A bricolage of narratives about teaching college in prison: interpreting through a performance text
Date
2008
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Abstract
The purpose of this narrative inquiry was to explore and understand how a selected group of educators made meaning of their experiences teaching college courses in prison. This phenomenon was framed by the tension between two contrasting conceptualizations of education: education as a means of social control and education as the practice of freedom. The data were in-depth stories collected from a small number of participants through unstructured interviews. As I identified narrative structures from my interview transcripts for analysis, three transcendent themes emerged that I used to create a coherent composite story, or bricolage, about these lived experiences. Using a feminist lens, I examined how these educators worked in a borderland, negotiated power relations within this environment, and made personal transformations. To convey an impression of these real-life experiences, I presented the data in a performance text leaving intact large segments of my participants' interview dialogue. The prison offered a rich discursive environment for this study since its hierarchical power structure that focuses on social control contrasts with the democratic classroom that the participants attempted to create. Within the stormy, dangerous, and frustrating prison setting, these educators encountered unique situations for which they were often unprepared and were caught between competing conceptualizations of education.
Description
Rights Access
Subject
corrections
discursive environment
feminist interpretation
narrative inquiry
performance text
prison
prison higher education
criminology
higher education
teaching