Five Vignettes: Stories of Teacher Advocacy and Parental Involvement

Qualitative research can, and sometimes should, utilize fictional representations, particularly when attempting to connect to and collaborate with communities outside of the academy. This work utilizes an arts - informed methodology of representation to communicate the importance and potential consequences of teacher advocacy and parental involvement. Specifically, I use fiction as a mode of representing the interview data that my research participant and I generated. After analyzing the data using grounded theory methods, I chose to represent the data with five vignettes. Vignette 1 introduces the reader to Ms. Abeni, a public school teacher who is passionate about educating every child. Vignettes 2 - 4 illustrate challenges that Ms. Abeni faces in working with parents, students, and school personnel. The final vignette shows one of the consequences that Ms. Abeni faces for being such a radical change agent in her school. The vignettes are fictional representations of the real life of a teacher who I interviewed. I detail my process for creating the vignettes and offer justification for why the use of fiction is appropriate for this research study