Writing relationships, weaving words: How teachers construct knowledge in a graduate education course

This teacher-research study was conducted in a semester-long, graduate course in education for pre- and inservice, K-12, language arts teachers in 1993. Using theoretical frameworks and research on critical and feminist theory, knowledge construction, professional development, literacy, and school writing, the study explores how five female participants used writing to build relationships with me, with one another, and with their students. As a teacher researcher, I used qualitative research methods--drawing on participants\u27 writing, my own reflective journal, and interviews--to construct three series of case studies through which I analyzed teacher-student and student-student relationships as sites for the construction of knowledge and authority. The data suggest that in my relationships with participants, I conceptualized authority as a balancing of experiential authority and theory-based authority, and through my written responses, I reinforced, challenged, or impeded participants\u27 conceptualizations of themselves as authorities in constructing knowledge about practice. In the relationships participants developed through writing to one another in their journal groups, there was a consistent attempt to support and validate each others\u27 experiences and practices. There was also, however, a range in the extent to which the groups embraced a critical and feminist perspective and a range in the agency participants felt in constructing knowledge of practice based on their authority. In their relationships with their students, participants experimented with their notions of empowering teaching practices and offered their students opportunities to write and respond to one another which paralleled the most empowering experiences participants had in their relationships with me and in their journal response groups. The data revealed complex power dynamics in my assessment of and response to participants, in their engagement with each other as authorities on practice, and in their extension of learning opportunities to their students. These findings suggest that it is important for all teachers to create spaces in their classrooms for multiple relationships through which participants can construct their authority and their knowledge of practice and explore possibilities for empowering pedagogies