Recognizing and navigating the relational landscapes of self in action: How higher Ed educators construe the value and purpose of the ePortfolio process

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Educators Construe the Value and Purpose of the ePortfolio Process by

Scott Gerrity

BA, Eckerd College, USA, 1985

MA, University of North Carolina Ch-H, USA, 1992 A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction

We acknowledge with respect the Lekwungen-speaking peoples on whose traditional territory the university stands and the Songhees, Esquimalt and WSÁNEĆ peoples whose

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Supervisory Committee

Recognizing and Navigating the Relational Landscapes of Self in Action: How Higher Ed Educators Construe the Value and Purpose of the ePortfolio Process

by Scott Gerrity

BA, Eckerd College, USA, 1985

MA, University of North Carolina Ch-H, USA, 1992

Supervisory Committee Dr. Kathy Sanford, Supervisor

Department of Curriculum and Instruction Dr. Tim Hopper, Committee Member

School of Exercise Science, Physical and Health Education Dr. Darlene Clover, Outside Committee Member

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Abstract

Instructors in higher education are being asked to introduce electronic portfolios (ePs) into their teaching without prior knowledge or experience on how to do it

effectively. They struggle with conceptualizing how the eP process connects pedagogy, assessment and student engagement within their courses and programs. Research has shown that instructors need to experience the eP process first hand, within meaningful and situated contexts that enable professional learning. This study explores how

instructors make meaning of the eP process in relation to their own professional learning, and subsequently how they construe the eP process’s pedagogic purpose and value for their students. In this context, professional learning is defined as a relational engagement between identity, knowledge construction and professional practice that leads to a transformative understanding of learning as embodied and holistic.

Based on a review of the literature on the eP process and theories of professional learning, a group of instructors in higher education were engaged in a shared self-study of the eP process within a narrative inquiry methodology. They used images, video, word clouds and other artifacts to explore and build awareness of the values and beliefs that have shaped their teaching practices. Participants concluded that the eP process promotes multiple competencies linked to “readiness,” the ability to assess new situations and move forward in new environments. Intrinsically formed through iterative cycles of reflection and engagement, “readiness” is a dispositional stance or type of knowing-in-action that can help students bridge the gap between conceptual knowledge learned in classrooms and situated, relational knowledge required for professional practice. The study implications are that the eP process can be used as tool for professional educators

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iv to examine their own practices, in order to imagine new ways of learning for their

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List of Figures

Figure 1: Methodological Framework ... 38

Figure 2: An overview of the shared self-study process... 47

Figure 3: Image of The Climber ... 71

Figure 4: Mary’s word cloud ... 90

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my supervisor, Kathy Sanford, for her patience, support and guidance throughout the writing of this dissertation. I would also like to thank Tim Hopper for the multiple opportunities that he provided for me to engage in the learning, teaching and researching of the ePortfolio process.

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Dedication

I dedicate this dissertation to my wife, Tracie, and my daughter, Celia. Their ongoing support and understanding throughout this long process gave me the commitment and strength to finish the work. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

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Chapter One: Introduction

Introduction

The world of higher education in North America is seeing an explosion in the use of electronic portfolios. In 2012, Educause Center for Research (2012)1 published the surprising finding that electronic portfolio (eP) use by undergraduate students jumped sevenfold in 2 years, from 7% in 2010 to 52% in 2012 (p. 29). These numbers suggest that as undergraduate programs adopt ePs they are simultaneously asking their instructors to implement, teach and link ePs learning to the requirements of the professional field. From the perspective of professional educators, these stats beg the question, what methods are instructors using to integrate ePs into their teaching? Are they actually learning how to use ePs themselves?

The jump in eP use is being driven in large part by hiring and advancement practices within professional organizations based on competencies. Understandably, organizations want to ensure that employees have competencies in the specific areas necessary to fulfill the duties of the position. Considering these organizational practices, professional oversight and accrediting bodies within Nursing, Social Work and Education are requiring that professional schools ensure students meet competencies before

graduation. Increasingly, professional schools are turning to ePs to enable students to build and demonstrate evidence of learning that speaks to competencies. For example, Arntfield, Parlett, Meston, Apramian & Lingard (2016) cite that professional schools

1_{ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2012. This ECAR study involved} collaboration with 195 institutions (184 U.S.-based, 11 other) and surveyed more than 100,000 students from around the world.

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2 such as Medicine and Nursing are turning to ePs to address the international shift towards competency-based models in order to satisfy new accreditation standards. Goodyear, Bindal & Wall (2013) add that both undergraduate and postgraduate programs are increasing their emphasis on reflective practices and life-long learning, founded on evidence of learning-based models such as ePs.

For educators within professional schools in North America, the shift towards evidence of learning based approaches implies a need to move away from instructor-centric practices often understood as “stand and deliver” toward a learner-instructor-centric, negotiated curriculum in which students build self-selected artifacts and critically reflect on how to link them to competencies. Implicitly, educators are being asked to re-assess and reframe how they share their knowledge and practices in the context of the new eP process, in order to gain proficiencies that make them increasingly more competent as instructors within a globalized digital age and help prepare their students for professional life.

However, shifting teaching perspectives within institutional contexts is fraught with challenges. Higher education lags in helping its educators realize the pedagogic potential for enabling transformative learning through newer technologies (Gustavsen, 2002). In Canada especially, as Siemens and Matheos (2010) point out, educational institutions still retain systemic structures that do not promote or encourage a more participatory pedagogy between instructors and students —so important in the

development of innovation (Fullan, 2007)— that is afforded by newer technologies such as the eP. In a comprehensive study on challenges to ePortfolio adoption across multiple programs within the US, Wetzel and Strudler (2005) specifically point to conflicting

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3 educational paradigms within departments, student resistance, and paradigm shifts in assessment. Working within these systemic structures, instructors cite not the skills training on learning technologies as the primary barrier for successful integration of eP practices, but rather time, departmental support and access to contextualized learning opportunities and models that have pedagogic value (Moser, 2007).

My own initial research into eP implementation echoes the findings of both Wetzel and Strudler (2005) and Moser (2007). In examining three eP implementations at separate universities, my colleagues and I found that the challenges that arose spoke directly to the need for instructors to shift their pedagogies to value learning as a constructivist process rather than a measurable product (Gerrity, Hopper & Sanford, 2014). In moving forward, this research highlighted the need for instructors to develop competencies and model practices that encourage and enable students to value their learning, share their learning through scaffolded and contextualized events, and come to understand both the eP process and the electronic platform in relation to the underlying notion of professional digital representations or identities. Pedagogic structures that function well across programs tend to focus on helping students establish and maintain both habits of mind and practice in ongoing, shared engagements with digital identity building through recursive processes of self- and peer-assessment.

The digital identity component, our research also found, is becoming increasingly more emphasized in eP implementation strategies and increasingly more integrated within eP platform feature sets. However, building professional digital identities is a much more complex endeavor than simply engaging with platform feature sets. Digital identity (professional and other) requires contextualizing the “what” and “how” of

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4 identity representations in light “for whom?” and “for what purpose?” Creating

meaningful digital representations of professional identity requires high level meta-cognitive thinking and ongoing awareness of process.

Traditionally, a common critique across professional programs is that ePs offer a narrow instrumentalist approach emphasizing the “how to,” the “what works,” and the mastering of the “best” practices (Aronowitz & Giroux, 1985). This critique says more about how ePs are being implemented in programs than it does about their pedagogic value. Good implementation requires that instructors design and undertake learning themselves, to understand what building digital professional identities means within the eP process, in a manner that supports and encourages them to examine critically their assumptions, practices and articulations of their own professional identities.

Black and Wiliam (1998) remind us that assessment is only as valuable as the function it plays in helping learners form and reform their learning processes. The “formative” of assessment must be embedded holistically within curriculum structures and practices, as feedback cycles, self-reflection or instructor initiated scaffolding that both engages and motivates students actively to improve their own learning.

Functionally, assessment serves as a form of learning in regard to the whole student and his or her experiences with learning. Useful assessment supports students’ thinking as a meta-cognitive process, and positions students as the primary agents in their

understanding, linking past performance to current and future performance, in relation to what it means to succeed within the professional field.

Assessment of competency in relation to ePs in professional schools has long been moving toward more formative, holistic approaches (Gonczi, 1994; Hodkinson,

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5 1992). McMullan, Edacott, Gray, Jasper, Miller, Scoles, and Webb (2003) emphasize that knowledge is generally context-specific, and that students build and exhibit competence in differentiating ways. This recognition is increasingly asking educators as practitioners to approach competence as a dynamic, a dialectical relationship between performers, actions and the culture in which it resides. In this light, assessment moves away from notions of measurable product and rightly focuses on the underlying attributes of the whole practitioner in the context in which the practitioner practices. Within eP learning, the evidence of what and how new practitioners exhibit competency forms through building digital collections in an ongoing dialectic with self-, peer-, and instructor feedback—objectively, in recognizing linkages to learning outcomes/competencies (reflection-oriented, not tick boxes); and subjectively through the instructor’s experienced judgment as practitioner in the field and as practitioner educator. ePs, as a recognition of evidence of competence, intrinsically build on the assessment as learning process, the ability of learners to learn from the process of doing assessment, outlined by eP

researchers such as Barrett and Wilkerson (2004), Butler (2006), Earl (2003), and Hopper and Sanford (2010).

As we see regularly, competencies and standards specified by professional accrediting bodies not only shift regularly but also serve learning only as static reference points, not assessment processes. Assessment processes have to be constructed in relation to notions of competence. In my own research and teaching experiences, I have found that competence in relation to expectations of performance not only functions as better scaffolding for student success, but motivate students’ desire to explore their professional identity through self- and peer-assessment strategies.

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6 In summary, instructors are being asked to implement ePs within their courses at staggering rates. However, they are struggling with the ways in which they perceive or imagine how—or cannot imagine how—the eP process connects pedagogy, assessment and student engagement within their program boundaries. The contextual issues may arise at the programmatic level, but they are located, enacted and experienced within classroom settings, where instructors grapple with the ways in which they engage with practices that enable students to learn. In citing paradigm shifts regarding eP use, instructors imply that the primary challenge lies specifically in how they understand the eP process in meaningful praxis and the implications of that understanding for student learning (Moser, 2007). More specifically, the challenge lies in re-framing the

relationship between learning and assessment as enabled by the eP process within the context of evidence-based learning.

How educators forge professional identities in encounters with their own learning has not attracted enough attention in relation to the quickly building literature around learning theories within 21st century contexts (Benoit, 2015; Chau & Cheng, 2010). The instrumentalist approaches within traditional program professional development models have proven to be ineffective because they fail to engage instructors in an exploration of their assumptions, bias and practices in a manner that allows them to “talk to their… experiences, consider alternatives, and contextualize theory within practice and practice within theory” (Russell, McPherson, & Martin, 2001, p. 44). The electronic component complicates matters. In addition to requiring functional levels of mastery of the “how to” of technology, virtual environments also require engagement with a multiplicity of teaching and learning roles, if not shifting notions of virtualized identities. Within the

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7 classroom (be it blended or fully online), instructors are being asked to evaluate

virtualized, multi-modal representations (both artifacts and reflection) of students’ experiential learning in a complex consideration of how the representations meet formal but often shifting notions of professional competencies.

Research Questions

My research question focuses on the relationship between professional learning, the eP process and evidence of learning-based approaches to pedagogy. In my study, these three areas intersect in the ways that the eP process serves as a vehicle for reflective and reflexive engagement for instructors with their own professional identities and

teaching practices. The question is situated contextually within the problematic

relationship between traditional forms of assessment within learner and learning-based curriculum, as evidenced by the eP process. The question that guides my research study is:

1. How do instructors in higher education use the eP process to examine and transform their own teaching practices in light of evidence-based approaches to their professional learning?

I explored this question within the context of:

2. How do instructors (re)define assessment in relation to how learning is enabled by the eP process?

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Chapter Two: Within the Literature: The Issues Under Inquiry

Defining the Terms: Professional Learning

I situate professional learning within Mezirow’s framework of transformative learning (1981, 1991, 1994, 2000). Mezirow (2000) writes,

Transformative learning refers to the process by which we transform our taken-for-granted frames of reference (meaning perspectives, habits of mind, mind-sets) to make them more inclusive, discriminating, open, emotionally capable of change, and reflective so that they may generate beliefs and opinions that will prove more true or justified to guide action (pp. 4-5).

The process involves becoming critically aware of not only one’s tacit assumptions and expectations but also those of others in coming to a new interpretation. Mezirow notes, “In adulthood, knowing how you know involves awareness of the context—sources, nature and consequences—of your interpretations and beliefs and those of others” (p. 70). Learning begins by recognizing one’s categorical thinking patterns that have become tacit over time, and seeing the norms, conditions and socialized expectations that drive our behaviours and actions.

Bruner (1957) contends that our categorical thinking becomes so reified over time that we cease to recognize the polysemic and indeterminate quality of experience, and instead re-engage repeatedly with the mental categories themselves. Building on Bruner’s work, Mezirow (1981) writes, “We construct a model of the world with our system of categories, come to expect certain relationships and behaviours to occur and then

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9 double-edged sword. It serves as an “evocative shortcut” that allows us to act, believe, or do something in an automatic, formulaic manner that is useful in the context of learning. However, it can also blind us to the rigidity of categorical thinking, and foster a certain finality in the ways we engage with our learning. Unexamined categorical thinking “can ossify activity around its inertness” (p. 58) and provide us with an illusion that we fully understand the processes or meaning our thinking describes as an unbiased engagement with the phenomenon.

A primary vehicle for transforming our thinking patterns is perspective taking or “seeing” oneself through another’s lens. Learning through perspective taking involves positioning the “self” in reflexive engagement with an “other” that generates new locations from which to understand identity (Bruner, 1987; Gillespie, 2007; Mezirow, 1997; Qualley, 1997). As Qualley (1997) notes, “The encounter with an ‘other’ results in new information or perspectives which we must hold up to our current conception of things” (pp. 11-12). The act of “othering” problematizes our categorical thinking patterns and, given the proper conditions, initiates inquiry into its processes.

Mezirow (1997) contends that “othering” is achieved through reflective discourse. He writes, “Discourse is that specialized use of dialogue devoted to searching for a common understanding and assessment of the justification of an interpretation or belief. This involves assessing reasons advanced by weighing the supporting evidence and arguments and examining alternative perspectives” (pp. 10-11). The other may be an actual person or, as Qualley (1997) notes, the other may be a symbolic representation such as a text, narrative, poem or image created by an earlier self, a return to one’s earlier (or previously imagined) identity (p. 139). For example, Bruner (1987) and Mezirow

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10 (1981) explicitly recognize metaphorical thinking and symbolic representation as

vehicles for engaging with self in relation to an other. Mezirow (1981) writes, “Through symbolic representation one can dialogue with oneself, and, in imagination, construct the perspective of the other person. Perspective taking then becomes an indispensable

heuristic for higher level cognitive and personality development” (p. 70). Perspective taking as a form of “othering” situates learning as an imaginative, relational engagement between identity, perspective (one’s own and those of others) and the ways we construct knowledge.

Learning becomes professional when the relational engagement between identity, knowledge construction and professional practice becomes the focus of inquiry.

Grounded in adult learning theory, this type of learning is not instrumentally or

informationally focused on knowledge acquisition or skills development, but rather on development that leads to shifts in perspective and transformative understanding of oneself in action (Portnow, Popp, Broderick, Drago-Severson, & Kegan, 1986).

Professional learning occurs when inquiry has an impact on a learner’s identity, meaning-making processes, and teaching practices (Benoit, 2017; Merriam & Clark, 1993).

Polyani (1959) emphasizes that professional knowledge is implicitly gained through ongoing critical reflection on teaching practices, which become tacit over time as instructors integrate and re-integrate the complexities of evolving personal, social,

institutional and pedagogic contexts that frame their practices. Through cycles of critical reflection, the professional educator “uncovers and produces knowledge of practice” (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2011, p. 348). Critical reflection on practice disrupts habitual thinking and doing, which over time can result in what Brookfield (1995) calls

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11 “experiencing the same year of teaching over a span of decades” (cited in Benoit, 2015, p. 4). Self-examination of practice assumes that the process of “looking in” at self in relation to practice serves to build awareness of one’s current ways of perceiving or constructing knowledge, and “looking to” others helps to imagine new ways of knowing that will inform practice.

Defining the Issue: Relating to the eP Process in Meaningful Praxis

Instructors in higher education are struggling with how to relate to the eP process in meaningful praxis (Gerrity et al., 2013; Moser, 2007; Wetzel & Strudler, 2005). The constellation of issues that contribute to their struggles lie at the intersection of paradigm shifts within education, resistance to mandated “top down” approaches to teaching and learning based on standards, and the lack of opportunities to engage meaningfully in re-framing how they might interconnect pedagogy, knowledge and learning approaches enabled by the eP process. The relationships are further complicated by the virtualization of learning and the virtual identities that come with them, and both instrumental and communicative knowledge in using multimodal texts to represent ourselves within virtual environments. The issues arise often at the programmatic level, but they are located and enacted within classroom and practicum placement settings, where educators grapple with how to engage with practices the enable students to learn in a holistic manner, and prepare for careers in professional practice.

The eP process is implicitly a learning process and a learner-centred curriculum founded on constructivist and social constructivist approaches to learning, and

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12 Smith & Tillema, 2003). However, curriculum models and instructor teaching practices within higher education are currently still heavily instructor-centred in nature (e.g. Benoit, 2015). Teaching-centred curricula privilege the instructor’s expert knowledge of pre-defined and established content and processes outlining how and why students should engage with learning. These approaches are currently considered, informally, as “stand and deliver” models of instruction that place students in the role of receptacles in which to pour knowledge and mould to a particular orientation towards that knowledge (Freire, 2007). Learning centred curricula, on the other hand, are situated around the student’s interests, relationships, learning style, and particularly “choice” in how these are integrated into the course learning process. Student centred curricula are based on evolving learning theories indicating that student negotiation and control of learning motivates and stimulates sustained engagement with content, processes and other people who share in the process. Learning-centred curricula beg the question of whose

knowledge and learning is of most worth in instructor/student engagements.

Lave and Wenger (1991) emphasize that there is an inherent tension between learning-centred curricula and teaching-centred curricula. The tension resides in the locus of control and to what extent the instructor is willing and able to cede his/her role as knowledge “expert,” and embrace aspects of learning theories in course design and mode of instruction that allow students to take ownership of the process and develop their own competencies. Sorcinelli, Austin, Eddy, and Beach (2006), and Lattuca (2005) maintain that faculty in higher education still align themselves more with the norms, practices and worldviews of teaching accepted within their disciplines than with the learning of their students. Identities as researchers first, instructors second (Bandura, 1986) also contribute

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13 to the “expert” mindset, specifically in relation to what constitutes knowledge within the discipline (Lindblom-Yianne, Trigwell, Nevgi, & Ashwin, 2006; Lueddeke, 2003; Neuman, 2001). Ceding control and re-thinking practices can be perceived as threatening not only to an instructor’s worldview but also to his or her identity aligned to the norms and practices within the discipline. Benoit (2015) notes, “If the greater part of a faculty member’s overall identity is composed of alignment with the faculty expert role

conjoined with membership in a particular disciplinary community, the result may be increased territoriality and resistance to change” (p. 359). The extent to which instructors can and will cede control of their students’ learning, as well as establish (alone or in concert with students) both theoretically and practically sound conditions for meaningful praxis, involves ceding power as experts over their students in favour of empowering their students, in a variety of roles as facilitators, mentors and resource providers.

The eP process, learning- and learner-centric, implicitly problematizes and challenges instructor-centric curricula as well as instructor identities founded on the problematic “expert” roles and knowledge I laid out above (Samaras & Fox, 2012). However, instructors as adult learners need contextualized learning opportunities that speak to an embodied and relational understanding of knowledge (Brookfield, 1995), so that the eP process can be understood as a learner-centered vehicle for transformation, not a checklist of activities. Contextualized learning means situating the eP process of

learning within discipline specific challenges or areas of tension. Within professional schools, a primary tension resides in meaningful praxis itself, the interplay between conceptual knowledge and its application in practice settings (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Professional educators continue to struggle to find ways to help their students bridge the

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14 gap between conceptual knowledge learned in classrooms and situated, relational

knowledge required for professional practice (Markauskaite & Goodyear, 2014; McMullan et al., 2003; Mulder, 2014). Moreover, Markauskaite & Goodyear (2014) argue that the gap resides not in the “knowledge to understand” vs. “knowledge to do” dichotomy, but rather in the disconnect between classroom contexts for learning and the actual situations in which conceptual knowledge gets applied: “Students do not ‘see’ learnt concepts as professionals do, because educators and employers rarely succeed in creating conditions that allow students to ground concepts in situations that fuse theoretical and practical professional experiences” (p. 101). Bringing these student experiences in line with my previous discussions, the same could be said of professional educators attempting to learn the eP process. The contexts for understanding and

conceptualizing the eP’s purpose and value must be grounded in discipline or pedagogic-specific issues in order for professional learning to be meaningful.

Contextualized learning is meaningful because our cognition itself is situated within experiential frames of reference (Bruner, 1987; Dewey, 1910; Schön, 1986). Arguments in defence of situated cognition emphasize embodied and relational ways of knowing (Damiani & Gomez Paloma, 2017), and share the overarching commonality that agency, application and purpose—action with intent, not abstract conceptualization— drive our thinking and motivate us to learn (Barselou, 2008; D’all Alba & Barnacle, 2007). The implications for learning is that “knowing something” is co-constructed between the knower and the known as an embodied and relational engagement, one in which the purpose of engagement defines how we construct knowledge (Dewey, 1902; 1910). The individual actively constructs his or her own cognitive processes in relation to

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15 specific social contents and environments (Barselou, 2008), as a way of being in the world, a dispositional stance founded on thinking, making and acting as ways of being and knowing. This stance within professional practice “pulls disparate elements of practice together as an “assemblage of self” (Markauskaite & Goodyear, 2014, p. 91), and reorganizes conceptual knowledge not around abstract categories but rather “the interface between perception and action—for example, understanding the concept means ‘conceptually being there’” (Markauskaite & Goodyear, 2014, p. 100) in a dispositional state of purposeful agency.

Competency within professional practice also reflects a dispositional stance founded on embodied knowledge and identity. Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner (2015) consider competence as an identity or a way of knowing, not a particular set of skills, that is negotiated and defined by the domains of knowledge and norms of practice of a given community of practice. Competency is highly contextualized and situated, and does not necessarily transfer across contextual boundaries. Navigating across boundaries implies navigating multiple domains of knowledge and various landscapes of practice. The ability to navigate across contextual boundaries of knowledge requires a constant re-negotiation of meaning and identity, not just knowledge, especially when students move from classroom situations to professional practice ones, and must create as well as navigate new contextual boundaries—tiered relationships, agency norms, regulatory bodies, myriad of client issues—in becoming competent within their field.

Given that knowledge is generated in relation to its context, it follows that

engagement with new contexts produces different ways of knowing. Within an embodied and relational understanding of cognition, knowledge creation theorists contend that

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16 knowledge resides not just in the individual mind, but also in our mediating and

conceptual artifacts. As Paavola, Lipponen, & Hakkarainen (2004) note, Learning could be understood as a collaborative effort directed towards developing some mediated artefacts, broadly defined as including knowledge, ideas, practices, and material and conceptual artefacts. The interaction among different forms of knowledge or between knowledge and other activities is emphasized as a requirement for this kind of innovativeness in learning and knowledge creation. (pp. 569-570)

Lave and Wenger (1991), and Schön (1987) add that we apprehend new knowledge in direct and unmediated ways through engagements with our mediating tools and artifacts that include concepts used as tools, and that what is learned cannot be separated from how it is learned or the context in which it is learned. Without the use of mediating tools or artifacts, knowledge risks becoming inert, decontextualized as a means to solve specific problems, to examine or deconstruct a problem and re-imagine it in a different light (Carter & Adkins, 2015). Our conceptual artifacts serve to mediate how new knowledge is formed, and their modality contextualizes the ways knowledge is recognized and categorized in the mind.

As much as cognition may be situated within experiential frames of reference and mediated through our engagements with conceptual artifacts, the meaning we make of an event is highly individualistic and cannot be considered inherent to the event. Meaning making is more circular and iterative than linear (Merriam & Heuer, 1996), often

embodied and felt (Tobin & Tisdell, 2015), and meaningful in so much as the individual experiences it as meaningful (Stern, 1971). “Meaning-making involves interpreting or

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17 giving coherence to experience” (Mezirow, 1991, p. 4), which is, as Helsen and

Shrivastava (2011) note, highly subjective in nature, founded on the individual’s reaction to an event, not the event itself, and contextualized by his or her personality traits,

disposition and openness to learning, as well as relationship to the knowledge domains and communities of practice in which the experience takes place. Wenger and Trayner and Wenger and Trayner (2015), and Usher (1993) argue that the environments in which meaningful events take place are themselves meaningful and are important factors in understanding how adult learning occurs within institutional and professional settings. For one, interpretation or perspective occurs within a particular context or point of view, which include cultural significations, existing meanings, and one’s experiential history (Usher, 1993) in relation to the norms, domains of knowledge, and practices of a defined community of practice. Meaning making within professional learning contexts is founded on the individual’s identity within a shared domain of knowledge and the practices for which that domain of knowledge is relevant.

Context of the Issue: The Relationship Between Learning and Assessment Within the eP Process

The context that guides my study is how instructors (re)define assessment in relation to how learning is enabled by the eP process. Within the eP process, assessment is a recognized place of tension residing between measuring competencies and capturing development and reflection of the individual as authentic learning (Darling, 2001; McMullan et al., 2003; Smith & Tillema, 2003). Educators differ dramatically in the reasons they cite for questioning assessment within the eP process. Some highlight the

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18 danger in unreflective assessment practices that privilege measuring competencies over learning and reflection (Chau & Cheng, 2010). Others emphasize the opposite, calling into question the validity of eP assessment because it assesses primarily “[individuals’] ability to write about their practice rather than the standards necessary for the actual practice itself” (McMullan et al., 2003, p. 284). I argue, along with Delandshere and Arens (2003), that the issue rightly lies in the epistemological positionality of the eP assessor, and more specifically in the differences in understandings of what constitutes evidence and reflection. Meeus et al. (2006) add that ePs can only inform us indirectly regarding student competencies, and that the indirect nature of evidence in general is problematic. The issue is a pedagogic conundrum, located within the epistemological positionality of how instructors relate to learning and assessment within the eP process and evidence-based learning in general.

The pedagogic conundrum is implicitly brought to the forefront of teaching practices in the manner in which the eP frames the relationship between learning, competencies and assessment. “For example, in building ePs, students create digital artifacts of their learning, reflect on the relevance of the artifacts to programmatic or course outcomes, competencies or values, then assemble both artifacts and reflections together as a self-informed, self-authored presentation” (Gerrity, Hopper & Sanford, 2014, p. 199). This process allows for students to demonstrate how they connect what they learn in courses with fieldwork through an ongoing self-reflection and

peer/supervisor review process (Stefani, Mason & Pegler, 2007). In this manner, students clearly document their own progress and achievement of defined knowledge, as well as their own understanding of competencies and skills required of the practitioner (Byrne,

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19 Schoeter, Carter & Mower, 2009; Hopper & Sanford, 2010; Shirley, 2009). As students continue to engage in a cycle of building representations of their learning experiences, their knowledge also builds in the “doing” to form a reflexive sense of growing mastery or agency within an iterative process of experiential learning and reflection on learning (Hopper & Sanford, 2010; Hopper, Sanford & Bonsor-Kurki, 2012; Hopper, Sanford & Gerrity, 2012).

The eP, moreover, allows access across geographic distances. The scale and scope of what comprises a professional community grows by virtue of the virtuality of the environment in the ways that peers, supervisors, instructors and colleagues can provide feedback and engage with each other around content, contexts and process (Hopper, 2012). ePs are seen as a means of implementing a “holistic” learning in which the individual takes ownership of his/her own learning and seek out feedback and

engagement in multiple ways, in contrast to a reductionist simplification of knowledge in which students act as vessels into which instructors transmit knowledge and whose abilities to meet defined, measurable and observable objectives are assessed in a summative manner (Barrett & Turner, 2000).

Many different types of evidence can be used within an eP. The types may include completed or uncompleted writing or art samples, photographs, videos, word clouds, research projects or work related projects, multimedia collages or montages, peer or supervisor observations, to name a few. The artifacts are selected or

self-constructed because the individual believes that the artifacts represent the potentiality for linkages to competencies that can be made explicit through reflective engagement. Though the artifacts are central to the eP process, the reflective engagement on the

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20 artifacts and the reasons they were chosen are foundational to learning with the eP

process (Abrami & Barrett, 2005; Klenowski, Askew & Carnell, 2006; Loughran & Corrigan, 1995; Smith & Tillema, 2003). Kimball (2005) summarizes, “Neither collection nor selection are worthwhile learning tasks without a basis in reflection. Reflection undergirds the entire pedagogy of portfolios” (p. 451).

Reflection can take multiple forms. It can be a type of “on your feet” assessment and analysis considered sense-making (Siemens, 2012) or reflection-in-action (Schön, 1983) in situ of doing. Both sense-making and reflection-in-action imply that learners understand a problem “only after they have faced it and only after their actions have come inextricably wound to it” (Siemens, 2012, citing Weick, 1988, p. 306). Siemens describes sense-making as “essentially the creation of an architecture of concept relatedness, such as placing items into frameworks” (citing Weick 1995, p.6) and

continually seeking “to understand connections” (citing Klein, Moon, & Hoffman,, 2006, p. 71). Both sense-making and reflection-in-action anticipate that emerging factors will change the nature, direction and complexity of doing.

Or with ongoing engagement, reflection can transform into a more reflexive, introspective process in which students look inward at their own motivations, beliefs and biases and how these personal markings influence professional identity making

(Mezirow, 2000; Schön, 1983). In its potential to engage learners in transformative reflection, the eP process resembles key characteristics of an action research cycle.

Action research within education is a participatory research process, often collaborative in nature, that is founded on iterative cycles of planning, doing and reflection, and situated in real-world contexts around real-world problems. Within an

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21 action research approach, the iterative engagements with ideas, beliefs, plans of action and/or habitual practices, returns multiple and different potentialities for understanding, engagement and practice (Kember, 1998; Phillip & Nichols, 2007). One guiding principle of action research is the inter-relationship between theory and practice, positioning the research from within (instead of on) the setting under question, and emphasizing a collaborative process that “transcends distinctions between researcher(s) and subjects” (Noffke & Somekh, 2011, p. 94). Both researchers and participants interact in a process of research. One primary goal is to have an immediate impact on practice. O’Brien (1998) calls action research “learning by doing” that involves a cyclical process of participants working together. Many iterations, or further cycles can take place, too, in refining the issues and improving outcomes, contextualized continually within a collaborative process.

The eP process engages learners in a similar manner. The iterative process of reflexive engagements with artifacts and other people makes the eP a vehicle for affecting transformation by positioning learners as collaborative self-evaluators within ongoing and recursive encounters with their own learning, contextualized by what

constitutes becoming competent to engage in the practices of the professional community (Zubizarreta, 2009). Each new engagement with an artifact, for example, may return not just different interpretations but also new and emergent ways of looking at motivations, beliefs and biases that have shaped an understanding of the artifact’s value, context or meaning. With the recognition that a multiplicity of interpretations are not only possible but probable, creative and emergent possibilities for transformation also emerge as the inquirer comes to realize that there are no pre-determined ways in which he/she can

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22 engage in the eP process. A new way of knowing or practicing that may not yet exist becomes actualized through what Drummond and Themessl-Huber (2007) call a

“reciprocal dialectic of continuous becoming” (p. 437). This process encourages students to think about how they relate to themselves through a different lens.

The modality of the artifact influences how individuals make meaning of their artifacts. Kress (2003) note that there are fundamental differences in the potentiality of modes that reside specifically in “space” and “time” (see pp. 43-44). For example, video is a time-based mode in which meaning making arises out of the temporal succession of elements, events and actions. This mode captures sequences of “lived experiences” as they are enacted in time. Photography, collages, montages or word clouds are space-based modes in which meaning making occurs through spatial distribution, metaphoric representation and the inter-relations of the meanings they signify. Writing can be either time-based or space-based or both. For example, poetry is highly metaphoric and

imagistic in nature, aligning it with space-based modes, whereas narrative accounts or stories often focus on how plot elements unfold over time. Both time-based and space-based modes have their own logic as forms of representation and thus influence meaning making and what they signify when used.

The eP process includes the sharing of artifacts and the articulating of their

meaning and value. The sharing component can be formal—a presentation of the eP to an audience—or informal, as an articulated discussion within a group, often around the meaning of the artifacts or the learning enabled by the eP process. Pedagogically, the sharing of artifacts serves a reflective purpose. Through dialogue, the individual engages with alternative perspectives and examines the rationales, reasons, beliefs and

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23 assumptions that inform the meaning making process. As Mezirow (2000) notes,

“Reflective discourse involves a critical assessment of assumptions. It leads toward a clearer understanding by tapping collective experience to arrive at a tentative best judgment” (pp. 10-11). Reflective discourse is reflexive by nature, and involves

perspective taking as means to examine one’s own lens on the meaning making process. How reflective discourse influences perspective transformation, however, is difficult to define, since perspective transformation often evolves incrementally, and becomes recognized only in retrospect (Mezirow, 2000).

The diverse nature of reflection within the eP process is complex, polesymic, messy, and often paradoxical. Pearson and Heywood (2004) note that there are at present no objective ways to measure reflection in relation to the eP process. To objectify or overly constrict reflection within an eP context undermines the purpose of reflection as well as ownership of the learning process. Teitel, Ricci & Coogan (1998) add that the key benefits are lost if the reflective culture of professional development is replaced by a “culture of compliance”– where instructors or students go through the motions of assembling materials according to a predated checklist (p. 152). This emphasis on reflection as the key component of the eP process moves the focus for success from judgment based on a checklist of competencies or assignments graded by an instructor, to a focus on self-assessment in relation to continuous feedback (from instructors, peers and supervisors) framed by notions of competencies within a professional learning

community (Barrett & Wilkerson, 2004; Chau & Cheng, 2010; Meyer & Latham, 2008). Given the constituent elements that inform learning within the eP process,

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24 learning that evaluates it as something “other.” Based on research of how learning

happens (Manitoba Education, 2006), assessment as learning underpins reflection as a meta-cognitive restructuring of one’s thinking whenever one interacts with new ideas. This speaks to the regulatory process in meta-cognition, and is informed by notions of active engagement with one’s own learning by making adjustments, adaptations and re-calibrations or even major shifts in thinking. Ultimately, the process aims to enable students to become more independent, develop good habits of mind, and create greater capacity not only to learn but also continually assess their learning. The instructor’s role in assessment as learning are multiple, but instructors need to “start by presenting and modeling external, structured opportunities for students to assess themselves” (Earl, 2013, p. 52).

This understanding of assessment as learning implies a relational positionality of instructor as assessor in regard to the “whole” student and his or her experiences,

informed by the potentiality of learning as enabled by the eP process. The relationship between reflection, competencies and assessment situates the inquiry of my primary research question:

1) How do instructors in higher education use the eP process to examine and transform their own teaching practices in light of evidence-based approaches to their professional learning?

within the pedagogic conundrum of eP assessment implicit in my second question: 2) How do instructors (re)define assessment in relation to how learning is enabled

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25 Relevance of the Issue: The Value of the Study Within the Field

Citing Amundsen and Wilson’s (2012) conceptual review of the literature on professional development of educators, Benoit (2015) notes that additional research is needed to understand how faculty can better engage in professional learning. He cites a lack of understanding of what it means for professional educators to learn “beyond disciplinary perspectives and exposure to evidence-based strategies” (p. 356). Others contend that a new conceptual framework for professional learning is required that emphasizes experiential contexts that stimulate self-exploration, and that recognizes the non-linear, multi-dimensional, and often contradictory but interconnected relationships between teaching and learning (Davis, 2008; Davis & Sumara, 2007; Kiss, 2012). Instructors are increasingly being driven by programmatic concerns and compliance to standards-based education to integrate ePs into their courses without real knowledge or experience of how to do it meaningfully. Within the past decade a growing body of literature has emerged that has focused on what makes for a successful eP integration. Citing the current state of the literature, Arntfield et al. (2016) summarize that portfolio learning may be vulnerable as a successful pedagogic process unless certain conditions are enabled, such as “clearly communicated purpose, priming of learners, a flexible learner-centered structure, effective mentorship, consideration of summative assessment along with their limitations and impact, effective written feedback and longitudinal, and mandatory integration into the curriculum” (p. 197). These conditions are not only related to student success but also success of instructors who are being asked to implement ePortfolios within their courses. For instructors, understanding how to “do” the ePortfolio and what constitutes the eP process is important as a point of initiation, but transferring

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26 that knowledge into practices that recognize the complexities and full range of needs for student success are even more pivotal. The learning environment in which the eP process is enacted, and the necessary social processes that support and enable learning, are important indicators for a successful eP integration (Donato & George, 2012; Van Schaik, Plant, & O’Sullivan, 2013).

Researchers in areas of professional development within higher education have cited greater need for instructors to experience the eP process first hand, not only to build contextualized learning opportunities for themselves but also to understand the intricacies and intimacy of self-reflective learning as experienced by their students (Butler, 2006; Dekker, Shonrock-Adema, Snoek, Van der Molen, & Cohen-Schotanus, 2013; Tosh, Light, Fleming, & Haywood, 2005; Butler, 2006; Van Shaik et al., 2013). Wade & Yarboourgh (1996) and Person and Heywood (2004) emphasize that although reflection is implicitly fostered within the eP process, there is no guarantee that it will actually occur or that students will understand it in relation to evidence of learning. Often students confuse quantity for quality, with their ePs populated with a plethora of artifacts but little accompanying reflection on the artifacts’ value or meaning. It may be that students do not necessarily value or recognize reflection as a learning strategy, but it is more likely that they do not know how to engage in it without guidance, strategies or scaffolded processes (Aronson, 2011). Martini and Lackner (2015) point out that reflection seems to come more naturally in areas of personal development, but less so in relation to professional practice. Reflective engagement in professional contexts requires first recognizing or “seeing” how their learning fosters competencies or skills within practice. However, without appropriate situated practice contexts that help shape their relationship to

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27 knowledge, students will continue to struggle in transitioning from classroom to practice situations.

Student success within eP learning is tied inextricably to their ability to relate to the ways that their instructors not only value learning but also the methods their

instructors use to facilitate learning. For students, success is linked to “relatedness” (Martini & Lackner, 2017) and “adaptability” (Arntfield et al., 2016) in the ways their instructors model engagement, provide mentorship, and create situational contexts in which students can engage meaningfully in reflective practices. For example, if instructors themselves do not value or engage in self-reflection personally or

professionally, they may not take the time to understand how to motivate or facilitate reflective learning for their students (Sandars, 2009; Van Shaik et al., 2013) or understand how reflective capacity helps students build intrinsic competency. The relationship between reflection and intrinsic competency is often cited as integral to how the eP process promotes learning in relation to professional practice (Mann, Gordon, & MacLeod, 2009; Quirk, 2006; Sandars, 2009).

Instructors often do not always understand their roles as mentors in facilitating the eP process (Arntfield et al., 2016). In a mentorship of the eP process, the instructor may need to employ different types of reflective engagement to help students bring their eP learning to fruition, such as referential, self-referential and even disruptive forms of inquiry, so students can begin to examine the ways that their knowledge, identity, and practice inter-relate. Mentors ask questions for clarification and elaboration so students gain insight into their own cognitive development and decision-making process as they engage with their artifacts. Questioning not only serves the purpose of meaning making

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28 but also emphasizes critical moments and decision-making regarding which artifacts may be of value and why, and how inter-relations between artifacts might shed light on

identity in relation to professional practice. Referential questioning and contextualization around key eP learning events help to frame and reframe for students the understanding that eP learning is a self-reflective, relational process, not a product-driven activity. Given the unique learning context of the eP process, in which mentorship is widely acknowledged as essential to learning (Heinrich, Bhattacharya, & Rayudu, 2007; Mollahadi, Khademolhoseini, Mokhtari-Nouri, & Khaghanizadeh, 2018; Pearson & Hawood, 2004), becoming a mentor requires that instructors undertake a self-examination of what mentorship means in relation to learning as enabled by the eP process.

Hopper & Sanford (2004; 2010; 2012) have emphasized for over a decade the need for instructors to redefine their assessment practices in light of the experiential and situated context of learning enabled by the eP process. However, citing the

comprehensive research by Bryant and Chittum (2013), Butler (2006), Eynon and Gambino (2017), and Panke (2014) on the state of the literature of eP learning, gaps reside in multiple areas relating to assessment within the eP process, and specifically in the relationship between competencies, assessment and learning. For example, Panke (2014) notes that little can be gleaned from the literature regarding how to establish fair and transparent eP assessment practices, and very few studies discussed how ePs were evaluated. Bryant & Chittum (2013) add that a shift in research is required away from data focused on affective considerations such as student attitudes and perceptions to the actual learning outcomes, especially in relation to evidence based learning.

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29 Cummings & Maddux (2010) and Ralston (2015) highlight that ePs are certainly perceived to support sophisticated assessment of, for and as learning. However, as Deneen and Boud (2014) point out, the move away from an examination-dependent system towards discipline achievements founded on the formative and sustainable value of assessment requires that not only instructors but also students become more

assessment literate. Along these lines, Deenen, Brown and Carless (2017) add that instructors who model adaptive conceptions of assessment tend to have better student learning outcomes. “Adaptive conceptions of assessment include those that foster personal agency, responsibility for learning, and accepting the legitimacy of being

assessed” (p. 489). Their study concludes that the ways in which instructors model, relate and emphasize their own adaptive beliefs about assessment correlate directly to whether students come to understand the phenomenon of ePs as assessment.

Conceptual Framework: Dewey’s Ontology of Experiences

Underpinning this study is the conceptual framework of learning as a lifelong pursuit of becoming. The notion of becoming, as framed by Dewey (1902; 1910) is an ontological turn for understanding the continuous evolving nature of learning as an experiential process of doing and reflecting on doing in the everyday experiences of professional practice. Within Dewey’s ontological turn, individuals learn primarily by iterative cycles of doing informed by reflective practices that build knowledge as conceptually guiding frameworks for future learning. The two, doing and reflection on doing, co-exist in a relational manner and inform each other reflexively to frame knowledge-building in an inductive process. In this manner, knowledge is informed by

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30 both lived and living experience – “a course of life as lives are being lived” (Clandinin, 2006, p. 105).

Dewey’s understanding of “reflection on doing” is a type of reflection-in-action or “conversations with the situation”, as Donald Schön writes (1992). As a conversation with the situation, the individual is engaged in the situation and attempting to make sense of it, influenced both by their prior knowledge of like situations, and “his [sic]

appreciation of it at the same time that he shapes it by thinking and doing” (Schön, 1992, p. 126). Inherently constructivist, this type of reflection in action is often triggered by a surprise encounter that invokes uncertainty or questioning—“back talk”—as Dewey (1902) frames it, that interrupts the activity and requires a conversation with the situation in order to understand the nature of the uncertainty. However, one must first be open to discovery so that surprise or wonderment can emerge. This means attending openly to the question or phenomena as a puzzle or conundrum, inviting many different points of view to gain a better understanding.

Dewey’s notion of reflection on doing also embraces “one’s way of thinking and acting on it” (Schön, 1992, p. 126) as a type of meta-cognitive functioning. Reflection thus becomes engagement with how one knows and the assumptions that guide one to action. The purpose of meta-cognitive reflection is to help the individual transform the way he or she resolves uncertainty in recurring engagement with it, especially as the individual moves into increasingly more complex situations of doing. It is an integrative function that binds different subjective and inter-subjective ways of knowing into action based on purpose. Thus, becoming is not only an evolutionary process in which learning occurs but also a mindset in which new challenges are embraced, and emergent inquiries

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31 are cultivated and nourished, regardless of our prior knowledge or competence on the subject. Dweck (2007) refers to this type of mindset as a growth mindset, and reminds us that motivation and competence become intrinsically defined when development or growth informs our mindset or worldview. As a growth mindset, becoming can transform or shift fixed frames of reference to more open, dynamic ones. As a reflexive practice that builds through experiential cycles, Dewey’s reflection on doing is the process or vehicle that transforms, promotes and sustains a growth mindset as a new guide to action.

Dewey’s understanding of “doing” and “reflection on doing” do not take place between a knower and knowledge considered separate and mutually exclusive; rather, knower and knowledge are bound together, intertwined and inseparable. Learning is the iterative interaction of knower in knowledge as an experiential process, contextualized by the continuity or continuum that is a human being’s life journey. Dewey (1902) says, “Abandon the notion of subject matter as something fixed and ready-made in itself,

outside of the [individual’s] experience; …see the [individual’s] experience as something fluent, embryonic, vital; and we realize that the [individual] and the curriculum are

simply two limits which define a single process” (p. 11). Learning is considered in terms of the continuous processes through which knower and knowledge are simultaneously interwoven. Davis (2008) calls Dewey’s conception of the knower-knowledge

relationship an ancient intuition for educators who implicitly understand that “knower and knowledge are simultaneously redefined in relation to one another” (pp. 53-54).

Conceptual Frames.

This ancient intuition Davis (2008) refers to is central to engagements within teaching practices. The simple phrase employed daily throughout education settings

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32 everywhere, “where students are in their understanding” rephrases the question of the students’ subjective and inter-subjective location within knowledge in the continuity or continuum that is their lives. Just as learners engage based on their location within knowledge, instructors teach from their own location within knowledge, informed by the whole of their teaching practices and the ways in which they engage in practice.

Ellsworth (1997) contends that teaching and learning are a dialectical exchange within one’s competence with textual knowledge of curriculum, in the differences educators and students share in “location within the pedagogical structures of address that takes place between [them]” (p. 63). Within professional practice situations, the context is one of identity in relation to knowledge. On the instructor’s part, this implies using his or her more experienced sense of location within textual knowledge to identify and establish learning conditions upon which students can build authentic and legitimate relationships with their knowledge and professional practice. On the learner’s part, this implies consistently negotiating greater textual knowledge and meaning of their identities and how these may locate them within the norms of knowledge and practice within their fields. Both are informed by an identity of participation and development of that identity in relation to the field of knowledge and the practices that sustain it (Lave & Wenger; 1991; Ellsworth, 1997; Gerber & Scott, 2007).

Within teacher education, teacher identity in relation to its location within

professional knowledge resides within an understanding of teacher knowledge. Clandinin and Connelly (2010) make a distinction between what they call knowledge for teachers and teacher knowledge. “Knowledge for teachers originates in theory and policy matters outside of teachers and teaching” (p. 597). Teacher knowledge, in contrast, is founded in

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33 “how teachers know their professional settings and the whole of its constituent parts” (p. 597). Teacher knowledge emphasizes that the whole of the teacher’s professional

experience is context for growth and development.

Within my framework of professional learning, Clandinin and Connelly’s (2010) concept of teacher knowledge applies across multiple disciplines in which educators are preparing students for professional practice. Teacher knowledge is implicitly gained through ongoing engagements with teaching in relation to professional practice, a framework of knowledge that becomes tacit over time as instructors integrate and re-integrate the complexities of evolving personal, social, institutional and pedagogic contexts that frame their teaching practices (See Polyani, 1959). Polkinghorne (1988) writes that practical teacher knowledge “is personal and involves the past histories and experience of the person, the constraints on practice that emerge from the context itself and other in that context, as well as the emotional and relational responses that motivate and guide action in practice” (p. 26). Knowledge of how teaching and professional practice inter-relate emphasizes increasing levels of competence founded on and embracing agency as a growth mindset.

Within a Deweyan framework, knowledge is situated and embodied in practice. The multiple and contextualized variables that motive and guide action in practice are enacted as living processes that bind pedagogy, learning and assessment within educational contexts. The tacit understandings are informed by the whole of the instructor’s experiences, in the ways instructors relate to the pedagogic norms of their practices. Teacher educators frame it as the teaching self in-relation-to his or her practices (Clandinin & Connelly, 2010; Loughran, 2004; Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009). The

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34 dynamics implied by self-in-relation-to center around the holistic implication that the personal and professional experiences, theories, and human relationships as enacted in practice define one’s location within teacher knowledge. By engaging with individualized self-in-relation-to practices, educators gain insight into the ways in which tacit

knowledge guides their actions, locates them within their knowledge, and invites shifts or transformation between locations, with the end goal of becoming better educators in relation to the domains of knowledge and norms of practice within their fields.

Narrative Ways of Knowing.

It may be that much of what we call lived experience remains unknowable; however, the ways in which individuals frame their experiences in language provides insight into how they relate to their experiences. Clandinin (2006) contends that Dewey’s ontology of experiences “are manifested as narrative form, not just in retrospective representations of human experience, but in lived immediacy of that experience” (p. 51). Her contention rests on Bruner’s (2002) assertion that narrative is a “way of knowing” unto itself, engaged in meaning making of experience in the instances of living it. Bruner (2002) writes, narrative “looks for particular conditions and is centred around the broader and more inclusive question of the meaning of experience” (p. 11). In contrast to logic-scientific thinking concerned with categorization and the establishment of universal truth conditions, narrative acts constructively to create personal truths that continuously evolve and emerge as we tell and re-tell our narratives, primarily in the form of life stories.

Life stories and the humans that tell them exist within a relationship founded on the premise of Dewey’s simultaneity of knower-knowledge. Like knower and knowledge, humans and their stories are bound together, intertwined and inseparable. For one, life