Abstract:
The use of memories in research captures the lived experience of everyday events, and foregrounds experience as part of a multi-layered assemblage of knowledge (Haug, 1987; Davies & Gannon, 2006; Onyx & Small, 2001). The process of remembering embraces a deep connection with the body, to recall events and actions that occurred through the body and in relation to everyday experience. It further makes connections to place and facilitates place-making (Somerville, 2007). In this presentation I draw on memory-work conducted with secondary visual arts teachers as part of an on-going collaborative research program examining classroom-based teaching practice. I will present a compilation of memories written by teachers working in rural and regional areas of Australia in response to the prompt “What is your earliest memory of teaching?” The memories this prompt evoked were initially thought about, then written and then shared within the group. They were bought together in an adapted process of collective biography (Davies and Gannon, 2006), allowing us to examine commonalities and distinctions related to experience, while maintaining the integrity of each respective memory. In the presentation, analysis of the collected memories will focus on the significance of the body in and for practice (Green, 2009; Green & Hopwood, 2015). It will further examine the significance of memory in relation to the development of teaching expertise over time (Dreyfus & Dreyfus, 2004; Reid, 2011) and situations of practice (Suchman, 2007) and place (Green, Letts, Novak, & Reid, 2008; Roberts & Green, 2013). Implications for the affordances of practice theory and understandings of teaching and teacher education will be examined.