduct in a research project and consider the positionality of the broader research discipline. This could cover what is taken for granted in how problems are defined, which research questions tend to be included or excluded, whether a restrictive dominant paradigm or even a liberal orthodoxy or cultural relativism in which ‘anything goes.’ As with positionality, the discussion of reflexivity has been criticized as narcissistic and self-indulgent. It is essential to remember that the reader may be a lot less interested in the researcher than the researcher himself or herself. Discussion of reflexivity can, further, lead to a kind of paralysis (Johnson and Duberley 2003) as each judgement becomes nested within layer upon layer of personal and disciplinary frames of reference. A way of addressing these difficulties is to bring reflexivity back down to the issues within the research. Winter (1989) compares research to the detective story in which by solving the crime, the detective comes to understand something about him or herself.
A brief history of corporal punishment
School corporal punishment is the deliberate infliction of physical pain due to undesired behaviour by a learner or group of learners. The term corporal punishment is derived from the Latin word for “the body,” corpus used primarily from British practice in the 19th and 20th centuries. In schools, it involved striking the learner across the buttocks, hands, back, or shoulders. Tools used consisted of a rattan cane, wooden paddle, slipper, leather strap, or wooden yardstick.
Advocates of corporal punishment argue it provides an immediate response to indiscipline so that the learner could be quickly sent back to classroom learning, unlike time missed due to suspension. The challenge, it would seem, would be questioning when the strap would be used appropriately. For example, would learners be strapped not only for disobeying rules or disorderly behaviour but also for not understanding a lesson, answering a question incorrectly, not completing homework, or throwing dirt lumps?
Opponents argue physical punishment is ineffective in the long term, interferes with learning, leads to antisocial behaviour, causes low self-esteem, promotes mental illness, and breaches children’s rights. Being subjected to corporal punishment in early childhood can lead to various adverse health and developmental outcomes, including aggressive behaviour, mental health difficulties, physical health difficulties, confusion, and damage to parent-child relationships (Gershoff, 2013; Rose-Krasnor & Durrant). Children may feel stress, fear, anxiety, shame, unhappiness, and depression, continuing into adulthood (Afifi, Mota, Dasiewicz, MacMillan & Sareen, 2012).
The end of corporal punishment
Secondary education expanded massively in the second half of the twentieth century, transforming the opportunities available. Inequality concerning sex, social class and religion changed fundamentally. Learners were treated with unprecedented consideration and respect. These changes were partly due to policy – notably the ending of selection into different secondary schools and the resulting reforms to curriculum, assessment, and child guidance. The reforms thus gave an unprecedented range of learners access to the European cultural legacy. But the changes owed more to slow social evolution than deliberate political action, and schools’ traditions shaped how learners had access to new opportunities.
Poland was the first nation to outlaw corporal punishment in schools in 1783. By 2016 all of Europe and most of South America and East Asia had banned corporal punishment. However, parts of the United States, some Australian states, and many countries in Africa and Asia consider corporal punishment an essential component of their educational system. In 2004, the Supreme Court of Canada outlawed corporal punishment in public and private schools. The practice was viewed as degrading and inhumane.
Discovering how further exploration can help to understand self and how it informs praxis
Palmer (2007) embraces the significance of self in the educative experience, insisting that denying self-limit learning and breeds disconnectedness. When we speak of self and identity, we look at all the forces in one’s life that merge to constitute who I am. Palmer refers to disconnectedness as a form of disengagement that occurs when we experience detachment from our learning. In this essay, I cover Palmer’s third dimension of detachment – personal and public – where I share a unique strapping experience to encourage others who feel disconnected. Parker Palmer shares the opinion of other scholars that we cannot know others if we do not know ourselves. Without these inherent understandings, our capacities to teach and learn are significantly diminished (Lyle, 2018, p. 262).
As a social researcher using reflexivity of my experience with strapping, I acknowledge the changes occurring in myself due to the research process and how these changes will affect my research in the future. For example, I found this essay and research cathartic. I released strong emotions through open expression and narrative dialogue. The journey of discovering my disconnectedness helped me find my connectedness through an iterative and empowering process. By creating space for self, wholeness was fostered where there was once disconnectedness. As my positionality was challenged, I acknowledged that reflexivity should and must be recognized as a significant part of my future research findings.
To be a more holistic educator, it is imperative to understand self and be aware of your personal praxis. A humanizing pedagogy is based on a relationship of trust, caring, and respect and requires a reflective and reflexive stance as part of its praxis. I believe that corporal punishment, in my case, strapping, has no place in education. To understand self, learning is to be in the present moment, without judging it, boosts our resilience. Reflexiveness and a humanizing pedagogy allow me to feel more accepting and clearer about my own educating and learning situations and responses. I know that I relieve stress with the use of humour. By being fully present, I am more likely to find appropriate levity in moments of challenge and to relieve stress by finding humour in most situations.
Freire (1970, p. 75) clarifies that mutual humanization is possible when teachers promote and embrace a humanizing pedagogy. What better way than to tell a story, a memoir which is not a summary of life but a window into it. Understanding self permits me to become the editor of my own life, imposing a half-remembered event in a narrative.
How reflexive inquiry can mitigate personal bias to boost research rigour.
As I wrote the narrative for this essay, I reflected on the notion of lived experience popularized by Schutz (1967), who argued that its importance resides not only in the experience but in our reflexive awareness of it. Schutz continued to emphasize that its meaning is found in retrospective reflection through acts of remembrance, narration, or meditation. Before writing this essay, I would have preferred to have filed the memory of my strapping in the most bottomless, darkest file box, never to be reread. However, I discovered the topic of strapping is not esoteric, and my story could be enjoyed and understood by many rather than a few.
Reflexivity influences our thinking and our actions, and the potential for transformative learning. As a seven-year-old child, I utilized the strapping experience as a lens or interpretation tool to interpret my reality (Mezirow, 1997). For example, my biases were that all teachers were rats, bullies, and could not be trusted. This memory, reflexivity about my teaching, and my change in opinion of teachers have challenged my thinking in new and exciting ways. The lenses I now use act as a reference structure to assist me in making sense of my personal experiences in referencing structures that refer to “habit of mind” and “point of view.” These lenses shape and delimit my expectations, perceptions, cognition, and feelings (Mezirow, 1997, p. 5). I am encouraged toward a more open and sophisticated understanding of the fundamental ideas of bias and a more honest way of looking at things. I understand that it is individual to each learner’s needs and that the change within me will not be easy. Dirkx (1998, p. 3-8) stated that transformation could be achieved by employing consciousness-raising, critical reflection, transformation as development, and individuation. As an adult, I am moving beyond subjective biases towards transforming my current thinking, beliefs, values, and attitudes.
Creating conditions for successful learning
Narrative inquiry and autoethnography was the methodology chosen to identify how one adult out of billions on this planet learned through the meaningful experience of one story in his life’s history.
From this narrative, I invited myself to construct reflexive thinking about the dynamics of my lifelong learning journey. The reflexive interpretation of the learning experience now plays a crucial role in my transformative learning process.
Learning is personal, but it is a collective process as well. There is no formal learning without constant interaction with the social environment. Family, friends, workmates, colleagues are part of our learning experiences. “Learning to be oneself, whatever else one has to learn in life, is the main trend of each life history” (Dominice, 2000, p. 173). Therefore, it is vital to empower educators and learners to become more reflexive.
Learning is essential to the process of finding one’s identity as an adult. Looking at their life history helps adult learners realize what characterizes their relation to knowledge and how they construct their knowledge. School and studying depended on my parent’s expectations and the fear I could not meet them. As stated by Dominice (2000, p. 179), “Adult’s narratives tell us that adults have an image of themselves based on the grades and diplomas they have gained during their school life. Working on their life histories might then discover some meaningful learning experiences that can reduce the weight of the bad memories they have of painful school learning experiences.”
Although there are general characteristics in an adult’s life that are recognizable and re-occurring, each adult also has his or her own story. For example, this narrative approach identified a school failure that occurred to one person, but it was not isolated or uncommon in the education system. However, finding the exact meaning of this experience of loss required reflexivity and carefully listening. As Gaulejac (1987, p. 98) states, “Adult identity is torn between permanence and contrast, between similarity and singularity, between reproduction and differentiation, between the past as background and openness to the future in the present.”
Conclusion
Reflexivity as a process is an introspection of self and the research process with the goal of transformation. As stated by Lawler (2002, p. 239), “we all tell stories about our lives, both to ourselves and to others; and it is through such stories that we make sense of the world, of our relationship to the world, and the relationship between ourselves and other-selves. Further, it is through such stories that we produce identities.” I am proud to have written a story and explained it in essay form. I addressed and worked with the dehumanizing legacy of strapping and acknowledged its presence in education.
I have produced a self and identity worth respect through reflection and reflexivity. As a result, I am a better researcher, learner, educator, and person. My story served to construct and shape experience. It provided a window for understanding how I interpreted a situation and created a reality that I could, in turn, act upon. Issues surfaced essential to educating learners, such as the importance of emotions, care, compassion, mutual vulnerability, social justice, and issues of voice.
This essay has returned me to the source of reflexivity and transformation in understanding a more humanizing pedagogy and a critical personal teaching philosophical underpinning. I explored my understandings of a dehumanizing pedagogical experience. Strapping was used as a method of compliance and discipline. Still, as expressed by Freire (2003, p. 68-69), “in a humanizing pedagogy the method ceases to be an instrument by which teachers . . . can manipulate students, but rather expresses the consciousness of the students . . . themselves.” The event was ineffective in helping me develop positive values, care for others, develop responsibility, learn to problem solve, or think independently.
In life, we make decisions we may regret. I never told my parents about the strapping in school. My embarrassment haunts me to this day. Until this essay, I disconnected from self by failing to remove barriers of silence and secrecy, weakening me individually. As recommended by Harkins et al., 2009, I have told my story honestly and unapologetically, which has contributed powerfully to my insights while acting as a pedagogical strategy. Reflexive inquiry has been a tool for personal healing of my authentic self while re-connecting the reality of who I am, which is central to sense-making and fostering a coherent sense of identity. I say this because the one person I know best is myself.
References
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